Evaluation

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? Before production of our documentary could begin, it was important to establish modes and conventions. The ambition for our documentary was to have the style of cinema verite, however wanted to look deeper to gain knowledge about particular traits and conventions. Looking at research from Bill Nichols, I was able to verify the different aspects from each mode he had distinguished. Due to the factual information given by us and interviewees, our documentary has aspects of the expositional mode. Our narration provided a story telling scenario which was omnipresent. An example of the expositional mode is the cutaways which appear throughout our interviews. Aspects of the observational mode are also present through the use of certain shots displayed where the camera is as unobtrusive as possible. Shots of students in the canteen, walking to lessons etc are examples of the camera being used in an observational way. In documentaries such as Morgan Spurlocks supersize me, he became participatory to his own work, however we did not use this mode as we wanted to appear as subjective and not use an argumentative tone. There is also a tiny element of the performative mode as the story we created acted as an almost autobiographical description of subjective truths that were significant to use. For example, the opinions aired about the riots and teenagers were the truth to us as film makers, therefore we showed our views through a subjective documentary. Our documentary has the part of the realist documentary genre as we have shown teenagers in their natural educational habitat with minimal treatment on recorded material. However, we also have a subjective genre as our personal opinion on teenagers involvement in the riots was revealed. The tone of our documentary was to be serious and uncritical as we wanted to show the opinions of teenagers and adults towards the riots. The serious tone was implemented straight from the beginning as the destructive shots of the riots appeared creating the tone we wanted. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson identified four types of narrative structure which were story telling, categorical, rhetorical and associational. Our documentary had part of the structure for the rhetorical as we identified the problem of youth involvement and the media within the riots and explained facts about the events, however we could not get further within the narrative structure then this, and this could be due to the limited time of the documentary. Initially, all members of the group had similar generic conventions, which were found in examples of documentaries. These were important to incorporate into our documentary to ensure it was a professional as it can be. The American documentary Super-size me used many conventions which were similar in our documentary. For example, professional interviews used tripods which added to the sense of importance of the interviewee. Huma Mian

To begin with, we all had different ideas for the establishing shot. This was a very important decision as this can be used to captivate the audience to watch the rest of the documentary. To clearly show what the documentary was going to be about, the decision became final to use vox pop footage from the recent riots to engage the viewer and to add a dramatic beginning to the documentary. The shots of the riots were chosen carefully, as only a few seconds are dedicated to each clip, it became of importance to choose clips that featured teenagers being violent as this begins the questioning on youth violence. To accompany this, a violent backing track was used which suited the shots of robberies and the youth violence that we were showing. It was important to find the correct music to accompany the shots as this can create a certain mood throughout the documentary. As shots of college were introduced, the music became investigative and upbeat to portray the pace of the documentary and the qualities of the college. The music remained in the background lightly throughout the whole documentary, which is also a convention found in real media texts. Sound levels had to be adjusted so all voices were balanced; this shows the documentary is of professional standards.

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This would be expected if our documentary was to be similar to real media texts. Conventions sheets In order to understand what features are necessary within a documentary, many examples were watched. A documentary about Alcohol produced by Panorama had the following conventions:

Camera

Tripod is used often when introducing the show and showing the streets of Yorkshire, this is done to keep the professional element of the programme. All interviews are done using tripod. Hand held camera used for interviews on streets to give a sense of realism. Most common shot types are two shots to show the presenter is always present. Also, MCU's (medium close ups) are used to create a sense of closeness to the person so the viewers focus on what they have to say.

'A piece to camera' used throughout.

Sound/graphics:
The principal source of sound is diagetic and ambient sound to give a sense of realism of clubs and bars.

Panorama's theme music is used throughout which makes the show recognisable to viewers and keeps consistency Graphics such as panorama being in a spinning globe and maps of cities are used to portray information in a more appealing way to the viewer instead.

Narration/voiceover

The presenter does 'a piece to camera' and seems as if he is reporting to the viewers directly. his voice is used as a voiceover and is very successful in piecing the shots together and explaining whats happening on screen.

