Teendom: The DocumentaryEvaluation

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

Forms and Conventions?

Our film makes great use of real world media texts forms and conventions. Our research was based upon the works of David Attenborough (specifically his nature specials). Using the research we applied knowledge gained on the script writing and applied this to our text in a satirical form. Visually (for camera editing and mise-en-scene purposes) we drew inspiration from a newscast (specifically BBC News).Further research gave us facts on what the specific forms and conventions of documentaries are in order to properly utilize such conventions in our mocumentary format.

Form & Conventions

Documentary Forms And Conventions Real World Conventions:

• Voiceover: Presented in an authoritative way, making the audience think that the host has some kind of specialist knowledge or that they have the correct opinions that people should pay attention to.

• Footage of events: documentary style is essentially presented as non-fiction although this is not true across the entire genre (footage can be “tweaked” or manipulated in order to form a specific opinion). Non-the less documentaries are seen by the audience as displaying events that are real.

• Technicality of realism: Diegetic sound and natural lighting.

• Interviews with ‘experts’: In order to reassure the view that the film is portraying. If the expert disagrees with the general opinion of the filmmaker, such footage will be altered or such opinions will be noted and disagreed with by the filmmaker.

• Text: Use of text on screen in order to label dates, chapters etc in order to create unquestionable and quick information.

• Sound: Use of non-diegetic sound such as music in order to create moods or bridge scenes together in order to convey a certain meaning

• Mise-En-Scene: Props, costume etc making an all around reassuring effect for the audience, a builder in a suit (poor) versus a builder in a helmet, work vest, jeans and a white shirt. Of the two, the second would be much more helpful from the audience perspective allowing them to follow and trust the film.

Application To Teendom The ways in which Teendom used these elements are as follows:

• Voiceover: Host was coming across as serious, dictating “facts” in an authoritative manor, however the facts and subjects focused on themselves were humorous, making the audience realise just how funny teen culture is.

• Footage of Events: In our case this included actual teenagers who have characteristics of the social groups stated complementing the facts given by “Mike Attenborough”.

• Technicality of realism: Majority of our sound is diegetic and all of the lighting, except the in studio green screen footage, uses natural lighting

• Interviews: our experts came in the form of actual teenagers giving their own opinions. No more can be known about teenagers than what teenagers know about themselves. The interviews conducted may not have been included in the final piece, however they were conducted in order to stick the form and conventions of the style of film we are mocking

• Text: Each chapter begins with text portraying the specific group to be analyzed in order to keep the audiences attention (sparking interest) and allowing more clarification to the focus of each chapter, delivering quick information.

• Sound: Songs themed around characteristics of each group add further humour to each chapter and are widely used in the documentary style.

• Mise-en-scene: Use of suit in order to stick to the forms and conventions of a regular mocumentary but challenging the forms and conventions by switching the microphone prop in each secene.

AnalysisAs you can see, our research lead us

into having achieved a real (documentary)feel to our product, that if a person stumbled upon may assume it is educational at first glance. However we acieve comedic value through challenging certain aspects from our text, breaking of continuity, soundtrack, props, technicality of realism, footage of events etc.

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

The ancillary text we created would be extremely vital in a real world situation. Our ancillary texts included a movie poster and a magazine article. For real films, these can be of utmost importance during the marketing process of the products. With the combination of digital technology (e.g. viral promotion, blogs, youtube content, film websites, myspace, facebook and twitter pages etc.). Often films ultimately become hits or misses by utilizing such marketing outlets (creating controlled promotion in order to spark further word of mouth promoting which now mainly takes place online). Therefore our two ancillary texts are vital in the "big picture" as they spark an interest in our presentation. The real key to our marketing is to create curiosity among our target audience by leaving it open to interpretation. Especially prevalent with our film poster. However, we took careful consideration when it came to creating such texts that could achieve mass interest in our production by looking at real world examples relating to media texts within the same genre as ours.

Real World Poster Our poster bends the usual conventions that a comedy

poster would include, however fits perfectly with the promotional styles that mocumentaries use. Especially considering our use of forms and conventions based off of the text we are parodying.It is common for mocumentary promotional posters to have little humorous elements thrown into them. For example, the satirical mocumentary entitled Its All Gone Pete Tong’s posters are barely suggestive of a comedic feature, with the exception of critics review segments:

“The Legend of Frank Wilde the deaf dj”

well as reviewers commentary:

However, the images of the protagonist, choice of color schemes etc. are representative of the dance and dj culture as well as the warm vibe of Ibiza (the location of this movie) in terms of the people and the parties.

Real World Poster Pt. 2Another example is the promotional

posters for the film “This Is Spinal Tap,” a rock mocumentary.The actors facial expressions are serious with appropriate costumes for the subject that they are parodying (Metal Music), again emphasizing the comic appeal behind this genre being funny by portraying truthful stereotypes.

