Media Evaluation

For our media coursework we were given three main tasks to complete. These were to produce the opening five minutes to a documentary, a 45 seconds radio trailer and a double page spread magazine article. Within each of these tasks came research into other professional models and what needs to be including in our models. Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Documentary Before we started designing the opening to the documentary we researched into what documentaries need in order to be successful. I found that there are many different styles a documentary can fall under. I began looking into what style a documentary based around the recession and crime would need to fall under. We found that our documentary would be a polemical public affairs documentary. We also needed our documentary to be taken seriously and therefore needed to use conventions such as serious archival footage. Our opening to the documentary contains different aspects such as factuality and a rhetorical style. These were key in order for the documentary to keep a serious tone. The expository rhetorical style came accidentally as when we were researching the subject recession as a whole we found that it had mainly only negatively affected people. This then lead to us speaking directly to the viewer only persuading one side of the argument. When researching into different documentaries I found that some of them could relate to ours in terms of modes and sub genres. I found that Supersize Me could be specifically related to ours. Having already worked with video cameras I found that I never learnt anything new, though I did familiarise myself with camera angle and shot selections. For example, at the start of the Supersize Me I found that they had used an establishing shot of the children singing about fast food. I found that this gave me a brief idea of what the documentary is about before any real information was shown. We took this into account when producing our documentary. For example the shot of the books and the college grounds within the first minute. When selecting the camera shots to use in our documentary we decided hand held camera angles werent effective. We found that using a tripod produced a more stable and more effective shot. The tripod enabled us to pan and zoom. For example; when filming the presenting parts we found that zooming out would give the viewer a sense of where the interviews are

being taken without their focus moving from the presenter. When research into documentaries we found that sound played a massive part in making it successful. We found that in Supersize Me there was a mix of diagetic sound and non diagetic sound. We found that having a presenter would help the audience understand the topic that was just being discussed and would help summarise what is being said. When we were using establishing shots we found that background would really fit in and help keep the audience focused on the images. We used garage band to create a simple, mellow beat that would fit in with the shots. During the research stage I found that using a well known song wouldnt work as the audiences focus would be drawn from the documentary onto the music. I found that the content of a documentary is just as important as the shots themselves. Instead of filling the opening to the documentary with facts and figures I found that using first hand informative such as vox-pops and interviews would be more interesting and more suitable for the opening. When editing the documentary I referred back to the effects I was already familiar with. I found that both Cross Dissolve and Dip to Colour Dissolve were very effective with the transitions between establishing shots. I also found that when placing a transition between interviews a Non Addictive Dissolve was very effective. These effects can be found by clicking the Effects tab near the top left hand corner.

Radio Trailer When creating our radio trailer; we researched into other radio trailers and what effects they use to make it effective. We listened to Radio 4, Capital Radio and others such as Radio 5 as different times during the day so see which would be more efficient to host our radio trailer. We found that radio 4 would best suit our target audience (aged 18 25) who we think would be interested in and understand the recession.

We wanted to try and provide many different opinions on the recession as possible within the time limit of the trailer. We then edited and cut the sound from the documentary so we got the relevant parts to use. When analysing different radio trailers we found that putting our ideas down in a grid like this would help us making sure we took into account the different aspects and help us make our documentary as professional as possible. Having looked over all of the grids we found that background music was used in the majority of the trailers. We then looked into why it was used and found that trailers without the background music were boring and were prone to loosing the viewers attention. We then decided to take the music we used in the documentary and use it the radio trailer as it was best suited for our target audience. To go over the background music we scripted a strong voice over; along with interview cuts from the documentary to build up the vocals for the trailer. As radio trailers are quite short (20 seconds 1 minute), we didnt want to let ours drag on. We made it 41 seconds long and ensured that the information contained within it was relevant as we found it was the most important aspect of the trailer. When selecting the vocals for the trailer we made sure there was no ambient sound as we didnt want any of the information contained within it to be missed. Having any background noise would make the trailer more realistic but on the other hand give it a sense that it is too fast paced.

Magazine Article Having already made a magazine article during the AS Media course, I had some idea on what was to be involved in producing one. Although, as with all the other tasks, we research into what magazine articles are already on the market and how they can relate to what we needed to produce.

I looked at different magazine articles that are already on the market that are specifically based on television documentaries. I found that they all contain many of the same conventions. These were:

Masthead. These are generally situated at the top of the article. They usually contain the title of the documentary or a relevant quote.

Headers. Not all magazines have these, but they are a good way to state the times and channels the documentary is hosted on.

Pull Quote. These are quote that contain interesting information, or something that will pull the readers attention into the documentary.

Drop Cap. These are capital letters at the start of a sentence of paragraph that help bring the readers attention into what the information is about.

Columns. The text on most magazine articles is split up into columns. This helps the text in being broken down and helps keep the attention of the reader as the texts itself is grouped into small portions.

