This document summarizes feedback from an audience questionnaire about a student documentary. Key findings include: - Most respondents rated the documentary 4 or 5 out of 5, showing they enjoyed it and thought it was good quality. - Camera shots were generally rated as "good" or higher, though some felt shots could have been steadier at times. - Mise-en-scene for interviews was deemed "professional" or "very professional" by most. - Sound quality was rated as "professional" or higher by the majority. - Everyone agreed the upbeat background music was the right choice and worked well. - Sound levels were deemed "appropriate" or "very appropriate" by most

1. A2 media documentary
evaluation
Becky wagstaff

2. Our target audience
We decided that our target audience
would be 16-40 year olds, both male
and females.
We made this decision because we felt
that this was the age range which apple
products were most popular amongst We also wanted
and also for footage for our documentary to explore the
we would be around college and getting idea that Apple
opinions from college students and gadgets had now
teachers so we felt this would be the become a fashion
average age range of the people in our accessory, we felt
documentary so it would therefore this target
interest people of similar ages. audience were
the main people
that saw it as this.

3. We kept an upbeat tempo
We did interviews and vox throughout or
pops with those that were documentary with fast
of a similar age to our straight cuts, up beat
target audience. Helping music and interesting
our target audience relate footage, suiting our young
to the documentary. target audience.
we chose to air our
documentary on BBC
Three, a channel that is
popular among our target
audience with other similar
documentaries being aired
on there.

4. Question 1
In what ways does our media
product, use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions real media products?

5. Research into a
professional
documentary
To gain a better understanding of the typical
codes and conventions of professional
documentaries, we did research into a
polemical, American documentary:
“supersize me” it had the purpose of
informing and to entertain, a similar purpose
to that we had in mind.
We felt that research into this documentary
would give us good knowledge of the codes
and conventions of documentaries so we
could then include them in our own
documentary and improve the professional
quality of our own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHKCb0_2oD0

6. Documentary

7. ‘Supersize me’ made a lot of use of vox
Supersize
pops and formal interviews. This showed us
me
some good examples of how these should
be set up effectively and professionally.
We found that
Our documentary formal, professional
interviews were often set up
in their place of work such as
an office and they were
introduced with titles and
introductory footage of them
using the computer for
example. This would then
make the point they are trying
to inform the audience
with, more believable and
trustworthy. We wanted to
show that we had contacted
people with good, trustworthy
knowledge for our
documentary so we then
continued this convention into
Next to apple macs to our own documentary.
show they use
products, have Professional mise-en scene to suit the
knowledge. person & title banners. Medium close up
shots

8. Supersize me
Vox pops vox pops
Our vox pops
We found that vox pops were
set up on the streets near
McDonalds or the area they
were from to show the sort
We got some establishing of person they
shots of around college to set were, therefore we thought
the scene of the vox pops. it’d be suitable to set our vox
pops up around college, we
set them up near lockers and
infront of college signs and
posters to show where they
were and add
interest, appealing to our
audience.
Establishing shots to introduce vox pops

9. Our documentary Editing Supersize me
Regarding editing, we noticed
that “Supersize me” made use of
transitions to make the
documentary flow better, making
it more professional looking. Also
to add interest and emphasize
significance of some scenes.
We therefore used the fade to
black transition (also used in
supersize me) to emphasize our
important scene about iPods as
we wanted to emphasize the
effect of the advert song we had
included to make it stand out
and make the point about iPods.

10. We found that Supersize me used fast pace straight cuts in its
opening sequence and for the background footage when the voiceover
was on. This was an effective technique that we chose to continue into
our own documentary in order to keep the audiences attention and
make it more appealing, informative and the audience would take it
more seriously, we found that if shots were left on the screen for a
long time, the audience would lose interest.
You can see above that we used fast straight cuts in our opening
sequence and throughout our vox pops that were making a point.

