Elliot WIlcock

A2 Coursework Evaluation

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

There are many ways in which my TV documentary does use, develop and
challenge forms and conventions of real TV documentaries. All the
members of the group had seen documentaries before and knew the
techniques and conventions which we thought would be best suited to our
documentary which was about how technology is influencing society. The
first convention that we used was the use of an expert interview with in
the documentary these are used to install confidence into the audience
that the fact and figures and opinions being shown in the documentary are
legitimate and have some evidence to support them. A convention that
most interviews will follow is having the interviewee sitting on one side
and looking across camera to look at the interviewer this is so the
audience has room to look as the interviewee is hardly ever placed in the
centre of the screen we have followed this convention for all of our
interviews.

Example of expert interview taken from a program shown on the history channel

Another convention of documentaries which we have followed is a voice

over which a member of our group recorded. The person who performs the
voice over is the main person in the documentary as they are the ones
conducting the interviews and filming of the documentary we used the
some person in the interviews as in the voice over so there was a link

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between the two. We decided to follow this convention because we

believe it was an integral part of our documentary and making it more
appealing and better flowing as it does now keep switching between
different voices and people speaking to the audience and the interviewee.
Another small convention which we have also used is the use of text on
the screen to give clear and easy to see information like the name of the
interviewee, I think if we would have used this convention more it would
have benefited our overall product in making it look more professional and
perhaps not having as much on the voice over so it kept the audience
hooked better. A documentary where this is done well is in “Super size
me” which although is a film documentary and not TV does this
convention very well to show the day, time who they are speaking too and
where they currently are so that you have all the information you need to
understand what is happening.

Sound has other conventions in documentaries apart from just the voice
over most other documentaries use a lot of non diegetic sound and play a
song in the background to give
the images a flow between
them the music is never to loud
that you cannot hear what is
going on but is in the
background. We used this
convention as it gives the
documentary another layer of
sound which makes the
documentary sound more
professional and not as empty.

A convention which we did not use and I think our product would of
benefited from is the use archive footage which could have been obtained
from the internet this could have been used to show technology in the
past and shown how much society has moved on since. Another
convention which I think could have been developed is our vox pops which
are the small clips with people who have just been asked to help of the
street I think these could been have been improved with a stricter script
and a clear idea of what sort of answers we would like to receive so that

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when we put together the answers there would be more direction with the
answers and they would relate closely to the title of the documentary that
way the opinion we are trying to show could be shown clearly to the
audience.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

I think that the three products which my group produced do a fairly good
job of promoting our full documentary. I think that the combination of the
three tasks works well together as there is a clear theme through out all
three products and we have not strayed form our main point and aim of
the documentary .i Think all three products do a good job of appealing to
the audience we set out to aim our documentary at .I think all three link
up well especially the radio trailer and documentary as there are sound
clips used form the actual documentary and the same background music
had been used in our documentary at some point another way we have
kept a link between the two is by extracting a quote form the
documentary and putting it in the radio trailer so the audience can hear
the sort of stuff the documentary will entail. For the Double Page Spread
DPS we have also extracted form our documentary to give it a strong link
we extracted a screen shot of an expert interview we did that way from
reading the article the audience would know what to expect I think the
combination of all three products create a small brand strength and I think
the three products could have been linked better. Another thing that I
think could have been done better is how appealing the Ancillary tasks
make the documentary seem. I think this could have been done better
with more time as both task I feel were rushed towards the deadline day a
way we could have improved these with more time and a better
understanding of what needed to be done to make them both look
professional. I think we could of found this out with a deeper research into
radio trailers as most have more than two layers on and use sound effects
where as ours only two and did not make use of any sound effects apart
from the background track I think a research into double page spreads
was also needed but more into already existing double page spreads
about upcoming TV shows that way we could have produced a DPS which
looked more like a TV DPS than a music DPS or other media DPS.

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Elliot WIlcock

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The audience feedback which I carried out with my group was 3

questioners of ten questions on each of our three products 5 minute intro
to our documentary, radio trailer and our double page spread advertising
the documentary.

Feedback for the radio trailer

The results that we got back

for our radio trailer were on a
whole quite good. For the first
question most people answered
yes or in most parts yes, this
shows that when people are
listening to our radio trailer
people think that it is
professional and can imagine
hearing it on a radio show. For
the second question we got a
very positive response again
with every questionnaire
coming back with a yes as an
answer for this question this
shows us that the information
that we put in the radio ad
flowed and informed people
about the documentary well
and would make people want to
watch it. The next question
The questionnaire that we handed out to ten people
was on a scale of 1-5 asking
how good do the audience think
the sound levels are this
includes maintaining a constant sound so levels don’t jump from too quite
to high volume. The results we got back showed that most people thought

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our sound levels were average with the majority of the votes going on
number 3 for how good the sound levels are this shows us that this part of
the radio trailer could have been improved if we had of had more time I
think a way we could of improved this is spent more time at the end of the
project tweaking the sound levels so it flowed continuously and
seamlessly.

