A2 MEDIA EVALUATIONKelly Laine

Brief We were given a list of task to choose

from, and after much consideration we chose to create a 5 minute documentary, with a magazine spread and a newspaper advert.

Originally we were going to create a short film but through many discussions we decided a documentary would be good, as we wanted to find out other peoples views on racial identity.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

To begin, we first had to look closely at real media products within our genre, which meant we looked a lot at different types of documentaries. Our documentary uses forms and conventions of real media products, as we have taken ideas from ones we analysed. When researching documentaries we found they all had a specific style, making them identifiable as a documentary. Our target audience of 18 and above will be able to identify this as a documentary, as they are people who generally watch other ones.

Whilst doing our research we found that for the type of documentary we wanted to create, we needed to do some interviews with the public. From watching many clips, we saw that they only showed snippets of a interviews, as they wanted to show more people. In our main product we followed the conventions of the real media products by using the same techniques as we showed a number of people answering the question but cut it to hear each answer one after another in a quick but controlled manner. When we had completed it, we uploaded it to YouTube and our blogs.

Our newspaper advertisement has some similarities to other documentary advertisement but it also develops them. We found that many of the newspapers advertisements were quite simple and straight to the point, however we wanted to make ours slightly different by using Adobe Photoshop to combine the faces of the interviewers. We saved it as a JEPEG Image to present it.

When creating the magazine we looked at other examples and took ideas. We try to create it in a similar way to others but with our own style too.

Newspaper Advertisement

This advertisement is very clean cut and is straight to the point.

We wanted ours to shows what our documentary is about, while looking interesting enough to catch peoples attention. As it is a sensitive and debatable topic we wanted the advertisement to show that it looks at grouping people through stereotypes.

Magazine Inspiration

Although all of the magazine articles we looked at had plain, bold, black titles, we wanted to do something different that represented our product.

Both articles have photos that are apart of what they are advertising, which we found was a good so we added quite a few photographs from our documentary to show bits of it, to show the newspaper advertisement and to show the makers (us).

Magazine

A lot of the magazine titles were plain, with simple fonts. We challenged this by creating a title that stood out as we wanted it to have flag to represent our subject matter.

We found that many of the magazine pages had a short interview to get a better sense of the documentary so we decided to do something similar.

We put our advertisement in the magazine with out the added part, which is for the newspaper. However this allows people to know what one it is if they have seen it or will see the advertisement.

Brief explanation of our process and how we came about the idea.

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

The combination between the three products is clear and is easily linked to one another. I think that they worked very well together and can easily be recognised as being related to the same thing. As we chose to create a documentary, the ancillary text for this project was to create a double page listing spread for a magazine and a newspaper ad. To link the two texts together, we used the poster we had created for the newspaper advertisement in the magazine to create a clear link between the two, making it obvious, as we felt it would connect them. For the advertisement my group and I decided to merge their faces as they were the one asking the questions in the documentary. Also through planning we thought it was an interesting idea that made sense with the subject matter of identity and that all stereotypes put people into groups. We kept the back ground in both the newspaper ad and magazine a plain white to keep a sharp focus on what was most important within both texts.

Although merging the photos of my two team members was a challenge due to the face shapes, I feel that we did really well making it different but relating it to our main product. We chose to have it as the middle image in our magazine to clearly link all of our products together. I think both ancillary texts were extremely effective in publicising our documentary and showing what it was.

Each product showed took the target audience into account. As we have a broad target audience from 18+, as we thought the younger generation is more open to understanding different cultures due to the time period they are growing up where a lot has changed. Targeting a older audience, we went we a slight more complex ideas as our audience are likely to understand it.

We chose Channel 4 as the place we would release our product, as it targets our audience, and releases many documentaries we found through our research.

Using the poster for the advertisement on both the ancillary tasks combine them effectively. We wanted to use the same colours

throughout both. We chose red as a bold colour for both task as its fitting with our main product as it is a direct and bold colour.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Before creating our documentary we chose to arrange a focus group to learn what an audience thought of our idea. This really helped decide who we should target it towards. Also it showed us what was necessary to show.

As a group we decided to both record our feedback using a camera, and get some written feedback too. We had a wide target audience ranging from 18 up as we thought the subject could be insightful to a many people at different ages.

From our feedback we learned that the way in which we arrange the interview clips worked very well for a documentary, as it showed the people’s views without showing to much of a clip, allowing us to achieve what a documentary looks like.

We found that many people we got feedback from mentioned our cinematography and said they liked the shots we did especially at the beginning. However, some of the negative feedback said that the sound would have been better if it was consistent throughout, without changing at bits.

A high majority of our target audience approved the documentary and found it interesting.

Stuart Hall audience theory.

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the research and planning, construction and evaluation of your coursework?

To create our main product we used a laptop, which had the Adobe Premier software we needed particularly to edit the documentary. As we had used this software a few times before, when creating some short films for our school along with using it for our AS Media coursework, we were very familiar with it. This allowed the process to go smother, rather than having to learn how to use new software, which would have taken a lot of time, also this extended our knowledge further of the software. One of the major positives about editing on a laptop, meant we could take it different places if we needed to. Through the half terms we were able to take it home and alternate between each of us.

To film our main product we used the cameras from our school for most of the footage but used a canon camera for some parts. The negative side to doing this meant that the screens were different sizes when we put it on the adobe premier software, it was a challenge trying to adjust it to make it the same size, however by zooming in some screen we got it to match the other parts of the video. If we were to do this again we would only use one camera to make sure it was consistent, however I feel that we handled it well and had a positive outcome. We used different cameras to take the photographs for our newspaper ad and magazine, as the schools one is not a high quality and its main purpose is for filming.

The Apple IMac's had all the software we needed to create the ancillary texts, although the Adobe Photoshop was an older version which was not as good to use, however being a minor problem we carried on using the IMacs as it had everything in one place. We used Adobe Photoshop to create both the newspaper advertisement and the double page magazine spread, as it was able to do everything we needed to complete it to a high quality. Adobe Photoshop allowed us to merge the faces together and add text on top. We were able to create the specific title we wanted for the magazine through this software. As it could do everything we required , it made sense to use it. The only negative was , due to the computers being quite old they ran a bit slow at times, which messed up our timing, however this just meant we needed to put more of our time into it.

I used blogger to record my progress throughout and for the examiner to see the whole process brought together. I had used this for my AS Coursework so I decided to use it for A2 Coursework too.

We used YouTube a lot throughout the planning process to research other documentary as it was accessible at school, making it useful.