The document discusses the use of conventions in documentaries and how the student's media product challenged some conventions while adhering to others. Some conventions that were used include using archival footage, a serious tone, music, rule of thirds framing in interviews, voiceovers, cutaways during interviews, and transitions. However, the opening sequence challenged conventions by using a long newspaper shot instead of quick cuts. Magazine articles conventions like headlines and photos were followed but a large grab quote in an unusual font challenged norms.

1. Jessica Millward
QUESTION 1: IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE,
DEVELOP, OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA
PRODUCTS? Storyboards
Documentary Task: To produce a 5
minute opening sequence of a
documentary.
To begin the project we had to study
existing documentaries in order to
understand their use of codes and
conventions. As a class we looked at;
Supersize Me, Airline and A Good
Smack all of which used codes and
conventions differently.
After deciding on our documentary
subject, The Education Maintenance
Allowance, we began to storyboard our initial ideas
and started to form a 5 minute sequence.
Typically, documentaries used archival footage in order to show events that relate
to the subject. To use this convention, we decided to use a YouTube clip of footage
from student riots in order to highlight the destruction that cutting EMA caused. This
worked well as it highlighted the problems cutting EMA caused and it added to the
polemic represented of EMA.
Another typically used convention that more serious documentaries such as
‘Dispatches’ takes is a serious, pessimistic tone about their chosen subject and we
decided to develop this in our documentary by making the tone of our documentary
condemnatory and pessimistic. Again, this worked well as it added to the polemic
representation of our subject which contributed to the overall biased opinion.
Documentaries use Representation which can vary
depending on the documentary and its subject.
‘Supersize Me’ appears to adopt a polemical
documentary-he clearly wants to expose the dangers of
McDonalds. However, he does try to contact McDonalds
to allow them to give their point of view, leaning
towards a more balanced, unbiased documentary. We
decided to take a polemical approach in our
documentary, condemning the cutting of EMA and
clearly portraying a biased opinion.
Screenshot from Final Cut Express-
Stealing suggests a biased opinion

2. Music is commonly used within documentaries as a background sound to keep the
audience interested and it also helps with the continuity. We decided to use this
convention and added music as an undertone to our documentary. We used a
serious, but pop style sound to keep our target audience interested, with the sound
levels varying throughout.
Another convention we decided to use was the framing our expert interviews.
Typically, documentaries (such as Supersize Me) take a rule of thirds approach
whereby the interviewee is usually positioned on the left side of the shot which their
head and shoulders usually being in the middle third both vertically and horizontally
and the look to someone who is on the right of the shot, rather than looking straight
into camera.
Medium Close Up
Relevant Mise En Scene
Occupies left half of
screen
Interview from Supersize Me
Interview from our Documentary
Voiceovers are a popular convention used in documentaries to give factual
information and tell the story the documentary is portraying. Supersize Me uses
Morgan Spurlock’s voiceover to give factual
information about McDonalds. We did some
research into our chosen subject for our
documentary, using statistics and quotes from
newspaper articles which gave interesting
information about what problems cutting EMA is
causing.
As a way to keep the audience interested and to
relate the documentary to our target audience we
used Filler Footage. We used various shots such as
ones of students in the canteen and a
teenager texting their parent which
would draw our target audience into
the documentary as they feel they can
relate to the students featured,
convincing them to follow the biased
opinion of our documentary.
Newspaper articles about EMA, written Voiceover
and Voiceover screenshot from Final Cut Express

