Evaluation

In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of real media products?

Our media product did use and develop conventions of a typical media product. At a technical level, it followed different conventions such a continuity and other forms of editing. During filming on location we would try to keep lighting in the shots we are filming constant by white balancing the camera before we filmed, so it would flow better and give a professional look to the film. During the interview with the councillor, we kept the camera around the same place to observe the 180 degree rule. If we didn't do that, the interview would look disjointed and would look poor. When people have been interviewed, especially on the news, all the cameras are in a certain part of the room so it wouldn't confuse the view on where people are on screen. When the narrator started talking about the main buildings, we would establish it with a long shot of the building we are talking about, reinforced with a voice over stating the main facts about the building. Certain documentaries on buildings would start from a long shot of the building as a whole, and work it's way around the building whilst the voice over would give you facts about the building. They would also pan around to show you more of the building. We incorporated pans in our product to establish the shot and give surprise to what is going to be in next in that shot. We would also have the narration giving facts about the building and not just stating what people would be able to see. This is common in most documentaries as people don't want to be told what they can see, they want extra information that they can take in.

We observed the 180 and the 30 degree rule in the interview

As we wanted our product to be in a Channel 4 documentary style, we incorporated certain conventions such as an interview with a top person and stylish shots of the subject we were talking about. We didn't want to challenge the conventions as it would be very hard to make a good documentary without the basic genre conventions. We needed the product to portray a Channel 4 style as we would be making the product for Channel 4. Without that style it would look disjointed to the channel and wouldn't suit it at all. One way we reflected the style is to have a presenter hosting the show. This is a typical Channel 4 convention as shown in most documentaries which is in this nature. Whilst her voice is throughout the film with the voice over, she is also physically present in a few shots developing the scene. Also she is influential in making the interview work, her presence helps the viewer incorporate themselves with her wanting to know the information she is trying to get. We didn't want to present every shot physically as she would block the view of what we are trying to show, and also there wouldn't be any point of her being in every shot talking about the building. We felt it would be sensible to have her voice over the main set shots whilst when she introduces a different topic, we would have her physically there.

Main narrator/presenter in front of Gateway Plaza

The main aim of this product is to inform the viewer of the topic, by giving factual information about the topic, whilst also making it interesting with an interview of someone who is crucial to the topic. By doing this it would make the viewer understand more about the topic and make them aware of what's happening with that topic. The way we did this was to collect research about the topic so we could give the audience the fact and figures  about the topic. The interview also allowed us to gain more information from someone first hand which makes it more interesting and helps the audience understand the information more.

In the documentary I studied whilst researching this project, Extreme Engineering; Bridging the Bering Strait, there are a few techniques that I picked up and used in our film. One of the things we did in our film was to use extreme long shots to establish the buildings, like they did with the model of the bridge at the start of the documentary. Another thing that we took from that documentary was the way we interview people about the buildings. We allow them to talk a lot more with the focus more on them, then on the interviewee, which we have some shot to show that someone was there interviewing them. Our documentary can be compared to EE; BtBS as both of them are trying to give a message for improvement such like in our documentary, we are trying to show that the town is improving with the new structures that are developing here.

Clip from Extreme Engineering; Bridging The Bering Strait

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

With our series being about the regeneration of Yorkshire and the episode is specifically about Barnsley we wanted a poster and radio trailer which reflected this. It also had to the fit the Channel 4 conventions we were going to follow for our film.

We wanted our poster to reflect the content in our production, so as in the production we have pictures of the main buildings featuring in our production. This would show the person looking at the poster what they can expect to be in the production. With the title "Boom or Bust; Regeneration in a world of crisis and austerity, this design is basic as we wanted it to not confuse anyone with a lot of information on it. Also a poster with clutter wouldn't suit the Channel 4 style for a poster. We have all the conventions that a typical Channel 4 poster has such as the Channel 4 logo, font, text box and the writing style with the title having a tagline underneath it. The poster reflects the style of documentary we've made and the message we are trying to give out. It also gives out the essential information such as the time it's on and where they could get extra information to look it up further.

Main poster for the documentary

For the radio trailer, there isn't any Channel 4 conventions we could compare it to so we used the typical radio trailer/advert conventions from commercial radio. We made a 30 second trailer that was sharp and got to the point. The urban feel the music gives to the trailer makes it feel that what is the program is about is in an urban area. The voice over also helps to describe to what the program is on with a simple message which doesn't confuse and gets to the point. The urban music helps to create a tense atmosphere with the narration which attempts to make the product seems exciting and attractive to people.



