Rebecca Mendil Evaluation

8/7/2019 Rebecca Mendil Evaluation

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Media Evaluation – Becki Mendil

1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media

products?

For my media product, I have worked within a group to produce a documentary. We chose to base it on

Cosmetic Procedures and to broadcast it on BBC3, a channel which we felt would be most appropriate to show

the documentary, with an interested audience.

Before we started making our media product, we watched a variety of documentaries of which we picked out

the main conventions, such as; actuality, exposition, montage, voiceover, interviews, archival footage and

reconstructions. When making our own documentary, we tried to include as many as possible within the

assigned five minutes.

Initial screen shot

When making the first screen shot, we thought about the exposition, wanting to make the viewers first

impression a positive one, leading them to watch the rest of the documentary. After watching ‘An Inconvenient

Truth’, a documentary about global warming, which started with a calm and picturesque sho t of nature, it

inspired us to start with looking at natural beauty such as the environment rather than man-made beauty, in

humans which is being altered using cosmetic surgery.

Screen shot from “An Inconvenient Truth”.

We thought that using such juxtaposing images would interest and entice our potential audience and

encourage them to keep watching. To do this, we then took a camera outside and retrieved a vertical pan shot

of the sun with a tree in the foreground. Here you can see my comparison between the two shots.

Screen shot from our documentary.




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Interviews

The next convention we looked at as a group

was ‘Interviews’. All documentaries include

interviews, giving the viewers as much

information as possible as well as portraying

different opinions on the subject. This allowspeople to talk on screen about the content of

the documentary and to answer questions

prompted by the filmmaker.

For our own documentary about Cosmetic

Procedures, we wanted to include at least two

expert interviews. The benefit of having

experts is it lets the audience believe they are

hearing a correct answer from a reliable

source, someone who is in a high position in a

relevant profession.

After carrying out some research and sending

letters to the right people, we successfully

interviewed a media expert and a dental

practitioner.

Positioning shots

When interviewing our experts, we had to think about the

positioning of our shot, a very important factor when

showing an interview on screen. It is ideal to have the

interviewee on one side, looking into the shot, as well as

positioning their eye line within the top third.

We also had to consider what was shown in the

background of the shot to make a good

composition. This is when we decided to sit our

media expert, Mike Hatton, in front of a computer

screen with an article about cosmetic surgery on, to

portray his profession.




3

On Location

For our interview with Dr. McCullough, a dental practitioner, we travelled to her surgery and chose to film in

her work room, wanting to show the dental chair in the background. However, the room was very small and

the only way we could fit, was to have Dr. McCullough sitting in front of the window. This was not ideal, as the

sun was shining through the window, constantly changing the lighting within the interview. This would be one

thing I would change if we were given the chance to start over from the beginning.

Light level 1.

Light level 2.

Editing

When we were in the editing stage, we also added headings and titles in for the expert interviews, for when

they first appear on screen. This is to tell the viewers who they are, what profession they are in and reassure

them it is someone with a high level of knowledge answering the questions. This is a convention that is used is

all documentaries providing the audience with the correct information.




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Vox Pops

Our second type of interview which is a widely used convention within documentari es is known as ‘vox pops’.

These are interviews with the general public, often taken out in the streets, where people are stopped to

answer a few simple questions. For example, they were used within the documentary ‘Supersize Me’; a feature

film directed by Morgan Spurlock, to find out how often people will eat a McDonalds within one month.

Screen shot from “Super Size Me”.

This is something we wanted to include, so as a group we took to the streets of Solihull town centre, to ask the

public about their opinions and knowledge on the different cosmetic procedures. I think the vox pops were

very successful and provided us with a good source of information.


Montage

The next convention of a documentary we looked at

was making a montage, a series of edits put

together. For our documentary, we decided to

make a montage of images relating to cosmetic

procedures, showing the variety of popular

surgeries in the UK. These include tummy tuck,

breast enlargements and liposuction, all of which

provoke different opinions.





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Montages are often used as a visual aid for the

audience. Images that relate to the spoken voiceover

and help the viewers understand what is being said.

For example, there is a montage used in the opening

of ‘Supersize Me’ showing a variety of pictures of

unhealthy meals; burgers, fries etc.

We decided to use the idea as I thought images can

portray a message or information better and stronger

than words.

