Post on 06-Apr-2018
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
1/15
Faye Shorrock
Advanced Media Evaluation
Adolesense: Bullying
The task we were set was to create the first 5 minutes of a documentary into a chosen subject, wewere also asked to carry out two ancillary tasks; a double page spread for a magazine and a radio
trail. We chose to base our project on Bullying as we feel this is a subject that is talked about a lot in
the media and a big issue getting worse in our country. We collected research into this subject, and
then planned out our documentary using storyboards. We then did all our filming and collected any
other secondary footage such as YouTube clips and photographs. To put our documentary together
we used Apple Mac computers. Using the programme final cut express we logged and transferred all
our footage and picked out the footage which was definitely going to be used. We then edited all
our footage and put our documentary together. For the ancillary task the double page spread we
used a normal PC as we thought it would be an easier computer to use InDesign on, as we had
already used this programme numerous times before this was not a hard task. The other ancillary
task of the Radio Trail was a little more complicated as we have never used recording devices beforewith the headphones and microphone and it proved difficult to get the sound level right on the
device. We then produced our radio trail on the Apple Mac using the programme Garage Band.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real
media products?
To make a documentary into Bullying using the correct conventions and make it as interesting to
the viewer as possible we analysed existing media documentaries such as Airline and Super-size Me.
Airline is a docusoap which means that it can leave viewers on a cliff-hanger for the next episode
or exaggerate peoples opinions for the sake of entertainment. The role of the documentary Airline
is to inform viewers of what happens in airports and the type of situations that staff their have todeal with. Most of the camera work in the documentary Airline is handheld, this is to give a more
realist feeling to the viewer, to show that it is real life situations. There are a few occasions of tripod
mounted camera shots, but these are mostly aesthetic shots to show pans of the airport, or a plane
taking off etc. The main shots used were medium close-ups to show the emotion of the airport
customers, and to further make the viewer seem involved. The documentary used a voiceover
narration instead of a presenter. The only other voices were them of the people in the airport and
the staff, no music was used in the documentary and the only music was the theme songs at the
start and end of the documentary.
In our own documentary the conventions that we took from watching Airline, were that we
decided that we would use a narrative voice over rather than a presenter. We made this decision
because we realised that during the filming stages, the narrator would have to be on screenconstantly, and more filming would have been needed to film gaps where the narrator would have
been speaking. We came to the conclusion that we would not have had enough time filming to
include this. We also took into consideration the conventions when setting up the shots that they
used when talking to people, on the most part when these occurred the shot was framed and the
interviewee was either to the left or the right of the shot.
Super-size Me is a direct cinematic documentary directed and presenter by Morgan Spurlock, the
aim of this documentary was to address and inform people of a serious issue that is affecting the
United States as a nation, it was to convey the point that the fast food industry is affecting peoples
health. Super-size Me is directed in performative mode meaning that the documentary maker
interacts with the subject. In Super-size Me Morgan Spurlock has decided to me an on screen
narrator of the documentary, this gives the documentary a more informal style, and helps him to
interact directly with the viewers. You can tell in this documentary that Morgan Spurlock has a
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
2/15
genuine interest in the subject and wants to actually make an impression, he also gives a lot of his
own personal opinions of the documentary. Super-size me uses a large range of different stylistic
elements to create a very aesthetically pleasing documentary including; graphics, animation,
photographs, drawings, text and secondary footage. The non-diegetic sound used in Morgan
Spurlocks documentary is that of a very upbeat tone, combining this with the fast editing, and
montage style of the footage it helps keep the viewer interested. Documentaries usually presentfactual information about the topic in Super-size Me with in the first few minutes facts are present
to inform the audience and to convey public opinion. Actuality is the term for real film footage of
real life events, places and people in Super-size Me the actuality occurs constantly, when he walks
into McDonalds to order his meal and the camera crew just film him ordering and eating and also
when he walks into the doctors - this is not scripted, actors arent used and it is not an artificial set.
