media eval 2

As part of our media advanced portfolio we as a
group were intended to produce; an extract from
a new documentary TV programme which
lasted approx 5 minutes.) In addition we had to
create the following 2 ancillary tasks; a radio
trailer which advertised our documentary and
also a double-page spread from a listings
magazine which focused on our documentary.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The documentary that we produced had a purpose to ask the audience various
rhetorical questions about the topic of legalising cannabis. As a group we decided
to name our documentary ‘Why Shouldn’t We…?’ which follows a series, our
documentary being ‘Why Shouldn’t We Legalise Cannabis?’ We decided that this
would be our chosen title as its catchy and leads to many different ideas to support
and go against the argument.

Bill Nichols an American documentary theorist propose that there are 6 main
documentary modes; poetic, expository, observations, participatory, reflexive and
performative. Our documentary doesn’t support or feature the poetic mode as our
documentary features continuity of a consequence and is also objective. Therefore
the first mode that ‘Why Shouldn’t We’ supports is the expository mode.

Grierson supports the expositional mode as he states it’s an
explanation for the move away from poetic documentary in terms of
visual practice and story telling by using various rhetorical questions –
this is shown in both our title and also throughout the voiceover.
Factual information is also a feature of expositional mode; our
documentary supports this as it uses statistics ‘……’ and also in
opinions given by interviewees ‘…..’ this helps pass on key information
to the viewer.

Narration is a distinctive feature of the expository mode, which ties in
with our documentary as our voiceover is omnipresent, omniscient
and objective. This is used to explain and argue out or documentaries
rhetorical content.’ Why Shouldn’t We’ collects footage which aims to
strengthen the spoken narrative – cutaways were used to support this.
For example in our interviews Julie and mike… . This refers to Nichols
‘evidentially editing’ as the images help to illustrate what the
commentary is about therefore helps to persuade the reader.

Observational documentaries tend to observe, allowing viewers to make their own
conclusions, our documentary didn’t contain much features of the observational
mode. However we did use the camera while moving with subjects and staying in the
action this was displayed in the canteen whereby we left the camera at an anchored
point on the tripod. However our documentary features music, interviews and
narration therefore doesn’t strongly support the observational mode.

Participatory is whereby the filmmaker is visible to the viewer, however we chose not to
have a presenter featured in our documentary but just to use a voiceover therefore
our documentary doesn’t support the participatory mode.

Both the performative and reflexive mode doesn’t support our documentary as the
performative mode targets documentaries, which involve the filmmaker in the story to
give an autobiographical description of the subjective truths made by the filmmaker.
Whereas the reflexive mode tends to present the viewer with footage of how the
documentary was made. For example In Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera
(1929,) he features footage of his brother and wife in the process of shooting footage
and editing, respectively.

After focusing on the documentary modes that our documentary fell under, market segmentation was our
next important consideration. An ideal market segment identifies a certain group of customers which
have similar needs and demand similar products. Psychographic segmentation aims to divide the market
into groups based on lifestyle and social class. Firstly the social class is provided from the socio-
economic scale, we decided to focus our documentary on c2, D and E. Reason being is due to the
stereotype of those taking drugs are likely to fall under the occupations of these particularly the
unemployed and unskilled manual workers. Lifestyle involves classifying people according to their
values, beliefs, and interests. Young and Rubican, an advertising agency, provided the Cross Cultural
Consumer Characterization known as the 4 C’s –
resigned, struggler, mainstreamer, aspirer, succeder, explorer and reformer. ‘Why Shouldn’t We’ aims to
attract strugglers – those of which are alienated with a few resources with a heavy consumption of
alcohol, junk food and lotteries. Even though this is a low lifestyle and we would like to aim high with the
documentary, our audience who is going to watch it are more likely to be struggler than succeeders or
aspirers.

We chose channel 4 to broadcast our documentary as from completing secondary research we found that
BBC three already featured a documentary ‘Cannabis what’s the arm’ therefore this would have been to
similar to our documentary. However channel 4 has only featured a documentary on cocaine therefore
our documentary targets a gap in the market.

Statistics (dated 6thfeb – 12thfeb 2012) taken from http://www.barb.co.uk/ suggest that channel 4 reaches
more than 3 times the BBC three, this justified our decision on whether we should choose channel 4 or
BBC three. Channel 4 targets a large audience depending on the type of program i.e. soap
opera, documentaries etc and through its portfolio including E4, More4, Film 4 etc. However as channel
4 broadcasted a three part series named ‘cocaine’ we can see that this will attract a similar audience.

Before we started to film our documentary we had to complete various research and planning into other
documentaries to outline the main conventions, we focused on Super Size Me. Super Size Me is a direct
cinematic documentary that features Morgan Spurlock. The documentary is shaped into the narrative of
an investigation as it focuses on how modern society is represented. Super Size Me contains detailed
stylistic elements such as voxpops, graphics and location. However as this documentary is cinematic it
was hard to relate the conventions as our documentary doesn’t fall under cinematic. Therefore I
completed research into a documentary that had similar features and of the same topic ‘giving up the
weed’.