Conclusion After looking into different media products, we started to understand what is needed to make the product work and look professional. Although we did challenge the general conventions of real products when designing the radio trailer as did choose to not use ambient noise in our vocal clips.

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? We made three media products. Two of which were designed to promote and help advertise the third. These were the radio trailer and the magazine article. We feel that the recession is a vast topic and can affect many different people in different ways. But we feel basing the documentary and other media products on young people we can personally relate to it. We feel a young mature audience, between the ages of 18 and 25, would be able to also relate to the media products. In terms of gender I believe that both females and males would be able to relate to the media products. The recession has a major impact on both males and females trying to progress into higher education and employment. We also aimed the media products to be focused on people we think will be feeling the full impact of the recession. We believe this would cover people of a social class of C2 and D. Radio Trailer I believe the radio trailer goes well with the other media products. We tryed to recognise the many different aspects in each of the media products and try to integrate as many of them deemed necessary as possible. This helped them all fit together and work. For example; in the radio trailers we used different vox-pop voice clips we used in the documentary. This is easily recognised by the target audience and will help bring the two media products together. Not only did we use the vox-pop vocals in the radio trailer; we also used the same background beat. This will definitely create a strong relation between the two media products. It also helps create a musical slogan. Having the same beat played on both media products helps the listener/watcher remember the documentary for its beat. On average 10.83 million adults listen to Radio 4 every week. This definitely captures our target audience. Radio 4 is generally progressing to more listens every year and we believe that hosting our Radio trailers on this channel would

not only advertise the documentary and the topic itself, but bring more listeners to the channel. I believe that the target audience, after having watched the radio trailer, will have an idea of what the documentary is about and well definitely be interested in watching it. On the other hand, the radio trailer hasnt really related to the magazine article. If I was to do this task again I would definitely create a relation between the two. The enables the listener to read the article before watching the documentary. It would also help advertise the article. Magazine article As the magazine article is a still picture media product; it was a lot harder to create a relationship between it and other media products. We took many different screen shots from the documentary and used these pictures in our magazine article where possible. This can prepare the viewer to expect to hear from this person in the documentary. I feel this was a good idea as it helps keep a stable relationship between the media products. We also took different still pictures of the presenter who feature in our documentary and some of the screen shots simply didnt fit. We were sure to keep the people the same are we wanted to reader to remember the same people from different media products. When taking these pictures the mise en scene was taken into account. We took one over a blank background as we wanted to erase the background of the image. We also took another picture with many relevant books around the presenter. I found that the magazine article did not fit as well with the other media products as planned. I think that if we were to of found a colour scheme and based all mise en scene and picture around this colour scheme, the magazine article would have worked a lot better with the other tasks. This fault was mainly down to the lack of time we seemed to of had in producing the magazine article.

Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? In order to gather feedback on our media products; we produced questionnaires. The questionnaires were based on what our target audience would want to see in a documentary and what documentaries/channels they watch. With this information we could about producing/editing a relevant documentary that grasps the interest of our target audience. Documentary We handed out 20 questionnaires and handed them out to students ages around our aimed target audience. It was from the questionnaires that we found what channel and what time to host our documentary. We found that most people would prefer to watch our documentary if it was broadcasted at 7- 8pm on BBC 3. We then agreed that hosting it based on this data would be the best decision.

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

We asked the students watching the documentary whether they thought the sound levels were consistent. The majority of the students said no. I agree with this answer as in some places the vocals were louder than others.

We asked the students watching the documentary whether they thought the music was suitable for the style of documentary. As you can see 17 people said yes and 3 people said no. I am pleased with this result as I agree that the music does go with the documentary.

18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

I have found out that in terms of sound, the music itself was good, though the sound levels were inconsistent. If I was to do this task again, I would make sure that I pan all sound to the centre and make sure the entire volumes match so no clips are louder than others.

The final question was asking how the students rated the documentary as whole. This was taking into account everything from the clip transitions to the music selection. The feedback we got from this question was very positive as no one said excellent, 16 people said good, 3 people said average and 1 person said poor. If I were to design these questions again I would make sure there was another question asking why they thought this as an extension on the final question. This is because I would like to know where we went wrong so we can correct mistakes if we were to do it again. Radio Trailer This is what I got from the feedback for the radio trailer.
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

This is the feedback I got from when I asked if people thought the sound level were consistent throughout the whole radio trailer. As you can see 14 people said no. This is disappointing though I can agree that the sound levels were too loud at the start and end.

I asked whether the music went with the topic of the radio trailer. 18 people said they thought it did and 2 people said it didnt. This is very successful as the music is also used in the documentary.

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

25 20 15 10 5 0 Yes No

We asked if the purpose of the radio trailer was clear and if it stuck to its purpose. Everybody said that the purpose was clear.