Interviews are a main documentary technique. These allow the people being filmed to express their
opinions on the topic in Super-size
Me Morgan Spurlock interviews
experts on medical health and 'vox
pops' to get different
opinions. During an interviews
the rule of thirds must be
applied, the eyeline must be in
the top third of the frame, if
standing on the left hand corner
the person being filmed must look to the right hand side of the camera and vice versa.
The conventions that we took from Super-size Me was that we used the same montage style of
editing at the start of our documentary when explaining what will be going on in the documentary.
We were also able to see some conventions of documentaries in Super-size Me such as the rule of
thirds when framing the professional interviews.
Super-size Me has a rhetorical style meaning that, there is a question asked, discussed and then the
way for it to be changed and helped is shown. In this case, the problem is health problems in the
USA due to the growth of the fast food industry. Morgan Spurlock talks about this and justifies the
truth behind it by talking to professionals and carrying out his own experiment to prove the health
implications of fast food, he then discusses how this problem can be changed. We liked this style on
documentary because it is a good way to convey a serious message. As our documentary was about
bullying, we wanted to show a clear message and how to change this problem. We started the
documentary subjects by discussing what the problem was, and questioning how we can change
this, we then justified our points with clear knowledge and understanding and also answered the
question on how we can stop bullying from happening.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
3/15
There was a lot of non-digetic sound in Super-size Me, including sound effects and music tracks, this
was often layered in the documentary. In the first 5 minutes of the documentary there was a lot
upbeat music used, this combined with montage footage and quick cut editing meant that it quickly
drew the viewers into the topic with interest. We decided to use a similar approach by using music
that fitted the subject and the speed of
our documentary to further interestthe viewer. We also used the same
convention that the volumes of the
sounds would be altered in consistency
according to voiceover. As is the case
in Super-size Me and other
documentaries I have looked into we
can see that when there is voiceover,
or someone talking in footage the
sound level decreases, then increases
again where there may be no talking.
Many documentaries including Super-size Me and Airline use cutaway shots, these are aestheticallypleasing shots, used to keep viewers interested in the documentary and to give a further indication
into what the documentary entails. In airline the cutaway shots used were mainly of the airport
processes, such as luggage collection etc. In Super-size me cutaway shots were used of McDonalds
menus and the fast food
restaurants in America. In
our own documentary we
used a range of cutaway
shots that appealed to the
nature of the
documentary, such as
posters, location andelectronic devices used in
cyber bullying.
All these cutaway shots
were linked to what was
presently being talked
about to keep the viewer
interested in what was
being talked about using a
visual enhancement. For
example, when we were discussing bullying in aschool we had this cutaway shot, of the St.
Alphege Infant School.
Another type of shot that we used was an
establishing shot; this means that before talking
about something or before interviews and vox
pops, the scene was set. For example in our
documentary before our professional interview
with the principle of The Sixth Form Solihull we
chose to show a shot of him sitting at his
computer typing, this set the scene of what his
job may entail and who he is.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
4/15
Like many documentaries we decided to only use straight cut edits, this is because our documentary
aims to convey a serious issue and if we were
to use fancy editing such as fades or dissolves
it could stand out more than the serious
issue. Straight cut also worked well with our
documentary because we used fast paceshots, meaning that there was a lot of visual
very quickly. To keep the viewer interested
we decided that this would be an appropriate
editing method so that our documentary
flowed quickly without confusion. We did
however use a cross dissolve when putting
text on our professional interviews and when
sourcing our secondary footage. This worked
well because it meant we were able to take
the text of the screen gradually without
drawing attention to it so that viewers wereable to concentrate on the footage rather
than the effects.
We also carried out two ancillary tasks. The first being a radio trailer for our documentary. After
researching by looking into many different radio trails for different documentaries, we found that
they mostly have the same structure and conventions. By comparing these conventions we were
able to decide with our own radio trail which conventions to use and how we may challenge these
conventions.
