1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media
products?

2. Our brief was to create the opening 5 minutes of a television
documentary, along with two ancillary tasks: a double page spread and a radio
trailer to go alongside the documentary. As the documentary was an hour
long, we had to research into what would go into the first 5 minutes of it, as
well as research into what goes into a double page spread and a radio trailer.

3. Bill Nichols theoretical modes is something we looked into when planning our
documentary.
As seen in our planning we looked at the different types/styles of documentaries
that there are; poetic, expositional, observational, participatory and performative.
Our documentary uses expositional mode as it is in our subjective view of binge
drinking and we use footage that strengthens our spoken narrative. We use a
narrative structure in our documentary which persuades an argument against binge
drinking. We do this by presenting a reasonable argument, repeating motifs and
addressing the audience directly using our voiceover.
To further strengthen our view we use professional interviews, we spoke to experts
e.g. a police man, and this shows authority and so gave across a persuasive
argument. Another way we strengthen our argument is by using facts and statistics
to support our point about rising numbers of underage binge drinkers and the
dangers with this e.g. rising numbers of alcohol related crimes, by using facts we are
able to prove our point and therefore create a stronger argument.

4. In preparation for creating our own documentary, I have watched many others to
look for similar codes and conventions that they use. From watching documentaries
such as Supersize Me, Laura Hill : My battle with booze, and Airline I have found
common conventions such as the use of camera. This includes shot types such as
long shots, establishing shots, medium shots, medium close ups, close ups and
extreme close ups.

5. When doing the reconstruction, we used a handheld camera to do our point of view
shot. This added to the sense of realism and helped give the viewer get a feel for what
is going on. This was used a lot in the documentary supersize me and has shown to be
effective in ours
For the rest of our documentary we mainly used a tripod. Tripods are used in most
documentaries and films to give accurate professional shots. We used ours on many
occasions such as establishing shots of the college, our professional interviews and
our vox pops, and for our background shots. The tripod enabled us to use many skills
that we have learnt such as using a Pan or Zooming.

6. When watching similar documentaries we made notes of typical shots that were
used, we then used these shots when making our own documentary.
Our Documentary Cutting edge: My big fat royal gypsy wedding
An establishing shot is used in a lot of documentaries to set the scene about
where the documentary will be taking place

7. Another convention used in documentaries is that they will include professional
interviews as well as vox pops.
Our Documentary Supersize me
Professional interviews genuinely use the rule of thirds, they will be
positioned about a third of the way in, with their eye level a third of the way
down looking into an empty space. Another convention used with a
professional interview is that their name and occupation will be stated at the
bottom and the mise en scene will represent them in some way e.g. in the
two shots above they have a professional educational background (books and
computer).

8. Vox pops genuinely use one or two
people, they are short shots of peoples
opinions and answers to questions and
are commonly used in documentaries.
They type of shot that is mainly used is
Our Documentary the medium close up. The mise en
scene genuinely seems to be plain and
have no sort of relation to the people
on the shot. The names of the people
are not included – no details of the
people in the vox pops are given
Supersize me

9. Our Documentary Supersize me
We have used special effects in our documentary. This is done in real documentaries
such as supersize me. Some of the effects we used were changing the
focus, zooming, overlapping shots and changing the opacity to make them blur into each
other, and fade ins / fade outs etc.

10. Another important part of the documentary we had to take into consideration was the
sound. We had to think about the background music, the voiceover, whether to have a
presenter, and diagetic and non diagetic sound. We chose to have no presenter in our
documentary and just a voiceover instead just like in airline to inform our viewers what
is going on as our documentary is a more informative one. We also had to find
background music that fitted well with our topic mood but wasn’t too over powering
so that it would attract attention away from the voiceover. We wasn’t allowed to use
copyright music and so we made our own on garageband using simple beats.

11. This is our final magazine double page spread which we made for the radio times.
We looked at many other articles before making ours so we knew which codes and
conventions we needed to use.

12. I will compare our double page article with this secondary one from the radio
times to show how we have followed codes and conventions.

13. The masthead is the title of the page and is always used in magazine articles.
They are sometimes the title of the programme but can sometimes be based on
the characters or plotlines. We have chosen to do the title of our documentary
as ours is a series. The masthead should be easily seen on the page and should
stand out therefore we have made ours big and bold and used the colour white
as it contrasts with the bright colours on the picture behind it.

14. The standfirst is the bit under the title and before the article which is used as
a quick summary of the article. It is used so that people can quickly read it
before the article before deciding whether or not to continue reading. It
should be bolder and slightly bigger than the rest of the article and be about
one or maybe two sentences long.

15. Just like the other article we have used one main image which is very large
and takes up about a third of the whole double page spread. The image used
should be striking to intrigue people to read it and should relate to what the
article is about.

16. Many magazine articles use a
number of images. These tend
to be shots from the
documentary or shots of making
the documentary. We have
included shots from our
documentary including our
professional interview to show
people who they should expect
to hear from. Every image
should include a caption
explaining what is going on or
who the person is.

17. ALSO USED…
Pull quotes
Drop cap used at the
beginning of article
Page numbers
Date, Channel
and Time
Name of magazine and
date at bottom
The use of columns

18. Radio trailer
Before making our radio trailer, we listened to a number of real ones to get an idea of
the conventions that they use in order to use the same in ours. I listened to ones from
different radio stations and noted down things such as the tone of voice, sound
effects, the use of music and how many tracks were used, the sound levels and the
length etc.

19. From listening to the radio trailers I found the following conventions to be common in
many:
- The average length is 30-45 seconds
- They use direct address as they use words like 'you' to intrigue the audience
- They use appropriate music and sound effects
- They use extracts from the programme
- The voiceover outlines the programme, they may ask a question that will be answered in
the programme
- Volumes are controlled so voices are clearly audible and music is kept at a level that
doesn't interfere
- The scheduling information is given at the end of the documentary: Channel, time and
date, title

20. Our radio trailer also used these conventions…
- The duration was 35 seconds long
Our voiceover outlines the programme
“We have a frightening look at the dangers binge drinkers are bringing to
British society and themselves to really see how much is too much.
Recent NHS figures have shown that alcohol related incidents have risen by an
astonishing 52% over the last decade; however 45% of these incidents are 15-
16 year olds that participating in binge drinking
Including an exclusive interview with PC John Whelan - extract from interview
with police officer Extract from interview with students (for getting drunk)
Tune in to channel 4 at 9pm this Thursday to really see how much is too
much”
Extracts from the
programme
Scheduling information at
the end of the trailer

21. We had to choose appropriate
music for our radio trailer that
would fit in with our
documentary
We used two different layers when creating our
radio trailer. One for the music and one for the
voiceover and extracts from our documentary. This
made it easier to control the voice levels so that
music would be kept at a lower level so that it
didn’t interfere