Giving up the weed is an observational documentary which focuses on J Rock’s, an actor and rapper, power
to stop smoking cannabis. Giving up the weed features various stylistic elements such as
interviews, vox pops, various shot types and camera movements, transitions.


Shot Types
After comparing our documentary to channel 4’s, giving up the weed, we were able to make the
comparison about the shots used in the documentaries, the most common type of shot was close
up. The helps engage the audience as it is a lot more focused. Both of the shots below are
extremely similar – both focuses on the ‘spliff.’


Extreme Close Up
This shot type gets right into the subject and shows extreme detail, however this shot doesn’t
show emotion or general reactions as just in both of these images focuses on the eyes. In order to
improve this shot we could of used the choker shot to show the mouth, this will help to express the
emotions of the character.


Cutaway / Establishing Shots
Cutaway’s are a shot type which are often show something other than the current action i.e.
picture. We used cutaways in our documentary over our expert interviews to add interest and
information to break up the interview – to keep the audience interested. Established shot is used
of image 2 as it shows the audience where the action is taking place.

Archive Footage
We filmed archive footage off The Focus Pull
YouTube. The video was a This is a creative camera
music video which featured clips technique which allowed us
of cannabis. We used this as a to change the focus of the
closure to our documentary as it shot.
gave time to allow audience to The image below displays
assess their views on our this as it focuses on the
chosen subject – should tree and not the subject –
cannabis be legalised. smoking. This works very
effectively.


Expert interviews
Expert interviews are a key convention of documentaries as it allows people being filmed to speak
directly about the subject. Interviews were conducted with experts to give various fact and options
related to the legalisation of cannabis. However our interviews may be put across as being bias – only
showing one side of the argument. A convention we followed was the use of text outlining who the
interviewee was and what there role was.


SOUND
Throughout our documentary we used both non-diegetic and diegetic sound. Non-diegetic sound was
used throughout the documentary this was shown through the non-copyright piece of music and also
the sound effects recorded of the telephone message. However diegetic sound is present when the
interviews are taking place as the sound is onscreen.

MISE-EN-SCENE
Mise-en-scene was an element we had to consider when filming our footage particularly our interviews.
We had to ensure the lighting of the footage was of a balance so the subject was clear, we had to make
sure the setting was appropriate. An example of this is through our voxpops (background of smoking
sign) and also the expert interviews – background of ‘liberal democrats..’ on screen behind Mike
Pattinson. Also we filmed people with props such as cigarettes, lighters, grinders etc, this helped to set
the scene of the clip.


Voxpops
Another typical convention similar to interviews are voxpops – voice of people. We asked various
people around college ensuring we gathered a range of open ended questions, it was important that
we considered the shot type and framing. Medium close ups were the most frequent shot types that
were used throughout, we also added text with a freeze frame enabling the audience to read the
question.


Scrolling text
One of the amendments we made was adding text
to our achieve footage. Therefore we added a text
which scrolled down the footage – either over the
existing footage or just a plain black background.
Both worked extremely well as it engaged the
reader in what the footage was showing.


The majority of documentaries contains exposition
at the beginning whereby it introduces the
important themes of the documentary. However
our documentary challenged this form of
convention as we used a picture of an error
message and then it suddenly went onto a voice
recording of ‘talk to frank’ whilst footage was
shown of the talk to frank website.

In other documentaries the voiceover often states
what the documentary is called and what the
documentary was about. In my opinion our
opening sequence was very successful as it was
interesting and engaged the reader.

Images relating to
subject
Headline
Fact file

Caption
image Pull Quote
anchored
by text

Byline

Page
Numbers
Rule of
thirds

How effective is the combination of your main product
and ancillary texts?
After completing the three tasks the question we had to ask ourselves was whether they all attracted our
target audience and whether our article and radio trailer promote our documentary.

In my opinion I feel the tasks all interrelate extremely effectively through the use of images, voiceover music
and captions. Firstly the article features various aspects of the documentary – images of cannabis, pull quote
from the documentary etc. This therefore engages the audience in finding out more about the
documentary, furthermore this leads the audience to read the fact file which gives brief but precise information
about the documentary. Therefore if someone is just flicking through the radio times and they come across
our article if they just look at the images but not the text they can find out more from the fact file.

In addition to our article the radio trailer features the same copyright music however the voiceover has
changed to a girl this gives the documentary variation. We created a montage of voices which layered over
eachother at the start of the radio trailer this worked effectively as similar to the start of the documentary it
gave the trailer individuality and creativity.

Our documentary mainly featured our target audience 17-25 year olds, however the only difference was the
expert interviews. The positive of using people that fall under our target audience is the audience can relate
themselves to the individuals in the documentary.

Both the article and radio trailer work in favour in promoting our documentary.

How effective is the combination of your main product
and ancillary texts?

IMPROVEMENTS
After assessing all of our media text I feel that we could of improved the way in which our article and
documentary related. Therefore instead of using new images we could of used images which was
featured throughout our documentary – this would create a stronger brand identity.

BRAND IDENTITY
Brand identity is an extremely important element of our documentary as it is important that our brand
identity is clear so consumers can easily perceive our brand.

