Do they know it‘s Christmas time at all?

A2 Media Evaluation by Sonja Madani

Research: Before we started with any practical work we did a lot of research. Looking into various different documentaries as well as looking at the five different established modes of documentary. This was helpful as it gave us an insight on how documentary works and is constructed. It also showed us which features are significant to each of the modes. We looked at a wide range of documentary films starting from World War II propaganda films like ‘Listen to Britain’ and ‘London can take it’ as well as modern documentary films such as ‘Murderball’ and ‘Man on Wire’. We looked at various different documentary makers such as Nick Broomfield and Humphry Jennings who have all had a major influence on the documentary genre.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventi ons of real media products?

Voice-over

A voice-over is a common feauture of documentary where the film-maker talks about the images the

viewer can see. It allows him to adress the audience directly. Sometimes the voice –over can be „Voice of God“ like in documentaries such as London can take

it, where the speaker takes an authoritative role.

Forms and conventions of Documentary:

Talking Heads

Talking Heads are often seen in form of interviews where real people talk about real events . This gives the viewer a range of opinions on the texts subject

as well as being able to show a broad range of approaches to the subject. This is a feature often

seen in participatory documenatry mode.

Archival Footage

Archival footage can be anything ranging from old photographs to news articles or even extracts from fiction films. Archival footage can be used to show

historic events or add more detail without having to film anything more. This is also a feature of

participatory documentary

Re-constructions

Reconstructions are staged scenes of events which have already occured. They often provide factual

information and give a sense of reality, however it is often made clear that the footage isn‘t real, through techniques such as blurring or colour enhancement. This feature can been seen in the documentary ‘Man

on Wire‘

Montage

Montages can be there to illustrate changes over time as well as changes of location within the film. Different shots can portray different ideas to the viewer. In documentaries the montage is usually

linked to what the voice-over or the characters have to say.

With the diagrams above I am trying to show some of the key forms and conventions of documentary. Those for me, are the most distinctive and influential and show what needs to be included in an extract in order to be considered documentary.

Answer:

When we started our project we looked at many different forms and conventions as well as features of real media products in order to give us an understanding what makes a conventional and an unconventional documentary. The research we conducted before starting our project has helped us see what the key features are and given us inspiration as where to incorporate these.

Personally what I found to be very helpful when trying to understand the forms and conventions of documentary was a slideshow about the five modes of documentary. Not only did they explain what distinctive features are needed for a documentary to be in each of the modes, it also shows what these features are and gives an idea of how they can be constructed.

For reference: http://www.slideshare.net/crosswaysfederation/the-five-modes-of-documentary-typical-conventions

Some of the key features we instilled into our extract are interviews. Our documentary portrays a wide range of opinions and different attitudes about the Christmas season, ranging from school kids our age to people who have devoted their life to Christianity. Another conventional feature we used is Archival Footage. We used this only in our introduction sequence in order to mix up our own personal footage with something that looks older. We did this because changes over time matter a great deal to the subject of our documentary and we thought using some archival footage would help our representation of changes over time. Also we saw that this was a common feature of documentary so decided to use this to make our documentary a tad conventional. In my opinion this is one way we used the forms and conventions of real media products and gave our extract one of the ingredients it would need to become a real media product.

Personally I reckon our major challenge to forms and conventions of documentary is our animation. In all our research we never really just saw a picture of a real person who has been edited and made to talk like our animation of Karl Marx. In my opinion however our documentary over all is quiet conventional and mainly conforms to one of the modes, participatory. The elements of participatory documentary for one are interviews. In our extract there are many interviews which all show different people and opinions. Another factor that implies that our documentary is in the participatory mode is the fact that we used archival footage in our extract that is considered to be an element of this mode. The fact that our shots are long and often location shots once again fit in to the elements of participatory documentary. One aspect where our extract doesn’t completely conform to the participatory mode is the fact that our voice-over could be considered voice-of god like or authoritative, at least that’s the impression I hope it gives off, which would fit in better to the mode of expository documentary. Personally I reckon our documentary is more conventional than not, we mainly stuck to one mode and tried to use as many forms and conventions of documentary as possible.

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

Ancillary ProductsThe definition of ancillary products is that it

is something you get when buying your main product.

Before we started our ancillary products we once again conducted a lot of research in order to understand how to target an audience and which medium and magazine to use, which is the most effective combination with our extract. Looking at various different listings magazines such as ‘Time out’ and ‘TV Choice’ our favourite one by far was the ‘Radio Times’. Not only did we consider it to have the highest quality texts, what was very convenient to us was the fact that the ‘Radio Times’ release a Christmas edition every year. Considering the fact our documentary is about Christmas and would be aired around Christmas time we targeted the Special Christmas edition of the Radio Times.

The task being a two page spread, we decided to do it interview based, where the people being interviewed was us. We did this because this gave us an opportunity to express our views and opinions on this controversial subject. We attempted to make it something special by integrating a celebrity, namely Stephen Fry. Because Stephan Fry is very famous and influential we decided to have him interview us so we could attract attention within the listing magazines and make people aware of the existence of our documentary.

The other ancillary product had to be a poster. When we made both of these products we tried to make them slightly match theme wise. For our poster the image we used was one of a Transvestite Santa who was also featured within our documentary extract. Considering the fact the main colour of Christmas is red, we displayed certain aspects of our extract in red as well as matching the ancillary products in a red theme.