The next question asked how well was the voiceover on the radio trailer
written and the response was good with most people responding saying it
was good and informative while keeping intone with the documentary
which is what I feel one of the strongest points of the radio trailer was.
The next question was another question on a scale of 1-5 the question
asked how well do you think the song underneath kept intone with our

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overall documentary.

The results we gathered showed that most people thought our song
underneath did a good job of keeping intone with our documentary. Our
next question asked what the audience thought could be improved, two
answers occurred more than once one of which was to improve sound
levels and the other to use more audio from the 5 minute opening of the
documentary in the trailer I think this point is a very valid one and if I were
to go back and do this again I would make sure certain clips and bold
statements from the documentary were used to try and grab the
audiences attention. The next question was a very important one and it
asked if the radio trailer would make you want to watch the documentary
the results on this were 50% said yes and 50% said no or possibly. The
questionnaires were handed out to the target audience that we aimed our
documentary for and only 50% would want to watch I think this shows
that maybe the content of the radio trailer could have been improved to
try and grip the audience more I did not expect this outcome for this
question. Question 8 was very simple and got the outcome that I expected
which was yes they did understand question 9 was also fairly straight
forward and got the response we expected, question 10 asked was it clear
when it was on and on what channel this question was very important as
we wanted to make sure it was clear where and when the documentary
was on as without that information it would have been a very
unprofessional radio trailer.

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Feedback for the double page

spread

The first question on our double

page spread questionnaire was do
you think the Double page spread
(DPS) looks professional? The
results on this were mixed with
some people saying yes and others
on the fence saying it sort of looks
professinal this gives us as a group
the impression that a lot more could
have been done on the DPS to make
it look more professional and look
like it had been in a radio times or
other TV listings magazine. The
second question about the DPS
came out very positive with only one
questionnaire coming back saying “its okay” the others all came back
with yes commenting on the good use of images in some responses this
shows us that the images that we had taken screen shots of from our
documentary and the digital still images wee took our selves were very
good and kept a good image of our documentary.

The third question was one which we knew would get bad responses as
we had rushed towards the end of the DPS and as a result had not used all
of the space to its full potential and the second page of our DPS looked a
bit empty. The third question
asked how well you think the
space has been used in the
DPS.

The results were as expected

and showed that we should
have spent more time
Digital still filling
from our
up the spaces andpage
Double making
spread it
look tidy, one thing I would
change if I were

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to do it again is leave more time for this task as putting it together to

make it look professional would have taken more time than the amount we
allocated to it. The fourth question was a very broad question and asked
what we could have done to improve the DPS the main answer that
appeared was to make used of space and layouts better which was
expected other answers involved things like “pick out a quote and
highlight to make it stand out” this is something that you see done in
magazine articles and can prove very effective at grabbing the readers
attention as the quote is usually a bold statement that the read would
want to know about. The fifth question was about how clearly can you see
when the programme is on and what channel it is on the main response for
this question was that the time date and channel should have been
separate from the text as it would of made it a lot clearer when and when
it is on rather than having to read through the text to find it making it
easier for the reader. All of the responses for the sixth question were a
yes showing that the questions that we had asked in the interview within
our DPS were the sort of questions readers would want to know before
watching the documentary and the sort of questions people would want to
ask about it. The question about whether the DPS made you want to
watch the actual documentary has again a 50/50 split about whether or
not they would like to, I think the main reason for this is there is not
enough bold statements about what this TV documentary will do that no
other has done before if I were to redo this task I would have made sure
that within the
DPS there would
be lots of
reasons for the
reader to tune
in to our
documentary.
The next
question got a
universal
answer of yes
as it is clearly
shown what the
documentary
will be about,
the question

used as well as colour schemes to trey and portray what the article will be about
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 Elliot WIlcock

after got mixed response with some people saying it could have been
better and other saying they liked the effects used which comes in to the
last question as well a lot of major magazines make use of different
effects and colour schemes to portray the them of what they are trying to
show our music magazine has tried to do this to a certain extent but could
have been improved

Feedback for the documentary

The first question on this

questionnaire a rating system on
whether or not the documentary
answers the question it is trying to
answer. The results were positive
with most people feeling that we had
done a good job at answering our
question which shows us that we
definitely kept focused while doing
our recording and tried to make sure
that all the footage we gathered was
relevant to our subject. One way I
think this could have been done more

How well do you think this documentary answers the question it proposes?

8
7
7
is
6
by
5

3
2
2
1
1
0 0
0
9 1 2 3 4 5

How well do you think this documentary answers the question it proposes?
Elliot WIlcock

having a more specific interview where we ask some question that we

would know that the viewer wants answered.

