Sunday, 12 December 2010

Saturday, 11 December 2010

Evaluation

Evaluation

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?












These screen grabs from our documentary and a profesional documentary of The 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster shows how I have kept to the codes and conventions as the Interviewee here is looking directly at the interviewer and not at the camera. Framing on our interviews was very important and we followed the rule of thirds as the interviewee's eye lines is a 1/3 of the way down the shot.

Here you can see that the Mise-en scene is very important in explaining what the interviewee is talking about and it realates so that the audience have more knowledge of the topic. For example Dave a learner driver we interviewed, had L plates ontop of eachother as the background and here I have compared it to an professional documentary interview and the mise en scene relates to what the interviewee is talking about.



The graphics used in the interviews were simple, they told the audience who the person being interviewed was, and how they were relevant to the documentary.We collated alot of research before making our documentary to find out what people wanted to see. We asked the question what’s your favourite colour? And a greater part of people said they wanted blue so the graphics needed to be blue, to get our target audience interested and not be bored.

is examples of print adverts and I have compared them both to see any differences in professional work and ours. The title,date and the time it is on is in the bottem left hand corner as seen in both images. The channel 4 logo is in the centre right hand side of the print advert this is shown on both images again, therefore shows how we have conformed to the normal codes and conventions of real media products.





My Radio advert, has a music bed aswell as other real media documentaries, this is showing how that It is conforming with the rules of a radio advert.


Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Q3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?






Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?


In the planning of our documentary 'Emergency Stop' we decided to use alot of different technologies, for example Archive footage, cut aways and vox pops. This will make the documentary less boring and make it more enjoyable to watch. When we interviewed people ad filmed our vox pops we decided to ask people questions like 'what is your favourite colour?' As well as questions about driving which will then help us decide on the colour we will use for our titles.


After all the planning for our documentary had been done we then needed to get some research that was relevant to driving, the research also needed to be up to date and include statistics to make our documentary more realistic.



After we had done our research and found relevant information we then we chose to get different pictures we could use in our documentary, for example pictures of old and new cars this way we could use them for our opening titles as shown below.



We then started to edit our documentary and by doing this we had to look out for information and archive footage on the news that would help us keep our documentary modern and original. The footage had to be interesting so that our target audience would actually want to watch it and not get bored. For our archive footage we decided to use Top Gear because this programme is modern and up to date therefore people can relate to our documentary, also as this is already a TV programme so we know that people enjoy watching it. Here is a link where we got our archive footage from www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer

We also decided to use footage from the film Final Destination 3 within our documentary because this film is a modern film therefore the audience will be interested. We stuck with the idea of using modern up to date footage because the programmes and footage will still be fresh in our audience's minds. Whilst editing our documentary Emergency Stop, we worked on a range of different things like aligning different interviews so that the framing would look more professional.


Also we worked on putting a background onto a Bluescreen we used for an interview as shown below.When we where using Premier Pro we were able to watch two different clips this ment we could cut down and work on two different clips at the same time, therefore we could see if we could use a different clip as cut aways or footage that could be placed over our voiceover.


We also used a cutting tool which we could use to cut out anything we didn't want to put into our documentary.Once had edited our documentary we started to work on our print advert doing this we opened Photoshop and decided on using a ripped red learner plate as our main focus image because this relates to learner drivers and to our target audience however will also reach a bigger audience than just learner drivers. After we had chose our image for the main focus of our poster we then added a coloured background to it just to see what it would look like.

The next thing we did was to add the Channel 4 logo onto our poster this shows what channel our documentary would be on for the viewers. Originally we wanted to use the colour blue on our poster because this was the favourite colour our target audience chose however we then changed our minds to red because this stands out alot more and pulls the viewers in, also people relate the word 'STOP' to the colour red hence the name of our documentary 'Emergency Stop'.








Thursday, 9 December 2010

Codes and conventions in filming and editing documentaries (AS Task)

I watched two documentaries, "In the Teeth of Jaws" and "The Simpson's 20th Anniversary Special''

In both documentaries I noticed many things that are done the same and some that are done differently.

