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.