Maria Phipps

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The aim of this task was to produce the opening five minutes of a documentary of our choice. The first stage of this process was brainstorming of ideas, followed by research and planning, where we analysed different types of documentaries which links to our chosen topic. Our documentary was called Fashion: Pushed to the limits and targeted the issue of how fashion affects todays youth. Most of the filming for our documentary was done in Touchwood, Solihull.

This is a still taken from our documentary, introducing the location. Before brainstorming ideas for the documentary, we decided on a target audience. The target audience for our documentary was primarily teenagers, both male and female and of mixed ethnicities, but also had the secondary audience of parents. We decided our documentary would be broadcasted on channel 4, as this was shown to be the most popular channel for our chosen target audience, and it also has shown real documentaries with a similar purpose to our own. Our initial brainstorm consisted of our group each putting forwards ideas for topics, then each of us eliminating the ones which we did not think would work as well. After deciding to use the topic of fashion, we made another brainstorm of ideas of how to pursue this topic. We decided that to make our documentary suit a wider target audience, we would target both males and females, by including aspects of new technologies being perceived as fashionable and desirable to males as well as clothes for females. We then analysed documentaries with a similar purpose to ours to get ideas on what kinds of footage to get, and how to arrange the first five minutes effectively. This

Maria Phipps research enabled us to get appropriate footage that would make our documentary look realistic. Another way in which our documentary followed conventions used in real media products was the use of professional interviews. The interview with Neil Attewell and Jag Jagdev gave our documentary authenticity and made it more believable. We asked questions such as why do you think teenagers find it so important to pursue fashion trends? and how do think this affects them? When filming for these interviews we paid close attention to the shot framing, having our subjects in medium close-up and slightly to the side of the shot, not directly facing the camera to give a sense of realism. This is similar to real documentaries as the interviewees are always placed slightly to one side. Another way these interviews followed conventions was that the name of the interviewee appeared on the screen to let the audience know who was talking. We also did vox pops short interviews where we asked people on the high street of Touchwood for their opinions on fashion. These are often used in real documentaries to give a feel for the amount of people affected by the issue.

Here is a screenshot of our interview with Neil Attewell. As you can see, he is placed to the right hand side of the frame. His open laptop also adds to the effect of the mise-en-scene, making his office look more professional.

Here is a still from Are the net police coming for you? showing a professional interview. Interestingly, in this documentary, professional interviews were filmed using a camera steadied by a tripod, whereas interviews with normal people were filmed with handheld camera. This is a technique we did not use in our documentary, as we chose instead to use a tripod for all footage.

Maria Phipps

Another convention we followed was the use of a channel 4 ident, with our own voiceover layered on top. This linked our documentary to the channel of broadcast and made it more realistic. Here is a screenshot of the channel 4 ident we used.

Here is the ident used before the documentary Are the net police coming for you.

In our documentary, we followed on the trend of using a voiceover, rather than using a presenter. During our research into other documentaries similar to ours, we did not see many with presenters so by just using a voiceover we were following this convention. I think that using a voiceover rather than a presenter was effective as it allows the audience to focus on what is happening on the screen as well as absorbing information, as well as keeping their attention. However, presenters are sometimes used in documentaries, as shown below:

In the Are the net police coming for you documentary, a presenter was used. This is common for panorama documentaries but not completely necessary for all documentaries.

Maria Phipps

We used Are the net police coming for you? to help us with ideas for footage in our opening montage. From watching the opening montage of the real documentary, we were able to follow conventions in our product. This research helped us use conventions of real media products as we were able to make our documentary look more professional.

Our opening montage was a series of short video clips relating to our topic to open our documentary. The clips used in ours included shop windows and names, and a range of shot distances including close-ups of peoples eyes which combined with clips of typing and a computer screen, gave the representation of someone searching for fashion online. This idea came from watching the net police documentary. We also used short clips of a teenage boy talking on his phone, and a close-up of him using the phone to text.

Here are 2 examples of stills from our opening montage.