Both of these ancillary texts do help to sell the production to the audience. Both help to explain the content of the production without overfilling the audience with too much information making it seem really unattractive to them. Both of them are clear and give out a sharp message on what the product is about. With the radio trailer, the script was the most essential part of it as it's the only way to give the message out. Because of this we have to make the script the seem attractive by using words that powerful to create more effect on the audience. This would have the greatest effect on the audience we are targeting as they can relate to this or even find this type of program interesting to them.  Our ancillary texts are effective on targeting the people we want targeting as it's clear that this program is aimed at them with out simplistic approach.

Our products poster does fit normal Channel 4 conventions besides the background which is a plain coloured background and not a picture that which fits across the page. This image is powerful because of it's size and the content it is showing on it. We moved away from this as firstly, we couldn't find a suitable to fit the background. Most of the pictures were taking in a landscape format and even though we could have also made the poster landscape, but we thought that this wouldn't look good for our product. I would personally go for both a landscape and portrait picture to have variation to our product. Secondly, we though we would try to have a more pictures of the buildings we were looking at our documentary so people would realise what they are going to see. The four pictures on the posters are the main buildings that we were planning to talk about in the documentary.

Poster I researched before the group made the main poster

Our radio trailer does follow conventions from most commerical radio trailer/advert. It has voice over that is effective and informative with music which suits the topic we are advertising. An example of this can be seen below.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Getting audience research for our project was an essential thing to see what the audience want and produce this in our product. We did this by producing a short questionnaire and asking people about it.






We learnt that most people we asked liked watching documentaries in the evening time, which we were going to do anyway. Another point that came out of this is that came out of the questionnaire is that people prefer and individual episode to a series of documentary. We considered this but as we are doing it on the regeneration of Yorkshire, we felt that a series would be better as we could focus on individual towns and not on main buildings in the whole of Yorkshire. We don't want to focus on the big cities and miss out the developments that are happening all across Yorkshire. We were planning to do an single episode just on the development on Barnsley but the product being displayed on Channel 4, it wouldn't be good enough just having that.

We aimed to keep this production as simple as possible but also giving as much information as we can without making the viewer bored. We did this by talking about the building in question and giving the main facts about it. We want to give as much information without overloading them and try to gain them knowledge about the situation which is happening in the documentary. We made sure that the script included the main and basic facts about all the buildings such as the amount it cost and it's purpose. We didn't want to go into detail which would be irrelevant to the program on hand such as the material they used to create the buildings. With the information we gave, we wanted to make the shots as interesting and relevant to the subject. We did this by showing the buildings from different angles using innovating shots and also telling a story about the development especially about the Barnsley College building. We also wanted to get the information right so we researched before, and also in the interview we selected a person who would know information about the project and knew the situation before the regeneration.

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

In the research of my project, my group and I use a few new media technologies to our advantage such as Apple Mac’s which with its speed loading websites up and safeness helped us to find the research for the project.  Another thing we used to find research for our product was the internet. With the vast amount of resources, the internet is a great source to find the right information such as, for our project, the details about each building, the people who were going to be featured in the documentary and how we should make the documentary. Even thought the internet is full of things which are irrelevant to our project, search engines such as Google and Bing helps us to find what we want to find without any hassle and we can use it to help us develop out film. We also asked people on their opinions by filming them using a Sony HDV1000 camera which had a DV tape which filmed the interview. We edited the interview with final cut and upload the research on Youtube which can be watched by anyone.  We collected the research and put it on the blog so we can show the research. We also can look back on it and use the research accordingly for our film.

In the planning stage we used some new technologies to help us plan our film. One was having a digital storyboard; which can help us with what shots that we are going to film in our documentary. This has been an aid as without it we wouldn’t know what shots would go where when we are editing. Another thing which was helpful was the shots of buildings we were going to film. This aided our planning as we could use those shots to see if the building would be good for our project, and also we can show it on our blog to show to people
which buildings we are going to talk about in out film.

In the construction of my film, my group and I used a range of new media technologies to help produce our film to the best quality we could make it. The first way we did that is to record the film with a Sony HDV1000 using a DV tape to record it. We used this camera/tape combination as it was the best that my college could give us. We wanted to film in the best quality we cold as the film would look good if it was. During filming we aimed to get the best picture quality out of it, so we manually white balanced before every shot. By doing this, we kept the colour constant so it didn’t jump around on in the film. Using a DV tape was a good think has we could have an hard copy of the thing we filmed and we also could use a DV tape player to upload it onto the Mac’s. Even though we could have recorded it on the camera, the amount of recording time we could have used on the tape makes that a better way of recording than just recording on the camera. We also used a Zoom recorder to record the voice over for our film. This is a good way of recording our voice over because we can try to record the voice over for film in the place which doesn’t echo such as someone’s bedroom or a little room in college.

