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This presentation presents the three products I created in different form.
The above presentation was done on Prezi, another form of technology used to create my entire production and evaluation.
Question One
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Our media product uses the forms and conventions of real media products by following them. We created our documentary by using conventions, such as, including interviews to provide evidence. This makes our documentary more creditable and informative to viewers. It also brings the audience into the documentary as they have a say in what is being discussed.
The codes and conventions of documentaries are the use of the rules of thirds, voxpops, narration and interviews. The rules of thirds is used to allow some access to view the background, this is usually used in most shots, such as, interviews and cutaways. Voxpops are used to give quick opinions of the public, in involves them all answering the same question in a short form. Narration is used to guide the documentary and give reasons and answers to what is happening and why. Interviews are used to give factual information and/or opinions from relevant people and are often supported by cutaways and the narration. Despite there being multiple sub genres to documentaries, they all usually follow these codes and conventions. Other types of genres that are found within documentaries include drama, nature, scientific, crime, biography, social and entertainment.
This is a screenshot of a section of voxpops used in our documentary.
If the above video does not work, click this link http://youtu.be/1uiF7_WLWx8
This above video is a directors commentary of our documentary produced by myself, it discussed the following -
It develops the typical forms and conventions of real media products in multiple ways. These ways include interviews, voxpops, rules of thirds, cutaways and genre. One way is through the use of the camera, this includes the framing and mise en scene. Our framing followed the simple rules of thirds convention in order to allow our main focus to take to the subject in the interview, but still allowing the background to be present, showing relevant aspects within the shot. Our framing supports the mise en scene being relevant and necessary to what is being discussed or to who the person is within the interviews. As most documentaries do, we alternated which side each interview was taken on to give variation.
The typical conventions of documentaries was furthered by presenting multiple voxpops of people answering one simple question with a one or two word minimal answer. This shows a quick overview of the public's opinion and can make the audience feel more involved so we followed this convention accordingly. In terms of sound, we had one main track playing beneath the entire documentary, this is known as the 'music bed' and the volume of this sound was reduced during the interviews and the voiceover. Our voiceover was relevant to the documentary as it was informative, which is what we wanted our documentary to appear as. When advertising a production, the voiceover is conventionally the same as the one within the documentary so we stood by this and used the same person.
Our media product does not challenge any forms or conventions of real media products. We decided not to do this as it would make it more complex for ourselves, it would not look like a documentary and it would not look as professional. It is narrated accordingly to the structure. We structured our documentary to present multiple takeaways and to show the popularity of them in this day in age. The documentary then progresses on to the positives and then negatives of takeouts, with supporting interviews from a takeout owner and a science tutor. Opinions are weaved in where necessary to relate the public to the documentary, this is through interviews and voxpops.
During interviews we used graphics, like professional documentaries, to present the name and profession of the interviewee to the audience. We used a dissolve to blend this text into the footage as the interview began, the dissolve meant that full focus could remain on the interviewee and what they were discussing without interruption. The graphics were used on the first interview with each interviewee, this was to get the audience to recognise who each person is. After watching and analysing multiple professional documentaries, I have discovered this convention.
Over the top of voiceovers and interviews we placed relevant cutaways which gave a visual insight to what was being discussed during that particular time. The cutaways were short and many were used and followed on from one another. This is a convention of documentaries and to further it we used our cutaways to tell a story. By this I mean that we would have an interviewee describing the process of something and our cutaways would lead one on to another in a linear sequence, showing the chronological order of events. Not only did our cutaways do this but they also disguised any jump cuts between shots. The cutaways were placed where there were jump cuts, the transitions between interviews, during long speeches and voiceovers. The purpose of cutaways is to give the audience something to look at whilst information is being given, it often draws in the attention and gives a focus to the topic. Images can often be more impacting than audio so it is good to give a variety of both, it also keeps the audience more engaged.
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Question Two
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
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This is my print advert in comparason to an actual professional print advert. Mine is on the left, the professional one is on the right. It compares as it follows all of the listed codes and conventions stated in Codes And Conventions Of Newspaper Advertisements.
