A2 MediaDocumentary Evaluation

After Researching current Crime Documentaries we found a variety of conventions already in use within documentaries of thiskind.

Crime watch and Real Crime are the types of documentary I chose to evaluate as part of my product research;

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

After analysing and evaluating several of the attributes including in these programmes, and thoroughly researching documentary codes and conventions, it enabled me to create a mind map of features to explore when creating our individual crime documentary.

For the production of our documentary we firstly had to establish our target audience and the primary purpose.

•Following this we needed to learn more about our chosen target audience and what they wish to see within documentaries.

•We carried out market research using a manual questionnaire where we asked our target group of ages 16-30 about crime in their local area and how they react to this, as well as their individual opinions regarding crime related programmes and documentaries already advertised in the media television market.

•We used a broad range of questions not only regarding Crime Documentaries, but also real life crime and how safe they feel living in their local area. This provided us with more knowledge of the background of our target group. Giving us more succinct and clearer ideas for conventions and codes to include in our documentary

•From our market research we concluded that our audience would prefer to see real CCTV footage within a crime documentary. From this we decided to feature archive footage within our documentary with a maximum limit of 30 seconds

•We made plans to follow current conventions seen within crime documentaries such as ‘Crime watch’ and ‘Real Crime’ and other documentaries in general, looking at the documentary modes and seeing how they are currently used.

•We also conducted a focus group to achieve honest and valuable opinions from our chosen target audience to help develop our documentary, allowing it become of a professional standard.

•After establishing our target audience and the primary purpose of our documentary it was possible for us create a documentary which not only develops and challenges forms of current media products, but targets the maximum possible audience.

Our documentary includes conventions such as:Interviews with Witnesses. Interviews are a typical feature of documentaries and are used to express opinions.A Variety of Shot types and angles. This helps to express this city of Manchester in a number of different perspectives.Voiceover. Provides an extra insight to the media conventions featured on screen.

We added text to provide names of interviewees providing them with unique identities, a common convention of documentary types.

We have challenged the documentary form in the sense we used a voiceover of a Manchester local, as opposed to choosing a well known character within the television industry. I believe the local accent is a good choice as the more local audience of the Manchester area will feel a more personal connection to the documentary, and feel as if we, the producers, have fronted the audience and their feelings and what their preferences would be from the start.

A Variety of Shots and Camera angles provides different perspectives of the city of Manchester. The wide angle long shots of the Manchester wheel examine the attractive areas of the city, encouraging the audience to be still tempted to visit. Using a zoom helps to focus on a positive of Manchester. Also the extreme long shot of miss Selfridge, shows the newly restored store after it was set alight during the riots in the city. The long shots also show the city and how it has recovered and what an exciting, relaxed and interesting location the city of Manchester can be.

Medium shots are used to reveal the identities of our interviewees, which provide the audience with a clear view of any emotions that are

expressed, helping to create a greater sense of realism. Interviews are a typical convention of documentaries and are used to express opinions from people who were somehow related to the incident or topic in question.

From the research, I also found out that sound effects are used, such as ambient sounds and music. Using police sirens helps to provide a certain atmosphere, of distress and anger. We collected such sound effects from both the College’s Media shared area and YouTube.

•During filming we used natural lighting, whether that was the natural outdoor lighting, or the lighting that we were provided with during indoor filming.

•During filming we used natural lighting, whether that was the natural outdoor lighting, or the lighting that we were provided with during indoor filming.

•However when editing in Adobe Premiere Pro, we were able to edit the brightness and contrast of our shots, which did to some measure help to create a more overall professionalism in some shots. Artificial lighting is a regular convention seen within documentaries, to perhaps dramatise a seen, or silhouette a character during an interview.

•As we found our from our market research, our audience would prefer to see real life CCTV within a crime documentary, so we decided to include a selection of archive footage. We used non-copyright footage from the internet to avoid any problems or issues that may

occur regarding misuse of copy right protected footage.

•We researched archive footage and how it is used within documentaries, to give a realistic insight into the context.

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

•To attract our audience we have created ancillary products, a magazine review and a billboard poster which would be used to promote and help advertise our product.

