ADVANCED PORTFOLIO EVALUATION

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

The coursework consisted in making the opening 5 minutes of a documentary, a radio trailer for this documentary and a magazine article also on the documentary. We decided to produce our media product about Student Finance and choices students have after they finish college. Each member of our group had a variety of understanding about documentary conventions which we used in the making of our media project. As the task was to produce a 5 minute opening, we could plan how we want our documentary product to look like by researching other documentaries to get a better understanding.

During class we watched several documentaries to see the different styles and influences they may or may not use. The documentary ‘Super Size Me’ follows Morgan Spurlock on his 30-day period of only eating McDonald’s food, 3 meals per day. This documentary shows what effect this food can have on a person’s lifestyle and physical well-being. This documentary is similar to the documentary I produced with my group as they have the same purpose to inform the audience about the chosen topic. As well as similarities, ‘Super Size Me’ and my documentary ‘Student Finance’ both use different styles of filming, genres and representation.

Our ‘Student Finance’ documentary was done in a cinema verite style. This is because of the use of techniques we used when filming footage to convey students at college. We used a lot of hand – held camera and the use of a tripod, when filming still shots, interviews and also students working around the college. This was to show the audience of our documentary what choices students have and showing them in a realistic way whilst they’re at college. This style of genre that we have used is also similar to direct cinema. Direct cinema is another documentary genre but they use no voice over’s or interviews, but show fly-on-the-wall real events, leaving the audience to draw up own conclusions. There are similar elements in both genres, but cinemas verite suits our documentary as we can give interviews, and use a voice over to help give the message and develop understanding about ‘Student Finance’ for the audience. ‘Super Size Me’ uses direct cinema as it has a lot of fly-on-the-wall footage. But it challenges this genre style, as Morgan Spurlock is the presenter and the documentary includes interviews and dissolve edits, where in the rules of direct cinema, this shouldn’t be allowed. Understanding this, ‘Super Size Me’ includes a variety of styles of documentary as it includes several genres and sub-genres. These sub genres includes; video diary entries which are made by Spurlock, talking about how he feels and about the situation he had got himself into. These are effective for ‘Super Size Me’ as the video entries can show the audience how Spurlock is truly feeling and it gives a sense of realism and seriousness about eating fast food everyday. ‘Super Size Me’ gives a fly-on-the-wall feel to it and the audience can clearly see what is happening to Morgan Spurlock and other people during the documentary. For the documentary my group and I made, we didn’t use any diary entries, as it was more of an informative and public affair documentary. Our documentary would be usually shown on public service broadcasting channels, and in particular Channel 4. Our documentary explores the options students have and the problems with going to university or not, and employment rates for 16-24 year olds. Compared to ‘Super Size Me’ they both follow media conventions but just not the same, as they both are for different audiences and showing different parts of social issues.

My media product represents student life and choices students have to make during college life. The documentary presents different views about what is best to do for students when they leave college. It gives a neutral view as it shows good and bad views in either going university or seeking for a job. It explores student life and future aspirations for them. It gives facts that will be helpful for students when making such decisions. It takes a good attitude towards this, as the

As you can see both shots follow the convention when interviewing an expert. Both interviews show surroundings of the experts and give an idea of what their profession is. Both of them also follow the rule of

thirds by making sure the eye lines an also a third way down of the screen. As they are both positioned on the left, they should be looking out towards the right, to the interviewer – which is what is happening.

documentary is there to help students and keep them in mind so they feel supported. When looking at other documentaries such as ‘Super Size Me’ it represents a polemical view which expresses that McDonalds food is really unhealthy for people. This view comes across as they show what happens when eating this fast food, and shows letters/stories that are biased in against eating McDonald’s food. The filming that we see shows Morgan Spurlock getting ill and unhealthy, so people who see this documentary will automatically see what ‘Super Size Me’ is representing.

