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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
A2 Media Documentary Evaluation1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge codes and conventions of real media products?
Our documentary “Is it worth it?” was created as an educational documentary for students and parents for Channel 4 to view. The documentary goes into detail about
the rise in university fees and how it has affected students, parents and even head
teachers at school/colleges. Our documentary includes a couple of interviews with
professionals who have a strong view on the rise in tuition fees and also other
interviews and focus groups with students attending college and are planning to go on
to university.
We decided to use Channel 4 as a broadcast channel as it usually plays documentaries
about teenagers and also real life situations. This is why Channel 4 would be perfect
for our documentary as the rise in university fees is a real life satiation which will
affect a lot of people of the future.
When researching into other similar documentaries about the rise in tuition fees there
was a range of videos, I found documentaries, interviews with professionals,
discussions and debates with government representatives. All videos had good points
about hem and we took them into account when producing our own documentary.
Some of the facts that I got from the videos were used in our documentary by the
voice over.
Use of Codes and ConventionsTo make our documentary seem as real as possible we had to follow and includecertain codes and conventions in our documentaries. We found most of the codes and
conventions by watching clips of other documentaries on YouTube, Channel 4 and
BBC iplayer.
IdentEvery documentary we looked
at each had an ident of the
channel they were being
broadcasted on. When doing
more research into idents Ifind out that they are a very
important convention in the
production of a documentary
as it gives the documentary
credibility as a production of
the channel it is being broadcasted on. We used a channel 4 ident and also had a male
voice over cover the ident, the voice over introduced or documentary and said when it
will be on and then mentioned another programme which is regularly played by
channel 4. We did this because it gave our documentary a sense of realism.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
Expert InterviewsIn real life documentaries experts are always used to provide there view point which
will be classed as a strong opinion as they are professionals. However you would not
ask a dentist about students fees because he has a different profession, rather ask a
professional who is relevant to your documentary and the topic your are discussing. A
principal for my documentary is perfect as he will have a great view point on studentfees. We also interviewed a college chancellor who also spoke as a parent, we tried to
show a wide range of opinions from different people. To introduce the professionals
in our documentary we used captions which also allowed viewers to recognize the
importance of that professional.
Paul Ashdown – Principal, The 6th Form College,
SolihullPaul Ashdown is the principal of our college, in the
documentary he gives his opinion of what he thinks of the rise
in university, he tells us what the worst outcome could be as aresult of the rise and also ensures students that university is
the best option. In real life documentaries interviews are done
in surrounding environments of the subject, this creates a
sense of realism within the documentary and interview. Our
interview with the principal took place in his office, which
was the best place we could interview him as his desk was in
the background, also his computer.
Neil Attewell – Chaplain of The 6 th Form
College, Solihull & Parent Neil Attewell is the college chaplain and is also a parent.
Neil works with student’s everyday so he was a perfect
interviewee, he gave us his own opinions and also his
opinions as a parent. This was very good as he gave us 2
different viewpoints. Again with Neil out interview with
him was in his office so the objects in his office gave a
sense of realism e.g. His computer, chair posters filed
papers etc.
Student Focus Group
Instead of interviewing several students one by one wedecided to have a focus group, asking students what they
thought about the rise in student fees. This would be
better as it would be less time consuming and more
efficient, in the sense that questions would be answered
more directly by students. Also a advantage of a focus
group was that students could bounce of each others
answers and be confident as they were being
interviewed within friends. When recording with the
camera we used 3 students and all of them were pictured
in the shot, and we also added zoomed in shots when
students answered certain questions.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
Use of Camera ShotsWe tried to use as many type of shots as we could to make our documentary look
more eye catching and keep the attention of viewers.
Establishing Shot
Establishing shots are very important conventions used in all documentaries. They areso important because they introduce the documentary and take you to where you are
going for example, the room of where your interview is taking place. In our
documentary out establishing shot is of Solihull and also The 6th Form College,
Solihull. The establishing shots helps us give the documentary a sense of location,
which all adds to the realism and professionalism of the documentary.
Medium Close Up ShotThe medium close up shot was use in both interviews
with professionals, this type of shot was best because
you could see how the professional was dressed and
also see the surroundings, which in our documentary
supported the professionals as they were in offices
which relates to their job titles.