Apple Mac and Sony HDV1000 we used this year

JVC handheld camcorder we used last year

We edited our film on Final Cut which is a great program for editing film as we can slice things to a suitable level and also we could add things to our film such as effects and our voice over to it. With Final Cut it’s a really precise editing program which works really well on the Mac’s. An example of what we did on Final Cut is when we created a time lapse of a building we filmed. We did that by speeding up the clip of the building to a point that it looked good and worked for us with the voice over.  We used Youtube to add our completed film to show to everyone. Youtube is a good site for adding videos, as there are people who might not watch it on some other medium because they might not have a television or might not like watching it on television, but they have the internet and would rather watch it on there.  I also used Photoshop to create a poster for our film. Photoshop is a great image editing software, as there are many things you could do to a poster such as putting effects, such as blending pictures to make it look better, on the poster which other image editing software aren’t able to do that. We also use the Zoom recorder to record the radio trailer and we edited the radio trailer on Garage band. Using Garage band, we got to edit the trailer together and include some music in it. We blended the two together by decreasing the volume on the music and increased volume on the voice over.

Shot from Handheld

Shot using the Sony HDV1000

In the evaluation stage, we used new media technologies to evaluate our film and see what we could improve in our film. The way we could get this is from feedback from people by filming them using a Sony HDV1000 with a DV tape and editing that on Final Cut and uploading it onto Youtube. We also created a questionnaire online using sites that we could create free questionnaire and sending them over social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr which are effective ways of getting people opinions on our film.

Critical Evaluation

In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms or conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses many conventions of real media products. At a technical level, it includes many different conventions of continuity editing and other types of edit style. During the interview with the local councilor, it was very important that we stuck to the 180 degree rule to establish each character's position in the room and to maintain a smooth and professional atmosphere to the product. When we used pan shots, we would usually pan left to right, as it makes a smoother and easier shot because we read left to right. As most of our product involves shots with a narrative voice over, it was very crucial that we ensured that the narration elaborated on what could be seen in the shot and to not just point out the obvious. We also needed to do this to make sure we could all the information across which could not be portrayed by visual camera shots. Each time we moved to a different location, we usually began with an extreme long shot of the location to establish the scene. It was important that we did this otherwise the viewer wouldn't be aware of location changes and become confused with the whole documentary.

As we decided that our product would be in the style of a Channel 4 documentary, we needed to reflect the conventions of the genre. If we challenged the conventions too much, it would not suit the Channel 4 style and wouldn't reflect our initial aims. The content of the product needed to reflect the conventions of a Channel 4 documentary as much as the editing does. We used a variety of different shots and edits to fit the conventions, but the most obvious ways we reflect the conventions of the genre is through the use of an interview and the use of a presenter. Although the presenter provides a narrative throughout the production, she only actually appears in the interview and a small number of shots. We decided to do this because it meant we could fulfil the convention of having a presenter on location for some shots and give a character for the viewer to relate to, whilst also being able to have a huge range of shots without the presenter blocking part of the view. The fact that most of the shots were accompanied by a voice over meant that it was easier to film buildings and landscapes without worrying about positioning the presenter, but still being able to provide information to the viewer.

The main aim of our product was to provide the audience with information on the regarded topic, whilst also providing entertainment, which would generally come from the information put across as people's interest in a topic entertains them. It was a simple task to do this. All the information we needed could be acquired from research and we managed to provide the audience with a range of facts, figures, details and even explanations on the topic our product covered. Also, the use of an interview with an expert on the topic meant that more detailed and elaborate information that we couldn't find through research could be provided. 

Our production follows many of the conventions of documentaries that I found when researching and analysing real media texts.  Firstly, the use of extreme long shots as establishing shots is a common convention and very important for the genre of documentary we produced.

Another way in which our production shares conventions with real media texts is through the use of different types of narration. Like many documentaries including The Building Inspector Is Coming, our production uses a mixture of an on screen presenter and voice over narration. However, there is a slight difference in use of presenter, as The Building Inspector Is Coming follows a presenter round as he performs his job at the same time, whereas our production has fewer shots with the presenter, who is just documenting on the topic and not actually performing a job at the same time.

 

A third way in which our production shares conventions with other documentaries is through the use of interviews. Interviews are extremely important in providing an expert or professional to provide more information for the viewer. Almost every documentary will include an interview, making it a very  important convention for our production.

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

We wanted our production to be an informative documentary about regeneration, with the episode being specifically about Barnsley. We also wanted it to fit the Channel 4 conventions. Our poster and radio trailer had to fit both of these as well.

We decided that our poster should have to include photos of some of the buildings documented in our production, as it would blatantly display the topic of the production. The simple design of four modern buildings next to the title "Boom or Bust: Regeneration in a world of crisis and austerity" quickly informs the viewer on the content of the product. The simple design also let us apply the conventions of a Channel 4 production poster, most notably the C4 font, the colour scheme, text boxes and Channel 4 logo. I think that the poster is very representative of the content of the documentary, the style of documentary and the message we are trying to portray. The poster shows that the film is about the regeneration of towns and cities, it shows that it is a Channel 4 production and shows the date and time it starts - which is everything the poster needed to do.
(Left: our poster. Below: our radio advert.)