The target audience for this radio advert is B, c1, mature men, aged between 40 65 years old,
who clearly take an interest in David Attenboroughs work and appreciate what experiences he s hadduring his life time. These people might like literature as that is what you associate with him. The
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
5/15
tone of voice used is normal, sounding very direct as if everything is truly getting through to the
audience. Theres a slight tint of enthusiasm in his voice, this helps attract the audience as it isnt all
expressed the same and helps get the main points across. No sound effect are used during the
making of this trailer, this is because it has a serious meaning to it. The music adds a sense of drama
and adventure to the advert, without this it would be dull and the audience wouldnt be attracted to
it. There are 3 tracks all together, the one music one runs throughout the trailer. The other is DavidAttenboroughs voice and the other is the presenters voice. The music increases towards the end, it
was very low to start with and eventually it speeds up and increases in volume, this draws the
audience in, and sometimes will make them remember the advert by the music, which makes them
want to watch the documentary. It is approximately 40 seconds long.
We took some of these conventions and used them in our own radio trail, the main convention we
took from analysing David Attenboroughs radio trail was that the sound levels for the non-digetic
sound was altered throughout the radio trail. In this case the music seems to increase further to the
end the of the radio trail, this could be to build a climax and keep the listeners interested for the end
in which they
are told where
they can viewthe
documentary.
We chose to
use a similar
style by using a
sound effect
loud at the start
and the end of the radio trail to attract the listeners. We also used the convention that when there is
any voice over or clips from the documentary the non-digetic sound would be altered so that the
voices could be heard over the music. All the radio trails that we listened to had clips from the
documentary, the clips taken were usually the most exciting parts of the documentary or parts thatcould be quickly understood and linked well to the topic of the documentary.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
6/15
The other ancillary task was to make a double page spread magazine article for our documentary. To
create this we used InDesign, we already had previous knowledge of double page spread
conventions and InDesign from our AS project. We used many of the conventions of a double page
spread including:
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
7/15
How affective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
Did the documentary, radio trail and double
page spread all link together to portray theideas of the project on Bullying?
This is a question that we asked on our
audience feedback questionnaire. We wanted
to find out if all our products worked well
together and linked.
The result was positive, as 90% of people
thought that it linked well.
Our Documentary will be aired on BBC3 as it has
a good target audience ages between 16-34
years. This is linked to the radio trail played on
BBC radio 1 and BBC radio 1 extra with a similar
target audience age range. Also our as our
documentary is going to be aired on BBC it would
make sense that the BBC would use its own radio
stations to promote this.
The double page spread will be produced by TV
Times magazine owned by IPC Media.
IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brands,with print alone reaching almost two thirds of UK
women and 42% of UK men almost 26 million UK
adults while our websites collectively reach over 20
million users every month. TV Times is one of the UKs
best-known magazine brands, with over fifty years of
TV heritage. It enjoys an excellent reputation within
the TV industry and has enviable access to Britains
favourite stars and their programmes. After major
research and development, TVT has been refreshed to
reveal a modern and vibrant look, with a clear vision of
what today's reader wants from their favourite
television magazine. Theres even greater emphasis on
big star interviews, more soap coverage than any other
TV weekly title, and the most easy to use digital listings for simpler navigation. TV Times is
positioned in the premium sector as a
quality TV weekly magazine, popular with
all the family.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
8/15
By looking at this we can see that TVT is a very popular magazine, reaching 2 thirds of women and
42% of men in the UK. Therefore by publishing our article in this magazine, we can assure coverage
and promotion of the documentary across the UK. TVTIMEs mainly focuses on soaps yet it does
advertise documentaries targeted at 20-50s age range. Although our target audience is 16-35 I feel
this will be a suitable magazine to advertise our documentary by our double page spread as it will
reach the bulk of the people who we presume will be watching it. Also if somebodies parent readsthe article they will be more likely to tell their children about it to encourage them to read it.