Here are 2 examples from a real documentary. We have used similar ideas, however the mise-enscene of our documentary is much lighter, reflecting the lighter topic. Are the net police coming for you is more about legal issues, so the clips of people using computers were much darker.

Maria Phipps

As our topic was controversial, we supplied the viewers with both sides of the argument people saying how they either did or did not follow fashion trends, as well as the voiceover stating how fashion is not for everyone. This follows conventions of real documentaries as all real documentaries must be unbiased and give both sides to every story. An important aspect of any documentary is sound: both diegetic and non-diegetic. The non-diegetic sound used in our documentary included the music, which had to be copyright free and was chosen from a list of music tracks stored in the college database. The music we chose was upbeat, which linked to our topic and provoked interest from our target audience. This follows conventions of real documentaries as music must always be appropriate to the target audience to keep viewers interested. At the beginning of our documentary, the shots cut in time with the music which makes the whole thing flow and not look choppy. Another convention we followed was the use of transitions between shots. Most of our cuts were straight cuts with no transition used, but when moving to a different location or aspect we used the transition random edge wipe to make it more consistent.

Our radio trailer also followed many conventions of real documentaries. It was presented by a serious presenter, and included sound bites taken from our documentary. This is the script for our radio trailer: On channel 4, an investigation into peer pressures of an ever changing society. I think this is a serious issue To seek out the cause of controversy in teenage lives today: fashion trends. Fashion is an enormous issue in todays society, I think particularly for young people the pressures on them to look good and have the latest gadgets, it is a real problem. Ive had to resort to stealing; I cant afford not to fit in Even if they cant afford it, theyll steal it. Fashion: Pushing it to the limit. Catch it on channel 4, at 8 oclock. The sound bites taken from the documentary follow conventions as they make the trailer seem more authentic. We also used music throughout the radio trailer to keep it interesting, choosing an upbeat sound track appropriate to our target audience.

Maria Phipps One way in which our documentary does not follow conventions is that it did not include a title sequence. If we had been given more time and had a better knowledge of software, we could have created a title sequence which would have made our documentary more authentic. This title sequence is used for all panorama documentaries.

Overall our documentary mostly follows conventions rather than challenges or develops them. This means it is realistic and more professional, as challenging too many conventions can make it unrealistic and unbelievable to the audience.

Maria Phipps

This is an example of a real listings page. Here I have compared and contrasted the conventions used in this listings page with our own.

Main heading here also doubles as a pull quote a technique often used in listings pages. However, we did not choose to follow this convention, instead using a rhetorical question.

Name of magazine is displayed here. We also displayed the name of the magazine in our listings page, but at the top of the page.

Small column promoting another program this shows that listings pages do not have to be a whole double page spread, and that programs can be advertised just using a small column.

Main image displaying the subject of the program. This is similar to our listings page as the main images relate to the documentary. Pull quote we have used 2 of these in our listings page as they add interest and are almost always used in real listings pages. Smaller images are often used to give added interest to the page and to show other aspects of the program being promoted.

Maria Phipps

This is our listings page analysed to highlight how it follows and challenges conventions: Name of magazine - adds to realism Main heading bright and grabs attention from readers. Image taken from documentary adds to authenticity and anchors documentary to listings page. Large image to get reader attention

Captions anchoring images

Drop caps are frequently used in listings pages to improve the overall appearance of the article.

Pull quote to gain interest in the article and make people want to read on

Page numbers anchoring the page to the magazine.

Maria Phipps

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
The idea of the ancillary tasks was to promote our main product by giving people a taster of what would be shown in the documentary. To do this, we had to connect all 3 products throughout, and to have a brand identity. This gives the audience, readers and listeners a chance to connect with our products and to gain interest to make them want to watch the documentary. For all of our products to make an effective combination, we had to keep them consistent to each other.

Our main product and ancillary tasks are kept consistent in many ways. For example, the listings page uses images taken from the documentary, anchored by captions which relate to our documentary.

This photo here was taken as a still from our documentary.