Medium Angle ShotWe used a medium angle shot when recording
the focus group as we needed to get all 3
students into the shot and also show that they
are inferior in this situation, we tried to show
that the rise in university fees was having a big
impact on them and their lives. We had to make
the audience feel that these students are
genuinely upset about the rise and that it is
actually affecting them.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
Sound & Editing
Voice Over Most documentaries include a voice over and a
presenter, we decided to use both as typicaldocumentaries also have both. Our presenter was a
female member of our group and our voice over was
another male member of our group. We decided to use a
male voice over as it would create a sense of authority,
however I think by using a student we showed clearly
who our documentary was targeted at as it was mostly
student orientated.
Sound BridgesTo link different scenes and clips in our documentary we decided to create several
sound bridges which also helped with adding transitions and putting scenes together.By using sound bridges we were able to prepare the audience for the upcoming scene,
for example, when the montage finishes and the scene changes and goes to the
presenter the music is stopped and then carried on after the presenter is finished
talking.
Theme MusicAs a group we decided that we should use a more upbeat and fast paced beat, which
would keep viewers intrigued and keep their attention. The soundtrack we used was
perfectly suited for our audience, as most of them would be students who are
teenagers and would prefer upbeat music rather than slow music.
TransitionsIn the documentary we used many different transitions and also used the more simple
straights cuts and fade outs. Transitions helped us move from one scene to another
and also complemented the sound bridges when we used them to change scene.
Whilst creating the documentary or group realised that all the answers we were
getting from our questions which we asked students and teacher where very biased to
either for the rise in university or against. We had to use more of the against the rise
in university fees as that was what our documentary was based on. We had to display
the truth so we had to cut out certain clips to show what we wanted the audience tohear. People have different opinions and views on the rise in universities but we had
to show why people are against the rise.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
Magazine Listings Page
Radio Trailer The purpose of creating a radio trailer was to give the audience a short 30-45 second
insight to what out documentary will be about and what it will feature. We recorded
sound for our radio trailer separate to when creating the documentary, however sound
bites from the documentary were used in the radio trailer.
Conventions Presenter – The presenter in the radio trailer was probably the most important
part as the presenter would introduce the radio trailer similar to how a
presenter introduces a documentary.
Sound Bites – I used sound bites in the trailer which were from our actualdocumentary, I used parts of the documentary which were explosive in content
and ear catching to draw in listeners.
Title – The title of the documentary was mentioned at the start when the
presenter introduced the documentary and also the channel the documentary
will be viewed on is mentioned. Both of these conventions give the radio
trailer a sense of identity.
Background Music – The music which we used was upbeat and was the best
for our documentary as it would keep the attention of our target audience,
teenagers.
I could have improved the radio trailer by adding more opinions of professionals andstudents rather than just the one voice of the principal.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
2. How effective is the combination of your main product
and your ancillary tasks?
Creating our documentary was the main focus and aim of the group however, we also
had to create a magazine article and a radio trailer which were very important inccreating an identity for our documentary and chosen subject. We used many features
from our documentary to link it with the ancillary tasks, our main linked aspects were
direct images and quotes from the documentary.
The student we used in our
documentary as vox pop was also used
in our documentary, the student is a
studying at The 6th Form College,
Solihull and is stressing about the rise
in tuition fees. By using him on the
magazine article we have created astraight link from the documentary,
this shows a sense of identity and if
our audience read the magazine article
and then watched the documentary
they would see many familiar aspects.
We used Neil Attewell in our magazine article as
he was used as a professional in our documentary.
By having Neil on the magazine cover it shows
that there is an opinion of an older much wiser
person, whose points on the rise will be very
strong.
Also we used an image of the focus
group interview in our magazine
article, this was very effective as
they were all students, and this was
a direct link and also a direct link to the audience as they will be of
same age and same position.
This is a direct quotation used on the magazine article
straight from the interview with Neil Attewell from the
documentary. By doing so we create a direct link and
readers who also watch the documentary will be able torelate to the article.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
When creating the radio trailer I
decided to use direct sound bites from
the interview with the principal from
the documentary as his opinions would
be essential, I did this because it would
link both and also give thedocumentary a sense of identity from
the audience’s perspective. However
the radio trailer was okay but I think I
could have added Neil Attewell being
interviewed and also opinions from
students themselves, so students could
actually relate to who is talking whilst
the radio trailer is on air.