This is my print advert with the title. Below is the documentary with the title. The title remains the same throughout, thus, another comparason.
The poster and the radio advert have reflected the themes that we used within our documentary by using the same narrative voiceover, the same slogan, the same voxpops and the same title name. This means that each product is relevant to one another and the audience can see this both visually and audically. They are branded for Channel 4 as Channel 4 often presents documentaries. Channel 4 is also a student channel and our documentary is aimed at people between the ages 17-25, typical students. It is targeting this age band because these are the most likely, as research shows, to consume more takeouts. The print advert used the Channel 4 logo in bright colours as Channel 4 portrays multiple colour schemes for different programmes. The Channel 4 logo is placed on the right hand side in the middle as most of their adverts do, with the scheduling and title on the left hand side in the bottom corner with a colooured box to emphasis its presence.
Question Three
What have you learned from your audience feedback?
Audience feeback is vital in media productions because without it you would not know whether your audience liked it or not. You would not know what they liked or what they did not like. Without positive and negative feeback, critical feeback, you would not be able to improve for next time and you would be in the dark about how to go about making a successful production. I have used audience feedback to give my own analysis of my media products and to gain knowledge on what worked and what did not, which will allow me to consider changes for next time.
"The quality of the filming is good, but the sound keeps changing volume," said Simon Aspinall.
Daniel Brown said, "Gread video well put together, good camera angles, wasn't boring, kept me informed but I didn't feel bored watching it. Overall, great video, you should be proud."
Conor watching our documentary
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Conor commenting on our documentary
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The audience feedback has allowed me to see both the positives and the negatives of our productions, and where we could improve on it next time. Audience feedback showed me the successful aspects of our documentary. These positives include the interviews that were relevant to the message within the documentary, the relevance and informative information provided by the voiceover and the interviews, the position of the interviews which allowed the background mise en scene to be visible, and the use of supportive cutaways to provide entertainment whilst the voiceover and the interviews were progressing. Other pressing positives are the choice of soundtrack as the audience found it relevant and interesting, and the cutaways which presented relevant key points to what was being said.
Question 5 in the group Audience Feedback was an important question to ask as the feedback allowed us to see what our audience thought of the sound quality. The question and results are as follow.
5) On a scale of 1 to 5 with five being the most positive, how was the quality of the sound within the documentary?
1 - 0
2 - 0
3 - 4
4 - 5
5 - 1
To summarise, our sound was not perfect, however, no one rated it less than 3 so it was bareable. The sound was said to be 'alternating in volume' and there was 'too much background noise in places.' To improve this next time we could film in a different area and analysis the effects of this before filming, we could also listen to the audio through the headphones throughout the entire production as we will be aware that this needs to be done.
The sound was difficult to alter as we chose places to film which had uncontrolable background noise, such places include Priestley College canteen. Feedback is important as it allows us to note where improvements can be made and what can be left the same. From this feedback we can gather that we had good quality sound in some places, however, it kept altering volume levels and there was high levels of background noise.
The audience feedback that I received shows me that our documentary had the following negatives, the sound levels that kept changing when the footage switched between interviews and the voiceover as the ambient background noise was loud and quiet in different areas.
Collectively, these positives and negatives affected my overall product in different ways. The negatives, such as, the angle of how some cutaways were filmed, affected the documentary as the quality was reduced. This meant that the action we were trying to portray was not noticed as much as the person in the shot may have been positioned wrongly and their body was in the shot or that the camera was shaking during a panning or crabbing shot. These factors make the documentary look unprofessional.
I feel that myself and the group could have done better, however, it was difficult to get things done at the start as it seemed like no one would do anything on their own. The work load was unevenly spread and I, personally, felt like I was left to do the work. The group selected me as a team leader when I felt we should have all been incharged and had a say, despite this, my ideas weren't followed through with and we made little production. Initially, after filming, I was left to edit the footage which was not very good and we decided not to use it. Upon this, we went out as a team to film more footage and edited it together. Me and Jack came in for an entire day to correct the editing and get it up to 3 minutes of solid documentary. This was the turning point and our group became more successful, however, one member of the group was not doing their share of the work so loose ends were still untied.
