Media Evaluation - Richard Bedford

Evaluation By Richard Bedford

1.In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge codes and conventions of real media products?

I feel as though our documentary has followed the codes and conventions of real media products. For example our professional interviews are produced to show the mise on scene match the interviewees career (documentary subject). As well as this we have used the rule of thirds set up, which parts the shot into a grid of 9 squares allowing us to have a easy to do good looking lay out. Also having the person in the left hand side of the screen can show of more mise en scene in the right side. An example of this can been seen in our professional interviews Rule of thirds Interviewee is placed on the left hand side of screen The background matches his music career

In the planning stages of our documentary we watched the documentary super size me to take notes from ( Super Size Me Link ). We used and developed multiple codes and conventions. For example we have used animated background footage to show facts and figures as does supersize me.

In super size me Morgan Spurlock both narrates onscreen and off through his documentary. He does this as he is telling the story from his point of view onscreen and helps give us information off screen during facts, figures and other background footage. We only used a off screen narrator in our documentary as we where not telling a story, we where showing facts, figures and details of Facebook and its history. The reason Spurlock used both on and off screen narration in his documentary is because he is not just showing facts and figures about the fast food industry, but he is telling his own personal story about eating McDonalds for 30 days and what it is doing to him. By using on screen narration his story can engage the audience a lot more successfully. Voice over clips used over background footage.

As well as our documentary our magazine Article has also followed the code and conventions of real media products. Quote used from the article content to pull in readers attention. Small fact area to surprise readers into what they may not have known, making them want to find out more. Chosen radio magazine to use shown at bottom of page. Large image captured straight from documentary, shows people what they will be seeing. We used a highly informational professional interview to makes readers interested. Caption used at bottom of image to show what is happening. Content in article is a question and answer. Where we are shown to have been asked questions by a interviewer and our answers are put in underneath. Headline used at top of page Large realistic Facebook logo used as though it is part of the Facebook internet page. Date, time and what TV channel it is going to be shown on. Standfirst gives the readers a fast effective introduction into what the article is about making people want to read it. We have put our magazine content into nicely fitting easy to read columns. With not too much text. Image of animation from our Documentary showing facts and figures.

Quote used from the article content to pull in readers attention. Small information area Chosen radio magazine to use shown at bottom of page. Large image, shows people what they will be seeing. Caption used at bottom of image to show what is happening. Headline used at top of page They have put there magazine content into nicely fitting easy to read columns. With not too much text. Large images showing what the article is about Date, time and what TV channel it is going to be shown on. Standfirst gives the readers a fast effective introduction into what the article is about making people want to read it. This is a real Magazine Article and I have pointed out the same codes and convention I have used which are in this article. Large image used near headline like our Facebook logo

Using a Radio Trailer allows us to advertise our Documentary. We chose Radio 1 as it plays a lot of new trendy music which targets a age range of around 13 – 30 which matches the age range of our target audience exactly making it the perfect place to advertise. When planning and researching we found that nearly all the Radio trailers had used quotes from there Documentaries. Therefore we added three short quotes into out trailer to allow the audience a taste of the documentary. We kept all the levels the same and matched them with the music. The voice over was kept clear as in the documentary. Finally we included all the nesasery details in like the viewing time, date and what channel it was going to be on. Background music which drowns out at the end. We have used three quotes, two from a professional interview and one from a vox pop. Both are cut to make the documentary sound informational and interesting. Same narrator voice used as in the documentary.

Overall I am pleased with how we have managed to follow real media codes and conventions to suit our documentary and target audience, however at the same time change them to suit our documentary and target audience. Target Audience Our formal proposal outlines our target Audience as working class citizens at age13 – 30 years old, both genders. Mainly those who use social networking sites, but also the people around them, so that we could show them the effects it may be having on there relatives and/or friends. We have made the documentary easy to understand also so that people that don't use Facebook can even learn things from it and equip themselves with knowledge of to be careful when using social networking sites. Due to our target audience we chose BBC 3 to show are Documentary on as it shows both informational programmes and trendier shows, of whom our target aged individuals watch. We chose Radio Times as our magazine as it has a wide ranged audience. As we have quite a wide ranged target audience ourselves we though this would be great to have our article in. This pie chart shows the reason we chose our age rang. That it is because it shows that the largest age ranges of Facebook users are 13 – 17, 18 – 25 and 26 – 34. As our documentary is aimed at Facebook users we then put these together and used decided on the suitable range of 13 – 18 year olds.

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

I feel that that the main product and ancillary texts combine and come together extremely well with one another. As each can be easily related to one another through pictures, music, quotes etc. The Magazine and Documentary match the best with one another as the colour scheme of the magazine (Mast head, text colour, images, etc matches perfectly with the colour scheme of the Documentary (Titles screens, captions). The two images used in the Article once which can be easily remembered from the documentary.

There are very few faults in matching the products. The ones that stand out are that the voice over in the documentary is not as enthusiastic as it is in the actually documentary. As well as this there may be a little too much text in the article making it more of a task to read where people whom the documentary is aimed at don't have to read anything and just get told all the information. The same music and voice over has been used in the radio trailer as in the documentary to help piece them together. As well as this the quotes from the documentary have been chosen to be easily picked out of the documentary as once is a fact which We placed our columns of text out quite wide and spaced apart from each other this may also be a problem as it gives the effect as there is a lot of text therefore younger aged readers may not wish to read it all and just skip the page.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get feedback for are media products we created two simple questionnaires which are show below. Both have statements about the media products and along side these are rows which people can tick saying whether they strongly agree , agree, neutral, disagree or strongly disagree with the statement. We also gave them a few lines to say where we could improve our products at the bottom.

