Kirsty Dunn A2 Media: December 2010

This is our final Documentary piece which we have been working on for a few weeks

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our documentary used many conventions throughout. For example We have interviews which is a typical convention for a documentary. Our title sequence used a good code and convention as we used graphics. The music also represents a convention as it directly links back to the topic and the documentary each time. The interviews are also a good convention as they are important for a mixed documentary

These imagess are showing examples of print adverts which have been done by channel 4. These images were found on the website http://www.4creative.co.uk/ These images clearly helped me when it came to making a print advert. This is because it shows exactly what one is supposed to be like and they are professional ones which have been shown on television. This helped our group very much and helped is get ideas for our own print advert. This helped us to discover what the codes and conventions for a print advert were and what we need to do for a channel 4 advert

We new we needed to use a simple photo with a simple background to get the point across. Also we new we had to use a slogan and then channel 4 logo in the right hand bottom corner and the correct writing should be on the left hand side too.

This was our final piece as it follows the codes and conventions of a print advert. We made sure that the image was not too complicated and that it was simple and related well to the topic. We used the colour red as it shows contrast and in our target audience questions it was picked as the most favourtite. We placed the slogan in the correct position and had the correct writing on the advert, for example: the time, date, title, channel and website.

We tried to research radio adverts however there is not many products of this we could find on the internet but we needed to see what would look good and what the codes and conventions are fot it. This video below is a prime example of a good radio advert for a documentary.

This one is a great example of what helped us make a good documentary and radio advert as it relates to what we were making. It has all the codes and conventions of what a radio advert should be like. for example it was a voiceover, voxpops, music and many other conventions. This is also a documentary made on channel 4 so it relates well.

Our radio advert managed to be thirty seconds long which is the average for a nromal radio advert.

This is how we edited the advert:

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

It is very effective because we have used the same titles for everything. We have also used the same voiceover for the documentary and the trailer This shows a direct link in our documentary. We have also used the same slogan throughout in both promotional texts. We used one image for our print advert which clearly illustrates the topic and the theme of our programme. This all reflects in our texts as they all relate together and all use the same things. It works well as we tried our best to make it as professional as a real media product should be.

This video is a recording of my voice explaing how my three products combine together and how they all reflect eachother and reflect to the topic.

Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

Julia said: Your print advert looks professional as the codes and conventions work very well. The background is simple and the contrast of white to red looks good. The photo you used relates well to the topic and it makes me interested to watch it. The only thing is the writing could be made larger.

Joe said: I really like your print advert as it looks like something you would see on television. This is because you have the channel 4 logo and all the correct details in the correct place.

This clearly indicates positive feedback for our print advert. We decided to keep the background white as this was one of the codes and conventions of the channel 4 print adverts.We also chose the shopping bag as it was related to our topic of fashion and this has been noticed in the audience feedback, and the Channel 4 Logo was placed in the same place to the Channel4 Print adverts that we looked at. In our questionaire from a few weeks ago, our audience choice red as their favourtite this shows on the audience feedback . From the negative feedback this could be easily changed by editing.

We realised that most of the comments were positive which made us feel better about our documentary. We had positive feedback on the archive footage which we chose very carefully so it related to all the interviews. The feedback on the interviews were not as good as the voxpop feedback but this helped us to learn from the mistakes we had made. Another piece of feedback was about the voiceover, to solve this we would of just asked the person who did our voiceover to speak more slowly and more clearly. we chose not to have music running in the background constantly as this is not a code and convention of documentaries. We also gathered from the feedback that the title sequence needed to be changed. This is due to short time of filimg and the lighting of the room etc as it did not look professional.

RADIO FEEDBACK

Julia said: Your radio advert is brilliant. It makes me want to watch it and the music and all the voxpops fit well. It sounds like a real radio advert and the most of the sound is good apart from at one part is sounds not completely right.

Ryan said: The sound on your radio advert does not sound that good if I am honest and I hardly listen to the radio so I probably would not know when it was on. I like the music though which is being played on the advert and it does sound realisitc. I liked how you used the same voice in the radio advert and the documentary

The feedback we had was not as postitve as the rest as the people state that the music levels were different in a certain section. We could easily fix this by using sound fx on adobe premier when editing. We got some good feedback about adding clips from our documentary into the radio advert and making it relate very well. From our feedback we knew that people were interested in the documentary and new exactly what it was going to be about. We also used the voiceover in the documentary and as well as the radio advert which people found effective.

Adam said: Overall your documetary looks professional. The music relates well and most of your interveiws are done well excpect one where your camera is not in the right place. The mice en scene in the background is done well as it relates well to the topic. Your archive footage was chosen well. The voiceover is good but the voice is to fast and could be slowed down a bit.