We have linked all our media products including the
documentary and both ancillary tasks to appropriate
media institutions BBC3 we chose because we felt
that it had similar documentarys already in the type
of documentary it was however did not have one on
our specific subject. We then linked our radio trail to
our documentary by using the obvious choice of
advertisement BBC radio 1 and 1 extra because a
documentary aired on BBC would use its ownadvertising resources and because these radio
stations had a similar target audience. Our magazine
double page spread linked with the documentary in
the way of target audience because it was an easy
read and not too time consuming. The colour
attracted the target audience along with the pictures
that attracted the target audience range of 16-34 year olds as it was a picture of people in this age
range. We decided that our article would be published in TV times magazine
Overall they link together because of target audience and suiting it to the publisher of the products.
What have you learnt from the audience feedback?
We first gained audience feedback before we started our project. This was to determine what
people preferred in documentaries and what people already knew about our chosen subject of
bullying.
These are a few of the results from the initial questionnaire that we found helpful :
Whos opinion on bullying
would you value more?
-Support Worker
-Psychology teacher
-Sociology teacher
-Academic coach
-Principle of school/college
From these results we were
shown that most people
would prefer to listen to
opinions from a support
worker on bullying. Least
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
9/15
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
10/15
Would you prefer to hear a
narrator/on screen presenter
or a voice over narration?
Over half of people said theyprefer voiceover to a on screen
narration. This was and the
fact that we decided that we
could not allocate any extra
time for filming on screen
narration was the reason we
decided to use a voice over.
They were the most important thing that we learnt from our initial research questionnaire into how
people would prefer our documentary too look and its content. It was very helpful to put thisquestionnaire together and use the feedback because it showed us that many people had the same
opinion on certain documentary conventions, and by taking the results and using what people prefer
we hope it helped make a documentary that people will be more interested in watching.
We also carried out another questionnaire after we had completed our documentary and ancillary
tasks; this was our audience feedback questionnaire which we carried out to find out what people
liked and disliked about our project and what we could improve about it.
These are the results we found from our questionnaire:
Overall how would you rate our
Documentary Radio Trail Magazine
We can see from these pie charts that out of our documentary and ancillary tasks that our
documentary excelled above the ancillary tasks and that the magazine was the poorest rated
product. Most people rated all of our products as either good or fair and people only rated the
magazine poor.
excellent
good
fair
poor
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
11/15
How suitable were our products?
Documentary Radio Trail Magazine
We found that all of our products were deemed mostly suitable rather than unsuitable. The
documentary was mostly all voted suitable whereas the magazine was voted suitable by just over
half of people. This was the result we had predicted.
Did the documentary, radio trail and double page spread all show clear evidence of research into
bullying?
Documentary Radio Trail Magazine
The questionnaire results revealed that all of our media products did have clear evidence of
research; however some people thought that the magazine article had the least evidence of
research. We were happy with these results because we did try to make sure that the statistics that
we put into our documentary and ancillary tasks was well researched and documented in the
products we created.
We also used open questions in our audience feedback questionnaire to get a deeper understanding
of what people thought worked well or what they thought we could have improved. We asked:So overall what improvements do you suggest we could make to our documentary, radio trailer and
double page spread?
Overall, we had mostly positive comments. People said that the main think that they thought we did
well was sound levels in the documentary; they felt that all the sound levels were equal and merged
well when changing the levels of the music. Someone said that it was a well throughout
documentary and kept the viewers interested throughout. The good things that were said about the
radio trail was that the sound levels were good and appropriate clips were taken and used from the
documentary. The magazine was said to have followed and used magazine conventions well and that
it also included all the necessary information. Improvements people suggested was that we should
have made to the documentary was just that the lighting needed to be improved on the principle
interview, we may have forgotten to change the white balance on the camera before filming.Improvements needed to the radio trail were that the sound levels were a little too high at the start
suitable
unsuitable
yes
no
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
12/15
and the end of the trailer. Improvements made to the magazine article were that people found that
there was a bit too much white space around the text and the images didnt anchor the text well. To
improve these pictures could have been enlarged or more text could have been included, also more
pictures could have been inserted.
How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning andevaluation stages ?
