Media Evaluation - Police Documentary Forms

A2 MEDIA
EVALUATION
By Emma Reeve

QUESTION 1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS
AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

For our A2 coursework we were asked to create a 5 minute opening for a
documentary on our chosen topic. We were also told to produce two
ancillary tasks; a radio trail and double page article to go with the
documentary.
Documentaries aim to inform viewers; to convey opinions and to create
public interest. Documentaries hold certain common conventions such as
interviews, voice overs, archival footage, exposition and actuality.
Bill Nicholls (documentary theorist) developed a scheme called
documentary modes. Nicholls identifies six different ‘modes’ in which a
documentary will fall under. These six modes are
poetic, expository, observational, participatory, reflex and performative.
The documentary that my group and I created falls under the expository
mode as it addresses the viewer directly and emphasizes a well supported
argument on whether the police should be armed or unarmed. Our
documentary also could be seen as a little poetic as it symbolises the police
and whether they should be armed or unarmed with the use of images
police cars and guns.

Documentary
As part of our research and planning we viewed many different documentaries to help us
see what kind of documentary we wanted to create and see the kind of conventions used
in documentaries. One of the documentaries that we watched was Morgan Spurlock’s
Supersize me, he challenged himself to only eat McDonald's food for 30 days. Even though
this documentary is very different from our documentary it does include many of the codes
and conventions a documentary should require.

Camera – In our documentary we used a range of shots, including: long
shot, medium shot, medium-close up and close up. We used this range of
shots to show off the different locations (long shot) and expressions
(close up) shown in the 5 minute documentary opening.
In our documentary we used a tripod when filming important interviews
to give a serious feel to the audience and location shots. Supersize me also
used a tripod when filming important interviews, it was used to emphasis
the formality and seriousness of the person being interviewed. We also
used a hand held camera when filming vox pops so that the audience felt
like they were there and can relate to the ordinary person being
interviewed.

Sound- In our documentary we used a range of sounds including background music (non-
diegetic), voice over and presenter. We found many documentaries used a presenter, they are
used to engage with the audience and give some knowledge on what the audience can expect to
find out from watching the documentary. We also had voice over which was used to keep the
audience informed with facts and figures throughout the documentary. We used background
music as it is a common feature of documentaries, used in supersize me and others that we had
watched. We used the background music to break up the talking bits so that the audience
wouldn’t lose interest.

Image of presenting from our documentary

Mise–en–scene- In the documentary supersize me, the mise-en-scene was appropriate to the
people shown in the documentary. E.g The interview with his doctor, the doctor was wearing a
lab coat which symbolises doctors and health. In our documentary the interview with PC Chris
Brown, he was wearing his police uniform.

Editing- During the editing process we used some special effects such as blurring out scenes so
that text could be read above it and using dissolves instead of straight cuts to new scenes. The
use of dissolves would be seen as developing forms of conventions as most documentaries only
use straight cuts however more and more are starting to venture away from straight cuts. For
example in supersize me dissolves are used to show passing of time.

Mise-en-scene: PC Chris brown wearing his Editing: Blurred imaging to show off
police uniform text more easily

Double page article
Use of
(similarities) pull
quotes to
keep
reader
interested

Example double page spread Our double page spread

Drop cap Large Large eye
used to masthead also catching image
emphasis to draw to draw
start of text. attention to attention to
article the article

Both articles also use smaller images to break up text, page numbers, use text to anchor images and use serif fonts
which shows that the articles are formal.

Double page article
(Differences)

The differences between the two articles are that my article has more than one small
image to break up the text and the example article uses a standfirst but mine does not.
However, both articles above break conventions in that they are leaving a lot of white
space around the edges.


Radio Trail

From listening to other radio trials, we decided to include snippets of sounds from
our documentary. We used some of PC Chris Brown’s interview to give a taster of
what the audience can expect from the documentary and we also used some of
the music from the documentary in the radio trail. This then will help the reader to
identify the documentary if they were flicking through the channels and heard the
melody they may recognise it and decide to watch it. However we did challenge
conventions by using a speaker quote from the double page article, which is not in
the documentary. We felt by doing that, it gave a better link between the article
and radio trail. In the radio trail we also specified what channel the documentary
will be on and what time. Giving this kind of information to the listener makes it
more likely for them to watch it.

QUESTION 2: HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE
COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND
ANCILLARY TEXTS?
In our documentary we created a magazine article and radio trailer. These products
work well with the documentary as they would be used to market/ the documentary
to the audience to convince them to watch the documentary.

Our target audience is young adults, aged 17 and above. The documentary is
supposed to appeal to any gender and any young adults who are interested in
the topic of whether the police should be armed or unarmed or just generally
interested in finding out more about the police.