Screen shot from “Super Size Me”.

Screen shot

Another common technique used in documentaries is a screen shot of the computer, showing someone doing

research on the chosen topic. This also portrays a sense of realism, as the results on the internet would be real

and not made for the purpose of the show.

As you can see, for our documentary, we filmed a snippet of someone using the Google search engine to look

for information about cosmetic surgery.

Reconstruction

Reconstruction is also a useful tool, especially when used in the right context. It creates a sense of realism and

enables past events to be acted out for the benefit of the audience watching. We could not include this in our

documentary as it was not possible, however the closest we could get was taking a picture of someone with

lines drawn on their face, as if they were about to go under the knife.

We felt this was practical to show as we have

aimed our documentary at an audience aged

around 15-40, about a broad subject area.

In conclusion, I think we have used a strong

number of documentary conventions. However, I

feel some of them could be improved with extra

time, such as the positioning of the expertinterview and the computer visual shots.




6

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Looking at all three of my texts, I personally think they are of a good standard but could be stronger. After the

main documentary task was complete, we started with the radio advert.

To make our radio clip, we took snippets from our documentary such as the vox pops. This was to let people

hear certain elements of the documentary and hopefully make them want to watch. However, out of the three,I think the radio clip could be improved the most as the sound levels are not as professional as I would like

them to be. However, I think the content of the radio trailer is very suitable and includes the necessary

information for those who wish to watch the documentary. We wanted to make sure that the date, time and

channel for when it was going to be broadcasting was made clear to the listeners.

The next product we made to promote our documentary was a double page article for a TV listings magazine.

To do this successfully, we had to consider the layout, the colour theme, the images and the content, knowing

that we were broadcasting our documentary on BBC Three, to a targeted audience aged between 15 and 40.

We started at looking at other articles in magazines

such as ‘TV Now’, a very popular television magazine.

We made the title big and bold, hopefully catchingattention especially being called, ‘Bums, Boobs and

sorting out your Moobs’, matching other

documentaries shown on BBC Three. The layout we

have made simple but effective, clear but informative,

including snippets from the article being brought to the

reader’s attention using a bigger font size. We have

used the pink and blue colours to show that the subject

of the documentary isn’t taken too seriously as well as

attracting a younger and female audience.

The main image we have used is, briefly seen within the documentary, showing someone with the surgery linesdrawn on their face about to go under the knife. We could not retrieve our own photograph of someone who is

having or has had plastic surgery so to try and keep the sense of realism; we have reconstructed a photograph.

I personally think the image works well and would grab your attention when turning the page. The smaller inset

images we have included are screen shots from the documentary to show the readers what kind of image to

expect. For example we have used a still image from the expert interview with the dentist. This would show the

audience that we are including professional views and gathering information from reliable and respectable

business positions.

Overall, I think that all three texts work together well and the radio trailer and magazine article do their job in

supporting the main product. They all follow the same style but explore in their own ways to mention the

subject of cosmetic surgery.




7

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Once our documentary was complete, we carried out a detailed audience feedback session. We wrote a

questionnaire which was handed out before all three of our texts were shown and collected them at the end.

The feedback we received is as follows;

Feedback

Our first question was ‘On a scale of 1-10, how

enjoyable did you find watching our

documentary?’ They then had to circle the

number of which they felt from 1 being ‘not

very much’ to 10 being ‘very much’.

Here you can see that 50% of the group rated

their enjoyment 8 out of 10. I am pleased with

this result as the enjoyment factor also

depends on the subject of the documentary. Ithink this shows it was a good topic to develop

into.

The second question we asked was ‘How

informative did you find the documentary?’

We found that it was split 50/50 between very

informative and average.

I am proud of this result as we only had five

minutes to fill, however I personally felt we

could have put in a lot more research in terms

of facts and statistics, rather than people’sopinions.

Next, we asked our sample of people ‘How

much do you feel you can relate to the topic of

the documentary?’

This was also given on a scale of 1-10. As you

can see form the bar graph below, we got a

mix of results. This didn’t surprise me though,

as cosmetic surgery does not interest or affect

everyone, more so for males, which we did

have, answer our questionnaire.

Our fourth question was ‘Do you think that our sound

levels were consistent?’

