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1. In what ways does your media product use,
develop or challenge forms and conventions or
real media products?
We used the common conventions used in documentaries in our own
production. These consist of talking heads, slow and fast paced shots etc.
When interviewing our characters we also used many close up shots on
our character Amy, who was acting as our protagonist, Courtney.
We developed a typical convention of not revealing our protagonist in
the wheelchair until after we see her in a talking heads, as this is what
you’d see in a typical documentary in order to grip and then shock the
audience. Our documentary also follows the typical conventions of real
media products such as documentaries due to its controversial theme
about drug use, because most documentaries are based around
controversial topics’. However, our documentary challenges forms of
media products as we don’t have a straight narrative like most
documentaries do such as Guy Martin: Close To The Edge, a documentary
we studied. However, it can also be argued that the narrative form of a
documentary depends on the type of documentary you are watching.
We decided to not follow a narrative because we wanted to create a
sense of distortion which makes it unique and different.

2. How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary tasks?
The combination of our main product and ancillary task is effective due to how our
article relates to the advert we placed on one of the double page spread.
Therefore, people who may find a fond interest in our documentary article may
find the advert advertising a drug helpline helpful. Additionally, we added pictures
of cocaine and school kids overlaid on each other for the documentary poster, to
convey the theme of drugs and youth culture, where school plays a big part in that.

3. What have you learned from your audience
feedback?
• Our first cut on our blog was said to have had un even sound
levels, which meant we had to work more with the sound levels to
improve the consistency of the volume. Additionally, it was also
too short and we’d run out of ideas, therefore we had to develop
some more ideas to add to our documentary. However, we also
gained a whole lot of positive feedback from our audience, saying
that we followed the documentary conventions well as we used
many typical conventions such as talking heads and the
iconography used was highly relevant to the storyline. Such as
coffee (being a legal drug) and parties (one location where the
drugs are dealt). We also received feedback from our target
audience where we asked young adults in our 6th form what type
of music they would like in the documentary, to then get a more
positive response from our audience when watching our final
product.

4. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and research, planning and
evaluation stages?
• For the research and planning, we used the Google search
engine to do our target audience research, music and idea
inspiration. Additionally, for research we used Youtube to watch
other documentaries with a similar theme to our documentary,
such as Stacey Dooley Investigates : Drug Cartels + Drug Wars
etc…We used a large range of hardware and software
technologies to create our product including voice recorders,
iMovie and cameras. For example, we used iMovie to create our
documentary because we found it easier to use than when we
used Adobe Premiere last year. Additionally, it provided us with
everything that we needed editing wise, such as a larger variety
of transitions and sound editing. We also used my own camera
Fujifilm XP, due to it having a better resolution. For example, the
schools cameras only had 720p however my own camera had a
higher resolution of 1080p. Therefore, I preferred my own
camera to the school camera, so that’s why I chose to use my
own. We also used a voice recorder to record our voice over for
our documentary, which we’d never used before which meant
we developed a new skill of using a new device. I used Microsoft
PowerPoint when evaluating my product then uploaded it to
Slideshare so the format of PowerPoint would fit on my blog,
which is blogger.