3. The opening sequence of a documentary is extremely important because it sets the
tone for the whole documentary and must grab the audience’s attention straight
away. Typically, documentaries adopt a contents style opening sequence whereby
there a lots of quick cuts of shots that will appear later in the documentary, like a
montage of shots. However, we decided to challenge this convention by using a
longer shot of newspapers as our opening sequence with an accompanying
voiceover. On reflection this was not as successful as we hoped, some feedback
suggested that the pace of the opening sequence was slow and that it didn’t grab
their attention. If we were to produce the documentary again we would probably
adopt the contents style opening sequence to keep people’s attention within the
first minute.
Cutaways are a convention typically used during an interview to keep the audience’s
attention, rather than them just watching the interviewee talking. We decided to use
this convention during our second interview with EMA Advisor Julie Maitland. These
worked well as they kept the audience’s attention whilst still giving information.
Left: Screenshots showing our expert interview and our
cutaway shot. Right: Screenshot from Final Cut Express
Transitions are used within documentaries, the
most common one being the straight cut. These
are quickly paced in order to move from one
shot to another. However, we decided to
challenge this convention by using various
transitions, such as fade-to-black, cross
dissolves and dip to colour dissolves. We
decided to use these to make the editing flow
and also to make the documentary more
visually appealing and this
worked well.
Transitions from Final Cut Express

4. Magazine Article Task: To produce a double page article for a listings magazine
that focuses on and advertises our documentary.
This is the final version of our Magazine Article, produced in InDesign. We have used
the following conventions:
Main Photograph
Headline and
Standfirst
Byline
Dropcap
Smaller supporting picture Grab Quotes Text in columns
We decided to mostly follow typically forms and conventions of magazine articles.
We got really positive feedback for our article, most people gave it 9 or 10/10 which
was really good. However, we feel we did challenge conventions by using a large
grab quote in an usual font and a smaller picture rather than one that doesn’t take
up half the double page. We decided upon this because the picture we wanted to
use was landscape instead of portrait which is typically used. So therefore we
decided to add the large grab quote which we think works extremely well. It is eye
catching and visually appealing.

5. Radio Trail Task: To produce a 30-45 second radio trail to advertise our
documentary.
To begin the radio trail we had to write a script of what we were going to say, and
decide what parts of our expert interview and voxpops we would use.
We analysed various radio trails, such as one advertising Formula One racing and
another advertising a David Attenborough TV Show.
Printscreen from Garage Band of our Radio Trail
Voices from
our
documentary
Music
Various
different tracks
Our scripted voiceover
Sound levels- appropriately adjusted
We followed forms and conventions by including interviews from our documentary
in our radio trail. Another convention we used was to have music running
throughout which was louder and then went quieter as the voices came in, this was
to keep the audience interested and also to help with the flow of the radio trail.
After reviewing our radio trail with the class some obvious problems were made
clear. The sound levels at the beginning of our radio trail were too loud so if we
were to do the trail again we would make sure the sound levels were consistent and
not too loud. Secondly, some of our expert interviews taken from the documentary
were a little quiet, so again we would make sure the sound levels were consistent
throughout. The biggest problem with our radio trail was that we chose to put it on
BBC Radio 1 and our documentary was to be on Channel 4. In reality, BBC Radio 1
wouldn’t advertise a documentary that was on Channel 4 because they are
competitors. However, because we were concentrating more on making sure the
radio trail was informative and advertised our documentary well we forgot to check
this, so on reflection we would chose a different radio station to put our
documentary on, such as Capital FM which attracts a lot of teenagers who are our
target audience.

6. QUESTION 2: HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN
PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TASKS?
I feel that our magazine article and radio trail
combined very well with our documentary and
provided a strong advertisement for it.
To effectively combine the main product with
our ancillary tasks we had to make sure
elements from our documentary featured in
both the radio trail and the article to keep the
consistency between them.
Both our radio trail and magazine article
featured quotes from our expert interviews
which were both memorable and portrayed
our documentaries biased opinion whilst also
highlighting the problems with cutting EMA
stirring up so empathy from our target
audience.
We gave all 3 of our tasks a younger, edgier
vibe as a way of attracting our target audience.
The magazine article looks very young and
fresh with an interesting, appealing font
which appeals to our target audience,
similarly our radio trail is fast and punchy
which will keep our target audience
entertained. Our documentary has a quicker
pace and it features lots of teenagers, as does
our magazine article and our radio trail which
will relate to our target
audience.
All three tasks feature the same expert quote ‘I think it will have a
significant social effective on teenagers’ which helps to create a
Brand Image. The quote almost acts as our own slogan which
creates a strong bond between our tasks. The slogan
represents the tasks biased agenda to slate the cutting of
EMA appealing to our target audience who seem to agree
with this.
I think both the radio trail and magazine article
advertise/promote our documentary well. Both feature
quotes from our documentaries expert interviews, both
mention the channel, time and date that the
documentary will be aired and all have the same biased, polemic opinion.
Overall our tasks link will together, however I think the only difference is between
the pace of the documentary and the task of the radio trail. The radio trail is really
fast and punchy whereas the documentary has a slightly slower pace. Also it could be
said that the documentary has a slightly older feel and may attract a slightly older