Just like the poster needed to fit the conventions of a Channel 4 documentary about regeneration, so did the radio trailer. We used a short trailer that got to the point, similarly to the simple design of our poster. The quiet electronic music gives an urban feel to the advert, whilst the voice over starts to describe the content of the product. The trailer uses a simple format to give the listeners the crucial information as quickly and easily as possible. The use of tense yet calming music with the seriousness of the narration builds up atmosphere and portrays the product as exciting and entertaining, making it more likely for listeners to watch the documentary.
The two ancillary texts very effective in selling the production. They both show exactly what the production is about and give it a serious and exciting atmosphere. If the radio advert was a voice over with no music, explaining the construction of a building in great detail, it would be unclear to the listener and sound boring and unappealing. However, we carefully picked our words to make the script give the production some more excitement. Our target audience was people specifically interested in the topic, living in an area covered in the series or generally a fan of Channel 4 productions. Our poster and radio advert clearly show the content of the production and that it's a Channel 4 production, so we are clearly targeting our audience properly.

Our poster fits most of the conventions for a Channel 4 documentary poster, such as the logo, text and layout. However, when it comes to imagery, most Channel 4 posters use one powerful image, which makes up the whole poster. We deviated from this convention slightly, using four smaller images down the left hand side. We did this for a number of reasons. Firstly, one image powerful enough to show the topic of the product was not available to us, so we used a variety of smaller and less powerful images to show a variety of different buildings. Secondly, we wanted to play on the black/white contrast and show the C4 logo boldly on the right and using a larger image would decrease the contrast between the colours of the logo and background. Finally, a photo relevant to the topic of the production would be difficult to take because it would generally be a building or a cityscape, which would not fit a simple portrait A4 poster. For all these reasons, we found it more appropriate to deviate a little and use four images.

As you can see when comparing our poster with the Channel 4 poster to the right, apart from the slight imagery layout difference, our poster followed the important conventions that define the identity of a Channel 4 poster. Similar things can be said about our radio trailer. Most of the radio adverts I researched, like the one below, included a voice over narration with some relevant music in the background. We produced our radio advert to be more or less the same thing but relevant to the topic of our film.



What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience research was an important step for us during the planning stage. We needed to find out whether our chosen topic was thought to be interesting enough and whether our decided target audience was the right one. We made a short questionnaire which we asked to a range of people.


We discovered that most people watch documentaries in the evening, which was what we had planned anyway. We also discovered that people prefer an individual episode to a series, however, we decided that creating a series would spread our target audience if we were to cover different towns and cities in different episodes, as the most likely people to watch the show would be people from in or around the area, so the more areas we do, the more potential viewers we have. We also thought that an individual episode about regeneration in Barnsley was an unlikely topic for a Channel 4 show and decided that regeneration of a larger area would be a more likely and appealing topic.

As the aim of our production was to provide information and entertainment, we thought the best thing to do would be to keep it informative but not in such a heavy context. The information needed to be understandable to the viewers, and if it was too complex, no-one would understand the production. To ensure this, throughout the whole production we constantly made sure that when we were documenting the regeneration of a building, we would provide enough information for the viewer to gain a good knowledge and understanding of the topic, but not be overwhelmed by complex information. We made sure the script contained things like building size, purpose, cost, time etc rather than more complex issues such as physics or complex information about the structure. To go with the moderate information, we had to make sure we had a variety of creative and innovative shots, which is why the use of both an on screen presenter and voice over narration worked well, as we could use a mixture of extreme long shots, close ups, zooms and pans. We also used interviews to make sure accurate information was included, and the use of a professional gives people a more positive and trusting attitude towards the production.

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

During the process of researching, planning and producing our documentary, we used a wide variety of different media technologies to ensure the best outcome. Throughout the whole process the use of the internet was extremely important. First, we created the blog, where we would post all work towards creating our documentary. We used the internet – Youtube in particular – to research different styles documentaries to help us decide what style use for our project. We then researched similar documentaries and analysed one. This helped us quickly and easily discover the conventions of a documentary and what we would need to include in ours. It helped us understand what kind of shots we would need, what content and how it would be presented. We also used the internet to research the chosen topic of our production, where we found a range of different construction plans for Barnsley which we then used in our interview with a councillor. Similarly to when we researched similar documentaries, we also used the internet to research posters and discovered several websites and PDF files with lots of information on the conventions of Channel 4 posters which helped as we needed our poster design to be in the Channel 4 style. The final thing we used the internet for was researching radio adverts. Youtube allowed me to quickly and easily learn the main conventions of radio trailers within minutes. Without the internet, this research would have been a lot harder as we would have had to go through several books and watch the documentaries on TV or DVD.