Script for our radio trailer: Presenter: On channel 4, an investigation into peer pressures of an ever changing society. Quote from source 1: I think this is a serious issue Presenter: To seek out the cause of controversy in teenage lives today: fashion trends. Quote from source 1: Fashion is an enormous issue in todays society, I think particularly for young people the pressures on them to look good and have the latest gadgets, it is a real problem.

Maria Phipps

Quote from source 2: Ive had to resort to stealing; I cant afford not to fit in Even if they cant afford it, theyll steal it. Presenter: Fashion: Pushing it to the limit. Catch it on channel 4, at 8 oclock. The quotes highlighted in blue are sound bites taken from our documentary, by our main professional interview. This anchors the documentary to our radio trailer so they fit together. The channel and time are also the same as displayed in the listings page. The ident at the start of our documentary also links it to the ancillary tasks as it shows that it is being shown on channel 4, as both ancillary tasks state.

Maria Phipps

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When we had finished the construction stages, we showed our documentary and ancillary tasks to a group of teenagers of mixed gender and ethnicity to get audience feedback. We used sheets with questions and space to rate our documentary in accordance to those questions: excellent, very good, good, ok and poor. Here are the total numbers of each rating: Excellent: 9 Very good: 20 Good: 26 Ok: 7 Poor: 0 This graph shows the total amount of boxes ticked for each rating. It clearly shows that the most common rating was good, and that many more people ticked the higher rating boxes than the lower ones.

From these results we can conclude that our documentary had both strengths and weaknesses, which were shown in the comments at the bottom of each feedback sheet. I looked through these feedback sheets and wrote down the comments which appeared the most times. The most commonly occurring positive feedback point was the range of footage, and how the documentary met the target audience and the fact that it was interesting also appeared a few times. The most commonly occurring negative point was the consistency of the sound levels. This was because not enough care was taken to ensure that all of the sound levels were equal, resulting in some parts being louder than others. If we were able to spend more time on our documentary, we would spend more time ensuring these sound levels were even. This problem was likely caused by the original sound levels while recording, so they had to be rectified in final cut moving the sound bar higher or lower accordingly.

Maria Phipps The 7 questions asked in the questionnaire were to rate: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Choice of topic Appropriate filming Appropriateness for target audience Use of sound/music Editing for audience to understand meaning Effects & Transitions Professionalism

Here I have tallied up the results for each question and put them in their own graph.

Question 1: Choice of topic.

For this question, 2 people rated our documentary as excellent, 3 rated it as very good, 4 rated it as good, and no-one rated it lower. This result was encouraging as it showed us that our choice of topic was appealing to our target audience.

Maria Phipps

Question 2: Appropriate filming

For this question, 2 people rated it excellent, 5 rated it very good, 3 rated it good and no-one rated it any lower. These results showed us that our target audience thought our filming was appropriate for our subject, and we were pleased that nobody rated it any lower than good.

Question 3: Appropriateness for target audience

For this question, 1 person rated it excellent, 3 rated it very good, 4 rated it good, 1 rated it ok and no-one rated it poor. While these results were good, they were not as high as the previous questions so we can conclude that there was some room for improvement with the target audience.

Maria Phipps

Question 4: Use of sound/music.

For this question, no-one rated it excellent, 2 rated it very good, 4 rated it good, 3 rated it ok and no-one rated it poor. This category held the lowest overall ratings, and was also brought up in the comments that our sound levels and quality were inconsistent. Given this audience feedback, if we had time to improve our documentary we would fix this.

Question 5: Editing for audience to understand meaning.

For this question, 1 person rated it excellent, 1 rated it very good, 5 rated it good, 1 rated it ok and no-one rated it poor. The general feedback for this section was good, however again, there was room for improvement.

Maria Phipps

Question 6: Effects and transitions

For this question, 3 people rated it excellent, 2 rated it very good, 3 rated it good and no-one rated it lower. These results were positive as no-one rated below good, so thi was a successful category.

Question 7: Professionalism.

For this question, no-one rated it excellent, 4 rated it very good, 3 rated it good, 2 rated it ok and no-one rated it poor. These results were not bad, but also showed room for improvement. I think that part of the reason was did not get any excellent ratings was because of the sound quality.