11. Background music
We chose to use an up beat
tempo piece of music for our
background music. We kept this
continually playing throughout the
documentary at a suitable level so you
could hear it throughout but also clearly
hear the interviews etc. We had to alter
sound levels and dim the music to a
lower level at certain points (as you can
see right) for example when we played
the iPod advert, we turned the music
off.
As we were only creating the first 5 mins of a documentary, we felt
it was essential to include a backing track to build up the
excitement towards the documentary.

12. Voiceover
A professional convention we noticed
in a lot of documentaries was a
voiceover. “Supersize me” had an on
screen narrator as well as him being
used as a voiceover.
We felt that for our documentary it
wasn’t necessary to use an on- Our voiceover was clear and easy
to understand, at a suitable
screen narrator as it wasn’t just decibel level so that it could be
expressing one persons opinion or heard clearly throughout the
one persons investigation, it was documentary. We wrote an
more of a general public opinion so appropriate script for the
we made us of a voiceover that voiceover to explain each part of
narrated our documentary and the documentary. We found that
explained everything. the voiceover completed the
documentary and made it much
more interesting.

13. Radio trailer

14. We did research into some BBC radio trailers as
we had decided the channel for our
documentary would be BBC three already. We
did research into formula 1 radio trailers and
wildlife documentary radio trailers which had
the same aim as ours, to promote their
programmes and encourage people to watch
it.

15. We found that they used quotes and sound effects from
their documentary in the radio trailers to add interest
and build up suspense for what the documentary is all
about.
We chose to use the same background music from our
documentary in our radio trailer and also include some
catchy, memorable quotes from our documentary to
show how interesting it was and what it was all
about, we wanted to give them a quick taster. The
music built up the excitement well and represented the
documentary well as it was the same background
music used, so it gave it that brand identity, it’s
memorable.

16. Another technique i found interesting that they
used was a voiceover that introduced the
documentary and about it and they also gave
quotes from newspapers that had given
comments about the documentary, giving it
credit and making it sound more appealing
and something everyone wants to watch. We
used the same person to do the voiceover as
we had used for the documentary.

17. Our magazine

18. Apple Banner to attract Columned Black and
logo, recognizable, attention and interview. Q+A white
stands out emphasize channel style. colour
and time scheme to
keep with
large brand
headline identity
title and apple
logo colour
scheme
Large main
image
More
images/factfile

19. You can see from this professional magazine article that our magazine article has followed
some of the same codes and conventions, however in this one they have used conventions
that we now realise we could have improved on such as adding a third colour into the
colour scheme(red) to make it more striking and interesting and also more images. By
analyzing magazine articles such as these, it allowed us to create a magazine article that
looked professional and helped us understand the typical codes and conventions.

20. Question 2
How effective is the combination of your main
product and ancillary texts

21. Brand identity
• We
We did our best to create a clear brand identity between our 3
products, keeping consistency between them all so that our documentary
was memorable to the audience, clear, attractive and appealing.

22. We used the same background music in both our documentary and radio
trailer to continue the up beat effect, this kept some continuity between the
two products.
We used quotes from the documentary interviews and vox pops in the radio
trailer to give them a taster of what the documentary is all about, this shows
we have continued some of the aspects of the documentary, some interesting
quotes, in our radio trailer.
We chose to air our radio trailer on BBC Radio 1, which has a similar
audience to that of the channel of our documentary; BBC Three. Choosing to
air our products within BBC keeps consistency and keeps aiming it at our
target audience.
We used the same person to record the voiceover as we used for the
documentary, this kept the same tone for both our documentary and radio
trailer. The audience will recognise this voice from our radio trailer to our
documentary.

23. You can see that we included a large image from
our documentary as the main image of our
magazine. I think that if we had the chance to do
the magazine article again I would make the main
centre image more appealing and interesting but
this image is consistent from our documentary as
it shows part of it.
We made sure we included the Apple logo that was significant and
stood out so that as soon as the audience looked at the article, just this
image and the large bold title “The Apple Takeover” would make the
audience aware of what it was all about.
We used quotes in our magazine article from our documentary to tell them all
about it, a similar technique we had used in our radio trailer to keep consistency.
We consistently mentioned the date time and channel in our radio trailer and magazine
article to emphasize when it is on and make it memorable for the audience.