I think that I could have probably have took charge and done the work by myself but I did not think this would work and it wouldn't be fair as it is a team effort and we all need a say in it. I also made the mistake of capturing the print advert image in poor lighting on my HTC Mozart phone rather than on a stills camera. This meant that I had to keep capturing the image and changing the initial idea to make it more interesting. All of this was recognised and done after editing each individual image, as shown in the print advert section of my blog.
Question Four
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
In various stages of production, technology was used throughout, in many ways, to make it professional and to gain an understanding of the work and equipment efforts put in to creating a documentary. To create our documentary, a lot of work was required as there was more than one stage to complete it. Each section of the documentary required the use of multiple technologies.
RESEARCH STAGE
The very first piece of technology used was during the research stage of our production. We used the DVD Player to watch existing documentaries. This allowed us to see what documentaries look like and gave us chance to analyse them and record the codes and conventions of documentaries. By gaining this knowledge we could stick to the codes and conventions and make a professional looking documentary.
During this stage we conducted a lot of computer work on programmes, such as, Microsoft Word and the Internet. Questionnaires we produced on Microsoft Word and we then printed off multiple copies which we handed out to random members of the general public. The feedback from this allowed us to see what the general public would like to see and gave us suggests for a formal proposal as well as a running order. This data was collated with the use of Microsoft Excel which gave us an easy reading understanding of what the public wanted from our documentary. It allowed us to present the found information in the form of pie charts which could be easily analysed. We copied these pie charts and the collated tally researchs onto Microsoft Word and wrote a descriptive analysis beneath. These we then saved as images by Print Screening the work and cropping it, then placing it onto Paint where it was then saved as a JPEG image and uploaded to Blogger.com.
At this researching stage of production, I have found that most technologies link in together as proven above. An example being that we used Microsoft Word to create questionnaires and then Microsoft Excel was used to collate the information and then Microsoft Word was used again to present the findings.
PLANNING STAGE
The first stage was the planning stage where we thought of initial ideas for the documentary. In order to do this we needed to undergo the researching stage. Research was carried out both primarily and secondardy to ensure we had a scope of the industry and target audience preferences.
The primary research we did was conducting questionnaires, at this point, we used an XM2 Canon Camera to record some of the questionnaires in an interview format. We used a JCV Deck to insert the tape and capture the footage onto Premire. This was saved and put onto Youtube.com so it could be embedded and put onto Blogger.com which is where our entire production is individually logged on to. This stage allowed us to conduct and find sufficient audience research to gain an understanding of how successful our documentary would be, along with suggestions for its content. Our questionnaires were produced on Microsoft Word and then printed for distribution. Upon collecting them in, we tallied the answers and recorded the collated information on Microsoft Excel to convert them into pie charts for easy reading and understanding, as well as a descriptive paragraph to explain it.
CONSTRUCTION STAGE
This is our group with the filming and editing equpiment, preparing to film an interview in the blue screen room.
The next stage of production was the construction stage. During this stage, I captured screen shots of the editing on the computer, this was of the work being produced on Premire. I also took pictures of us creating and filming some footage, which is used within the evaluation to show evidence of the technology used. This was done with a Samsung Still Camera and a HTC Phone camera to show use of various equipment. The Stills Camera was also used to take pictures of the print advert which was later edited on Adobe Photoshop. The filming was done using an XM2 Canon Camera and Jessops Tripod. This camera and tripod allowed us to vary the camera angles and movement to suit the documentary in terms of interviews and cut aways. The camera was used to film the entire five minutes of production in our edit decision list and running order, and the tripod was used to keep it steady so there was no camera shake. As evidence that it was us who created this documentary we used stills cameras and camera phones. Although cameras were used to capture the documentary production, they were also used to get images for our print advert.