In the initial stages of our planning we used media technologies a lot to research and plan what our
documentary was going to be about. We used it to begin with to see if bullying was something that
appeared in the media often. To do this we used Windows PC to research news websites and anti-
bullying websites set up to raise awareness. We looked a newspapers every day to see what articles
were included on our chosen topic and to see how the media portrayed the issue of bullying. We
used the internet to watch current documentaries using catch up TV services and to watch Super-
size Me and Airline. We used catch up services such as channel 4OD and BBC iplayer.
Blogger.com is a website we used throughout the whole time from planning to evaluate our
products. It is a blogging website where you can upload posts quickly and easily for the viewing of
anyone. We used it initially to upload statistics and research we had found from different media
sources. We later used it to keep a log on how our filming was planning
out, and to show different skills that we have learnt throughout the
process. It was a useful website because it allowed us as a group to
upload research that we have done individually and share it with each
other so we all gained that knowledge and understanding. The only
issue with Blogger.com was that when uploading YouTube clips or
photos to the blog it was time consuming and restrictive to where the
image could be placed and what size the image is.
YouTube.com proved very helpful to our planning and
research stages as we were able to use it to see how
people were blogging about being bullied or how
people can help them if they are being bullied. Therewas a lot of support to people being bullied on
YouTube, which showed a large number of people have
experienced it themselves but also shows that a large
number of people agree that something needs to be
done about it as many people have watched these sort
of videos. YouTube also provided us with a log of past
and present advertisements and anti-bullying
campaigns from charities such as Anti-bullying Alliance
and Childline.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
13/15
When planning our documentary we used
storyboards and Mind maps to plan the layout
and content of our documentary, to show this
on blogger.com we used a flatbed scanner to
send them to the computer and then upload
them onto the blog as an image.
In planning stages we also used Microsoft
Word and Excel to create questionnaires and
analyse the results. When
analysing the results we used
Microsoft Excel because we feel
that this was an appropriate easyprogramme to calculate data and
analyse using graphs and charts.
To create graps and charts in Excel
you simply insert the data in a
chart, highlight it all then click the
graph button and it automatically
organises the data into a graph of
your choice.
I then transferred these graphs
into Microsoft Word to analyse all
the results, I then copied this ontoBlogger.com.
When we created the documentary the most
important technology that we used was the digital
camera. The camera was a piece of technology
that none of us our group had used before. This
meant that we took at least two sessions getting
to grips with how to use it and how to get
effective footage either handheld or using the
tripod. To start recording you press the centrebutton on the control dial and again to finish the
recording. To switch the camera from recording
mode to playback mode you switch the dial from
red to blue. On the pull out LCD screen there is
other recording options. To change the exposure
or contrast you press the joystick control down to
choose which mode you want to change to. Once
you have selected the mode you move the joystick left to right or right to left to alter it. To change
the white balance, press the function button at the bottom of the LCD screen to open the set up
menu. Then select the white balance, this was used when we were outside because sometimes the
brightness was too high. None of the other functions were changed because we can do any otherediting in the editing stages of our documentary.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
14/15
We used a tripod when filming our interviews and vox-pops we used a tripod
to keep our camera still and level. Sometimes this was an inconvenience
because often setting up the tripod too a lot of time as you had to make sure
it was completely level and on some concrete ground it was very difficult to
keep it level. We also had other attachments which we had to set up when
filming the interviews and vox-pops. This includeda microphone which we had to insert into the
camera and make sure all the microphone
connexions were correct otherwise the sound may
be compromised; we also inserted headphones into the camera to make
sure we could hear the interviews and make sure that the sound levels
were right whilst recording. The whole process of recording the actual
professional interviews was very hard because it always took a while to
set up the camera and make sure that the right balance of the camera
was. We did however manage to get some very good shots using the focus
function.
We used apple Mac computers for all of our editing stages of the project; generally I would say that
using the apple Macs for creative purposes such as our project was better than using a PC because it
is designed for that. It was hard to use at first as it is not my normal type of computer to use, but
after getting used to it and learning all the new controls we were able to use it to our advantage and
produce a better project than that on a normal PC.
