A2 media evaluation

1. MoniCon Productions

2. Brief
 We were asked to choose from a number of option for A2 media
, some include : Music video, a short film, documentary etc:
along with 2 option which included : a newspaper advertisement
, poster, radio advertisement , a web page etc.
 We have chosen to produce a short , 5 minute, documentary
about racial identity along with a newspaper advertisement and
a double page magazine spread.
 Our previous media production was a opening sequence for a
thriller film and we did not get the option to choose the genre of
the film. This had impacted our desire to produce something
different to As Media , as we believe this would challenge our
skills , ideas and widen our knowledge. As a result a 5 minute
documentary was something that we’ve all agreed on to
proceed with as we think that this will help us achieve a
competitive product which will challenge the existing media
products.

3. Racial Identity
 The idea of our documentary was born from our
experience of being wrongly identified.
 We believe that In the UK that mis-identification of
ones race is common. Also the idea of exploring race
and stereotypes is a sensitive topic in the UK due to
the history behind it.
 Me and Srijana have decided to find out the reasons
behind why people assume identities . Does the
assumption depend on the stereotypes or is it just an
innocent guess?
 In the documentary we interview some members of
the public and ask them questions about assumption
, whether they are right or wrong , on a mission to
persuade people to not just assume.

4. Interview questions
 These are the questions that we asked the
member of the public about racial identity.
 1) Where do you think I’m from?
 2) What makes you think this ?
 3)Do you think people should feel offended by
assumptions?
 4) Have you ever been wrongly identified?
 5)Do you think it’s right to make assumptions
about other people’s race/ cultural
backgrounds?

5. Changes to questions:
 After conducting some more research
and gaining feedback from our focus
group , some questions needed to be
changed. This is because some
questions where confusing and not
straightforward. For the interviewees to
be able to understand the question at
once is key as this does not give them
time to plan meaning that the response
given will be honest and truthful.

6. Evaluation question 1: In what ways does your media
product use , develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
 Our media product challenges conventions of real
media products as we have created and represented
a debatable idea. This is because discussing racial
identity in the UK is usually considered as a sensitive
topic. We have found interest in this and have used
are skilled and understanding to deliver and explore
our experience of racial mis-identification.
 As for producers of the documentary this gave us
clear , planned ideas of how we want to deliver this
documentary to the audience. As we've all
experience being wrongly identified we knew that
sharing personal experience will attract the audience
to watch our documentary.

7. Question 2 : How effective is the combination of
your main product and ancillary texts ?
Ancillary Texts-Double Page Magazine spread & Newspaper
advertisement
 We’ve used a colorful title of flags in order to represent the idea of
identity and race. The use of the white background came as an idea
from previous research that we've conducted on different magazine
pages which has been carried throughout the documentary as our
title was in white and through the ancillary texts. The advertisement
includes a white title along with the background. This white theme
has been carried out through the three media products that we've
produced in order to help the audience recognize and memorize
our documentary. The review section of the documentary was also
used for persuading purposes. This section was also inspired by
the real media product magazines as majority include audience
reviews. The star rating is also as a selling point for the audience as
the 4 and 5 star ratings suggests that the documentary is definitely
worth watching. Lastly we have included a number of images
across the double page magazine which was done once again from
the conducted research of film magazines. By including shorter
articles we can target the younger audience who judge a film /
documentary through the images.

8. Racial Identity : Advertisement
Channel 4 – Helps
the audience
identify a common
channel on which
this documentary
will air on.
A bold , white
title makes the
poster stand out.
A common
theme is carried
out as a way to
increase
recognition.
Red quote : Don’t Just
Assume’ symbolizes
importance and
danger of
assumptions.
Collage of 2
faces. Creates
confusion,
guessing and
gains the
audiences
attention.

9. The title ‘Seven Days’ puts a time
limit which intrigues the audience.
Information to the reader: The Date
and Time of the new release. Helps
the audience which are interested
not to miss it .
Channel 4 logo : orange
colour the same as the
titles. The colour stands
out from the collage.
There is a dominant
picture given away
however the womens
features are used to hide
it .
This is one of the film
advertisements we
have been annotating
analyzing

10. Newspaper Advertisement
Along with the effective use of colour
there are some improvements which can
be made to make this advertisement
more competitive against the others.:
• The editing of two faces has been
done using photoshop which did not
allow us to move bits and peaces
freely.
• The use of color may seem dull and
simple for the audience. Compared to
other newspaper ads, include bright
and warm colours such as, red ,
orange , yellow and pink.
• The title could’ve been more bold and
outlined. This is because the
background itself is white which leads
to the title leaking into the
background.

