This document discusses the conventions used and challenged in the creation of a documentary media product. It summarizes that the documentary aimed to use conventions from real TV documentaries presented by Cherry Healey, such as a bubbly presenter and interactions with guests. It challenged stereotypes of teenagers by portraying them in a positive light, unlike much real media. The double page spread and advertisement followed conventions of those real media forms but challenged some, such as including a full interview in the double page spread.

1. 1) In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media
products?
Megan Waite & Kira Brookfield

2. Documentary
My documentary was intended to use conventions from a
real like media text to establish a recognisable image that
would appeal to our intended audience. For research, we
looked at general documentaries that would appear on
TV. Then we recognised a presenter named Cherry Healey
who observes problems in society in an entertaining way
within documentaries. We noticed that these examples
were very contemporary and held technological
characteristics which allowed them to look professional
which encouraged us to create upon these terms to gain a
similar outcome, as this is the way we wanted to portray
our media text.

3. Conventions we used from real media
products.
The way we linked our piece to a Cherry Healey
documentary was the way myself presented our
documentary. As the presenter, I adapted my
personality to fit into Cherry’s bubbly and exciting
approach. Cherry interacts a lot with her guests on
her doc’s which encouraged me as the presenter to
interact with Kira, my chosen main guest, in a way
to show a positive relationship and a comforting
atmosphere which would contrast the conversation
that we we’re discussing within the story.

4. Our Documentary follows these
conventions…
• Vox-pops
• Voice-overs
• Direct Interview Technique
• Relevent mise-en-scene during interviews
• Presenter
• Cut away clips during direct speech from Kira and
interviewees (images of the college etc.)
• I also added a caption to Kira’s video to explain
where it was extracted from and it’s name so it
could be found by viewers etc.

5. Music
The type of music which we used in our documentary held positive
connotations and reflected the emotions we wanted our audience to
feel as our aim was to create equilibrium between younger and older
generations in order to cut out teenage stereotypes. This is to
encourage their view on the situation as we felt that matching the
music to the actual emotions would also make the audience feel just
as bad rather than sorry for the character within the documentary. Our
music used when introducing Kira had a slower pace and had stronger
bass which we felt would encourage the feeling of the audience feeling
sorry for her.
Particular genres of documentary have different effects and
iconography which meant that the choice of music was important to
allow us to get the right point across. Also, within research, I found
that having the perfect music mattered and increased the strength of
the message within the film aspect.

6. Conventions we challenged from real
media products
We didn’t really challenge any conventions to a large
extent as we we’re avoiding setting the wrong intentions
and we wanted to follow a correlation rather than drifting
off onto different tangents. We felt the way Cherry
Healey presented her documentaries were very similar to
the way we wanted to portray ours. Cherry doesn’t use
anything other than recent music and clean, swift
transitions that relates well with everyone as it catches
the audience attention enough without going over the
top majorly which would become over-exciting. We more
or less followed the conventions of Cherry and other
media products rather than devising our own.

7. Challenges from real life
Although we didn’t challenge conventions from
media texts, we challenged society by displaying
teenagers in a positive way which would rarely be
displayed in real life as well as media texts. In
research, I obtained some online newspaper
articles which displayed negative headlines and
contents. I did not come across positive headlines
which encouraged me to focus on this theme. There
are a lot of TV programs which display teenagers in
a negative way. For example; 16 and pregnant and
the popular American series, Sweet 16 etcetera.

8. Double Page Spread
The DPS conventions of real life media texts,
from a TV Guide, contained certain aspects
which we were able to work with as we had
gained research and creative skills from AS
coursework. This allowed us to find the specific
research we need quickly and apply special
effects in a more developed way. The layout and
colour scheme linked well with the documentary
so it matched and followed our work colour
scheme.

9. Newspaper Advertisement
By looking at real life adverts in a newspaper helped us
create this aspect of the brief as the conventions where
easy to follow. As we were developing a strong theme to
base our documentary on, we felt that increasing the
imperatives and features of the texts was necessary to
get the effect we was hoping for. We wanted to create
equilibrium over younger and older generations and to
make the audience feel belittled and targeted was a way
to achieve this outcome. As the media has created this
stereotype for teenagers, we wanted to use opposing
strategies for this effect.

10. Conventions the Print aspects follow…
DPS:
• Page numbers
• Images
• Air date/time of the documentary
• Range of interesting graphology within text
• Engaging quotes/headlines/subheading etc.
• TV Guide characteristics (descriptions)
Advert:
• Relevant images
• Brief info, short/snappy
• Eye catching, use of colour/font etc.
• Logo for Chanel 4
• Clear viewing time/date
• Persuasive features (direct imperatives, addressing the audience)
• Graphology – models looking directly at the camera created an illusion of
them looking directly at the reader which would challenge their emotions.

11. Print: Challenges of media texts
DPS:
• Contained a full interview which would not be displayed in a real
life TV Guide but we felt it helped the reader to understand Kira in a
more detailed way. This would be used in real media text, but in a
increasingly summarised way.
Advert:
• Our first draft was really abstract and dark which challenged our
message as a whole, it supported the negatives about teenagers
whereas our final product had a more uplifting colour scheme
which would avoid portraying the wrong message. Also, it
contained spoken features which was audience specific towards
older generations. This particular aspect had a main audience
whereas the film aspect and DPS had a general audience as well as
the main. This meant that the targets where different between
each piece although we felt it wouldn’t have a large impact as it
would be obvious who it was intened towards.