7. audience because it has a slower pace and is more serious, whereas the magazine
article is clearly younger with the edgier font and less amount of writing.

8. QUESTION 3: WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE
FEEDBACK?
To conduct our feedback research we produced a Questionnaire, questioning
students on all three of our main tasks. As a class we then took part in a Focus
Group, analysing and evaluating each other’s work which was extremely helpful.
I am going to select and evaluate the most important questions from our
questionnaire starting with our documentary questions. We questioned 15 students
in total and although this isn’t a large number, it makes the results easy to quantify.
Documentary
Question 1. On a scale of 1-10 how interesting is our documentary?
We averaged out our scores from this question and our average score was 8 which
is really positive and makes us have confidence in our documentary. I think the
reason some students may not have found it as interesting is being it has a more
serious tone and is very informative, which some teenagers may find boring,
however the average score is still very good.
Question 3. Do you think the sound levels are consistent?
As the chart shows, the majority of students
thought that the sound levels of our
documentary were consistent, which is really
positive. As a group we thought we managed Yes
the sound levels well, however when we
No
watched in on the projector with the class
there were a few tiny errors, however these
weren’t major and didn’t cause too much of a
lack of consistency.
Question 6. Did the first minute grab your attention?
As the chart shows 8/15 students thought the
first minute grabbed their attention, however 8
7/15 students thought it didn’t, which isn’t as
7.5
positive. We realised after the class focus Yes
group that the beginning of our documentary 7 No
had quite a slow pace and wasn’t instantly
attention grabbing, however the majority of 6.5
students said it did which is good. If we were to Yes No
do the task again we would make the
beginning more interesting and attention grabbing.

9. Question 8. Do you think our documentary appeals to our target audience?
This is an important question as it is vital that
our documentary appeals to our target 100%
audience otherwise no one will watch it. This is 80%
why we are extremely happy that 100% of the 60% Yes
people we questioned agreed that our 40% No
documentary appealed to our target audience. 20%
0%
Yes No
Radio Trail
Question 1. Do you think it advertises our documentary well?
This is a really important element that the radio
trail must contribute otherwise our documentary 15
wouldn’t succeed either. Thankfully, all of the 15
10
students questioned said that it advertises our Yes
documentary well, which is very important. To No
5
make it advertise the documentary well we
included elements from our documentary in the 0
radio trail to highlight a clear link. Yes No
Question 2. Do you think the sound levels are consistent?
After reviewing our radio trail with the class it was
obvious that the sound levels weren’t as
consistent as we initially thought. The beginning of
the radio trail is significantly louder than the rest
of the radio trail. This is why 8/15 students said Yes
they were consistent but 7/15 said they weren’t. No
The rest of the radio trail’s sound levels are
consistent except for the beginning so on
reflection we would make the sound levels at the
beginning much quieter to keep them consistent.
Double Page Article
Question 2. Out of 10, how visually appealing would you consider our double page
article to be?
We averaged out our scores from this question and our average score was 9 which
is really positive and put confidence in our magazine article. I think our magazine

10. article attracts our target audience well because of the younger, edgier font and the
picture which features members from our target audience.
Question 4. Do you think it would appeal to our target audience?
Again, we asked the important question about
whether students thought our magazine article
15
appealed to our target audience, and 15/15
students felt it did. I think this is because the 10
Yes
picture featured people from our target
audience group and also our font was younger 5 No
and cooler and would appeal to teenagers. We
didn’t have too much writing, to keep the 0
younger audience interested and we aimed it Yes No
more at teenagers with a formal/informal
balance.