Maria Phipps

LISTINGS PAGE AUDIENCE FEEDBACK:

10% said 10/10

40% said 8/10

20% said 7/10 30% said 9/10

This pie chart shows the overall ratings for our listings page. We asked 10 people to give it a rating our of 10, and the results were as follows: 1 person rated it 10/10 1 3 people rated it 9/10 2 4 people rated it 8/10 3 2 people rated it 7/10 4 Nobody rated it any lower than 7. These results were encouraging because they show us that our listings page was good.

One of the positive comments we got on our listings page said:

It was a good use of colours and the layout was simple yet effective.
Another positive comment said:

Follows common conventions well

One negative comment which appeared more than once said:

Too much white background

Using these comments we could improve our listings page by making the background coloured or filling the page up more. The positive comments and the high ratings show us that people like our listings page and that it is a strong product.

Maria Phipps

Radio trailer audience feedback:

This pie chart shows the overall ratings for our

radio trailer.
We asked 6 people for a rating out of 10, and the results were as follows: 1 person rated it 10/10 3 people rated it 8/10 2 people rated it 7/10 Nobody rated it lower than 7, and nobody rated it 9. These results were encouraging and showed that people liked our radio trailer. Like the listings page, we also asked for some feedback comments.

The positive comments included:

Good voiceover Appropriate for target audience

The negative comments were all about the sound levels. One example was:

Sound levels were a bit inconsistent

Using these comments we could improve our radio trailer by ensuring that all sound levels were consistently equal. This was the same problem we had with our documentary.

Maria Phipps

4. How did you use media technologies in your planning, research, construction and evaluation stages?
The first bit of technology we had to use for our documentary was cameras. We used both stills cameras and video cameras to create our documentary, using the stills cameras for the listings page and some of the opening montage, and the video camera to film footage. We also had to use voice recorders for the radio trailer and voiceover. Stills camera: We used the stills camera to take photographs for the story board (for use in planning) and for images used in the listings page. When taking photographs, we had to carefully consider the framing, as well as the quality of the photograph. We took a lot of photographs and only used the best ones to ensure the highest quality possible. Where necessary, photographs could be edited in Photoshop to enhance brightness and contrast, or to crop. Video camera: When filming footage for our documentary, we used a HD video camera with a tripod to ensure steady footage. In all video clips no matter what they were, we were very careful with the mise-en-scene to ensure everything was relevant to our documentary. We also carefully considered the framing of each shot so our footage could look as professional as possible. We also plugged in headphones and a microphone to our video camera when recording interviews to ensure sound quality was as good as possible to match the voiceover which was recorded on sound recorders. When recording interviews we had one person operate the camera, and another hold the microphone and wear the headphones so they could check sound levels were all in order. We also had to be careful that the microphone stayed out of the shot, which was difficult in some places where there was a lot of background noise as we needed the microphone to be as close to the speaker as possible to keep the background noise from being heard. During filming we used a range of settings on the video cameras, including adjusting the lighting and manually focussing the footage. The manual focus was particularly

Maria Phipps useful when I did some extra recording at home using my own video camera, as I did some interesting shots where I pulled an out of focus shot into focus.

Here is an example of a piece of footage where I pulled it into focus. This technique is commonly used in documentaries.

The computers we used throughout the production process were apple macs. Prior to this project I had never used one before as I generally use regular PCs, so I learnt a lot about the use of the apple macs during this process. We used the macs for everything to do with editing our main and ancillary tasks the programs we used included final cut express for the documentary, garage band for the radio trailer, and indesign for the listings page.

Maria Phipps

We also used the internet a lot during the research and planning stages, using Google and YouTube to gather information.

I also used YouTube when making the graph for our documentary, so I could upload the moving image and put it on the blog. This is a link to the video I uploaded of the moving graph:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1p2dUoKXC0
I also had to embed the video onto the blog, which I did by clicking share, then copying the embed code onto the blog.