Research

As this is a panorama documentary, it is expected that many facts and research has been found to inform the audience of Alcohol abuse. They discuss the changes in council laws, which some may not know. Give facts on the amount of pubs and bars there are e.g 19 pubs and 27bars.

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Try to shock the viewers by using facts such as 25 incidents per week are reported in certain nightclubs and 58% of people are to afraid to go to town in the evening due to violence.

Using a documentary such as this, we wanted to incorporate similar conventions such as using a voiceover, which explains what is happening on the screen for the viewers understanding. Also, we wanted to inform the viewers of our documentary, therefore using facts was an important part. All documentaries, such as teen species: girls, airline and supersize me all use hand held camera for un- professional interviews to give the feeling that the viewer is also a part of the scene. For example, in supersize me hand held camera is used in the doctors surgery so the viewer feels they are a part of the consultation also. With our documentary, we used hand held for all other interviewers however; our documentary was more opinion based therefore did not have the conventions completely of a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Such conventions then allowed us to produce a story board of how the documentary may be shot to give us clarity during the actual production stage.

The most popular type of editing is the straight cut which can easily be found in any documentary. However, we Exampleschallenged this convention and used transitions such of transitions as fade to black to ensure our documentary flowed smoothly. Also, it added to the aesthetics of the final piece. Generically, it would be expected names of the professionals being interviewed are displayed for viewers to know who they are. We ensured all of our professional interviews had names- we also designed the style in which the names were to be displayed. An example of this is below.

The story board includes a description of types of shots, timings and whether a voiceover is needed. Ideas from real media texts enabled me to think creatively.

Stills were used effectively through rostrum footage. An image from a looting in London was taken and creatively shown from right to left diagonally within our Huma Mian

documentary (rostrum); conventionally, looking at moving images is far more pleasing to the eye than a still image, therefore we decided to incorporate this. Our name strips

Part of the Rostrum movement Generic conventions within a documentary are: Narration which seems as if they are addressing us directly Two shots, MCU shots Background music Use of hand held for realism Research and evidence Use of graphics After research into radio trails such as sports trails and comedy trails, generic conventions became apparent. For example, the common about of tracks for each trail is 3; consisting of the backing track, voiceover and any ambient tracks. In our radio trail we used 2 tracks (voiceover and backing track) with the beginning using an ambient sound alone. Also, the tone of voice affected the mood of the radio trail, therefore it was important to have an upbeat tone for the voiceover, which matches the music etc. For example, the sports trail for F1 used an excitable tone, which caused an excitement for the listener about the last few seconds of the race. The general length of time for the 5 different trails I encountered were no more then 50 seconds, therefore we created a 42second radio trail which advertised our documentary but did not drag on for too long with opinions, which could cause the listener to not be interested after a certain amount of seconds.

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Radio trail analysis

It is important to ensure you adjust the sound levels to all 3 tracks merge together well. The image (on the left) shows blue dots, which allow you to put the sound levels higher or lower. The backing track needs to be lower then the voiceover for clarity, which is a generic convention. In order for the radio trail to be of par to real media texts, It is important to follow the key conventions such as: Voiceover which creates mood Date and time of the advertised piece Background music Sound level adjustments Adjusted sound levels Relevant sound clips which relate to the piece you are advertising I believe our radio trail follows all of these conventions. For example, the date and time of Running Riots can be heard at the end of the trailer, we think this Is a good thing to do as it leaves the listener with the important information they would need to remember if they wanted to watch the documentary. The voiceover, using myself, was upbeat and consistent to the documentary voiceover. The group had chosen the backing track carefully as the basis for the advertisement is using sounds, therefore using a backing track that is constant and pleasing to the ear is beneficial in all media texts. Conventions associated with the double page spread include a by-line, this gives a summarised description of the article, this can be found in majority of the articles, especially in the Radio times which were the publication we used. Our by-line gave some factual Insight on the riots and opened up the topic of the medias role in the portrayal of youths.