Nowadays radio trailers and magazine
articles are not as effective as they weremany years ago at promotion
documentaries amongst the teenagers of
today. Since the internet has developed
dramatically and social networking sites
have now been made available for people, most teenagers are a
part of one social networking website. Therefore instead of using radio trailers and a
magazine article I would rather have use online social network sites like MySpace,
Twitter, and Facebook.
3. What have you learnt from audience feedback?From analysing student feedback, I realised that students did really take a liking to our
topic, this being the rise in university fees. Students found that the topic was relevant
to them as they were students and also they found the interviews with Neil and the
principal very good as they would have liked to hear their opinions on the rise in
university fees. We handed out questionnaires to students within our class who
watched the documentary and asked them to rate our documentary, the results from
the questionnaires are listed below:
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
50% of people who completed
our documentary felt our choice
of topic was very good, 40%
felt it was just good and 10%
felt it was excellent. From these
results we gathered that our selected topic was very liked by
our audience and also as the
audience were students, we felt
as we had met our target
audience.
Results for the appropriateness
of our target audience shows
that majority of people thought
out decisions for our target
audience was very good and therest of people either thought it
was excellent or just good.
These results show that we
successfully determined our
target audience.
Results show that majority of
people felt our documentary
was good based on
professionalism and how it was
in comparison to real life
Documentaries.
Results for the filming/shooting
of material show that themajority audience thought it
was good and a decent amount
of people thought it was very
good. As we never had any poor
results, we can conclude that
out footage was appropriate for
our documentary.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
Results show that majority of
people thought the use of
sound/music in our
documentary was appropriate,
also there is an equal number
of people who thought the useof sound/music was just ok
and excellent.
Results for our editing of the
documentary so it could be
understood came to majority
of thinking it was good and a
couple of people saying it wasvery good and one person
thinking it was just ok.
Results for the use of effect
show that most of the people
thought they were good and
a few people who thought
they were very good and just
okay were equal.
Overall our audience thought our
documentary was good about 70%thought this, 25% thought it was
very good and 5% of people
thought it was OK. These results
tell me that overall our
documentary was a hit with our
audience, we could have easily
improved but in the time that we
was given we produced a good
documentary based on the rise in
tuition fees.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
What you have learned from out student feedback?
Likes
Good selection of topic.Good interviews.
Range of opinions from
professionals.
Range of footage.
Titles, captions etc.
Dislikes
Sound levels needed improvements.
Needed a more enthusiastic voice over.
Lighting was very dark in certain places.
Transitions through interviews.
Conclusion of Feedback The interview with the principal had lighting issues which could not be fixed
throughout the editing process, this was due to us having to rush the interview with
the principal. We had to rush because we previously recorded an interview with the
principal which did not go as we had hoped, there was a major problem with the
sound as we could not hear anything. But in the end the interview with the principal
came out to actually look away, despite having a few errors.
The magazine article had a very effective and simple layout but was not very eye
catching, the colour scheme needed much improvement and also the main image as it
just did not look right. Overall I think the listings page needed a lot of improvement,with the main focus being on the colour scheme and also the main image, with these 2
improvements the magazine article could have been much more appealing.
The radio trailer was produced by me in a very short space of time, I produce it on my
own so I rushed through most of it. It was very relaxed and the sound bites were very
engaging for the audience. The radio trailer sounded very professional however,
sound levels could have been improved as it was slightly quiet.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
4. How did you use media technologies in the construction,
research and planning and evaluation stages?
During the research and planning stage of producing our documentary, the internet play a huge part in helping us decide as a group what the topic for our documentary
would be. Finally we had decided what our topic was, we started researching into out
topics and listing ideas for footage. We used search engine websites such as Google to
find other articles and documentaries which linked to our topic choice, we also used
BBC News as a source of updated information on the rise in tuition fees. Below are
some articles which helped us with the research and planning of our documentary:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17053581
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/tuition-fees
http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/futurestudents/undergraduate/funding/facts-figures-about-new-finance-
system.html
YouTube, 4od and BBC NewsLooking at documentaries online on
YouTube and 4od gave us an insight
into what we should involve in our
documentary such as typical codes and
conventions in typical documentaries.
