a2 media course work evaluation draft

8/2/2019 A2 Media Course Work Evaluation Draft

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Lewis Rohloff – Louise Walshe

A2 Media Coursework Evaluation

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms andconventions of real media product?

When we first started our documentary we ensured we followed the common codes andconventions of TV documentaries so it would appear as authentic as possible. We all put our ideas forward and came up with the idea of basing our factual documentary on the topic of the recent rise in tuition fees. Our allocated task consisted of a five minute opening extract of a documentary. To ensure we kept an element of professionalism we followed the codesand conventions, for e.g. interviews with professionals and vox pox’s. As a group we decidedto base the documentary on uni fees as this subject appealed to us as this is effecting manyyoung people in modern society, therefore we found that this subject could relate and appealto us as well. This was a different but yet interesting idea to base a documentary on, alongwith it we got this idea after doing relevant research to target this documentary for teenagers

and young adults as they are mostly under the medias influence and pressure to go touniversity or else be condemned to a low wage job. As a group as we personally triedrelating this subject to us and thought what would appeal to us, as we are in the same agegroup so we found it easier to base and make a documentary that would appeal andengage us to watch a documentary.

Our main product was the documentary as we spent a lot of time on it, from research toproduction to editing; also this helped us choose the colour theme along with appearanceand the layout of the double page spread article. The montage consisted of different soundlevels, such as the lowering of music sounds on a particular interview shot where we thoughtwould grab the viewer’s attention. The music we chose was quite up beat and kept thescene flowing and in order to keep the audience tuned in. Also the voiceover used is clear and easy to understand as it is spoken quite slowly. This works well with the arrangement of

the different shots as the relevantinformation is given out whennecessary. When adding the voiceover to the timeline, and any other soundsneeded, we had to insure that all thevolume levels where altered to ensurethe sound remained loud and balancedin order to fit with the

appropriate scenes. These are veryimportant to the overall documentary asif the sound levels were un-clear andquiet, or too loud the wholedocumentary would lack in realism andcome across as amateur, but asour sound levels were adjusted well,this really helped to make it appear to befairly professional and created a highsense of realism. There are possiblelimitations within the voice over such as

a possible lack of enthusiasm from the




speaker however I feel the relevance of what is being said outweighs that of the arguablylacklustre delivery.

An additional area in which we altered to convention was the framing and mise en scene of

our interviews. The above picture suggests the main shot of how an interview is presented ina real documentary and how we have presented this as well. Although there are slightdifferences in the images above, they both still have similarities, for e.g. the medium shot,Mise en scene and positioning of the camera and both have taglines, stating who they areand their career title. Whilst we were filming our footage for our documentary we included aselection of cutaways and establishing shots. This is a typical feature of documentaries as itmakes our interviews more visually stimulating to watch, and prevents the viewers from justwatching the subject talking which could get tedious and make their attention go else where.We have establishing shots such as close ups of computer screens.

This went well with the documentary because as the statistics were being read out by the

voiceover, the relevant information was showing on the screen. We decided to combine therelevant footage of web pages, interviews from both professionals and average studentsalike. We found that this particular technique would keep the audience focused as it wouldbe more interesting for them to watch and it would allow them to relate to theparticular issues being raised in our documentary. We mainly used medium close for thisparticular filming to ensure the full image was shown, as it created a sense of realism and anindirect connection with the viewer, Other examples of editing that we used for example blurring, we did this to add extra effect when our opening montage ended andcoins fell followed by the title screen, the coins connoting the high prices of uni fees.

Moreover, we used different edits to change the scene such as zooms and an edit whichlooked like a page turning this added further effects in order to keep the audience visuallysatisfied and interested. After producing our documentary we drafted ideas to how we couldpresent our listings page, in order to make our page look professional we used codes andconventions and similar features in comparison to real life magazines, we analysed andlooked at other pages so that we cold use similar qualities and features and we did as shownbelow.




Our radio trailer follows and challenges code and conventions of real life media product invarious ways. Whilst producing this we also had to bear in mind media conventions, in order to help us produce these tasks we analysed professional examples from popular radiostations and this showed and gave us examples and ideas to what we would have to

produces as this was to ensure we had a good idea and framework to make our radio trailer consist of similar elements. Our radio trailer was produced from the following: The majority of our radio trailer contains extracts from our documentary, mainly from the montage as theseare the main clips voiceover used, from the documentary which would interest the audience.Furthermore we got this idea from the previous radio trailers which we analysed. Similarly tothe documentary, we ensured the voiceover used was clear and included all necessaryinformation was given such as viewing times, also quotes from the documentary werepicked out carefully as they were aimed to be catchy and effective in order to attract theaudience and indirectly gain their attention and make them want to watch it. The script wascorrectly followed and we also studied and followed all the above media conventions in order to produce a radio trailer that could be broadcasted on the radio advertising it on channel 4

as we chose our documentary to be shown on the channel 4 the home of many similar documentaries. The radio trailer challenges the convention in such a way as it would catchthe audience’s attention as it is short but yet catchy and contains a diversity of shots as wellas a range of different voices

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary text?

