The document discusses how the media product uses, develops, and challenges conventions of real media products. Specifically: - It attempts to follow the style guide of Channel 4 in its documentary format, production, and ancillary tasks. - It challenges conventions by using a female voiceover rather than the typical male "voice of God". - Through its filming techniques, formats, and styles, it aims to resemble Channel 4 documentaries while using a female perspective.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
My media product attempts to use the forms and conventions of a real media product in a variety of different ways, from
the ancillary tasks all the way through to the documentary its self i have tried to follow the channel 4 style guide and the
channel 4’s way of producing documentaries. I used the channel 4 website of the breakdown of what and how they do
things. I developed and challenged there way of doing things however with the use of ‘voice of God’ usually this is a mature
male, who is meant to be in authority hence why its called voice of God, however i used my own voice to be the voice over
in the documentary. I did this because women are rare to find in the world of documentaries and i thought it would be
good for me to represent that. I did however stick to the channel 4 ways of doing things when it came to the Radio add, for
this i got a male teacher who is much more mature than myself, and who is very well spoken. I did this to stick to the
channel 4 conventions and reach out to my target audience, who would expect a mature male to be speaking.
As like most documentaries in the first few seconds i give a brief introduction as to what issue i will be be filming/ covering.
This follows a typical channel 4 documentary so a regular of the channel should be use to it.
Through the interview i produced channel 4 regulars should see that i follow the same format as what they do when they
interview someone, The 180 degree, over the shoulder shot. This is to get the interviewer, and the person who is being
interviewed reactions, and emotions out to the audience.
In my documentary i use different camera techniques like close ups, establishing shots and over the shoulder shots, i did
these because they are technique correct and are found in near enough every channel 4 documentary.
The only main thing i challenged was the fact that i am female, and females are hardly ever a film maker for channel 4.
There are very little females that appear as the film maker on the documentaries on channel 4 , so the fact i appear and
speak as the voice of god on the film, challenges the normal stereotypical view of documentaries.
I tried to use some transitions in my documentary from shot to shot to make my documentary seem more professional, and
easier to watch without many jumps. By doing this is gives it a much more professional feel, and a good finish.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My documentary was made in thought it would be played on the channel 4 site, so i followed the conventions that were set out by the
Channel 4 style guide and there codes and conducts. I used some technical features which channel 4 use in their documentaries such as
over the shoulder shot, swopping the camera to me the interviewer and the person who was being questioned. I also used the tool of
zooming in on important things. Through editing i also used other conventions that they follow like the use of transitions, cut scenes and
voice over.
My documentary was an expository documentary which i thought i carried out the conducts they use quite well although my voice oveMy
factual insert i think relates perfectly with my documentary as the image is when the dogs are realised from the cages. Although i did not
take this image myself there is a reason. I wasn't allowed on the track or inside to film, and the footage i did have i just don't think it was
strong enough. I did try to get footage of YouTube to use as my achieve footage then to use it as the factual insert picture too, but again
no website allowed the footages to be downloaded because YouTube banned it, or it was not supported. Also when i print screened the
footage then blew it up for the picture it was blurry so i lost quality. So in the end i used Google pictures which wasn't ideal however the
picture is fine. The pun and subtitle and title fits in with what i wanted to get across. I followed the channel 4 style guide to a T in the fact
i used the colours behind the writing from the colour palette from the picture, The channel 4 logo is where it always is with the factual
inserts and also the right size was very important as they are very specific about it. My text follows the conventions, and i think it sets the
right tone. I decided to use a mature male for the radio advert to set the right tone and entice my target audience into watching my
documentary. I thought this was more appropriate for the situation.
r or ‘voice of God’ was female which might not of followed the usual conducts.
My factual insert is very suited to addressing my issue with the dog track. I tried to use a funny pun as the subtitle due to the fact i wanted to
bring people in to watch it but also seem interested and think about what I'm actually saying. ‘Hare today, gone tomorrow’. Anyone whose been
the dog track knows that the dog chases the hare, however do they realise how many of the dogs get killed and abandoned after that race?. I
wanted to get people thinking, and then this also relates to the picture of the dogs being realised from the cages at the start of the race. The
writing to describe my documentary and give a brief summary is blunt and straight to the point. I wanted it to again get people thinking and turn
to watch my documentary.