 

During the planning stage, we took a large range of location photos with a digital camera and then uploaded them onto an Apple Mac to then upload onto the blog. The use of the camera allowed us to present the different buildings and locations we had looked at to include in our film. The use of the Apple Mac was very important, as it's the machine we've used throughout the media course to use the internet, edit footage and audio, create posters etc. Every stage of this production has used the Apple Mac and so it played a very crucial role in making this production possible.

We used a Sony HDV1000 to film. It produced good quality footage that was easy to set up and capture. We recorded onto tape and then used a device to upload footage onto the Apple Mac. The HDV1000 was very useful as the sound recording quality and the image quality were much higher than on the smaller hand held camera we were required to use during our AS media production.

 shot from AS production with handheld camera

shot from Boom or Bust with HDV1000

To edit our footage, we used software called Final Cut Pro. The software was relatively easy to learn how to use and has made edited and producing our documentary a whole lot easier. We've been able to put all the shots in the right order, accompany narration when needed and even put in effects between certain shots for a smoother transition. Without this software or software like this, our production would just be different unedited shots on a camera tape. Another piece of software we used was Adobe Photoshop. We used this to create our poster ideas and then eventually design our final poster. It was very simple and easy to use, allowing us to make a presentable poster that truly represents our documentary. Without this software, we would have to either hand draw posters or use inefficient software like Paint, which isn't supposed to be used for professional designing. 

 

These technologies allowed me to maximise the potential of creativity within the whole production and without them the whole process of producing our documentary would have been a lot harder if even possible. They allowed us to find out what we needed to do and how we would do it, then actually produce the documentary.

 

Boom or Bust Critical Evaluation

Evaluation.

In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and convection's of real media products?

Many convection's that we used in our project are universal to all documentaries, as I have found out from my research. During the production of our documentary ,we tried to observe a number of the convection's, that we had found in other documentary examples. Such as ones from the national geographic, & BBC.

The one obvious convection that struck me immediately  was the use of narration in the documentaries. Much of the information is tied into the images being shown, for example in the documentary I analysed, we are told that the Burj Dubai is the largest building in the world ,and then shown footage of the building to reinforce this.

We ,in our documentary, have tried to meet these similar convection's. An example that stands out is the filming of the mining statue and explaining  that Barnsley's is trying to move away from its mining past to the future.

One of the many visual convection's that we used was the time lapse. The time lapse is seen in the many documentaries that we have analysed, especially shown to illustrate the speed up of events, such as a building being built ,or a flower growing, an example of this is in the documentary about  the building of the Burj Dubai that I have analysed ,where we are shown sped up shots of its construction.

We have included time lapses also in our production to show the constriction of Barnsley college. A time lapse is useful in a short production such as ours, as it can fill a short space with many frames.

An image from Boom or Bust of  the time lapse.

Time lapse can especially relate to documentaries like ours ,about redevelopment, and  also the one I have analysed  as part of the project.  The overall  purpose of our documentary is to show some of the redevelopment changes in the area ,and these are seen in real time by the audience.

A major part of the documentaries that we analysed ,related to how the information was given to the audience. In the documentaries most of the factual  information is  given though narration with the aid of images. This helps the audience link what they are seeing ,and what they are hearing together. It  allows the audience to be educated ,and displays the information in a simple format ,that is easy to take in and learn about. We in our  project have also stuck to these convection's ,and give the audience the information through an enjoyable format. Another way we have provided enjoyment for our audience ,whilst still attempting to put across the factual information, is to include interviews in the production .Many similar documentaries use this format to give their information to the audience. By including interviews in the production it allows us to give the personal views ,along with educated answers and responses from individuals actually associated with our subject matter. Thereby giving an experienced view on the subject, to give the production some credibility.

The documentary i analysed contained many interviews with professionals

 

Also during the filming of the interview we used a number of different shot types at different angles to give another perspective to the viewer. We edited these shots together to give  a professional interview effect shown in many news programs and documentaries.  The examples here of the interview with Mike Stokes show the different shots used for the interview.

These different shots gave a different angle to the viewer using the 30°rule. Also throughout the filming of the documentary we never broke the 180° rule not wanting to disorientate the viewer illustrated here in this diagram.