Psychographics are the attributes that describe the
personality, attitudes, beliefs, values, emotions, and opinions of customers, and prospective
customers. Demographics describe "who" people are, Psychographics explain "why" they buy
(and how to win their attention and motivate them to watch). By creating Psychographic
Profiles, marketers are able to understand the motivational and non-conscious drives of a target
audience.
The psychographic profile for our target audience is wide ranging from young adults who may
aspire to be part of the police or strugglers who are normally involved in crime. This
documentary is aimed at any young person.

ANCILLARY TEXTS?
We chose channel BBC 1 to show our
documentary as we found that BBC 1 is
firstly the most watched channel on TV
and is the update current affairs
channel. We thought this would be
appropriate for our documentary as it is
a hot topic in today’s society.

ANCILLARY TEXTS?

We chose BBC radio 2 to play our radio trailer as it has the highest listening share percentage. We
chose radio 2 over radio 1 as radio 1 is more of a music station compared to radio 2 being more of a
talkative station meaning playing a radio trail for a police documentary will fit in better being played
in between talk shows instead of being played between music were people normally change channels
to avoid adverts.

ANCILLARY TEXTS?

We chose radio times to hold our double page
article because the latest circulation figure (July–
December 2009) for the Radio Times is 1,000,648.
It also has been running since 1923 making it one of
the oldest TV listings magazine. This makes it more
reliable and more of the traditional approach in
advertising the documentary.

QUESTION 3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM
YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

QUESTION 3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM
YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

From our audience feedback we have learned that our documentary needs to have
better background music that fits with the topic, to avoid this we needed to listen to
more police related noises to really get a feel for the kind of music we should have
been looking for. I also believe that we need have filmed more gun related police
shots to really fit in with the documentary.

From our audience feedback we have learned that our magazine needs more
appropriate font to fit in with contents of the article. To improve this the article
could still have serif font to look formal but should use a times new roman as that is
a common article font style. We also found out that that there was too much
white, this can be avoided with more pictures and/or a coloured background.

From our audience feedback we learned that our radio trail needs to improve the
sound levels as they have been said to be too loud and distracting. To do this we
need to ensure we listen to the radio trail on speakers instead of just headphones so
that we can hear the radio trail properly and be able to hear the loudness of the
music.

QUESTION 4: HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA
TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND
RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?
Research and planning
We did a lot of our research on the internet using the bbc and
telegraph news websites. Once we knew what our documentary was
going to be on, we looked up articles related to our topic to find out
information and facts for our documentary, double page article and
radio trail.

As part of our research we also watched many YouTube
clips and news clips on the police and gun related
crimes.


Documentary
Filming
To film the documentary we used a canon
camcorder, tripod, headphones and microphone
kit. The camera was used to film location
shots, interviews and vox pops. For the
professional interviews and location shots we
used the tripod to keep the camera steady and
looking professional. If we were to use hand
held camera during these shots it would have
made our documentary look less professional
and would have made it harder for the audience
to concentrate on the documentary if it was
constantly shaking.


Editing

After filming for our documentary we then had to edit
the film on apple macs with the final cut express
software which allowed us to cut down footage to be
appropriate for the documentary . Firstly we had to log
and transfer clips that we thought would work well in
our documentary doing this gets the clips you logged
and transferred into an easy access box to the side of
the screen allowing us to easily drag clips down on to
the time line.

Secondly, the clips dragged on
to the timeline where then cut After we had cut down our clips and placed them
by using the cutting tool in the right order we are then ready to add
down to the appropriate special effects which could be put on top of the
length we wanted them. film as we have done below where we added
blurring to the image. We also used special
effects in between scenes, such as dissolving
We also used special effects into the next scene. We did this to make the
in between scenes, such as documentary look more interesting and take a
dissolving into the next break from the usual straight cuts.
scene. We did this to make
the documentary look more
interesting and take a break
from the usual straight
cuts.


Once all the clips were in place we
were finally ready to make our
backing music for our documentary
and radio trailer. This was done by
using the software
garageband, which allowed us to
create original music with simple
beats and chords.

The music was then
exported as an mp3 and
opened up onto final cut
express and placed in the
documentary when and
where music was needed.

Radio Trailer
For our radio trailer we used the software
garageband. We used music from our
documentary to go in our radio trailer so that
the two were better linked. GarageBand
includes a large selection of realistic, sampled
instruments and software modelled synthesizers
allowing us to create easy beats into a melody.


Magazine article

For our magazine article we used
Microsoft word to create the article
for the double page spread and
then adobe indesign was used to
create the layout of the article. Two
of the images used in the article
were taking from the documentary.
This was done by creating a freeze
frame in the documentary then
exporting that freeze frame into a
jpeg. The image of the fake gun is
an original image.


Blogger.com

Everything we have done in our coursework must be uploaded to
blogger.com. Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private
or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra
Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Blogger is very easy to
access from any technological device. It also lets you create, edit and
delete posts very easily.

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