The programme we used to edit our documentary was Final Cut
Express, designed for advanced editing of digital video and the
consumer version of Final Cut Pro. This was the first time any of our
group had used this programme, so it was quite difficult to get thehang of, the most time consuming part was the log and transfer of
footage from or digital cameras. This took us two sessions to
complete as we had a lot of footage to go through and decide what
would be essential to our documentary and what was too weak to
include. Even though we only made a short part of our documentary
the first 5 minutes it still took a long time to log and transfer the
footage and pick which ones were best. Once we logged and
transferred we renamed footage to find the clips we wanted quickly,
all this footage then appeared in the browser and was then easy to
drag onto the timeline.
We started then to add clips together and decide what we wanted
in the start, middle and end segment of our 5 minute clip. We found it easy to work like this because
we could fill any gaps later and this also helped us to plan the script for our voiceover. Although we
did get many good ideas from our initial storyboards we found that we lead astray from this a lot
when producing the film as sometimes it seemed harder to do what the storyboard said rather than
what we had the knowledge to do using the programme.
Some of the clips that we inserted from the browser we had to cut and swap or the sound levels
needed to be changed. We did all this after we decided on the sequence of the clips. To cut the clips
we played through them and cut a new start and finish then took the excess away. To change the
sound level of the clip we dragged the sound up or down using the mouse, this was simple but hard
at the same time because it was hard to determine if we had made the sound levels accurate.
8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation
15/15
We did also use a tool to speed up one of our clips, this was too show the amount of people walking
in and out of college, it was a good shot and worked well when sped up and was aesthetically
pleasing.
Overall, Final Cut Express was a very complicated expert programme, considering nobody in our
group had used this programme before we started our project I feel that we have learnt a lot about
the programme and used its range of resources to the best of our abilities. However, it was a timeconsuming product as each process took a long time. This was the hardest technology that we used
in the whole project.
InDesign was the programme that we used to create our double page
spread. We decided to use this programme on the computers as we were
already familiar with the programme on PC from our previous projects.
Adobe programmes are considerably more complex than that of Microsoft
such as Microsoft Publisher, which may have been easier to create the
document. However, InDesign has many features that can be useful when
creating a professional looking magazine. For instance the colour palette
allows you to select a series of colours to use for your magazine that workwell together and saves them colours allowing you to pick the same colour
and easily change it. Another good feature of InDesign is the picture tool,
when selecting the picture tool you have to draw a box out on the page, by
drawing the box exactly in the proportion you want it on the page you can
then insert the image afterwards to make sure it stays the same size. A
disadvantage to using InDesign is that writing the actual article was difficult in the programme itself
which meant that we had to first write up the article using Microsoft Word and then transfer this
into InDesign.
For the radio trail we decided as a group to use the programme
GarageBand on the Apple Mac. GarageBand is used mainly forcreating or editing music and audio sound. The reason we used
GarageBand was because of its huge library source of beats and
tracks we could use to enhance our radio trailer. In the library we
were able to pick from different instruments and genres to pick out
an appropriate track for the backing of our radio trail. We decided
to choose an upbeat track to attract listeners and make them
excited about wanting to watch our documentary. To insert the
tracks we simply dragged the media from the library onto the
timeline, we then imported our clips from the documentary and
imported our recorded voice over. These clips were also dragged
onto the timeline and rearranged accordingly. To cut our clips we
used the same process as on Final Cut Express. The way in which
GarageBand proved easier to use was that when changing the
sound levels in which was very important on the radio trail. To do
this on GarageBand we only had to use the mouse to put pin points along the timeline at the stages
we wanted to edit the sound levels we then dragged these pin points up or down to decrease or
increase the sound levels. These sound levels then automatically increased or decreased gradually
keeping the sound smooth throughout the radio trail. We then found sound affects in the library and
decided to attract listeners using these at the start and end of the radio trail. We kept these at a high
sound level but after consideration we feel now that we should have lowered the sound level of
these slightly. I believe that overall GarageBand was the simplest programme that we used which
was neither time consuming or complicated. It allowed us to do what we wanted with ease and
proved easy to navigate.