By-line in our double page spread

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The masthead had to be effective if it was to catch the eye of the reader. However, with the publication we used, our masthead challenged the conventions of that magazine. By using the strong black colour and having a masthead, which jumps out of the page, gives a strong mood to the article that may not fit in with the radio times. The rule of thirds is used to placed images/text on to page symmetrically, commonly, columns are placed and images are bundled together so the layout is clear and consistent. Our double page spread uses this convention as we have columns that have a structural form, also images are generally together near the bottom right of the page. Another convention, which is common in real media texts, is the use of page number accompanied by information such as the date. Our spread has page numbers, which gives it a professional appeal; also the publication is used Radio times

Generically, the date and time of the programme would be made clear at the beginning of the article; we also have followed this by ensuring the date/time/programme is clearly displayed which is used for easy referral to the details. I also believe our colour theme throughout using black, white and red for quotations is consistent throughout the article, which is very important when establishing a brand identity. Question2: how effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task? The target audience were 16-35 year old males and females, and it was important to ensure both the radio trail and double page-spread correlate to the documentary produced. Collectively, a decision was made to create a brand identity, which was repetitive throughout the main and ancillary tasks. The documentary began using dark rock style music which connoted the trouble and violence caused throughout the riots. With regards to the double page spread, the background colour used was black to keep in with the connotations of the riots. A cracked lettering style in the masthead indicated the shattered remains after the riots and fitted in with our brand identity.

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As the documentary and the radio trailer were visual audios, this made it harder to portray a clear brand identity with the double page spread. Still images were taken from our documentary and placed on the double page spread to make it recognisable.

However, the double page spread uses an interview with the producer of Running Riots which may not be as thrilling and captivating for the younger target audience. This is a flaw in the ancillary task; however by keeping the colour theme similar to the documentary, the aim was to entice our target audience with a glance.

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A positive element about the double page spread is the clarity of the article. It is easy to understand when the programme is on and the channel it is being aired on. The introductory paragraph gives an in depth insight to the documentary topic- the medias role in the portrayal of stereotypes. The bi-line in our double page spread is generic and can be found in most articles; therefore we deciding having a bi-line would make our double page spread read better as it gives an overview about our topic area. Altogether, the double page spread is relevant to our documentary and the theme we used is consistent throughout, however there are certain flaws in the double page spread such as the quotations, which could be seen as misplaced and straining to read against the black background. The radio trailer also uses the same voiceover and extracts from the documentary, which would be easily recognisable if people have watched the documentary also. The pace of editing in our documentary is fast; therefore it was important to keep the pace throughout the radio trail. The trail gives a small insight as to what the documentary is about and even asks the rhetorical question youth violence, whats your opinion? Asking this question indicates the documentary topic but does not give too much away. However, the music used in the documentary is extremely different the radio, this creates a completely different mood for each task. This is an issue, as the brand identity may get lost through the choice of music. The sound levels were as consistent as our documentary which thorough checking of levels throughout postproduction. Both the documentary and radio trail sound professional due to the sound levels.

Overall, I believe the ancillary tasks accompany the main documentary task very well with a recurrent theme throughout. Both the radio and double page spread advertise the documentary effectively and the name brand of Running Riots appears clearly. The generic conventions for both tasks were followed to ensure we created something of professional standard which had the brand identity of us throughout. It was important to have ancillary tasks, which correlate to the main production as this ensures an effective production piece is made, which I believe we have managed.

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Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback? To begin with, we created a questionnaire to see what our target audience knew about our topic area, this involved questions such as define the word stereotype It was important to get feedback from our target audience before we embarked on this task as it gave us a clear insight and aided us in our decision making.

From this Our audience research questionnaire questionnaire, it could be found that the key words and phrases used to define the word stereotype were judgement, assumptions and classifications of a group of people. This question was asked to see if the target audience understood the definition of a stereotype and could describe it. A unanimous opinion became clear as all of the participants thought teenagers are portrayed in a negative manner. Due to this, we wanted to show this opinion in our documentary in contrast to adults opinions. When questioned about the riots, most peoples opinions classed rioters as being selfish and disgusting. It was clear that although teenagers took part in the riots, most teenagers believed it to be negative themselves. Most perceived the riots to be a small minority but the media has shown the majority. Responses such as this have aided us to make decisions about what to show in the documentary; such as, finding the point of view from a media expert to give an insight to the effects of the media on portrayal of youths. By doing this questionnaire, we were able to see whether our target audience had any knowledge into the topic area and what opinions people felt about the riots. Due to this, we decided to ask students to define a stereotype within the documentary to ensure the target audience understand the meaning which we refer to.
All responses said they did not agree with the negative representation, along with it not being