Therefore in order to ensure that our brand identity was always met we used the same sorts of
image, texts and clips for all 3 media products. Our title ‘Why Shouldn’t We’ was constantly used as
this rhetorical question was extremely catchy and after a point was made through our documentary
the audience could re address the title asking themselves ‘Why Shouldn’t We.’

What have you learnt from audience feedback?

After completing our documentary, we carried out field research by handing out 20 questionnaires
to our target audience in order to find our their thoughts and opinions on our three media tasks.


We asked our audience which feature they thought worked the strongest in our documentary. The
most popular answer was the opening sequence, this supports my own opinion as I think this was
the strongest part of the documentary – as it shows actuality.

As music and the voiceover had the lowest value these may need to be improved – therefore we
could ask open question to our target audience to find out how to improve.

What do you think the strongest
feature of our documentary was?

Voxpops
4 4
Voiceover
2 2 Opening Sequence

Music
8
Interviews


I feel this question is important as it gives us feedback on whether or not our trailer attracted our
target audience. Our results show that 13 people rated our trailer 9/10 for attracting our target
audience. Therefore this suggests that by varying shot types, framing, mise-en-scene etc we have
engaged our audience and completed our aim and purpose.

Out of 10 how suitable do you think our trailer is for our
target audience (17-25 year olds)

High
9
8
7
Rating

6
5
4
3
2
Low

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
No. of participants


Similarly this question reflected the audiences thoughts about our double spread article – this was a
general overview. 8 people out of 20 rated out double page spread 7 out of 10, even though 8 people
rated higher than 7, this suggests there is room for improvement.

What are your first impressions of
our article out of 10?
High
9
8
7
Rating

6
5
4
3
2
Low

0 2 4 6 8 10
No. of participants

How did you use media technologies in the construction
and research, planning and evaluation stages?

HARDWARE
FOCUS WHITE BALANCE
Each lesson we were The focus button was a bit Before recording, George set
given a different tripod of a pain when recording up the white balance on the
this was sometimes a our footage as when video camera by getting a white
problem when zooming into the subject piece of paper and placing it in
adjusting, as some of the the object became out of front of the camera whilst
dials were different. For focus. In order to recording. This ensured that
example one had cog- overcome this problem the objects, which appear white
like dials, which were when zooming in we used in person, are rendered white in
harder to control than the manual focus to adjust it the footage.
pull mechanism used on so the image was clearer
many of the tripods. and sharper. If we were to
However as long as we improve this for the future
ensured the sprit level it would be interesting to
was correct the framing find a video camera with
would be in the correct auto-focus automatically
position built in this would save a
lot more time and make
the footage look far more
professional.


SOFTWARE

FINAL CUT PRO
Final cut pro is a video editing software which enables people to create their own
videos, there are many features of final cut pro which differ from other software
such as apple’s I Movie. At the start of the project I was unfamiliar with this program
and it took a lot of getting used to however I was able to develop my skills through
adding text, adding transitions, changing the speed of footage, adding a
voiceover/music and build up layers etc.

Firstly to open all of the footage which we
had taken we had to ‘Log and Transfer’.
This is shown in both of the images (right).
File > Log and Transfer, then to browse the
files to find the video format (.mov) files.


Final Cut Pro - overview Viewer Preview

.mov files

Layer -
Footage

Layer -
Sound


TEXT
The arrows represent different
Input of features that relate to text. The
text text shown was used over the
top of our voxpops. We
changed the font and colour to
suit the background so it stood
out and used a suitable size so
it didn’t take up to much of the
frame.
Font
Size of font

Colour of
font


TRANSITIONSIn order to create a flow
for our clips from one to another we
used a variety of transitions. Firstly we
went to the effects tab and were able to
browse the available transitions into
categories.Cross dissolve is the default
therefore this was our favorite and the
most popular throughout our
documentary. We found that the
transitions that were in bold could be
played into real-time without rendering.
ORGANISATIONWe organised the clips in logical order to Finally we dragged transitions to the
help us manage and find our assets easily into folders. By edit point ensuring that there were extra
choosing ‘new bin’ from our project tab in the browsing frames each side of the edit point.
window, this meant that we could drag an item into each bin
sorting them into subjects and topics.
TRIMMING After resembling the clips into order we trimmed
the clips to try and make the 5 minute mark. We clicked on
each clip and used the shortcuts 'I (input)' and 'O (output)'.
'I' being at the start of the cut and 'O' being where the clip cross dissolve
needed to finish. The eraser tool or the scissor tool both effect
enabled us to cut the clip. We then put the clips onto the
timeline, repeating these stages for each of our clips.


RENDER
Once we moved or edited a
SOUND LEVELS piece of footage we had to
Below is an image of how to edit the render it – Sequence >
sound levels, this allowed us to change Render All > Video. This
the pitch, speed and length of the enabled the footage to work
particular clip. once being played back.


GARAGE BAND
Garage band is a program specific to apple, which allows
people to create their own music through adding existing
sounds and sounds which are defaulted to the program
itself.

EDITING
Below is an image of how I split a piece of footage so that it allowed me to cut a section out. Edit
> Split, I then deleted the section I no longer wanted.

media eval 2

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