Our second question was another rating 1-5 answer where we asked how
professional the look and feel of the documentary was most responses on
this were a rating of 3 showing that there were things we could have done
to improve our professional appeal of our documentary one of the things I
know we could of done is maybe put more aesthetic shots in instead of a
lot of the interview. The third question was also done on a rating system
and asked how good the sound levels were and again we got a fairly
average response with nothing being to bad but with some errors a way
we could have made this better is by paying a bit more attention to the
earphones when recording our footage. The next question was on whether
the people we asked would want to continue watching the documentary if
it was completed 3 out of the 10 people said they would not which leaves
7 that would I feel this is a good response as reasons for not wanting to
watch it were due to the fact that they were not interested in technology
and less that it was badly presented. The fifth question asked about any
improvements we could make the main response to this answer was to
add background music in from the start and maybe turn up the sound
levels of the voice over this is a satisfactory answer as these corrections

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would not be that hard to do. The next two question which were is there
enough variety of topics covered within the timescale to introduce the
purpose of the documentary? And as a whole is the documentary
informative? For both these questions the response was universal as a yes
which shows that we had covered a range of technology topic and
produced stats to back up the information we did give. The next question
asked does the documentary flow well and while most responses were
good some people said that the music could have been better and we
could have maybe smoothed out some of the transitions between shots by
fading music in and out which could have been done at the end of the
production. For question nine we asked are shot positioned well to find
out if the audience could see any errors with the shots we had made all
responses where a yes which meant we had kept good positions in
interviews vox pops and some of our aesthetic shots which meant the
documentary would have a more professional feel to it. The final question
asked has the music been used effectively and as before some people
mentioned that we could have done with some background music at the
start to give it a more flowing feel but overall results were good from this
questionnaire.

In summary I feel that the audience feedback showed us that there were
lots of things that we had done well but also that there was lots more we
could have don’t to improve our finished products. I feel most responses
were expected and were due to the fact that we did not manage our time
effectively and left things to the last minute to do, if I were to go back and
do this task again I would make sure that we had a plan of when things
needed to be done by with spare time for any tweaks and changes that
needed to be made at the end.

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

Lots of different media technologies were used in the process creating all
three products. For the five minute opening to a documentary the main
media technologies used were a handheld video recorder to capture all of
the footage that we needed in order to complete our project I think me
and the rest of my group managed to use this piece of technology well

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with out having any problems with it we managed to cope with some of
the restraints of the equipment i.e not high
tech enough to cope with some lighting
and came out with some very good shots
we also had to attach microphones to the
video recorders to ensure that when we
got the footage the sound would be good
on it although we did not have any
problems with the microphones here we
did later on in the production of the voice
over where some of the microphones were
broken and distorted the sound and some
didn’t work this was frustrating as we had
to rerecord some of our voice over to get
it to sound right. Another vital piece of
media technology we used was some
Final Cut Express logo
software which was on the apple macs we
used. The software was called final cut express and it allowed us to do
everything we wanted to our video footage, I feel the soft ware did not
offer any restrictions to what we could do with our footage but the lack of
experience with this software meant that we were restricted in what we
knew how to do I think if we were to do this task again I would have not
changed the software we used but maybe become more aware of its
capabilities and how I could manipulate footage. The digital technologies
we used on the DPS were a digital camera and two pieces of software
which were Photoshop and InDesign. The camera was good and allowed
us to take high quality pictures with little to now fuss it even had an
option for a rule of thirds grid which would have been useful if we had
used it. The software we used was very important in creating a
professional looking DPS I had experience with the software before as we
had used it the year before for our Course work I think that the software is
very good and allows you to manipulate pictures very well it also allows
you to correct and alter lighting that may have affected the photo.
However I did not manage to use all that Photoshop had to offer as we had
left the production of our ancillary tasks to late although it was helpful for
what we did use it for minor editing of photos. InDesign was another very
helpful piece of technology allowing us to layout a magazine the exact
way we wanted and to add in colour schemes and effect very easily I
found the software easy to use and thought it was easy to create a

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reen shot of garage band showing how you can change sound levels
Elliot WIlcock

professional look to the magazine. Finally we had to use digital media

technologies for the production of our radio trailer the digital media
technologies we used were a microphone and voice recorder and a piece
of software called garage band, the microphone and voice recorder were
as hard to use as they had been while recording for our documentary and
caused a lot of problems if I were to do this task again I would definitely
have chosen to use something else. Garage band was a very good piece of
software which allowed you to layer tracks so that you could have one
over the top of the other and even allowed you to fade-in and out different
music this was useful as it allowed the group to change levels of sound
that were recorded to high so that they kept in tune with the rest of the
radio trailer.

On a whole I think that I used the media technologies available to me well

but could have used them to a greater extent if I had fully understood the
technology and software I think this may have restricted some of the work
I produced but overall I think it did its job well and there was room for
improvement in my knowledge of the technology not for the technology it
self.

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