1. A2 Media
Documentary Evaluation

2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products;
For the production of our documentary we firstly had to establish our target audience and the primary purpose.
After Researching current Crime Documentaries we found a variety of conventions already in use within documentaries of this
kind.
Crime watch and Real Crime are the types of documentary I chose to evaluate as part of my product research;
After analysing and evaluating several of the attributes including in these programmes, and thoroughly researching documentary
codes and conventions, it enabled me to create a mind map of features to explore when creating our individual crime documentary.

3. •Following this we needed to learn more about our chosen target audience and what they wish to see within documentaries.
•We carried out market research using a manual questionnaire where we asked our target group of ages 16-30 about crime in their
local area and how they react to this, as well as their individual opinions regarding crime related programmes and documentaries
already advertised in the media television market.
•We used a broad range of questions not only regarding Crime Documentaries, but also real life crime and how safe they feel
living in their local area. This provided us with more knowledge of the background of our target group. Giving us more succinct
and clearer ideas for conventions and codes to include in our documentary

4. •From our market research we concluded that our audience
would prefer to see real CCTV footage within a crime
documentary. From this we decided to feature archive
footage within our documentary with a maximum limit of 30
seconds
•We made plans to follow current conventions seen
within crime documentaries such as ‘Crime watch’
and ‘Real Crime’ and other documentaries in
general, looking at the documentary modes and
seeing how they are currently used.

5. •We also conducted a focus group to achieve honest and valuable opinions from our chosen target audience to help develop our
documentary, allowing it become of a professional standard.

6. •After establishing our target audience and the primary purpose of our documentary it was possible for us create a
documentary which not only develops and challenges forms of current media products, but targets the maximum
possible audience.
Our documentary includes conventions such as:
Interviews with Witnesses. Interviews are a typical feature of documentaries and are used to express opinions.
A Variety of Shot types and angles. This helps to express this city of Manchester in a number of different perspectives.
Voiceover. Provides an extra insight to the media conventions featured on screen.
We added text to provide names of interviewees
providing them with unique identities, a common
convention of documentary types.

7. We have challenged the documentary
form in the sense we used a voiceover of
a Manchester local, as opposed to
choosing a well known character within
the television industry. I believe the local
accent is a good choice as the more local
audience of the Manchester area will feel
a more personal connection to the
documentary, and feel as if we, the
producers, have fronted the audience and
their feelings and what their preferences
would be from the start.
A Variety of Shots and Camera angles provides different perspectives of the city of Manchester. The wide angle long shots of
the Manchester wheel examine the attractive areas of the city, encouraging the audience to be still tempted to visit. Using a
zoom helps to focus on a positive of Manchester. Also the extreme long shot of miss Selfridge, shows the newly restored store
after it was set alight during the riots in the city. The long shots also show the city and how it has recovered and what an
exciting, relaxed and interesting location the city of Manchester can be.

8. Medium shots are used to reveal the identities of our interviewees,
which provide the audience with a clear view of any emotions that are
expressed, helping to create a greater sense of realism. Interviews are
a typical convention of documentaries and are used to express
opinions from people who were somehow related to the incident or
topic in question.
From the research, I also found out that sound effects are used, such
as ambient sounds and music. Using police sirens helps to provide a
certain atmosphere, of distress and anger. We collected such sound
effects from both the College’s Media shared area and YouTube.

9. •During filming we used natural lighting, whether that was the natural outdoor lighting, or the lighting that we were provided
with during indoor filming.
•During filming we used natural lighting, whether that was
the natural outdoor lighting, or the lighting that we were
provided with during indoor filming.
•However when editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, we were able to
edit the brightness and contrast of our shots, which did to some
measure help to create a more overall professionalism in some
shots. Artificial lighting is a regular convention seen within
documentaries, to perhaps dramatise a seen, or silhouette a
character during an interview.

10. •As we found our from our market research, our audience would prefer to see real life CCTV within a crime documentary, so we decided
to include a selection of archive footage. We used non-copyright footage from the internet to avoid any problems or issues that may
occur regarding misuse of copy right protected footage.
•We researched archive footage and how it is used within documentaries, to give a realistic insight into the context.

11. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
•To attract our audience we have created ancillary products, a magazine review and a billboard poster which would be
used to promote and help advertise our product.