•The magazine review is largely inspired from a variety of documentary reviews. After analysing several documentaries, I took a mixture of conventions that were featured throughout them to create my own individual magazine review for our final documentary.

•The text is columns feature to make the information more accessible for most audiences to read as they recognise this style, and the primary purpose is to ‘keep the audience happy’.

•The image is a snapshot of a section of our documentary to give the audience of the type of content to be featured

•The star ratings and secondary review quotes encourage the reader into believing that it’s a worthwhile documentary to watch, again attempting to gain the maximum audience.

This is a review which would be featured within a unisex magazine such as Time Magazine. A popular all round informative magazine such as this, targets a wider audience, which in turn would hopefully generate a wider audience for our documentary overall. The structured columns with small text, the magazine masthead in the top left hand corner and images are all common features found within current magazine articles. The professional alignment of the text and images create controlled and well ordered article for easier reading. Along with this the high frequency lexis indicates a larger audience of people from any background or education. A date and time is added to inform, whilst the images and the direct quotations from other magazines and newspapers persuade. Here I have used my own image to give the article a more original approach, rather than using previously seen images.

This Poster, created using Adobe PhotoShop, may be seen on a billboard with a busy city centre location, such as Manchester, as this is area it targets, so therefore would hopefully like to develop a local audience from this area. The large image used as the background represents the themes to be featured throughout the documentary. The bold contrasting orange of the fire helps to illuminate the image, making in eye-catching and most importantly, interesting to look at. The basic monochromatic colour scheme of the text included, gives the poster a more professional look, inspired from earlier analysis's of channel four documentary posters. The use of just a title, strapline and tag line, gives the most important information, without revealing too much information regarding the contents of the documentary. This creates an enigma code, persuading the audience to tune in, in an attempt to learn more about the documentary and in turn, the riots.

•Predominantly looking at channel four advertisements as they are well recognised for their popular and well received ‘dispatches’ documentaries, I chose to base my final billboard on the basic yet striking photos and text used to make an impact on the audience.

•Although the billboard includes a limited colour scheme with a single image (taken from internet sources, due to the lack of time and resources available to re-create my own) it largely suggests connotations of the violence and distress that the riots caused and makes it clear about what the billboard is advertising without an excessive use of text.

•The more information that is accessible for our target audience to see, the more of an audience we will be able to attract

•Together, our documentary and ancillary products intend to convey a positive message about the city of Manchester, after the destructing riots.

•The combination of both my ancillary tasks and the final product help to promote the product to the mass audience if it were ever to be exclusively shown on TV. The magazine review provides valid opinions about the documentary and its context, which create a broader audience as individual opinions can help draw people to a media product.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

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

•During the production of our documentary I have gained more knowledge of how to use more complex computer applications, in particular the film editing equipment, Adobe Premiere Pro.

•Arranging video in accordance to the timeline. Allowing us to create a clear linear narrative to our documentary.

•Also using the brightness and contrast tool allowed us to create a more professional standard of images.

•Whilst creating the documentary I learnt how to manipulate film material to arrange it in a suitable order to help form the desired narrative effect. Using the razor tool allowed us to cut a clip in the time line into separate clips, whilst the select tool allowed us to move footage according to how we wish. This also enabled us to manipulate the footage in accordance to the voiceover and use montage editing to of interviews, archive footage and our own to recorded footage to create a valuable meaning.

•Using the title tool it became possible to insert text into our documentary to provide names of people. Furthermore it allowed us to include contact details of action help lines for people who may have been affected by the riots. Finally it enabled us to also add rolling titles and credits to provide the names of people and places involved, and also because it is a typical feature within TV documentaries

•On top of this my blog work skills again improved, gaining more knowledge on how to use the popular blogging site, www.blogger.com, where further skills were developed. These skills involved creating posts and then making labels to organise my coursework efficiently;

•Overall, throughout the production of our product, I have gained varied and more complex knowledge on not only advancing my knowledge on both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere, but also gaining more advanced skills on interactive websites such as Blogger and Slideshare, allowing me to express my work widely over the internet.