The reason why we looked at
documentaries on 4od was because our
documentary would be played on
channel 4, therefore we would have to
have certain codes and conventionswhich were the same such as ident, title
sequences etc.
We also looked at news stories about the
rise in tuition fees, to get an insight into
how it was effecting other people. We
found a lot of relevant information which
then we used in our documentary, the
voice over used some of the informationwe found such as the facts and figures
which the voice over was saying were
actually from the research we did at the
start.
The BlogThe blog was a very important part when we had to create our documentary. It helped
us keep up with deadlines for each task we were given. The blog can be accessed by
all students in college and also from home, this is very good as if students are behindon coursework they can catch up from home or if they are off sick they can carry on
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
with work at home. All information was posted on, information included research for
the documentary, magazine article and the radio trailer. The blog helped us keep up to
date with what work had been done and what work needed to be complete.
After logging onto the blog we would come to
this screen, this is where
we would select to view
our blog, edit our blog or
add a new post.
This is where we added
text, images, hyperlinks etc.
When finished we would
select publish post and our
content of information
would be put onto the blog.
Some features of the blog
were: place images,
hyperlinks, and audio clips,
add videos, format font inevery entry, spell check,
preview before posting and
also edit posts if mistake
had been made.
This is where we were
able to see how many
posts each person has.
We were able to view
posts, edit them and also
delete posts from this
page if they needed to be
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
EquipmentApple Macs – The macs have been the key to everything we
have done for our documentary, as everything was produced on
the Macs using programmes. We did our research on the macs
and even produced the radio trailer and the magazine articleusing the macs.
Kodak Easy Share Digital Camera – The camera was very
useful when planning and taking images which might have
been used in our storyboards for the documentary.
HD Canon Camera – The video camera allowed us to record our
documentary, the camera had a variety of features such as zoom,manual focus etc, these all helped as they allowed us to do what we
wanted and create a image which we wanted. We uploaded clips
which we recording as soon as we finished recording and put them
onto Final Cut Express, which is an editing programme on the macs.
Tripod – These were essential for us when we wanted the camera
to be steady and no shaky, the most important times when we need
the tripods was when did out interview with our professionals.
Microphone – This was used when recording interviews, it allowed us
to have much more clearer audio then just using the standard
microphone on the video camera.
Headphones – Kept the sound when recording clear and alsoallowed us to easily notify if sound was not right and needed
recording.
Recorder – With this we were able to set audio levels to a certain
volume to keep audio at a certain volume. We had a problem
with the audio levels and also sometimes could not identify
if we was recording or not.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
SoftwareFinal Cut Express
This is where we viewed clips and our actual documentary.
Our clips
where puttogether for
each
minutes in
certain bins.
This is the
sound and
video layers,
they have been placed on timeline, idents and captions would be put on another layer
which would be above this.
I created sound bridges in the documentary by using
the fade out tool. This allowed clips to blend into other
clips without looking weird or not professional.
We were also able to change sound levels for clips, this came essential for us as all
our clips had different sound ranges, by using this we were able to change all sound
levels around about to the same level. We could also use the sound levels to fade out
parts of the clip which we wanted to be silent or just did not want in the scene.
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Kaleem Harvar Amjad – Media Studies A2
Garage Band
For the radio trailer I used
garage band, I used sound
bites from the documentary o
the principal speaking and
also recorder a voice over myself using a recorder. I
was able to easily upload
sound clips onto garage band
and overall found it very
easy to use. Also the
background music for the
radio trailer was sampled
from garage bands own loop
selection, by using certain
drum, synths and guitar loops I was able to create a upbeat soundtrack which worked
successfully and kept the audience listening.
I layered clips over each other this
allowed my whole radio trailer to be
easily visible and usable. Overall I think
using garage band was very easy, it was
not complicated as everything was
simple, also the handout which I was
given by my teacher helped me.
Burning
Once we had completed all of our work we had to burn our documentary and radio
trailer to disc. We used a CD-R disc to burn. The radio trailer was very easy to burn
but for the documentary we had to export our documentary file as a MOV file, then
we used iDvd on the Apple Mac and also then created a professional looking menu
for the documentary.
Evaluation
The best way for me to present my evaluation was on Microsoft Word, this for me
was the best as I found it the most simplest and I was already use to the programme. It
allowed me to import pictures, add hyperlinks and also allow me to make myevaluation as interactive as possible.
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