Throughout the whole of our project I have found that the documentary was the mostsuccessful piece of production that we have created audience feedback hasalso proven this, as this is was our main product along with the two ancillary texts wehave produced, I personally think these three product combined together theymake an effective project. All three sources of media combine effectively with eachother this is showed in various ways for example through its textual colour and font choice, inthe documentary the main heading Fees Soar High ́this is in a block white colour, in order toshow and keep a consistency in relation between the products we have shownpreviously, for example our documentary relates to it as the problem itstackling is a standard black and white question ‘Is It Worth It’.

As you can see above our documentary has a black background with a once again whitetitle which states the documentaries name, this is similar to our magazine articleas it had similar uses of colour. Our radio trailer was also a great success as itis an appealing and effective promotion to ensure this by showing our fastpaced editing skills along with relevant quotes and facts and figures from thedocumentary, almost a mini preview which dares the listeners to watch thedocumentary. It is also giving an interesting description of the documentarywhich engages the listener’s interest, this also shows success as its appealing

and yet a good source of promotion of the main product. It meets its target audience andappeals to them. Through the radio trailer we use the same voice of the




narrator in the documentary, as both the radio trailer and the documentaryfeature the same voice over, this is effective as it is allowing it to becomemore recognised and memorable to the listener if they were to here both seethese product and would easily link them together, this is an effective way asit shows that they both relate and go well together and follow the same theme.

Overall after having a close look at all three media product that we as a grouphave produced I personally feel that all these products together form a strong,appealing, and informative but yet interesting form of media. They followcodes and convention and are reasonably realistic and effective.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We were provided with audience feedback, as we wanted to know what our targetaudience thought of the openingsequence of our documentary along withthe radio trailer and double page spreadmagazine. So as a group we examinedthe responses and converted them intographical data. According to our predictions and results we are glad to sayour documentary was great successalong with the radio trailer and themagazine,




- No one gave the answers of either okor poor with everyone in the class ratingthe documentary excellent, very good or good with half saying very good

- Mostly the audience thought thefilming/shooting material was goodtherefore supporting the fact that thedocumentary had a good basis of goodquality shots

- Once again a mostly good rating fromthe audience when asked whether thedocumentary seemed professional

compared to other real documentaries




- A positive rating on how thedocumentaries editing was viewed

means that the transitions don’t takeanything away from the product andonly emphasise its positives

- Similar results to previous questions inthat the audience saw that the captionswere used appropriately and were inkeeping with the documentary

- 3 students rated the appropriatenessfor the target audience as excellentwhich is a very positive piece of feedback as it shows the documentaryis suitable for that audience




Overall people viewed the documentary as good by a 75% majority; this

further supports the evidence that the documentary would be well accepted bythe target audience.

4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planningand evaluation stages?

- Another average rating on the soundand music use which shows no onethought the music took anything awayfrom the documentary as a whole




In the stages of production we used various media technologies in order to produce the finalpieces (documentary, radio trailer and music magazine). We used some familiar andunfamiliar technologies which were hard to use at the start but soon we learnt how tooperate the new technologies and became familiar with the programs with the help of manuals.

We used a wide range of technologies both inside the classroom and outside, for exampletelevisions, windows PCs, and Apple Mac computer for purposes such as editing thedocumentary and radio trailer in final cut express. Computers were mainly used for internetresearch purposes and also to upload all research and planning ideas on to blogger.com.This is a site where our group posted work so that our teacher could see and assess our work, also using scribe it enabled us to put up graphs from audience feedback when wewere gaining audience feedback. To produce the documentary we used a moderncamcorder provided by the college, along with the camcorder in order to do the shots wewanted to we used a tripod in order to make a steady and realistic documentary. Someshots however appeared to still be quite shaky therefore via final cut express we edited it as

much as we could to get a reasonable scene. This was a downturn in our project but weovercame the struggle and managed to overcome this.

Some of the cameras components were slightly difficult to use meaning we had to repeatsome shots on many occasions due lack of focus on the camera. However the camera wasvery convenient as it was easily placed on a tripod however we did find some difficulty at first.The tripod helped ensure shots were at a correct level and still. The camera also consisted of ports to place microphones and headphones into, this was very economical as we couldeasily listen to the recording and repeat any voice recording along with this, as we couldconnect the microphone into the camera at ease. Whilst recording we used a directional mic,which meant that we were able to focus on a certain sound reducing any backgroundsounds that aren’t relevant. Also the microphone was time efficient and reasonably simpleand easy to set up and use which saved a lot of valuable recording time although we found aproblem which was that the sound levels came out slightly louder than other scenes aroundit which could have made the documentary flow less and have that particular scene standout as a weakness. To put and edit our documentary together we used the Apple Maccomputers in order to edit our and put our documentary together in final cut express thissoftware was slightly challenging to get familiar with but eventually we became to use finalcut express to its full potential and put all the documentary together, we found that final cutexpress was very useful as we could panel, fade, blur, add text, music to the shots, fastenor slow clips and connect them together.

We used a scanner frequently in order to put our work up onto the blog, for example whenwe were logging clips and storyboards, this was very efficient and easy as it formatted andcopied our work on paper and transferred it onto the computer and then we uploaded thescanned work on to the blogs, this was very useful to us. Finally we used many differenttechnologies throughout making this product and in using them and developing our skills Ifeel I have become a better student of media with a greater knowledge of what goes intomaking a successful product.

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