11. QUESTION 3: HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE
CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH AND PLANNING AND EVALUATION
STAGES?
Producing all three tasks was going to ensure using new media technologies as new
programmes would need to be used for the editing of our documentary and
production of the radio trail.
Research and Planning
To research our documentaries subject, EMA, we had to
use the internet. A lot of our research came from
BBC.com, the popular news website which had a lot of
featured stories about our subject. Youtube was another
website we used to watch previous reports on the student
riots which were caused by cutting EMA. To identify forms and conventions of
documentaries we analysed some as a class using DVD’s and BBC Iplayer to watch
them.
Blogger.com was a new technology I myself had never particularly used before,
however the website is extremely easy to use and
provides a good platform on which to upload our
research and planning documents. However, as a group
we realised that we couldn’t
change the design of our blog to
make it more individual and interesting which we would
have liked to have done. After searching on the internet we
realised that the college must have put some sort of
restrictions on designing the blog which meant we couldn’t
change the background design of our blog.
To turn our paper documents into digital documents I used
my home printer/scanner which I had no experience of. This
converted our files from paper to digital documents which
meant that we could upload them to Blogger.com.

12. Construction
To produce our documentary we used a Canon video camera to film our shots which
was a new technology to our group. We allowed
ourselves one lesson to get used to using the camera,
practising using the focus and also the white balance
and after this lesson we felt more confident using the
camera.
Along with the camera came a tripod,
headphones and a microphone which we got
to grips with quickly. The tripod acted as a
stable stand on which to mount the camera to
make sure our shots were straight and well
framed. The microphone and headphones helped us to
identify consistent sound levels which are very important.
We also had to use a voice-recorder to record our script for
our radio trail which was another new piece of technology
we had to adjust to, we had to manually adjust the sound levels by pressing the
buttons. Once we got to grips with how it worked we handled it well, making sure
that the microphone didn’t pick up any ambient background noise by sitting behind a
screen.
Documentary
To edit our documentary together we used an Apple IMac’s programme Final Cut
Express which I have never personally used before. There are many elements that
Final Cut Express includes:
Canvas-displays the
Browser- Contains shot as it appears on
our raw shots, the timeline
unedited
Timeline-displays
the order of our
shots
Toolbar-options
for manipulating
Sound Timeline- clips
this displays the
sound levels

13. The first step in producing our documentary was deciding which clips to use, a
process called logging and transferring where we selected our clips and named
them, these were then transferred to the browser so we could drag them onto the
timeline.
We used our storyboard to create our documentary in
the timeline, making a few changes here and there once
we had watched the rough edits so everything flowed
well. We also put in a cutaway during one of our
interviews which caused us putting one clip on top of
another one which caused the other clip to play over the
top of the other so the
voice still played just over
the cutaway clip.
Screenshot from Final Cut Express-
shows one shot ontop of another
For several of our clips
we altered the speed, either making them slower or
quicker to help with the pace of our documentary and
also to give some clips a more interesting look. We
altered the speed by selecting the ______ tool and
then adjusting the speed accordingly.
We also added name tags to our expert interviews
which displayed our expert’s names and positions. We
did this by selecting the text tool at the bottom of the viewer Final Cut Express
screen and adjusting the text accordingly. We wanted a Screenshot-showing
professional looking text for the name and a smaller text for the speed manipulation
position. We also adjusted the colour of the background block to
make it an almost see-through grey which we think worked really well and made the
documentary look professional.
We also had to manually adjust the sound levels of our documentary to keep them
consistent and smooth throughout. We made sure all of the voices featured had the
same sound level. We wanted the music to be louder in parts where these wasn’t
any voiceover to keep the audience interested and them make it quieter when the