24. Our radio trailer and magazine article successfully promoted our documentary,
I think that our magazine successfully promotes our documentary, it has
a clear black and white layout which is striking and attractive and goes
with the Apple logo (black and white) theme.
The article also clearly states the date time and channel of the
documentary, emphasizing this throughout the magazine and radio
trailer will make it more memorable for the audience.
The radio trailer is catchy, upbeat and memorable, with our upbeat
memorable music from our documentary, it gives it that brand
identity and gives a good atmosphere and expectations to our
documentary. We used catchy quotes and I came up with the idea of
using quotes from newspapers regarding our documentary to show
that it had been tried and tested already and trustworthy sources
liked it.

25. Question 4
What did we learn from our audience feedback?

26. Questionnaire
We chose to construct a questionnaire in order to gain
audience feedback regarding our documentary. We felt
this was a good way of getting feedback because it
allowed us to ask the questions we wanted, it was
straight to the point and gained us a lot of data to
analyse.
We tried to make the questionnaire easy for the audience
to complete, asking closed questions with options for
answers so that they could fill it in easily whilst
watching it, we also asked a few open questions to get
some more wide range feedback.

27. How would you rate our documentary
on a scale of 1 – 5? (5 being the best)
scale
00
3 This was one of the questions we
5 1 asked in our questionnaire, we were
2 really pleased with the response we
got as the majority of people (18
3
people out of 26) rated us highly with
4 “4 out of 5” and 5 people rated it at
5 the best of “5 out of 5”. This shows
people must have enjoyed our
18 documentary and thought it was of
good quality.

28. How effective and professional do you
think our camera shots are?
Series 1
Amount of peopleitle
20 We wanted to find out if our camera shots
15 and angles were suitable for our
10 documentary and whether they were of a
5 good quality.
0 0 2 18 6
0 We used a range of shots, from over the
very poor okay good very shoulder, high angle, establishing, mid long
How effective and professionalgood
poor etc. All for varied effects and to improve the
professional quality of the documentary.
We were really pleased with the response as
again the majority rated them as “good”. To
try and get this response up to majority “very
good” I think we could have made our shots
more steady at certain points as at some
points during our background footage, the
camera was a bit shaky and not always
steady.

29. For vox pops and professional
interviews do you think the mise en
scene is appropriate?
Column1
For our interviews we did our best to
not very
Not very
set up an interesting mise en scene
appropriate for the person being
professional interviewed. We did this so that in the
professiona
interviews the professional opinions
l
would be proven as reliable and
very
very
believable.
We were again pleased with the
overall response with 16 people
answering “professional” and 9 people
answering “very” we reached the
upper end of being the best at
this, judging from this feedback, so I
think we achieved our aims for the
mise en scene.

30. Do you think the sound quality was of
a professional standard?
Series 1 Sound quality was a majorly important
16 aspect of the documentary for us because
14 it was essential for them to be able to
12 understand and hear it clearly in order to
understand the main message.
10
8 You can see from our feedback that again
6 we achieved high end feedback with most
4 people saying it was of a
2 professional/very professional quality.
0
I think that some people may have
Not very professional very chosen “not very” because the voiceover
was at times a little too loud and our
interview with Richard wasn’t very loud.

31. We selected an upbeat, electronic
choice of background music. Do you
think that this was the right
decision, did it work well?
Series 1
30
25 Everyone answered this
question “yes” therefore
20 agreeing with our choice of
music. This shows we made
the right decision and it must
15
have created a good
atmosphere for the
10
documentary and suited the
subject.
5
0
yes
yes no
no

32. Were the changes in the sound levels
appropriate throughout the
documentary?
With this question, again we got
positive feedback with the majority
not very
Not very
of people answering “appropriate”
or “very” I think this was because
appropriate kept to certain decibel levels
appropriate
we
very
very throughout so it had consistency
and we turned it down at the
correct points. I think at some
points the voiceover and backing
track could have been turned down
a little more and the iPod advert
may have been a little too loud but I
think overall it was of a good
standard.