The radio trailer generally produced positive feedback. I am pleased with this feedback as it specifically tells me where I went wrong and how I can improve it. I have found that a lot of the negative comments on the media products were based around sound level and how inconsistent they were. If I were to do this project again I would make sure that I check all sound levels on both media products to ensure they are not too loud. Magazine Article The questions we asked on the magazine article were based on first impressions, whether the student would buy it having not seen it before and overall how they felt about it. This is what was found.
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

The first question asked was whether or not they liked the layout of the article. This was from the images to the text. 15 people said they did and 5 people said they didnt. I personally feel that if I were to have more time on this media product I would be able to edit the layout to make a more professional magazine article.
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The second question asked whether the student thought the images were relevant to the topic. I think this is what let us down on the magazine article are the mise en scene wasnt as good as it should of been and simple wasnt grasping the attention of the reader.

10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Yes No

The last question was whether there was enough text on the article. This was a big issue when designing the magazine article as we found there wasnt enough text containing all the information we wanted to include. We had to redesign the article in order to fit more of the information on.

To conclude; I feel that as a whole the feedback we got from the media product was mainly truthful and positive. I feel that what let us down were the sound levels and the image choice. These would definitely be things to improve if we were to do this task again. We made sure that all the student taking part in the questionnaire were people within our target audience in order to generalise the results and make general conclusions about the media products.

Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? When constructing our media products; research played a huge part in helping us get ideas and know what it is we need to do. We researched into many different documentaries based on the recession and based on other topics such as teenage heroin epidemic. This helped us get an idea for what needs to be included in different documentaries and the effect different documentary modes have the viewer. It also have us an idea on what camera angles and editing ideas we could incorporate into our documentary. We researched into documentary hosting and which channels and times we could broadcast our documentary. When researching into similar documentaries we found out that most of them were hosted on the internet. This would cause an issue for us as we hoped to host ours on a television channel. We then research into the different aspects of our documentary and found documentaries with similar aspects that can be related to ours. We then came to the conclusion that our documentary should be hosted on BBC 3. There are four people within our group and all work was split between us. The work we did was uploaded to www.blogger.com with a label of the peoples name who contributed to the work. The website was useful as if meant all of us could upload our own pieces of work and contribute to the whole project and share ideas with ease. It meant that one of us couple upload a piece of work while someone else edits another. It was also very useful as it enabled us to save pieces of work as drafts and access them from a different location at a different time.

When we were filming our documentary we came across a lot of different equipment; some of which we was previously already used. To film all of the video footage, we used a Canon HG20 camera. This camera films in HD and has the opportunity to connect external microphones and headphones. This camera enabled us to zoom in and out when filming presenting parts and establishing shots. The majority of the shots we filmed were still shots which made filming with this camera very easy. When filming with this camera we used a piece of equipment called a tripod. This is used to keep the camera steady and it used to get pan effects. The tripod was generally easy to use as soon you get it perfectly level with the ground. When filming the sound for our documentary we used an external microphone. This simply plugged into the camera in order to get a better quality of sound. The problems we faced with this piece of equipment were trying to place the microphone without the wire being in the shot. We plugged headphones into the camera to listen to the sound coming in through the microphone. They simply plugged into the side. When editing our documentary we used an Apple iMac. The clips we filmed were simply drag and dropped into our folder on the hard drive. The software we used to edit the documentary on was called Final Cut Pro. We had all previously used this software and were all generally familiar with the effect on it and how to generally use it. On Final Cut Express, there are different effects available to use. For example, we used cross dissolve and non addictive dissolves as we found that these were most effective and relevant for our style of documentary. We found that all pan shots we had taken were too fast and therefore needed to be slowed down. We did this by changing the speed in Final Cut Pro to 50%. This then made it half the speed it originally was. Sound levels were easy to manipulate. We simple changed the volume for those which we thought were too quiet or loud and faded some vocals in and out by manipulating the pink line. When editing the radio trailers we used software called Garage band. We took some sound files we used to go with the documentary in Final Cut Pro and used them and manipulated them in Garage Band. We produced a simple, mellow beat that was catchy by wouldnt take the attention of the viewer away from the subject on the documentary. This software was simple to use and very self explanatory. The different sound effect were simple, we drag and dropped them onto the sound timeline. After finishing the radio trailer we exported it as an MP3 file.

We produced our magazine article using Adobe InDesign. This software allowed us to set the page style to double page spread and work within it knowing our page boundary. When manipulating images, we used Adobe Photoshop. We used the magic wand tool to erase the background from the larger picture by simple clicking the space behind the person and pressing delete. We had to alter the tolerance when we found that some of the actual picture was being deleted with the background. We then changed the contrast and light levels by making them both auto. Once we were happy with the images on Photoshop; we saved them and drag and dropped them onto our InDesign document where we positioned them in the places to go with text.