The results show 9 people said ‘Yes’ and 1 person said

‘No’. Here, I was happy with what the audience had

answered with, although there could be a few areas

which could be fine tuned with extra time but I would

agree the sound levels were quite even.

01

2345

678

910

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Enjoyment Rating

Number of

Respondants

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

VeryInformative

Average Notinformative

Number of

Respondants

01234

56789

10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Relate Level

Number of

Respondants

Do you think the sound levels were

consistant?

Yes

No




8

‘What is your overall opinion of the lighting

throughout the documentary?’

This was the following question, of which 40% said

good, 60% said Okay and no-one answered poor.These set of answers do not surprise me in any way,

in fact I would have to agree with the majority. I think

the lighting was good in parts but especially fell down

within the dentist interview.

Question number six was, ‘Overall, how effective did you find the visuals?’ The results tell me that they were

quite effective ranging between 7 and 9. I am very pleased with this as I was expecting the audience to rank

them lower. I felt we could have assigned a longer period of time to film visuals.

The next question we asked was ‘Did you think that the expert interviews we included were appropriate?’

100% of the audience thought they were appropriate for our documentary. Obviously, it could not be betterthan getting 100%, but I would have loved to interview someone who is involved with cosmetic surgery, such

as the surgeons or consultants. However, our contacts were limited and I think we did well to interview who

we did.

The eighth question we put to the audience was ‘On a scale of 1 -10, how successful do you think the editing

was in terms of its quality throughout the documentary?’ Again the answers were all between 7 and 9 which I

am very pleased with, knowing that it was the first documentary we have made and the first time using all the

different media technologies.

‘Do you think that our documentary is appropriate to be shown on BBC Three?’ was our next question. This

also got 100% saying ‘yes’ which tells us we have chosen the right subject to discuss as well as aiming it at the

correct audience. I was hoping for these results as we have specifically aimed our piece at the viewers of BBC

Three.




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The final question we asked for the main task was ‘After watching our documentary would you stand for or

against Cosmetic Surgery or neither?’ The results show that 60% of the audience would be against. Hopefully

some of these were due to our documentary but personally, I feel that we did not argue enough in either

option.

Radio Trailer

Our first question about the radio advert was ‘If you heard our radio advert, would you feel like you would

want to watch our documentary?’ 90% of our audience said they would, which is very encouraging. I am fairly

surprised with this result as I was not as confident in the radio trailer.

The second question was ‘Do you think that our voiceover provides you with enough information to know what

the documentary includes?’ Here we have received the same results, with 90% says there is enough

information. I think I would agree with the audience for this question, as I am confident in the material we used

for the radio clip; both the vox pops and the voiceover.

The last question we asked was ‘On a scale of 1 -10,how consistent do you think the sound levels are

throughout the advert?’ The results we obtained vary

between 7 and 10, which I am very pleased with.

However, I feel the sound levels could have been

better especially when listening to the difference

when the vox pops finish and the “studio” voiceover

was introduced.

0123456789

10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Scale for Consistancy of Sound Levels

Number of

Respondants




10

Magazine Article

The first question regarding the article for the TV listing magazine was ‘If you read our magazine article would

you feel like you would want to watch our documentary?’ The results are very good showing another 90%

would watch it after reading. I am pleased with this result as I think the article says everything it needs to about

our documentary on cosmetic procedures.

‘Do you think that the colours and the images we used were appropriate for our documentary as well as BBC

Three?’ This was our second question of which we also got a great reply. Another 9 people said yes and 1

person said no. Personally, I think the images work well but the colours should be less bright making it appeal

to a wider range of readers.

The final question we asked within the questionnaire was ‘On a scale of 1-10, how successful do you think our

magazine article was in terms of the layout looking professional?’ From looking at the results, there is a

complete mix showing the layout does not appeal to everyone. I think we could of done more research in terms

of TV listing magazines to accommodate for more people.

In conclusion

I think the audience feedback was very helpful, giving us a chance to pinpoint certain areas that we could

improve to satisfy our potential audience. After gaining the feedback, I believe the documentary would

encourage ‘negotiated readings’. This is from a theory made by Stuart Hall when encoding and decoding

audience responses. Negotiated readings suggest that the audience agree with the text in part, but with the

nature of the subject it is anticipated that the audience will hold a range of views.