33. How informative and helpful did you
think our vox pops and interviews
were on a scale of 1-5? (5being the
best)
1st Qtr
1 We were pleased to find that we again
2nd Qtr achieved average to really good feedback
2
on this, it shows that the formal
3rd Qtr
3
interviews we had managed to arrange
4th Qtr were effective and useful for our
4
5 documentary and the audience found
these interesting. The vox pops opinions
clearly also played an important part of
achieving the documentaries aims of
informing the audience.

34. Did you find our voiceover clear and
easy to understand?
Sales
Our voiceover was rated really well in
our audience feedback with 19 people
rating it as “very” clear and easy to
1st very
Not Qtr understand.
2nd Qtr
satisfactory
We felt it was important to make sure
3rd Qtr
very
our voiceover was of good quality
because it had a big impact on our
documentary. We made sure our
voiceover was clear and spoken at a
steady pace so the audience could
understand it and take it in.

35. Do you think the editing and
transitions of footage were
14 appropriate?
12
10 Although we didn’t use much
editing or transitions, those
8
that we did use obviously had a
6 good effect and were
4 appropriate to the
2 documentary without taking
0 the serious tone away. I think
Not very appropriate very that we used the fades, straight
Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 fast cuts and fade to blacks in
the appropriate places, and
clearly so do our audience.

36. Name two facts you’ve taken from our
documentary
“iPods are the most popular gadget”
“Macs designed with creativity”
“Apple sales have boomed over the last few
years”
“Apple has a key brand identity”
We were pleased to see that the audience took away new knowledge with them
and remembered facts from our documentary, this question allowed us to see if
we had achieved our aims of informing the audience all about Apple as a brand
and company and we were pleased to see we achieved this.

37. Magazine feedback

38. What do you think of the colour
scheme that we used on our double
page spread?
8
7 The modal response to this answer was
6 “good”. We chose a black and white
5 colour scheme to go along with the black
4 and white Apple logo colour scheme. We
3 thought this was effective and striking
2 but I think we could have made it even
1 more striking if we had included one
0 more other bright vibrant colour to add
excellent good poor interest and emphasize certain points.
Category 1 Category 2 Category 3

39. Did the article persuade you to watch
the documentary?
Sales
Our magazine article clearly achieved
its purpose and our aims to promote
the documentary and persuade people
to watch it. All of our audience
1st Qtr
yes answered “yes” saying it did persuade
2nd Qtr them to watch it. This was the desired
no
effect so we were really pleased.

40. Do you like the idea of one main image
or would you prefer a number of
images?
From this feedback we can
understand where we could have
improved on our documentary.
1 main image We can see that our audience
would have preferred lots of
number of images instead of one main image.
images
I think that we could have made
our main image more exciting and
striking and added more images
throughout the article.
Our original plan was to have a
collage of Apple products as the
main image but unfortunately this
didn’t work

41. To what extent would you say our
double page spread follows the codes
and conventions of a real media
product?
Everyone rated our double page
spread as being either good or
excellent excellent at following the codes
good and conventions of a real media
product.
poor
This shows the article appeals to
the audience as professional and
that they would take the article
seriously.

42. What would you change in order to
improve our double page spread?
“more images” “more colour”
“change the main image”
From this open question we got the feedback we hoped to get: some improvements
we could make. I agree with the feedback and think that if we could improve it
we would change the main image to a more striking one that was interesting
and appealing and also include more images and add interest. With this simple
but striking black and white colour scheme i think it is important to include
other images. Also, they said more colour, we could have added one more
vibrant colour as most professional magazine articles stick to 3 colours for their
colour scheme rather than two.