Radio Trailer and Article Feedback chart

The feedback I have gained shows that the majority of people agree that I have produced a good standard Documentary with certain improvements needed and two good ancillary texts. Over all my Documentary was rated the best product, then the article and the radio trailer was shown as the worst piece (however it was still given good feedback). The charts show that people thought that both my ancillary pieces related back to my main product, as they said the colour scheme was appropriate on my article and the music from the radio trailer matched the documentary. They stated that the documentary was interesting and would carry on watching it after the 5 minutes mark, which is good as similar aged people are generally seen as not to watch documentaries. Another thing shown is that nearly all the people who took the questionnaire said that they can related back to the topic which is pleasing as they all came under our are target audience. Feedback given from other individuals states: We chose a popular subject of which people have lots to talk about We had no obvious flaws The music chose fits the feel of subject The use of the face book colour titles effective and sets the mood We has good interviews People where able to learnt from the diagrams and the text from the documentary which was effective to the audience Use of vox pops was used effectively, using the face book logo on the computer

Conclusion If I where to go back and correct my Media products I would take all of the feedback into consideration and change certain aspects including possibly change the spacing of text in the Article and trying to cut it down; ensuring that the sound levels are correct and good through out the documentary; I would try to redo the voice over on the radio trailer so that it sound more enthusiastic at the same time as aiming to keep a serious side to the topic. Certain improvements where suggested in the questionnaires. These where that the sound levels in certain points of the Documentary where uneven; there was a bit too much text in our article (However I feel as though it just looked like there was because of how we spaced it out); there was a cough in the background of the radio trailers quote (we kept this in to make it sound realistic); that the radio trailer wasn't very enthusiastic; and finally that the documentary relied to much on computer graphics (we felt the need of this as our subject, Facebook, is all on the internet and apart from interviews and a few other shots there was not a lot of other footage to use).

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

Through out working on my media pieces I used a range of different technologies and software's from T.V and Radio to Final Cut Express. We had to learn how to use a lot of them and some we already new how to use. To start with before we even started the Documentary I had to get research and planning done. This was done by watching TV, listening to the radio for codes and conventions of real media products. I also used the internet sites YouTube , I player , E4 and other TV/Video streaming sites. These sites allowed me to access other peoples documentaries and other videos, which gives us ideas to add to our documentary, easily. Other sites such as Google and safari also helped in our research and planning.

To blog our projects we used blogger . This was a extremely helpful site as it allowed us to quickly and easily upload images and content, to add to our planning. Once uploaded we could easily find them as each post was saved into a simple Archive feature (done by date of entry) at the side of the page. Once we started filming the documentary we used a The Canon HD Video Camera which had many new features which we had to come to terms with and a tripod along side it so that we could have steady and well produced shots. We had to learn how to use by reading the booklet guide and watching the Camera and tripod guides.

We used a Apple I MAC to do nearly all of our research on and all of our editing on. Initially this was a challenge as my group and I didn't have a lot of practise with apple technology and software as we where all windows users. However once we came to grips with it we found that the apple software actually seemed easier and more suitable for editing projects such as ours. We used the software Final Cut Express when logging and transferring our shots, also when editing our Documentary and our Radio trailer. After we got all of our footage we had to log and transfer the footage we had chosen to use.

Log and Transfer This is where the details of the clip can be entered e.g. name This is the transfer queue area where the clips which are being added are shown This is the footage we filmed and are choosing from Here is where the footage is viewed and cut down This is the button used to add the chosen footage to the documentary

This is footage which has been logged and transferred and ready to add to the timeline once edited Final Cut Express This is where the footage which has been added to the timeline is viewed This bar shows sound levels This is the timeline where all the edited clips are put together along with music and voice over. Toolbar allows the manipulation of footage and clips This allows a preview of what the clip looks like, but can also show details of editing e.g. Speed and captions The top part is videos and images and the bottom part is sound and music

The scale of the clip can be adjusted here This is where text is entered when a caption is placed over a image This allows frames to be repositioned Rotation adjustments of clips Here is when the size of the font can be changed Font colour Other text manipulation settings Crop settings The speeds of clips can be sped up and down by simply typing in the speed percentage you want it to go at or the amount of time you want the clip to take. This came in extremely useful when there was a slight gap you could find out the size of the gap and enter this time into a clip to speed it up a slight bit so that there was no gap.

When creating our magazine article we used the software Photoshop. We used Photoshop over in design as we where used to Photoshop and felt as though we didn't need to use in design. This toolbar allows for a multitude of different actions which allow the manipulation of images including cropping, cutting, adding text, rubbing out and zooming in. This is the layers tab which allows you to switch between control of each layer of the image each layer being a new part of the image. This area includes navigation, for the page so that you can zoom in on a specific are etc., Paint and stamp tools. These tabs allow the change of colour, swatches and styles.

To create our radio trailer we once again used Final cut express. Are other choice was garage band, which would have given us a lot of nice features to use, however by using final cut express which we already new how to use we manage to create our entire radio trailer within one lesson with ease. As we had extra time we where able to tweak it to perfect sound levels. Other groups who used garage band seemed to take quite a while to create there radio trailer and seemed to have a lot of trouble. All we had to do was once again log and transfer are chosen clips; cut and edit them into our timeline level out the sound and we where done. We chose the same music as the documentary and simply cut it to the same size and left a small part on at the end so we could quieten it out

Media Evaluation - Richard Bedford

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