14. voiceover was heard, however we wanted there to be no music at all during our
expert interviews, so we had to make the music fade in and out accordingly.
We did this by using the toolbar’s select icon which allowed us to select areas of the
sound’s pink lines and move them up and down to fade them in and out, this took a
lot of precision but it in end it worked really well and the sound levels were mostly
consistent.
Screenshot from Final Cut Express-pink line represents the
sound levels, highlighting how we manipulated them.
Overall, we felt comfortable using Final Cut Express once we were used to the way it
works. We didn’t have any major problems with the programme and it was easy to
use once we had got to grips with all the controls. We feel our documentary was well
produced and well edited.

15. Image-taken using a stills
Magazine Article camera. Adjusting using
effects
Font-taken from
Dafont.com
Font-taken from
Dafont.com
Drop Cap-adjusting text
size to make it larger
We had all used
InDesign before during our AS Media project, so we were comfortable producing the
article within this programme, however there were a few new things that we used
and added when producing our magazine article.
We used font website Dafont.com to get our own individual font that we thought
would appeal to our target audience. The font we selected was called ‘Art-Post’ and
we had to firstly print screen it and paste it into Photoshop, from there we adjusted
the colour balance to make it darker and then we pasted it into InDesign and moved
it to the appropriate place.
We took our picture using a still camera which we then edited using Photoshop,
brightening the photo. We then pasted it into InDesign where we added a drop
shadow, inner shadow and outer glow to make
the picture jump out of the page, making it more
interesting.
Overall, I feel our magazine article is really
powerful and eye catching and it appeals to our
target audience as it looks young and fresh.
We also added a screenshot from our
documentary into our article. We did this by using
the screen-grab tool on the Apple Mac and then
selecting the picture of the EMA poster from our
expert interview. We then pasted it into InDesign,
brightened it and made it larger, then pasted it
into InDesign.

16. Vocals taken from
Radio Trail
our documentary
Different tracks-
we added vocal
effects
Volume- adjusted
to make sound
levels consistent
After recording our radio script we decided to add a
vocal effects on top of my voice to make it sound
more professional and more like a typical radio
voice.
To do this we went to the toolbar and went on the
Track Info list and then selected Vocals.We added
‘Female Voice’ over the top of my voice which made
it sound more clear and smooth. We then added
‘Vocal Reflection’ to the end of the radio script
which said ‘Channel 4’ which gave it an echo effect
which sounded really effective and professional. We
added a ‘Megaphone’ effect to the voice which says
‘BBC Radio One’ which gave it a really authentic
radio feel and we felt overall the radio trail worked
well.
Again we had to adjust the sound levels as some
voices were louder than others, we used the select
tool to select various parts of the blue sound line
and manipulated the sound levels until the were
consistent, fading the music in and out and making
sure all vocal levels were consistent.
Screenshot from Garage Band-showing
the various types of vocal effects

17. Evaluation
The evaluation requires us to
evaluate all three areas of our task:
the documentary, magazine article
and radio trail.
The produce my evaluation I have
used Microsoft Word, a programme I
am used to. If I knew the programme
I would have used Publisher because
it gives a cleaner finish, however I
have never used Publisher so I chose
Word.
A new technology that I had never
used before was Scribd.com which
allows you to convert normal Word
files into digital versions. It allows
you to scroll through the pages of
text you have written and makes content look more professional.
A quote from the Scirbd website states:
“Now, anyone can instantly upload and transform any file -- including PDF, Word and
PowerPoint -- into a web document that’s discoverable through search engines,
shared on social networks and read on billions of mobile devices.”
Once I was comfortable with Scribd, I scanned in all my paper research documents
and uploaded them using Scribed onto my blog (an example is shown above). It
makes the blog look more interesting and highlights a more professional use of ICT.