I also believe that our documentary would be watched by ‘active models’. This means that the audience is

active in interpreting the media content and not as vulnerable. From looking at the ‘Uses and Gratifications

theory’, made by Blumler and Katz in 1974, the documentary that we have created would be classified as

‘Surveillance’.

0

12

345

67

89

10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Professionalism

Number of

Respondants




11

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Throughout the production process, a large variety of media technologies were used to create all three of the

texts, the documentary, radio trailer and also the magazine article. As a group, we started work on the

documentary, choosing to base it on Cosmetic Procedures.

After filming in and out of college, we had managed to obtain plenty of video footage and images that could

potentially be used within the documentary, using a digital camera along with a tripod, boom microphone and

headphones. This was the essential equipment to successfully retrieve our footage. We then uploaded this

onto an Apple Mac computer which supplied us with all of the necessary software, such as ‘garage band’ and

‘final cut express’.

After selecting the useable film clips by marking them with ‘in’ and ‘out’ arrows, they

were moved into our new project. With these clips, we started to drag them in turn

onto the film line in where we could adjust them and add effects such as fade in and

out. The final cut software took some time to get used to and for us to know where

to find all of the different tools such as the ‘blade’ to trim our clips and ‘split’ to cut

our clips in half. By following our plan, all of the good clips were on our film line, butjust needed to be sorted into the right order in which it would flow best. This was

one of our hardest challenges as we did not want interviews one after the other. Too

many ‘talking heads’ can disengage the audience and make it ‘boring’. To avoid this,

we needed to fill in gaps using visual aids, video footage with could then later be

mixed in under our voiceover. For example, in Solihull, we filmed people just walking

past the camera for a few minutes, then, once imported into our project, we doubled

the speed, making them walk twice as fast. I thought this turned out well, a very

useful technique making an interesting image to engage the viewers.

We decided, as a group that were going

to create a montage of pictures relating

to our chosen subject. This was to helpinterest the viewers as I believe it is

easier to portray a message using images

rather than words. To do this, we had to

individually import the pictures, and to

save losing what we had done of the

documentary, we made the montage on

a separate film line. With each image, we

manually set the size and position so that

when more were added, they became

part of one piece. I really love the result

of it and found it to be very flexible.

After creating the majority of our film, we then had to record our voiceover. We did this by using exactly the

same equipment from when we went out filming. We decided to use a digital camera rather than a voice

recorder as it has the same if not better, sound levels for recording. We also found it was easier to control,

especially when we wanted to listen back to what we had already recorded. We knew that when this was going

to be imported onto the computer, it was going to be a film clip rather than just a voice recording as it was a

camera, so we decided to use this to our advantage. Whilst taping the voiceover, we held up a piece of paper in

front of the camera which told us which clip was being spoken. This saved us a lot of time in the long run as we

didn’t have to listen to the while clip to know where it went within our documentary. We just referred to our

paper image which was attached to the recording and slotted it straight into the assigned times. Once in place,

we then deleted the visual part of the clip so that it did not write over the top of the correct image.




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We also used another software package, called ‘garage

band’ to create our radio trailer as this was only to

make a sound clip rather than a full video with visuals.

This took some time to get used to after us ing ‘final cut

express’ as I felt the two programs are completely

different. However we imported our voiceover quicklyand added in our vox-pop interviews from the

documentary without too many problems. We then

added our background music on top and dragged it out

to last the whole snippet. However our trailer ended up

longer than we wanted it to be as there were several

time screens within the package. What we thought was

the time length of the clip was in fact the timing of

something else. By the time this was noticed, we had

run out of time to make any adjustments. Throughout the production process, we kept track of the work we were completing. This was done through a

blogging site, making it easy to keep in line with the other members of the group and to see what each otherhad done. The site was easily accessible and each post could be edited if needed to be improved. This is also

where we would write about our research and keep our plans.

In conclusion, I think we have successfully used a variety of technology. I felt the hardware equipment was the

easiest to use, such as the camera, although it did have its faults when filming our interviews. The lighting was

hard to adjust through the camera and has therefore been shown in our final product. The software was tough

to get used to in the beginning, but after making mistakes, we learnt how to navigate the programs.

Documents

Rebecca Mendil Evaluation