The similarities are:

The background to the people is either plain or relevant such as in the Jaws documentary it has a shark's mouth and in Simpsons’ it's either Simpson's merch or where the person works as shown with the people from Southpark.
The person being interviewed always looks at the interviewer and not into the camera. Also say they're looking to the left, the space is too the left (looking space), this looks very professional. During cuts between people it normally shows something relevant information either graphs, animations, pictures or videos. In the Simpson's documentary it shows an animation of trophies falling from the top of the screen to show how many awards it has used, this is a very good technique as it engages the viewer.





When the person being interviewed changes from person to person the name and reason they're on the screen is shown. For example "Name - Writer 1993 - current." this does not happen if the person has a minor role such as member of the public being asked a question. Both interviews don't just ask questions, they show certain details, for example in the Jaws one it shows how the shark is made. In the Simpson's one it shows how far fans go with tattoos and merchandise. With the subject of mobile phones this will be easy to use most of the population of people have one or have had one or even no someone who does have a mobile phone.

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

Plan (AS Task)

  • Wicked cafe, ask people in there like our interview room.
  • Make it MTVish like funny angles, and to interview a funny person to make it entertaining.
  • At the beginning have shots of people on there phones with a background song e.g telephone/lady gaga or Banana phone.
  • At the beginning have shots of people on their phones with a voice/talking doing an introduction about mobile phones.
  • Shoot someone walking down a street and then fast-forward it to see actually how many people you had walked past that where on their phones.

Tuesday, 7 December 2010

Filming (AS Task)

We used Canon XM2 for filming and we filmed onto DV tapes, this has a advantage which is that it is cheap and it can hold alot of footage however this has the disadvatage of audible noise being recodred of the tape being wound. We used a tripod to reduce hand movements and shakes from the person holding the camera this means that the video will be usable.

For the cut away shots we handheld the camera, this doesn't matter because the scenes are short. Also it gave better flexability for pans, as controlling the camera while panning with a tripod is difficult.

While filming for better sound quaility we should have used the microphones we have access too, but the microphone is sutable for the shots we used because the people were close enough to hear thier voices well enough.

Monday, 6 December 2010

Editing Process (AS Task)

Our editing process started off by capturing the orginal video from the DV tapes, using Adobe Premiere Pro and then editing it using Premiere.
To do this we dragged the created AVI into the timeline and using the razor tool to cut the video up into sections, we then were able to delete the clips we where not going to use, for example the questions.Also we used alot of cross dissolves on clipsto give a sort of edge/mtvish feel to the documentary. The time line is also used for audio, such as music.

The editing process for the documentary was very different to the thriller process, as there was less extreme edits, as the end product needed to be informational.




This screen shot shows the edits we used, simple cuts from section to section, from Question to cut-away to Question.


















We as a group also decided to use basic text over the video as this would not detract from the film.

Sunday, 5 December 2010

Evaluation and uploaded documentary (AS Task)

In our documentary there are things I liked and things I disliked for example some of the things I liked where the background music we chose, I think it fitted very well with the whole idea of our documentary. However I think the music could have faded in with the clips a little bit better as it just cuts off instead of the voume just being lowerd so that you can still hear the peoplebeing interviewed over the background music. So that is one thing I would change if I where to do this project again.

I like how one of the interviewees plays her Beyonce ringtone and both start to dance to it because this shows the funny side to ur documentary that we where trying to get across to the audience. Also the cut aways we used I think works well because they where not too long and the pans we used looked professional and works well with the music.Instead of jump cuts we used cross dissolves on the start and beggining of each clip to make it more 'mtvish'.

On the other hand I think that we could have had a better ending to our documentary as it just cuts to black and the music just cuts out, I think If we where to do this again I would have the music fading out and also mayby the last clip fades out also. I woud use the mics we where given access to because this would have given us better sound quality.