A following questionnaire was conducted on the target audience of 16-35 to gain overall feedback about our documentary, double page spread and radio Huma Mian

trail. The questionnaire asked participants to rate each task from good to bad. A further question asked for any improvements that needed to be made for all 3 tasks and the final few questions asked general closed questions such as was the documentary interesting?, was the documentary similar to those of the BBC? And do all 3 products relate to each other? There was also the option to add general feedback at the end. The reason these questions were derived were to get informed answers about the good and bad of our tasks, by asking for improvements we could make, we could understand where our faults lay and if all our products had the brand identity we wanted it to have.

This column chart shows the exact number of ratings. It can be seen that 2 people believed our documentary and radio trail to be the rating excellent and 3 thought the double page spread was excellent. Majority of participants (5) thought the documentary was good. The radio trail also seemed good to 4 participants and the same amount was rated for the double page spread. No participants rated any of the tasks bad or awful which shows our production was of a good standard. As expected, majority thought our efforts were good, with documentary and double page spread gaining equal rating. Task Documentary Improvements Lighting during High street interviews Smoother pans Clearer riot footage More relevant footage Sound levels to be improved Second page needs less images More structure Brighter colour Voiceover needs to be louder

Double page spread Radio trail

Question 2 looked for improvements on each task. Naturally, the documentary had the most improvements to be made which is due fact it is much longer Huma Mian

and an audio visual therefore there is more to analyse. As the table indicates, the major issues with the documentary included the camera work and lighting. Once certain shots has be filmed, i knew there were certain lighting issues, however as the shots from the Solihull high street were difficult to get, they had to be used. I also agree with the point about music, although the mood is investigative, i believe changing it during the documentary would have created a more uplifting effect. With regards to the double page spread, the improvement for the colour was mentioned frequently. We believed using the black would be effective and the masthead Running Riots would stand out well. However, i do understand using a brighter colour could be more appealing for a person to read the article the whole way through. The radio trail admittedly needed sound levels of the voiceover to be adjusted; however this was the only criticism for that task which is pleasing. A pie chart to show opinions on the documentary

This pie chart shows the general questions we asked. It can be seen the results are split evenly showing each participant thought our documentary was interesting, similar to a BBC production and relevant to each other. However, as this is only a closed question some may not be able to put in certain thoughts. The general feedback we gained were comments such as fantastic, well done, and positive comments on the professionalism of the productions. From this audience feedback i have learnt that our productions were seen as very good and enjoyable to most. The opinions demonstrated in the previous questionnaire were shown also in the documentary which shows we have taken on board audience feedback. However, improvements can always be made and from this feedback i am able to understand where faults are throughout the documentary, radio trail and double page spread. Question 4: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

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The initial idea for our documentary was to focus on the theme of teenagers and their representations as our brainstorm for this was the strongest. As we began research into the topic and began thinking of story boarding, it became clear that focusing just on representations of teenagers was too narrow. Also, as the idea was so wide, the documentary could a number of different directions; we were not sure which one to take. After careful consideration, it became apparent we needed a more focused theme; therefore we used the riots as a basis into a portrayal of negative stereotypes. From this, we were then able to imagine a well aimed documentary looking into the medias role of portraying teenagers. Before ideas could be further produced for our documentary, it was important to watch other form of real media texts to gain an insight as to what the genres there are. Household equipment such as a TV/projector and DVD player/computer are needed to allow DVDs of documentaries to be shown. A target audience had to be decided in the initial stages of planning , Unsure of whether to use BBC 3 or BBC4 for our channel, we did further research via their websites as to their target audiences, the types of programmes they show. Using the website gave us adequate information to make the decision to go for BBC 3.

We began searching for clips of the riots using www.youtube.com. The broad variety of clips made it a very long task and could be frustrating when we were not able to find the exact clips we had in mind. Youtube is a common piece of software most teenagers are in contact with; therefore using this website was easy as we all understood how to use it. Many of our footage from the riots came from this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zRUojIKrn0 A disadvantage about using Youtube is there are many videos, therefore when looking for something specific causes difficulty as you must go through many videos that do not have relevance to find the right scenes of the riots.