The feeback overall was pretty positive as most people liked everything over all and it made us feel confidence about our products we had produced.

Question 4:

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

We used the internet to research the topic and to get information to help us with our documentary, radio advert and print advert. To find extracts from documentaries which we analysed. We looked at many sites such as fashion sites to help us with our documentary. We also watched many programmes to understand the fashion industry more such as, Goks fashion fix and Top shop fashion week etc. This helped us to understand what people thought about fashion and what facts to put into our documentary

These websites helped as a lot as it gave us a great amount of information for our fashion documentary.

We also used the topshop site as it shown us the latest fashion today and helped us when we researched kate moss and her fashion range. We also looked at topshop as it is one of the populations best fashion stores and our target audience choice this as there favourtite

We used the search engine google most of the time as it is the best way to research topics. It found us facts about fashion we never knew and helped us make a good and professional documentary

As we went into further research we gained the confidence to find a local boutique shop nearby to ask for our first interview. They said yes so this was our first filmed interview at Ibizaar In stockton Heath near priestley college. This shop was a good choice for our documentary

We interviewed many different types of small boutiques when we visited Manchester city centre and went to Afflecks palace. The reason we chose this shop is because it has a wide range of different stalls and styles and it is very interesting to the public eye.

At the start of the research we used WORD and EXCEL to conduct data and to do the running order and the questionaire etc.

We used the DV camera to capture our interviews, cutaways and openign titles and all the voxpops. We used the tripod to make sure the camera was the right height for the person whether they are tall or small.

We used the microphone to listen to in the interview to make sure the sound was correct and sounds professional,

We also used a digital still camera to take still images as we recorded filiming and the editing process

We created our documentary using Adobe Premier. This was to edit all our footage. We used this for basic cutting, transitions, effects, graphics and adjusting the sound levels to make it sound professional This programme was easy to use after getting a hang of it/ It was very time consuming but after a while it gave us confidence when we started to see our documentary was almost completed,

We also added in some simple graphics such as titles for the names and jobs of the interviewees.

We also added title pages and edited the text and size and colour etc.

For the Radio advert we did the exact same but to make the sound good quality we made sure there was no distortion in the sound and all clips are of an equal level. To do this we had to Click on the clip, audio fx, and then delete any of the distortion, and alter sound levels.

We then used photoshop for the print advert. We took our own photo and put it onto photoshop and carefully edited it to make it look like a professional print advert. We got the text from http://www.dafont.com/, and copy and pasted it on to the page on PhotoShop. This was so the writing would look good and stand out. We then added colour and kept the background white as it shows a contrast in the red colour we chosen for the the writing etc.

We then used the radio studio for the radio advert and to record the voiceover and the radio trailer

We also used a mobile phone at some points to record the editing process for the inclusion on the blog.

To complete the evaluation i used the site http://www.blogger.com/ to upload all my work on the documentary, radio and print advert. I also used WORD to write up some of the work before i put it onto the site. I also used google to get the images shown in my evaluation and used the channel 4 website for other images shown above.

We used the channel 4 logo from the internet as it would make the print advert look as real as possible.

Our plan was to use the voiceover for the radio advert as well.

This was our final radio advert.
Script for Radio Trailer

-00.00 - 00.02 'I have a Passion for Fashion' Clip

- 00.03- 00.06 Vox Pops - What have you bought today?

-00.07- 00.12 Voice Over

-00.13 -00.25 - Clips from interviews and voxpops

-00.26-00.30 - Voice over - Ident, time and date, slogan.

-00.30-00.32 fade music out.

Lady Gaga - Fashion playing over the top throughout. We shall place our radio advert on large city radio stations at main commuting times from 8-10am, lunchtime, and 3-6, as this is when our target audience often listen to the radio,commuting to work or school etc.

Codes and Conventions of a print advert

Usually one image which is simple but relevant to the topic
Ident at the bottom right of the image
Titles at the bottom left of the image
Simple graphics used to inform the audience but not go into too much detail
Limited amount of colour used
Limited amount of text

All these codes and conventions of a print advert are the factors that need to be considered when creating a print advert. By including these things in my print advert, it will ensure that the audience will know the theme of my documentary, whilst at the same time telling them the information they need to know, this including the channel of the programme the documentary will be featured and the time and date.

These images shown below are examples of print adverts. This is supporting the codes and conventions showing evidence of the different features needed and a guideline for what i need to consider when creating the one for my own documentary.

When planning the ideas for our print advert, we brainstormed different themes that we could use to do with fashion. Our ideas were as such: Titles of shops, people shopping, clothing items etc. Our final idea was going to be simle. We used red writing and a white background with a person holding a large shopping bag. On the shopping bag is the title of our documentary, we beleieve this is effective as it gets straight to the put of what the documentary is going to be about.