11. The title symbolises
world wide race.
Adds color and stands
out.
Star ratings :
sells the
documentary
for the
audience to
watch.
Group picture and
the creation of the
documentary idea:
Producers/Director
introduction to the
audience.
Director interview: helps the
audience engage with the
ideas of the director.
Newspaper advertisement
included: Helps the audience
memorize and recognize .
White background color: white
theme carried out in order to link are
ancillary texts and the documentary
together.
Audience
reviews:
This shares
opinions after
watching which
allows to
persuade
audience to
watch the
documentary.
Shots from
the
documentary
of people
being
interviewed.

12. Directors
commentary:
Questions
aswered by
the director.
Short descriptive article
about the film. This
encourages the audience to
review this page as there is
less typed information.
Huge ,
high
resoluti
on
image
used .
This
attracts
the
audien
ce to
look
closely.
A picture from
one of the
scenes in the
film. Suggest
the main
protagonist is
being revealed.
First introduction
to the character.
ANT-MAN
The color contrasts :
Good vs evil , which
symbolizes crime and action
film.

13. Double Page Magazine Spread
The double page spread has
been succesfully produced
through intense and detailed
research. However there is
always room for
improvement.
• There could have been a
better use of text font
which would help to outline
key information.
• The structure of the article
could’ve been more free
verse in order to add more
creativity and style.
• The title may look better if
constructed 3D and
outlined.
• Images could’ve been
spread out better in order
to attract the audience.

14. Racial Identity
(Documentary)
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiDe
YiHTeg4

15. Audience Feedback

16. Our audience feedback
 Majority of the audience feedback suggested that the idea of exploring
racial identity in the documentary was a creative and interesting choice.
 The quality of shots and images was well appreaciated and noticed by
the audience.
 Adding on majority commented on the music used in the documentary
as ‘ very modern’ and ‘tense’ which worked well with the exploration of
such topic. The music used in our documentary
 Also the newspaper advertisement was well edited to reflect on the
idea of vast variety of races. The advertisement was comment to be
less colorful but very effective in terms of detail. It helped attract the
audience to closely try and identify the races in the picture . The poster
was succesful as our initial idea of an advertisement was to attract the
audience by the collage image which was proved to do the same.
 The double page magazine helped the audience learn about the
making of the documentary and how the idea was born. The audience
felt attracted to the colour used in the magazine and felt welcomed as
there were country flags displayed I the title. Also the audience felt as if
the magazine explain the reasons to why this documentary was
produced and how it was inspired which persuaded them to watch it.

17. 3 :What have you learned from your
audience feedback ?
 We have learnt that the colour, image quality and and the
idea of any media product is very important when trying to
target audience.
 The idea of our documentary was well rated by the
audience however some people felt as if the questioning
was not enough. Some feedback suggested that more
factual evidence and information should be used in order
to make the documentary seem
 Also there were some editing errors: fade in and out of
video led to shaky shots, the continuity was at some parts
rough/not smooth. Also the introductory start of character
introduction was at some places low in audio. This was
due to poor use of the microphone as the use of different
camera shots has led to varied sound quality.
 The poster was recommended to have more radiant color
as it’s mainly white.

18. 4: Who would be the audience for your media
product ?
 The audience for our media product would most
likely be for people aged over 12 years old. This is
because after researching young people under 12
years old are less likely to watch documentaries.
Whereas for people over 12 to the age of 40
debatable documentaries are popular. This may be
due to many reasons such as : for educational
reasons, wanting to explore opinions or being able to
relate to the idea. I believe that we have provided the
ability to do all of the three things as our
documentary allows people to learn about racial
identities , displays a number of opinions and and
highlights the most common mis-identification which
then helps people relate to these.

19. 5: How did you attract/address your audience ?
We have used a number of techniques to attract the audience.
 Our newspaper advertisement uses a collaged picture of two
different racial background pictures. This makes the
advertisement stand out as the facial features have been editing
together in order to make the picture stand out. Also as the two
faces are collaged together some people may start to analyse it
closely to see if they can unfold the races which that are
portrayed in the picture.
 We have also used a red colored phrase at the bottom which
says ' Don't just assume'. The red color signifies importance
which is our case symbolizes the main idea. This phrase is
directly addressing the audience which has been used in order
to suggest that we all assume but we should be more careful. If
located in a newspaper this would definitely catch the readers
eye as we've also added a white title written in bold , big letters.

