1. In what ways does my media
product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions
of real media products?
This is one of the questions that I have been
asked to completer when evaluating my
media product, I will have to look at
everything I have used like equipment I have
used to capture the documentary and how
this has created an outcome like others in my
documentary genre. I will have to look at all
of my research, posters and radio
advertisements and how these have affected
the ideas in my head. I need to analyse other
documentaries like mine because then I will
be able to see what forms and conventions I
have stuck too and which ones I have broken
in order to make a great documentary.
2. Other media products.
These are some of the other media products that myself and Alex researched
when looking at the codes and conventions of our type of documentary, we chose
to do our documentary on the paranormal and the debate are ghosts real? So we
started looking at these 2 shows most haunted is not a conventional documentary
however it does have documentary elements to it. For example conventions of
expository documentaries state that the directors use information to inform the
audience and most haunted does this in the form of investigating supposed
haunted locations and giving history and background of where they are, they also
have specialists featured on their shows such as historians and mediums, we felt
that this was a documentary also by the way that they interview people again a
convention is that we have to interview people in a certain way and at a certain
angle, and they stick to these conventions in most haunted. We can also see that
this also has conventions of a participatory documentary in it, as you can see from
the poster to the left the main presenter and creator is the face of most haunted.
And she is the main presenter and investigator with her husband being the co-
creator as well as being a main investigator typical conventions of participatory
documentaries, like ours.
As you can see from the screen grab on the left they have set up an
interview just like conventions say that you should in a
documentary, they subject is positioned along the rule of thirds
line, they are facing a person stood next to the camera talking to
them and not strait at the camera, there is text explaining who the
person is getting interviewed in this case she is a local
medium, and finally the background is relevant to what they are
talking about or the location they are, I know because we went to
Tatton hall where this episode was filmed that is a haunted
stairwell where ghosts are seen. All these codes and conventions
point towards this being a documentary.
3. Other media products,
Ghost hunters international.
This was another show that we looked at this is on a different
station it not on living but on sci-fi, this was another choice for
our show to be shown on however we felt that most haunted
appealed to us more than ghost hunters and living is a bigger
station. Again we can start to see that the same codes and
conventions are creeping up on this show as well as most
haunted. For example the presenters and co founders of the show
are always on the posters this is so that we as an audience
become associated with them and almost build a relationship, we
knew this is something we would have to do in our documentary
when making the poster. We notice that again this is not a
stereotypical documentary but it does have elements of a
documentary in it, like most haunted it has a walk around the
location looking for ghosts but they go into great detail on the
history of the location as well as bringing on historians, we see at
the bottom an interview set up like it should be in a documentary
with the text on the bottom the subject on the rule of thirds and
the background is relevant with ghost posters and text. After
looking at these 2 shows thoroughly we could see that they were
unlike conventional documentaries however were a new type of
documentaries in their own right a mixture of expository and
participatory documentaries makes them unique and inspired us
to make a unique documentary too.
5. Techniques
used
A technique that we noticed both
most haunted and ghost hunters
used was the fast forward
technique, this is used to get a quick
look into rooms in the location they
are almost used as cut away to
show that the investigation is
moving quickly around. Voice over's
can also be placed over these so
that they do not get boring on their
own. As you can see from the
example on the right I have used it
starts of at the top of a corridor, and
I have cut to the next shot and then
finally a shot at the end of the
corridor, this sequence takes around
4 seconds because it has been sped
up, and this was a technique that
we used a lot in our documentary to
show our movement through the
house.
6. The speed up
technique
This shows a few screen shots I have
taken of our documentary, this is a shot
that should take around a minute but
because we looked at other
documentaries like most haunted and
ghost hunters we chose to use a speed up
edit, this allows us to get to the next point
quickly and it also helps keep the flow.
We have used a black and white filter and
this helps keep the themes running
throughout as black and white filters are
used on the documentaries we
researched. We felt the need to stick to
these codes and conventions as people
would see our poster and hear our
advert, it looks and sounds a certain way
so we wanted to keep the continuity
running through and reward people for
watching our documentary with themes
that the have seen and like from other
documentaries like ours.
7. Challenging the codes and
conventions
Codes and conventions How we challenged them
1. Historian or medium is 1. We chose not to get a historian or
used. medium, this was because we did not have
2. Tripod is normally used access to a medium but also as we thought
3. Same sex or single it would be unnecessary.
presenters 2. We used a tripod when getting stills and
when it was possible, however we thought
that a handheld camera effect would
involve the audience more giving the
effect they're there themselves.
3. In most haunted there is just a woman and
with ghost hunters there is two men, we
chose to challenge this because we both
had the passion to be in it and thought it
would give us an edge over other shows
like this.