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

The ancillary texts express and contemplate our main production. One of the major parts outside our main production was the advertising, most notably the use of radio trailers and posters.
 In the same way as our documentary, we wanted the radio and posters to show the changes in building and development happening in Barnsley. For example, in the posters we created  we all used similar or the same photographs of the recent developments taking place in Barnsley. This was so the  viewer of the poster knew  what they would see on screen,  but it was also useful  to show local people the site locations that we had filmed at when making the documentary. 
You will also notice that the text in the posters does not take centre stage. Instead it is sidelined by the photographs. This was used first for simplicity ,and to make the poster easier on the eye of the viewer, but also to be more appealing.
   By including only the information that was needed for the audience, such as the name of the documentary, and the time that it is shown. It informs the audience and  entices them to discover more about the documentary ,hopefully by encouraging them to watch it.
Before creating our  posters we viewed many different examples and analysed some of their convections further in-depth. Many of the posters  from channel 4 where very similar in both style, layout and text .
Many of these ideas were then implemented into the creation of our posters. In many of the channel 4 posters I viewed, the image mainly dominated the page, with the text and logo much smaller, only providing the information needed like the poster I analysed, which is shown here.

This layout gave inspiration to my poster, along with the posters of other members of the group. The C4 style guide was also helpful when creating our posters, as it gave information on the font, layout and colour used in channel 4 advertising. I got many of the ideas for my poster from this guide ,but it was also helpful for other members of the group.

When creating our final poster we used many different ideas from each member of the group. Each poster that we created had many different designs ,and so when  creating our final choice, we picked the best ideas of each .For example the font in one poster, or the colour of another.

We  finally settled on this design for the final poster which is mainly an amalgamation of my design and Sam's shown below.








My poster










Sam's Poster






Another advertising product that we used was the radio trailer. When creating the radio trailer we linked it as much as possible to our main product. One of the ways that we established this link is to make the music in the radio trailer the same as that in the documentary. The radio trailer was also quite short, and so gave the audience the information that they needed straight away. The information was also provided in a clear format so the audience could hear what was been said ,without background noise that is present in many other radio trailers I've listen to. an example of this is shown here

Much like our posters, the radio trailer  provided  enough information necessary to inform the audience about the subject matter, whilst encouraging them to watch the documentary. Our radio trailer is shown below


What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience research was one of our most important considerations when making Boom or Bust.
Before starting the project, it was important for us to establish  that our idea for a documentary about the redevelopments taking place in Barnsley and South Yorkshire, would be of importance to the local community, and to our target audience of  15+.
This was to ensure that if the documentary was produced.
1. There would be an interest in the topic material .
2.That we could change the content of the documentary if necessary to appeal to a wider audience to make it a success.
In our audience research we asked  a range of six questions , covering areas from how regularly documentaries are watched, to what time you watch them, and if you would be interested in watching a documentary about the regeneration of Barnsley.
We asked these questions to a wide group of  five different people who fit into our target audience in hope of  giving us a better understanding on what  type of documentaries are the most watched ,and how people prefer to watch them. A link to the audience research that took place when planning the documentary is found here.

Once the filming of the project had started ,we made sure that what we had learnt  from the audience research  had not gone to waste.
Many of our audience said that they did not watch documentary's for fun ,but rather to be educated  more than entertained.  We took this information on board , and when interviewing people a number said that they would be  interested in learning more about redevelopment in the Barnsley area , so we made sure that the documentary included many interesting facts about the redevelopments.

Also interviewing important people in  Barnsley, such as councillor Mike Stokes who could give us a professional view on the developments that where happening , on the state of  local economy  in Barnsley, and if these developments are likely to continue.
We also tried to make sure that the audience was as involved as possible when watching the documentary. Trying to educate the audience, but also trying to entertain. When first making our documentary we where going to use narration over what we have filmed to tell the audience about the individual buildings in detail ,much like content in the documentary's we had watched and analysed. However we did not want to distance the audience too much, so we added a presenter to give the feeling that you are being taken on a journey around the developments happening in Barnsley.

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

In each of the stages of the making the Documentary we used technologies to great effect ,and would have been lost without the help of new media technologies, such as camera equipment and media programs.
In the early stages of the product ,many of the technologies that we used did not require a high technical skill ,and were basic software technology. We used many when planning are previous project.

In a notable example, the internet ,which we used for research into different products/documentaries is an example of this. You Tube which I used to search for similar documentaries and programs, such as Barnsley a portrait of a town and its people
I also found  many notable examples from the BBC archives an example been Park Hill Estate Sheffield Regeneration - Video Link   ,and the The Chinese Are Coming a BBC documentary that I found on YouTube.I found  these useful, for showing me many of the convection's ,such as narration, and how they are used in a professional documentary.  Youtube also allowed for me to find many different radio trailers from which I could quickly learn about the convections of radio trailers and when making our own trailer know what  would have to be included. 

 Youtube was very useful thought the duration of the production

The internet was also useful for finding research on  local developments in the area, from one that had recently been completed ,to others that had  already been developed ,and also what future developments where happening in Barnsley. .