12. This is a review which would be featured within a unisex magazine such as Time Magazine. A popular all round
informative magazine such as this, targets a wider audience, which in turn would hopefully generate a wider audience for
our documentary overall. The structured columns with small text, the magazine masthead in the top left hand corner and
images are all common features found within current magazine articles. The professional alignment of the text and
images create controlled and well ordered article for easier reading. Along with this the high frequency lexis indicates a
larger audience of people from any background or education. A date and time is added to inform, whilst the images and
the direct quotations from other magazines and newspapers persuade. Here I have used my own image to give the article
a more original approach, rather than using previously seen images.
•The magazine review is largely inspired from a variety of documentary reviews. After analysing several documentaries, I took a
mixture of conventions that were featured throughout them to create my own individual magazine review for our final
documentary.
The star ratings and secondary review quotes encourage the reader into believing that it’s a worthwhile documentary to
watch, again attempting to gain the maximum audience.
•The image is a snapshot of a section of our documentary to give the audience of the type of content to be featured
•The text is columns feature to make the information more accessible for most audiences to read as they recognise this
style, and the primary purpose is to ‘keep the audience happy’.

14. •Predominantly looking at channel four advertisements as they are well recognised for their popular and well received ‘dispatches’
documentaries, I chose to base my final billboard on the basic yet striking photos and text used to make an impact on the audience.
Although the billboard includes a limited colour scheme with a single image (taken from internet sources, due to the lack of time and
resources available to re-create my own) it largely suggests connotations of the violence and distress that the riots caused and makes
it clear about what the billboard is advertising without an excessive use of text.
This Poster, created using Adobe PhotoShop, may be seen on a billboard with a busy city centre location, such as Manchester,
as this is area it targets, so therefore would hopefully like to develop a local audience from this area. The large image used as
the background represents the themes to be featured throughout the documentary. The bold contrasting orange of the fire
helps to illuminate the image, making in eye-catching and most importantly, interesting to look at. The basic monochromatic
colour scheme of the text included, gives the poster a more professional look, inspired from earlier analysis's of channel four
documentary posters. The use of just a title, strap line and tag line, gives the most important information, without revealing
too much information regarding the contents of the documentary. This creates an enigma code, persuading the audience to
tune in, in an attempt to learn more about the documentary and in turn, the riots.

15. •The combination of both my ancillary tasks and the final product help to promote the product to the mass audience if it were
ever to be exclusively shown on TV. The magazine review provides valid opinions about the documentary and its context, which
create a broader audience as individual opinions can help draw people to a media product.
•The more information that is accessible for our target audience to see, the more of an audience we will be able to attract
Provides information about our
documentary to our target audience. More people will view our documentary
•Together, our documentary and ancillary products intend to convey a positive message about the city of Manchester, after the
destructing riots.

16. What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
After the production and final editing of our product we conducted audience feedback to see how our target audience react to our
documentary.
This gave us a more in depth perspective of how our audience will view and interpret our product, the positives and the negatives and
also if there could be any improvements to any styles or conventions featured within our documentary.
Our focus group concluded;
•The sound included was of a clear and distinct quality throughout – “Excellent quality sound. Was able to clearly understand the
information being provided”
•The information that was given by the narrator/voiceover was easy to follow and understand
•A broad choice of camera shots allowed for an serious, yet interesting depiction of the riots.
Some negatives and improvements that were mentioned were;
•The lighting could have been better as in some shots, the brightness was dark, not allowing for the most detailed depiction of
Manchester; “If you were to do a similar project again, I recommend artificial lighting, or if that's out of reach, organise
sufficiently to prepare filming on a brighter day”
•Including a reconstruction – “This would allow for a portrait of the riots, from you, the makers. This allows more personal
expression and opinions”

17. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning
and evaluation stages?
•During the production of our documentary I have gained more knowledge of how to use more complex computer
applications, in particular the film editing equipment, Adobe Premiere Pro.
•Arranging video in accordance to the •Also using the brightness and contrast
timeline. Allowing us to create a clear tool allowed us to create a more
linear narrative to our documentary. professional standard of images.

18. •Whilst creating the documentary I learnt how to manipulate film
material to arrange it in a suitable order to help form the desired
narrative effect. Using the razor tool allowed us to cut a clip in the
time line into separate clips, whilst the select tool allowed us to move
footage according to how we wish. This also enabled us to manipulate
the footage in accordance to the voiceover and use montage editing to
of interviews, archive footage and our own to recorded footage to
create a valuable meaning.
•Using the title tool it became possible to insert
text into our documentary to provide names of
people. Furthermore it allowed us to include
contact details of action help lines for people
who may have been affected by the riots.
Finally it enabled us to also add rolling titles and
credits to provide the names of people and
places involved, and also because it is a typical
feature within TV documentaries

19. •On top of this my blog work skills again improved, gaining more knowledge on how to use the popular blogging
site, www.blogger.com, where further skills were developed. These skills involved creating posts and then making
labels to organise my coursework efficiently;
•Overall, throughout the production of our product, I have gained varied and more complex knowledge on not
only advancing my knowledge on both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere, but also gaining more advanced
skills on interactive websites such as Blogger and Slideshare, allowing me to express my work widely over the
internet.