Generally I think our ancillary products and main product combine well with each other. Our chosen subject is in itself not controversial but the way we portrayed it we wanted to show how one could take a controversial approach to it. What I reckon the best combination is, is the fact that transvestite Santa is featured on both the poster as well as the extract. This shows we put some thought in it as well as using this interesting and unexpected image to attract an audience who is interested in controversy. Generally speaking I am happy with our ancillary products because I think they match our main project well and would be appealing to our target audience in real life as well as the fact that they both provide a message which generate impact which was an important factor we wanted to achieve.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For our audience feedback we went around asking various different people about what they thought of our final product. We asked them to judge the quality of the product as well as the context. The feedback was mixed however what was very helpful was the fact that not only were we told what to improve, but also certain aspects of our product were praised which we didn’t even consider to be that great.

Feedback within the class:Obviously the first people addressed to judge our product was our own media class. A bonus of them judging us was the fact that they know what the specification required thus could tell us whether we included all the important features needed to create a good documentary. What was very reassuring was that most of our class appreciated the Karl Marx animation that we considered to be the unique selling point of our documentary. Another positive feedback was the fact that our satirical approach towards Christmas was well understood and considered to be funny, which was what we were hoping for.

Of course our audience feedback didn’t only consist of positive comments but also of some very helpful criticism. For example something we only realised throughout our editing stage was the fact that a lot of the footage we had filmed we didn’t actually want to use or like so the footage we could use was fairly limited. This was picked up by our class as some of the mentioned certain aspects of our footage weren’t very thrilling. This once again helps us see that the next time round we should plan clearer what to film and which of the footage we should use.

Feedback outside the class:Of course it is vital to us to hear what neutral inspectors think about our final product. So we showed our piece to various different people including teachers, other students and even my parents. What we got to hear really often was that our Karl Marx animation was liked which was obviously a major plus to us because this is what makes our product unique. What also seemed to appeal to them was the voice-over, which is important to our documentary as it guides the viewer through the images. Another feature of our product which was liked was our intro which is mainly our footage however I would like to note that the black and white footage isn’t ours, I downloaded it of youtube and it is originally a honeymooners episode.

The criticism was once again the fact that our interviews didn’t have enough visuals to go with them. This once again showed us that we should have planned this better in order to avoid such problems during the process of editing

The important and helpful aspects of

audience feeback to us

1. To over-all be aware whether the project was a success or not

2. Interaction with the audience3. Obviously, what was good/what was bad4. Seeing whether the audience targeted really is

the target audience5. What can be improved next time round6. Re-assurance of parts one could be unsure

about

Conclusion:I am generally happy with the feedback we received. I am happy people liked our animation because not the actual Karl Marx animation but the one leading to it, was very time-consuming and difficult to produce, so when people said they liked it, it was reassuring and showed us that all the effort and time put into was worth it. I am also happy with the criticism because it wasn’t too harsh. Everything that was criticised were aspects which I was anticipating to be badly judged

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

Throughout the entire process of the making of our extract we used various different media technologies. Media technologies were vital in most parts of the process, starting with our research, which mainly took place over the Internet. Other than that we used media technologies such as blogging sites to document and illustrate our progress as well as our thought process.

Camera: The most obvious of all media technologies was a camera. The camera was one of the most vital of all technologies because it let us turn our thoughts and ideas into reality. The camera was a traditional film camera which still operated with a video and not a memory card. The camera in combination with a computer was the most important factor within the construction of our extract.

Mac Book Pro: Once we had finished all of our filming we uploaded our rough footage on to the schools Mac book pro which was also the medium we used to do our editing. As mentioned before this was a vital part for the construction

iMovie: On the Mac is the programme iMovie that, we used to edit our footage and create continuity with our images. The programme is simple and relatively easy to understand. A benefit is that it has loads of different transitions and themes that can be used to create a build up or just simply to make our images more visually appealing. This once again was an essential part of the construction process.

Blogger: Blogger is the media technology that was used right from the beginning right until the end of our project. Having used it last year I was comfortable with it and it was an easy way for me to document all our thoughts and ideas. It was very important for the planning of our project and very useful, as all the ideas we had noted we could look at retrospectively and develop them or dismiss them completely. It was also where all our research was put on and was a good place to keep all the information needed for the construction of our project.

Free-Play Music: Because of copyright issues we had to use copyright free music. We found the music used in our extract on a website called free-play music. I knew this website from last year, so I was aware of how it operates. It is very handy because it has music in all genres that are copyright free so accessible for us and allowed to use. This was a serious help with our construction.

Photoshop: To create our ancillary products we used Photoshop. Personally I’m not a big fan of this programme as I find it complicated and not simple to use. However it was a good medium for making both the magazine spread and the poster. This wasn’t a big part of our project but still needs to be acknowledged. I reckon this was part of the planning and construction of the extract. PowerPoint: For my evaluation I have used the programme PowerPoint. It was a good way because it helps you combine images with text in whatever way you want. I like PowerPoint because it is simple to use and offers a wide variety of visual representations. This was definitely one of the major aspects needed for my evaluation process. Once I have finished I will upload it unto Slideshare another media technology found on the Internet where PowerPoint projects and slide shows can be uploaded and then used on other forms of media such as blogger.