Maria Phipps

To make the graph, I initially used Photoshop elements 5.0. I created a simple graph with just one bar at the end, exported that as a JPEG file, then added another bar on, exported that, and kept doing this until I had a completed graph. This print screen shows all of the exported JPEG files open in Photoshop.

This is the first stage of the graph I made.

This is the final stage the completed graph.

Maria Phipps

I then put the graph together using Sony Vegas, a video editing software similar to final cut. This process could also have been achieved using final cut, but since I was making it at home where I did not have final cut installed, I used Sony Vegas. This shows the layout of Sony Vegas. Similarly to final cut, it has a timeline and several layers. To put the graph together and make it move, I just put each stage of the graph into the timeline and faded them together, then on the final stage showing the full graph I made it zoom in. I then clicked project, then render as to save it. I saved it in an AVI format so it would be compatible with final cut.

Then to add the graph to final cut, I just had to import it and place it where I wanted it on the timeline.

Maria Phipps

Final cut express was the main program we used to create the documentary. To
start off with, we created bins to put footage to be used in each minute in so we knew where to find the right clips easily. We then used log and transfer to go through our footage and pick out which bits to use, renaming them and placing them in the appropriate bin. While doing this, we followed our story board. When we had imported all of the footage to be used in our documentary, we started to place it on the time line in the order we wanted it. This part of the timeline shows the actual video footage.

This part of the timeline shows the sound that goes with each video clip. There are two lines, one each for left and right speaker.

After adding all of the footage, we added in our voiceover, music and text.

This is text overlaid to introduce our interviews.

These files are the voiceover files.

Files beginning with pop are music files, as we used pop tracks which would appeal to our target audience.

Maria Phipps This is the general layout of final cut express, here showing our finished documentary. This box is where all footage, sound etc was imported to. This is also where we created the bins. This box here allowed us to preview clips before placing them into the timeline as well as editing them once they had been placed in. Here, I had selected the motion tab which allowed us to make footage zoom in/out, crop it etc. This is the preview screen, where we could watch back footage placed on our timeline.

This is the timeline, as I explained in more detail above.

This is where transitions were added. To place a transition in the timeline, we overlapped two clips then dragged the desired transition in. The transition we used throughout was random edge wipe.

Maria Phipps We also used a website called www.blogger.com to upload our work to. Having never used this website before, it took some getting used to, but proved useful as a method of keeping track of our work.

This is our group.

Maria Phipps The program we used to edit out radio trailer was garage band. I used this briefly at the end of my AS year to produce a radio news report for radio 1, so this software was not entirely new to me. However, we were still able to enhance our skills using it.

In our radio trailer we used sound bites taken from our documentary. To do this we just had to import the same sound files we used in the documentary into garage band. To adjust sound levels, we clicked on the bars and dragged the level up or down accordingly.

Maria Phipps

We used comic life to make storyboards for our documentary. These story boards enabled us to plan effectively how our documentary was going to play out. I had never used comic life before so I gained a number of skills while using it for this project.

There was a number of different layouts to choose from when using comic life. We used layout J, so we could add in pictures, then used the callouts to annotate.

Maria Phipps

This is what my plan for the first minute of our documentary looked like. To put the pages from comic life together, I took print screens, went on Photoshop and combined them to make a single image.

Maria Phipps

The program we used to create the listings page was InDesign. While making the listings page, it was important to make lots of boxes to place everything in whether it was text or images. This enabled us to move everything around freely, so there was no limit to where we could place objects. To place an image in a box, we right clicked and clicked place, then found the correct image file.

Here is a print screen of our listings page in InDesign. In our listings page, we used an image taken directly from our documentary so the two linked together. To do this, we saved a video still in final cut as a JPEG format and imported it to InDesign. We chose to use columns to lay out our text as it looks more professional than simply having full length paragraphs. The columns are conventional of listings page conventions.

Maria Phipps

Overall, I have learnt a lot about using different media technologies throughout this process. I have used several pieces of software I had previously never used before, and have been pleased with the results. I have also found it rewarding working in a group throughout this process as we have been able to share knowledge to help develop our skills further.

Maria Phipps