My seconded ancillary task was my radio advert. I had about 30-45 seconds to sum up a catchy radio add and use appropriate language to get
my target audience interested. Channel 4 always use a male to do this and some one who is well spoken so i followed this guide and got a male
mature teacher who is well spoken from my school to read my radio add out. In this radio add i had to think of the tone i wanted to use, think of
the correct sort of language and also give them a taste of what is to come in my film.
To me all three tasks, the documentary, radio advert and factual insert work together to create and encourage a clear indication to what my
documentary is about, and are all appropriate for my target audience institute which is a channel 4 audience.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I presented my documentary to a group of people in my target audience and i received quite a mix review. Positive feedback
i received were ‘ i did well to get the shots i did, and it was clear i had planned my scenes out’. I was grateful for this
because i did struggle to get access into the ‘dog track’ as it was not allowed so i had to settle for standing outside. I also
had to arrange different times with the person who worked with the dogs. Other positive feedback were ‘my editing
transitions were done nicely’. Again i was pleased with this feedback. People were also impressed at the fact i had different
locations in my recordings , and it was clear to people that i put effort into producing my work, however at times it didn't
flow that good.
Negative feedback were, in the interview the lighting was too dark. Looking back this is massive error and it could of easily
been sorted however i didn't spot it when i was filming so it was too late. I would need to reconsider my interview if i was to
do it again as there was no natural light due to the time and the room light just wasn't strong enough. Other negative
feedback was the quality wasn't the best in the interview. Again this was my fault as i had the camera on the wrong setting
and again was too late to change so i had to make the best from a bad situation.
Overall i was pleased with the feedback as the negative feedback i already knew myself. It was trial and error and silly
misjudgement which could of easily been sorted but due to time, weather and peoples timetables there just wasn't enough
time for me to fix them.
Things i would do different if i got to do this task again was make sure that when i was filming the camera was screwed onto
the tripod so that it makes no cracking noises. I would make sure when interviewing people to think about the mis-en-
scene, as it is important to have the correct sense of tone.
I also need to plan my documentary more out, because my interview was rather lengthy and to be honest it does get
boring, so if i was to do it again i would try to break it up and maybe do some more jump cut scenes to different imagery
and achieve footage.
I thought my documentary on a hold was at a good standard however i do realise that there are errors.
This task was a lot harder than what i thought it would be, and there is so much to think about like the mis-en-
scene, camera angles, editing, voice over and titles/sounds.

4. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
To make my documentary i used Imovie on a Apple Mac to put together, and edit my documentary. I used
this software because it is completely exclusive for Apple and it has the ability and technical ability to do
everything to a standard of which a professional documentary would be done to. I used Microsoft and
PowerPoint to do all my work and research writing on. This is the best way to present text and is very simple
to use. From this i could then upload the work onto Scibd and slide share where then i could upload it to
Blogger. This is what i used to present all my work, where i made what could come across like a diary extract
where i made comments along the process of making my documentary.
I also used sites like photo bucket, Prezi and sound cloud. I had to upload images to photo bucket if i didn't
want to upload them straight onto blogger to have a different finish,. Prezi i used so people who wanted to
access my work can zoom in on things and have a bit of clearer yet different way to have a look at my work
in more detail. To film the documentary i used a hand camera made by Sony. It was a very good quality
camera and we had the tripod to set up and use it to film it had easy to use zoom features and it featured
light adjustments where we could change the adjustment of the lighting in an area to make it more suitable
for what we needed. I also used YouTube to obviously upload my documentary but also i tried to download
some achieve footage from there which i emailed the owner of the video and he said it was ok to use
however YouTube had blocked access to pretty much every video i thought was suitable for my footage. The
reason i wanted it was because i couldn't access going to the dog track myself and filming them race as it is
not allowed. In the end i decided to leave it, and get photos of ‘Google’ and also a website for protecting
greyhounds to use as my footage and also the factual insert picture as it was most suited.
To be honest i didn't have any troubles with using the camera or uploading anything onto the sites like
Slideshare etc however i found the site blogger a nightmare. As we was using the software in school, for
some reason blogger didn't let me access my account, so i was constantly behind the rest trying to upload
work, it deleted things and I just didn't have a good experience with it. However its done the job, my work is
up there but i would of preferred to have used something else.