This is how I used Adobe Photoshop to edit the print advert. Here is an example of how the lasso tool was used to erase some of the unwanted items in the background so that the main focus is on the key image of the person eating the burger.
This is the original image
Open the image in Adobe Photoshop
Drag this image onto a new layer to unlock it so you can edit on this one but keep the original image increase you go wrong
Once duplicated you need to click the lasso tool on the tool bar on the left hand side of the screen
It will then draw a black and white dotted line around what you have selected and you press 'Delete' on your keyboard
On Microsoft Word, we presented our logging and edit decision list sheets to portray evidence of our filming. This supports our filming diary which also provides evidence of our filming efforts. By creating this sheets we had help with our editing stages as we could see exactly what we filmed and where it was in the editing bin on Adobe Premire. Various software packages, such as, Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Adobe Premiere, were used to create the print advert and radio advert, as well as the audio voiceover within the actual documentary. The audio for the voiceover in both the documentary and the radio advert was recorded in the radio suite at Priestley College. Here, the audio could be recorded professionally without any background noise, allowing the entire focus of high quality sound to comes from the subject within the productions.
Sound was not only recorded in the radio suite, it was picked up and recorded by the XM2 Canon Cameras and microphones. These were used to record sound during vox pops and interviews. This made it easier to film as the microphones are easy to hide and can still pick up sound. It is easier than asking permission and brinigng someone to record within the radio suite. By using a microphone we can film in a relevant place, giving relevant mise en scene to what is being discussed, whilst presenting the interviewee in a more natural environment. Microphones have the advantage of allowing us to be mobile and film wherever we want.
The below images are of the radio room which was used to record the voiceovers for both the documentary and the radio advertisement.
We used the internet again to find archive material for our documentary, this includes McDonald's television adverts, Subway television adverts and footage from Supersized Vs Superskinny. We needed these materials to support points being made and to follow the convention of documentaries, this being to use other materials to emphasis and provide evidence to a particular point. Archive footage was taken from Youtube.com, Google.com and Channel 4 on Demand. These had to be approved by a member of the Media department for we used Hotmail.com to email the archive footage which we saved to the D drive on a particular computer, allowing us to access them again. Once approved we used we used the Adobe Premiere editing software to fit them into our documentary.
EVALUTION STAGE
To begin my evaluation, I created a short presentation to show what my productions are; a documentary, a print advert and a radio advert. This initial presentation was conducted and is presented on Prezi.com and I have posted a link for the website to play my presentation as well as posting it on my blog. The presentation scrolls and passes through the various parts to the presentation, it does this for you if you click the arrow. This makes it simple to view, and keeps it in the format of a presentation as it navigates through the poster. A benefit of this to my evaluation is that it shows the key elements that my entire blog will present and it shows, in order, the various stages of the products.
How Things Were Done
How Things Were Done
This is me filming whilst we used the blue screen as the background of an interview. The blue screen allows you to place any image you want in the background so if you cannot find mise en scene you particularly want then you can apply it in the editing stages. We put the blue screen in to put in our own images of takeout food and logo behind people during interviews and this was done on Adobe Premiere Pro. The entire editing was done on Adobe Premiere Pro and below is an example of how to grab footage off the tmeline by cutting it down.
When placing cutaways over the top of interviews and other footage whilst using Adobe Premiere Pro we had to lock the sound bars so that when selecting the matching footage to that sound to delete it, it would not delete aswell. We did this because we wanted the sound to play over the top of the footage but we wanted different footage playing over that. Another way of doing this when we wanted to keep some of the footage but wanted a cutaway somewhere within it is by placing the cutaway footage or image on the bar above the other piece of footage.
For the directors commentary I wanted to play my voice over the top of the playing documentary. In order to do this I locked all of the footage bars and deleted all of the audio bars so that I could place my recorded commentary over the top. I recorded myself using a Stills Camera which was then uploaded onto the computer and exported onto Adobe Premiere Pro and added to the documentary. This was all exported and uploaded to YouTube where I embedded it onto my blog.
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