43. Radio trailer
For the radio trailer feedback we did a focus group. We found
that by doing this we got open feedback of a wide range.
In the group we established that the radio trailer was
“interesting and memorable” “the music was good and got
your attention” “it built up excitement and anticipation for
the documentary” and “it would persuade people to watch
the documentary”. They also liked that we had used
newspaper quotes, they thought this was “a good effect, it
makes you want to watch it more”
The feedback we got was mainly positive which we were
really pleased about however they did say that we could
have used more interesting quotes to improve it.

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

45. Internet for research
The internet was a useful tool in doing all of
our research for the documentary, it
allowed us to watch other documentaries
and radio trailers on websites such as 4OD
and BBC iPlayer.
It also allowed us to do research into
Apple, exploring the Apple website and
other websites allowed us to get a lot of
facts and statistics for our documentary

46. Video camera
We used “canon hg” video cameras
provided at college to get footage
for our documentary. We used a
tripod to support it in getting a
steady shot and to allow us to get
pans and tilts steadily. I was not
used to using video cameras prior
to this but soon got used to it. We
had to understand
contrast/composition and focus of
shots on the camera in order to
get the best quality shots. Having
a camera of a good quality like
this, we realised was essential in
creating a good documentary of a
good standard.

47. Video camera
We had to input the microphone
and headphones into the
camera, we made sure that we
tested whether sound levels
were appropriate before
recording or setting out as it
saved a lot of time so that we
could get our footage and
sound perfect first time.
After recording we had to upload
our footage onto the Apple
Macs via USB. This was quick
and efficient, the Macs were
really useful as they did
everything efficiently. We then
stored our footage in
appropriate folders, labelled
and dated so that it was easy
to find when we wanted it.

48. Microphone
We used the microphones to
record our sound for interviews
and most importantly our
voiceover. We learnt that the
microphone was to be held at a
good position, not too close to
the person and definitely not in
windy weather conditions, in
order to get the best sound
quality.

49. Final cut express
Final cut express was probably the most
important tool that we used in the making of
our documentary, it was essential that we
understood how to use it properly in order to
create a brilliant documentary.

50. Final cut express
We began by logging and
transferring all of our
footage, sorting out
what we would use and
what we wouldn’t and
labelling it all, ready to
be put into our library of
footage that would be
ready for us to edit and
put onto the timeline at
a further stage

51. Final cut express
Select tool
• Once we then had all this The toolbar used to
footage we could begin a cut/select and
new project and start change sound
cutting, editing and arranging levels.
our footage onto the
timeline. Cut tool
• We soon picked up easily
how to do this and got used pen tool to
to doing it. We used the change sound
range of tools available on levels
the software: transitions
(fades, fade to blacks)
cuts, the pen tool to change
sound levels etc.

52. Final cut express
• Overall it was a vital tool and once we got used to using
it, we used it effectively and efficiently to create a
documentary of a professional standard with
appropriate, good edits and transitions.
• Although it took us a while to get used to, we picked it
up and really enjoyed using it because it had a really
creative aspect and we had to be precise and take care
over each thing we did. The programme had loads of
really useful tools to help you out such as the timeline
with timings on and the side toolbar, ready to be
used, instead of going into file, edit, etc.

53. In design
We used in design to make our
double page spread, we were used
to using this programme from last
years work, so we understood
how to add text and images
effectively, and edit it
appropriately and effectively. I
think this was a good program to
do this on because it allowed us to
edit it in all the ways we wanted
to, such as edit the text effectively
etc.

54. Microsoft word
We used this to create our
questionnaires, it is a tool we
are all very familiar with so it
was really easy to type up and
print out our questionnaires
quickly and efficiently, ready to
get our feedback.

55. PowerPoint
I used PowerPoint to do my
evaluation because i think it’s
an effective way of displaying
my work with a more visual
aspect because everything
about the documentary and
creating it is visual and
PowerPoint allowed me to
demonstrate this well.

56. Blogger
we used blogspot to keep track of our
progress and everything we had
done, this was a really useful tool
because it allowed us to show
everything, such as include images
and links etc. And we could see it
all together visually rather than on
loads of paper. It also saved the
environment by not printing
everything off, we could edit it all
and see it all online.