Nature Special Posters The most important basis for our ancillary text is based off

Attenborough Presentation promotional posters. The specific posters were as follows:

Both posters are based around a single image of a subject that’s featured in the film. Our poster does just that portraying an image with a focal point on a teenager, in a silhouette style, with a blue and cloudy sky behind him. The poster only shows half the teens face and with such a deep contrast between the dark lighting on the teens face and the clear vivid blues and whites of the sky suggesting the diverse and wide world of being a teenager. The poster will intrigue audience members to look further into this so-called “documentary” (as the poster and title of our film suggests). This is also relevant to the comedy genre that our film is part of. In a real world situation, if posters were the only form of tangible promotion, the products success would heavily rely on viral marketing (but not solely reliant on this form of promotion). The posters giving very little information on the text allowing the public to create individual opinions on the feature based on imagination, an appropriate marketing strategy for this genre of film and television (featured with Its All Gone Pete Tong, Summer Heights High and The Office: An American Workplace) almost telling less in order to build up more interest. Once the poster intrigues consumers, they then look further into the feature most likely on the Internet (the most commonly used media platform).

Additional Posters Within The Mockumentary Genre In Television

MagazineIn terms of our magazine, it follows the standard

forms and conventions of a film review. Clearly displaying our poster, a great marketing tool as well as a means of catching readers eyes, especially for those who flick through magazines. It was also vital to include the fact that our crew was made up of fresh filmmakers as this allows audiences to construct completely unbiased opinions of the review, as they will not have had any other opinions on what sort of films our company had produced meaning that their initial opinions prior to viewing the actual product will solely be based off of our ancillary texts.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Thus far into the project, the questionnaires have proven to be an essential element during the planning and construction processes. The facts that it provided for our group include who our target audience is in terms of age, sex and also identified the more popular styles of humor, thus helping with the script, establishing our desired mise-en-scene (e.g. location) and what topics to include. The final script was cut down based on our audience feedback, giving us ideas of the more recognizable social groups. Audience feedback has allowed us to improve upon our film, hopefully giving us an overall great movie that will have mass appeal to our audience.

Audience Targeting

Interestingly, most people noted that teens would be the most likely target for this production, however, two individuals also included curious adults who are naive or ignorant to modern teenagers might also find such a production appealing. Therefore we feel that we have most definitely achieved our goals and on top of that have also met our prediction (that a likely market sector will include adults).

Camera

No negative feedback on the camera work included. There are also points brought up about our camera work being appropriate to the documentary style as well as appropriate for capturing visual humour. However certain shots could have been captured with better focus as well as more stability (excluding those that had to be extra discrete such as walking past crowds or through college hallways etc.).

Character RepresentationThis audience feedback shows us that we

successfully and clearly conveyed each individual social group. We didn't get any confusion over what defines each social group or what the social groups are. There was also no dispute over how widely accepted the social groups included.

Mise-En-SceneAudience members noted that our

location supports our narrative and is also extremely appropriate. They also noted the breaking of continuity (with the microphones) a great element for the sake of comedic value in our feature (one of our films Unique Selling Points).

Narrative

Again this feedback supports our clear goal. The mockumentary style we followed is so real to documentary forms and conventions that certain parts slip in and out of realistic to comedic doc or mockumentation. Our use of sound bridges are also noted, a tool we used to keep the pace of the film up as well as link the chapters and of course to set the tone for each social group.

SoundThe audience stated that our soundtrack

throughout the movie is appropriate to each social group (e.g. emos chapter begins with an emo song, nerds chapter begins with star wars etc.) and the switch from dietetic in shot dialogue into the overdubbing was also noticed (as we stated and found from our research is typical to the documentary genre).

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

Research & Planning The Following Platforms were our main source of research material. Our

generation more or less takes advantage or more neglects such outlets. They have been set into our culture so much so as a norm that they are rarely appreciated for their full abilities. However having completed this task in this way, my appreciation has increased massively for the power and use of such platforms.

Yotube links Google BBC Iplayer Microsoft Word

Planning utilized media technologies to a great length. In order to save time, by conducting lengthy research into locations, we simply used Google Earth to map out certain places that we knew would have dense amounts of subjects at specific times of the day.

Google Earth Microsoft Word

Construction & Evaluation These media technologies were used for the construction

process. The biggest advantage they give is the added and simplified methods of organization.

Microsoft Publisher Microsoft Word Blogger Microsoft Powerpoint SlideShare

Evaluation was the final step in the project. Therefore I took it upon myself to combine numerous relevant media technologies in order to creatively portray my evaluation

Microsoft Word Blogger GarageBand SlideShare Blogger Microsoft Powerpoint

ConclusionI feel that this project went well. The reason being the

combination of different aspects of media that the skills needed for were acquired over the two years of the course. Media technologies were the most important aspect of this project, without the use of such technology, this project would not have been possible, or at least not in the same format or to the same quality. The topic we covered is also an extremely relevant topic toward an issue pressing the media in the UK that we are currently analyzing which tries to determine how effective the medias power is over the general publics view on youths. Our contemporary views on this topic were well presented and I am proud of the outcome.