 This research was crucial to the development of our ideas, and in turn to that of the project.

Without a significant amount of pre-planning it is unlikely that we would have know what subject matter  we where going to base the documentary on ,and we would not have come up with the title boom or bust without  knowing the fate of many of the redevelopment project in Barnsley.

The internet also allowed us to research Channel 4’s documentary style.

Posters and designs,  from the very useful C4 style guide ,gave a lot of inspiration for our own posters, drawing on ideas featured in this guide.

One other specific part of the internet that we used regularly through  the planning stages, right up to the end of the production’s completion was Blogger. The Blog proved very useful ,not only in the planning and research stages, but also the construction stages. The most useful aspect  of the Blog during the research stage, was being able to bring all of  our research together, this allowed us to share ideas between each other ,and compare our individual progress with the progress of  the other group members, and the group as a whole. The blog also helped, when adding the research we had found, as it gave us a medium to collect and combine our findings, and  an area where we could look back at previous research, during  future stages of development . Adding work onto the blog , allowed us to get easy access to it ,through the internet, this enabled us to work on the project outside our hours in college, at home, or when we had spare time. Another small part of the planning and research stages was digital photography this was only used on one task in particular ,which was taking the location photos for the project ,though these photos did prove useful in later stages.

During  the construction stages of the project ,one of the most obvious technologies we used was of course the camera. The Sony HDV 1000 with DV tape, though much larger than the small hand held cameras used in our first project was vastly superior ,not only in picture quality and sound ,but also mechanics. This allowed us a much sharper image that made the production seem all the more professional.

 A shot from our AS film in which we used a hand-held camera

A shot from Boom or Bust where we used Sony  HDV 1000

None of the group including myself had used the camera before ,this did create some problems when first using the camera ,as we were given no instruction on how to use it , and it took us as while before we could complete a simple task, such as white balance. This was mainly down to the different set up of the camera, most notably a touch screen. However, though these problems did cost us time, once we gained the hang of the camera it became all the more easier to use than previous equipment.

 The old hand held camera used in AS production

 Newer Sony HDV 1000 use in Boom or Bust

Another technology that was also new to us as a group ,was the editing software Final Cut which  we used for this production. This was superior to i Movie application we had used previously. This previous software seemed inadequate in comparison ,as what would have taken us a couple of hours to edit before ,now only took a couple of minutes .
So much so, that we wished we had made use of it in our previous project. Unfortunately we had never used this technology before so were not familiar with it ,though, we were given a walk through on how to use it . However getting used to using final cut was quite often a case of trail and error.

When recording the sound for the production  we mostly used the standard camera microphone however when needing to record in high quality examples been the Councillor interview, narration and presenting  the buildings we used a microphone and Zoom recording. Thought these where new technologies to us  that we had not used before we had not problems with them they where easy to used and we where told how to connect them to the camera the most difficult part about recording the sound was not the technology but getting some where quite to record. 

Another part in the construction of the project was making the poster for this we used the Photo shop program. Some of the group had used this before and others had not but we were all show how to use the software. Before creating the poster we all researched similar examples from Channel 4 and also used the C4 style guide as an influence for creating our posters. The style guide was most useful for many of the convection's the Channel 4 posters. Such as colour text  and the overall style of the C4 posters as a whole. The Photo shop program and images that we had taken as well as the C4 logo from the internet  allowed us to create professional looking posters that where similar to that of channel 4. Though we had no problem with Photo shop itself the uniqueness of the channel 4 text meant that it was impossible to use as it was not supported by any program. This meant  that we had to search for a similar text, use a different one or create are own text for the posters. I personally found a very similar text from research thought this was only a small problem.

Radio Trailer

Boom or Bust? Film

Evaluation

Evaluation

In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our product we used many conventions used in real media products, we also tried to challenge these conventions to create a familier but unique product. In the tec

hnical and editing stages we researched the conventions of continuity to apply them in our product; we looked at things such as 180 degree rule

and match on actions etc, and then applied them to our documentary, things such as the 180 degree rule especially is a very important convention that a

ll similar products to ours use as it looks more professional and all in all better.
The content of our product does reflect similar products that aim to do the same thing entertain and inform. Within the content of our documentary we followed similar products in the sense that we wanted to feature many different locations in our documentary to keep it exciting and fresh and make our documentary more accurate and more entertaining. One major content aspect that many similar products feature is a host and a voice over artist, a host helps smoothly link the subject matter together and add extra detail and is featured in most documentaries. Although we do not challenge the conventions of the genre often there are examples of it happening, for example in the content we tried to vary what is been shown on screen, things such as the images of the places we feature and various interviews. We tried to fulfil the nature of the genre as much as possible, this way people would know what they are getting and would be able to enjoy it. Through the nature of our project we felt that comedy aspects such as parody should be left out as it would not work in context and would look silly. The main outright audience pleasure we were gunning for is to inform and entertain; we had to strike the right balance between these two aspects. To keep it inform

ative we focused on fact based information but to keep it entertaining we sampled many different places. One real documentary that our product can be compared to is “The Story of India”. This documentary resembles ours in the sense that it is looking at a place (in this case a country) that has many problems and negative aspects but is ignoring that to highlight the best bits of the country and how beautiful it can be, in ours we are looking at Barnsley which has several negative connotations but we are looking at how it has changed and looking at how modernised it is compared to the past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APn07PS-5qc

