3. My documentary extract The documentary that I created was called Technophobia , and the five minute extract was at the start of the programme after the few minute introduction. Still from the opening of my documentary, showing the name and institution I decided to make the institution of the documentary Channel 4 and I decided this during the research and planning stage because they are the main channel for documentaries, they often produce one-off ones also, which I intended my documentary to be. What’s more, their documentaries usually focus on more different and non-mainstream things, compared to say the BBC.
4. In what ways does my media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
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9. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
10. Ancillary task 1: Newspaper advertisement This is the original plan that I made for the newspaper advertisement. It focused on a girl on the right hand side of the image cowering and hiding her face from the laptop positioned behind her. I came up with this idea because I liked the idea of the laptop ‘haunting’ her, and I thought that it was a simple yet eye-catching advert. However, when I took some photos and completed a rough draft of it, I found it really wasn’t very effective and instead looked quite silly, as the laptop appeared to be floating in the background. But I did keep some aspects of this design in my final product, for example the ‘real-life documentary’ titles at the top, the information about the documentary at the bottom, and obviously the channel 4 logo. The original plan for the newspaper advertisement
11. The stages of my advertisement 1 st Stage 2 nd Stage 3 rd and Final Stage These images show the main stages that I went through in creating my newspaper advertisement. The first one shows the picture that I took for it, the 2 nd stage shows the first draft of the advert, and the final one is the end product, with the relevant information about the documentary and institution. I came up with this idea by trying to relate technophobia to another common phobia that my audience would be able to relate to, so I thought of arachnophobia. With this phobia, people often put glasses over the spiders to trap them so I decided to do this with technology e.g. mobile phones.
17. Further audience feedback To fulfil the marking criteria I must use a variety of shot distances as appropriate, so I made sure that I added more shots when I completed my re-drafts. I’ve included a tracking shot leading into an establishing shot, above which comes at the end of my extract and is of the doctors surgery that Jo goes to. Although the duration of it is short, I felt this shot was necessary to set the scene of where this is taking place, and it’s clear to the audience where the narrative is. The above image is a high angle shot of my character Jo from the mini flashback of when she became technophobic. The lighting in this scene is low as you can see in the still because I wanted to create quite a scary atmosphere
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19. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
20. In the construction stages… In the construction stages I used 4od and YouTube to start my basic research on Channel 4 documentaries. Both these sites were launched in the 21 st century, YouTube in 2005 and 4od in 2006. I therefore consider them both as new media technologies and they’re part of web 2.0, which Gauntlett (2007) says is eroding the boundary between producer and audience.
21. In the research and planning stages… I used the Internet during my research and planning in order to obtain examples of double page spreads from listing magazines, and newspaper advertisements so that I could plan for my ancillary tasks. This allowing me to obtain authentic examples of what I needed to produce meant that I could have a style model to follow, and therefore use their conventions in my tasks. Examples of double page spread’s from a listings magazine, and a newspaper advertisement.
22. In the evaluation stage… Throughout the whole of the coursework, from the construction stage to the final evaluation I’ve kept an evaluative blog on www.blogger.com to document what I’ve been doing from week to week with my coursework, and to evaluate what I’ve completed. I thought this was a great idea as I could reflect on what I’d done and suggest what I could do to improve. By using a blog on the internet to keep an ongoing investigation, I’ve used a relatively new media technology being the internet. However, the blog is a new form of media that was created during the 21 st century and it easily shows how web 2.0 has become apparent as the public are able to input their own ideas/videos etc. on the internet for thousands of people to look at.
23. I included a survey on the blog about my first drafts of the ancillary tasks, and emailed several students, my target audience asking them to fill it out for me. Here I posted the first few scenes of the storyboard for my documentary so that I could keep up to date with my coursework. It also allowed me to commentate on them, giving more detail than what’s on the storyboard. Screen shots from my blog
24. An evaluative blog entry: comparing my production with an authentic similar text During February I chose to compare the 2 nd draft of my production with a similar text, the text I chose was Jess: Britain’s Youngest Sleepwalker? Which was broadcast on Channel 4 in November 2009. I decided to choose this documentary as they both focus on non-mainstream issues, it’s something that physically effects a person, and they both focus on an individual in the documentary, although my text isn’t explicit in this. I decided to include this in this evaluation as I thought that it was an important part of my evaluative blog because I was able to compare my text to a professional media text. It therefore allowed me to see if, for example I needed to add more shots and so follow the conventions of documentaries more. Jess: Britain’s Youngest Sleepwalker? (above) My production: Technophobia
25. Above is the comparison chart for Jess: Britain’s Youngest Sleepwalker , and Technophobia . I compared the shots, sound and dialogue, the use of on-screen titles, how clear the narrative was, the target audience and conventions, then I commented on the overall successfulness of the texts. I think that this was a really useful task to complete as it gave me a greater understanding of channel 4 documentaries, even though I studied them for my research and planning, but for this I was undertaking micro-level detail of the text, and it also gave me ideas of how I should stylise my production.
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