20. Double Page magazine
 Our double page magazine includes a title which is
designed from country flags. The title also stands out
as it contains variety of colors such and the flags
symbolize the different racial identities.
 Title of the documentary ' Racial Identity'. We've also
used a number of images in order to make the
double page spread more appealing to the audience.
This has been done after conducting some research
which proved that people are more likely to read text
if there are colors and attractive pictures used. We
have also noticed that majority of film magazines
include a lot of images and color. Therefore in order
to stay competitive we needed to make sure that our
newspaper advertisement and the film magazine
included images and creative use of color.

21. Narration
 In the documentary itself we used shots of
different places in London while having narrations
over them. This was done in order to break away
of having the narrator in front of the screen. We
also used the interviewer us part of the
introduction to the documentary. We've introduced
the two young women to the audience in order to
help the audience follow through the documentary.

22.  The narration was recorded using an
Iphone 5s. At first we did not feel like there
will be a problem with the quality or the
ability to upload the recording onto a
device. However after fully recording the
whole narration I have realized that the
m40v format had to be converted into an
mp4 for it to upload onto Adobe Premiere
Elements 10. As a result it was time
consuming to use an Iphone for recording
but the sound clarity and quality was worth
it .
However…

23. 6 :How did you use media technologies in the
constructions and research ,planning and
evaluation stages?
 I used media technology in all stages of my production
starting with a Canon EOS 1200D for all of the still
pictures. We used pictures for our documentary ,
newspaper advertisement and the double page magazine
spread.
 The camera was easy to use but required accurate use of
the lens in order to help focus the image. We also used
different lenses in order to create good quality pictures
full of detail.
 We've used Panasonic HDC SD100 video camera for all
the video clips and interviews for the documentary. This
camera allowed us to shoot interviews in busy streets
very efficiently and quickly. This is because it is very light,
good focused camera, clear microphone and uploads high
resolution vdeo clips.

24. Research
 For research I've used the 'Internet' , browsing
through Youtube, BBC , E4, Channel 4 and other
media websites. All of these media websites were
used for evaluating and analyzing the real media
products which are currently in the market which
helped us learn how to produce a media product that
challenges the rest. This research helped us with the
presentation of our media product as we've found the
key elements that are commonly used in media
texts. These things include: colorful images which
are shot in high resolution, catchy titles , variety of
shots, variety of locations presented and interview
huge number of people for a more reliable response.

25. Planning:
 For planning we have created :
 Brain storms- ideas of genres for the documentary to give as an idea of
what we all would like to film about.
 Storyboards- planned the shot sequence which helped us to build an
idea of what the documentary will and should look like .
 Media work done outside the subject- Promotional videos for our school
has helped us to with planning. This is because we were given around 3
weeks for each promotional video to be planned edited and prepared for
viewing. This has helped us to become more efficient .
 Scripts- Introduction scripts for the interviewees and the documentary
opening. The scripts helped us explain our idea to the members of the
public which then persuaded them to participate.
 Analyzing other media products- We’ve been closely researching and
viewing different short documentaries and films such as ‘How racist are
you ?’ ‘About a girl’ which helped us understand what we needed to
include in our 5 minute documentary.

26. Editing software
 Our skills are well developed using Adobe
Premiere Elements 10 software as we've
used it in our As production. Using this
software we were able to add text, add inserts
, transitions and various effects. We used fade
in, and out of the videos in order to help the
audience establish the responses to various
questions. Adding on it's important for the
audience to be able to easily establish
between responses to both mine and Srijana's
questions. I've also used magazines and
newspapers to research about the
presentation , advertisements of films.

27. However…
 However we were unable to create certain things such as different
shots due to our lack of high technology equipment. Some shots that
are seen in documentaries like establishing shots that require height
and high quality cameras.
 Our editing software Adobe Premiere Elements 10 , does not have all
the tools needed to create certain effects. For example, music needed
to be edited on garage band in order to ‘audio gain’ and speed the
tempo. Also the available title ‘text’ did not allow us to produce ‘3D’ ,
‘animated’ titles.
 Also the use of 2 cameras has led to shots not fitting to the frame. This
was due to the different camera resolutions which led to time
consuming changes that needed to be done in order to fix this. I had to
re-adjust the footage in order to fit it on the screen properly.
 Adding on at times, our research on internet was time consuming, this
is because of the slow computer operating systems installed. As we’ve
use Imacs for most of the research , we were unable to conduct this
quickly an defficiently. As a result we needed to move onto latop to be
able to conduct this research efficiently and upload the evidence online.

28. Conclusion
 Overall, as a team of three, I believe that
we’ve learnt a lot in A2 media . This is
because I believe that we’ve used all the
media technology which was available to
us as best as we could to produce three
successful , challenging and creative
pieces of media products. The skills which
were gained in As media have been
massively improved as we’ve learnt how to
work quickly, creatively and well as a team.