How effective is the combination of your main prod

uct and the ancillary texts?

There were several things that we wanted to achieve in our main production but the main one was to create an interesting factual documentary about our local area. I think our overlying message was portrayed in our advertising products, for example the poster featured shots of Barnsley from the past and from the present and

were placed side by side to show a good effect of progression which we wanted to interest the audience to wonder what other differences there are between Barnsley of the past and the regenerated Barnsley of the present. We also wanted to entertain the audience so in the poster we tried to make it visually easy on the eye and appealing. I felt that my poster would make the reader want to know more and want to watch the documentary. One good thing about my post

er was the simplicity and the inform

ation given on the poster, it just gave out important information that would entice the viewer, things such as the title of the documentary and when it is to be premiered.
There are many things that our advertisement had in common with established and successful advertising products and shared some key features. When we researched similar posters we took note that literal 95% of posters we looked at had a common them and simplicity and relativity, each was quite basic and only featured the important information. Most posters we analysed featured either one large picture or several small pictures and where always used to excite the reader and preview the program.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback was an important part of our product becuase essentially it gave us an impartial look at what we could improve on and also helped us identify what sort of people would be interested in our documentary. At the very start of our planning we had a discussion to try and get a basic outline of what our audience would be, considering: Gender, Age, Sex and Location. Originally we thought that our product would appeal to a local audience aged between 18 and 40.
At the start of our planning we produced a very brief questionaire and gave it to many of our friends via print offs and also online on Facebook, a questionaire worked well for us because we wanted a sample of different people who each had different opinions that we could compare to get an idea of what people would find interesting. We also did several interviews with different people and asked them a variety of questions to find out what kind of aspects they enjoyed and if our documentary would interest them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfgizvOUt-o&feature=player_embedded

When we were editing we had to be careful not to ignore the audience research and instead take it on board. At the time of filming and editing we knew that we were making a documentary to inform and enteretain so we took steps to make sure our project fitted them two aspects, we tried to incorperate a lot of fact based information into our film to help it be both interesting and accurate, yet we had to balance this with trying to keep it entertaining and easy to watch, to help with the entertainment we tried to create a light hearted informal tone, we didn’t want it to be too aggressive in giving out facts as to not become tedious.

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

We used new media technologies throughout our project from the research at the start to the planning and then to the construction of our documentary. The main media technology that we used for every part of our project was the internet, we used the internet first to research several different things that would help us create our documentary, we looked at videos of several similar documentaries “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APn07PS-5qc” This meant that we could get information about several different documentaries and look at the key features that different type of documentaries used, without the internet this would have been a lengthy progress but instead was done very quickly which is a large advantage of using the internet in general.
At the start of the project when we knew we were doing a documentary it was important that we used a media technology to edit what we had captured, the editing software we used was final cut pro. We were using final cup pro to edit our video together using some of the features of the software such as fades between shots, and effects on the shots themselves, this media technology was simple to use and with a little bit of practise we created something to be proud of.
New media technology helped us a great deal when we were capturing our documentary. One aspect of media technology was what we captured the video with a “Sony Hdv 1000” digital camera, using this camera made it easy to capture video in good quality and then transfer onto a computer to be edited. The actually recording was recorded onto tape before being transferred onto a MAC to be edited.

Photoshop is a media technology that we used to create our poster for our documentary, it is a hard piece of software to get used to but offers good results if you can master it, I used it for my poster because if all the expansive customisation it offers.

When planning our documentary we used a smaller digital camera to take planning shots of the areas we planned on basing our documentary on, being able to access a different range of camera that differed in size helped our group because we could easily pick up a small camera and quickly establish what shots we wanted and then practise doing them. The main advantage of using the smaller cameras was just practising before using the bigger cameras.

Many modern day media technologies helped us get feedback and responses for documentary, for example I downloaded our documentary onto my iPod so I could portably show it to people in college along with my family. This media technology made it very easy for us to get accurate detailed feedback very quickly and then act on whatever people said was wrong or needed to improve. Along with this we uploaded our documentary to Facebook and YouTube, again to get feedback from it.