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Any research and planning produced about our documentary or ancillary tasks were to be published onto a blog (www.blogger.co.uk) a standard blog looked like this:

Collectively, we agreed this layout was bland and decided to use the software and edit the settings which allowed us to choose a different layout which looked more pleasing to the eye. Again, our brand identity can be seen through our blog with the use of the colour black and the multicoloured spirals across the page symbolise chaos. However, blogger was not clear on how to edit certain features; therefore it took time to figure out how to use the software.

Throughout the post production of the documentary, Powerpoints were produced using Microsoft powerpoint and Slideshare which demonstrated the different stages we went through to get our final piece. www.slideshare.net enables you to upload your Powerpoint onto a piece of software which produces slides and can be used on other websites such as blogger.

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Due to these features, we uploaded our slide share onto the blog to make the information look better.

Our slideshare production Although Slideshare has its benefits, i was unable to use this piece of software to begin with and at times i encountered difficulties uploading the Powerpoint to the blog, however, with practice it began easier to use this website and it has allowed us to present our information in a different way on the blog which is interesting. Before we could begin filming, a short video uploaded on Youtube gave us an insight on how to use the camera (cannon HD) and the tripod so we were able to go off and effectively produce the documentary we wanted. The videos were easy to follow and helped me to understand the hardware i was working with for the number of following weeks.

The following links will take you to those videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g38qc0htJ1U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKrzxhZfK6c&feature=player_embedded On the camera, i learned to use white balance (holding a white sheet of paper in front of the camera) to level out the colour of the shots; this was very useful as our documentary mostly had consistent lighting. Also, effects such as

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manual focus could be used which added to the professionalism of the documentary and gave us the ability to create an appealing documentary. Also, for our documentary an audio technical directional microphone had been used which enabled sound to become clearer; this was useful when background noise in the college took over, the microphone still picked up the sound of the interviews clearly. Research into the documentary was found using the most common piece of software- www.google.com- when we typed in facts on youths in the riots, we were able to find sufficient facts and figures to shock and inform our viewers with. Research without search engines such as Google would have made the task of finding information very difficult. An M-Audio digital recorder was used to record voiceovers for our radio trail and documentary. Having used this piece of hardware before, this task became easy for me. I also knew how to upload these sound clips onto the documentary quickly, which became useful when more recordings were needed on short notice. A scanner enabled us to add in extra information onto the blog such as the edit decision lists which show all the clips we decided to use; and the analysis conducted for the radio trails.

Radio analysis

Edit decision list All post-production was done on the Apple Macs. Only having used this hardware one before briefly, i found it difficult to use. Luckily, one member of the team had frequent use with the Macs and was able to direct me when i needed help. The 3 main software programmes i used were: Final cut express, Garage band and In-design. I had experience of using garage band and In-design before which made the production of the radio and double page Huma Mian

spread slightly easier. However, I still struggled with Indesign as i forgot how to use most of the features to create the effects i desired. Final cut express was new to me, however once a demonstration was given it became fairly easy to use. To begin with, a log and transfer is needed to add all the clips into a bin we could use. From then on, our desired clips could be dragged on to the time line and edited. As i became familiar with this particular hardware, i understand now how to add in effects such as rostrum footage, transitions, voiceovers etc. Scripting for the radio trailer, documentary and the article for the double page spread were typed on to the Mac, using Microsoft Word. This made it easier to proof read and correct any mistakes that were made. The software was designed specifically for Macs, due to this I struggled sometimes to find the tool boxes i wanted too use.

Rostrum footage

Overall, in order to construct the planning and research for the task given, many different forms of media technology were needed. Using such a vast variety gave me the chance to increase my knowledge and progress when using software. Although i had my difficulties using certain pieces of software and hardware, with a bit of guidance and using my initiative- i was able to effectively make use of the technology available to me and create an interesting documentary, radio trail and double page spread for Running Riots.

Examples of software I used on the Macs

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