DocumentaryWe have watched several documentaries during class such as ‘Super Size Me’ and ‘Airline’. Seeing these documentaries, we can see the basic conventions and gain ideas on how to put a documentary together. Both documentaries gave variety of shots by the use of the camera, which included; close up shots, medium shots and wide/long shots. I also witnessed different edits and ways of showing the information. I gained a lot of experience by watching these documentaries so I was able to follow these conventions for when I put own documentary together. We used the camera when filming footage for our ‘Student Finance’ documentary. We used the camera in different ways to get a variety of shots, so it looks more interesting and appealing for the documentary. I filmed these shots by using a handheld camera and also the tripod to gain stability in the filming. Most of the footage we used was using the tripod as it was easy to control and set up. Also, using the tripod made it easier to set up interviews, as you could change different heights the filming took place. We used the tripod when gain footage of students walking around the college, setting up interviews, tracking, panning and zooming. Following these conventions, you can see the way we set up our expert interviews, and made sure we used the rule of thirds. This can be seen when looking at ‘Super Size Me’ that we have followed the same conventions.

When creating the background music and putting the voiceover in the documentary, I used Garage Band and Final Cut to blend these together to make sure they sounded right. The sound is very important during TV documentaries as using voiceovers, presenters or soundtracks can help the TV documentary seem more interesting or help get across the message they are trying to portray. In ‘Super Size Me’ they used a voiceover, and a presenter which was the same person, as well as background music’s. This works well for this documentary as having a presenter help show what Morgan Spurlock went through and how he felt. This also brought a comedy feel to the documentary. In my media product, we used a voiceover to help the flow of the documentary and explain what it is about. This worked well for the theme of the documentary

Super Size Me, InterviewStudent Finance, Interview

and also the audience. When picking the background music, we looked at different tunes in Garage Band. As we couldn’t use copyright music, then using this program was good for our documentary. We chose an upbeat sound for our background music as this was a simple tune that could play during the background. We made sure we change it slightly, so it didn’t get annoying as well. TV documentaries use background music to suit their documentary. As our audience was students, then we thought this suited it well. However, when looking back at the documentary with the music, sometimes it was overpowering against the voiceover and interviews.

Other conventions that we used that other TV documentaries use, is special effects. We did this by using effects of the camera, and on Final Cut Express. This was to make the visual part of the documentary interesting and adding different things to get peoples attention. When using effects on the camera, I created these by zooming in to loose focus or create a focus that’s blurred around the edge of the picture. From seeing ‘Super Size Me’ they used several special effects such as out of focus shots. We followed the same convention so this shows that we are using this correctly.

As well as using special effects, we also used transitions in our documentary. We did a lot of ‘Non-Addictive Dissolves’ and ‘Cross Dissolves’. We challenged this convention though, as most documentaries don’t use a lot of these transitions, especially informative documentaries such as our ‘Student Finance’. We challenged this convention by using these transitions but overall it worked out well as we used a variety which suited our documentary.

Selection of different tunes on Garage Band.

Out of focus of students walking, Student Finance.

Out of focus shot of a sign in a McDonalds,

Super Size Me.

Title, sub heading

Magazine ArticleWhen following and challenging the conventions of articles, I looked at ‘Radio Times’ and ‘TV Mag’ to see how the normal articles are laid out. I already knew what programme to use when creating it, which is InDesign. These magazines that feature TV listings for documentaries and TV programmes give information about the listing such as what it is about and when it will be shown. Also they give several still shots of the documentary. When creating the magazine we made sure we included these conventions in order for it to be successful and look like it would actually be shown inside ‘Radio Times’.

Here are two different programme listings that were in ‘Radio Times’. They both show the same conventions that I have shown above with the picture of the article about my documentary. Our article includes lots of the simple conventions that normal articles should have. It includes pull out quotes, pictures that represent the finance side of the documentary and follows the rules of columns, page numbers and drop caps. By looking at the other articles, we

Page NumberLayout of magazine

Information about times and dates

Still shot of footage of

documentary

Picture – related to ‘Student Finance’

documentary

Pull out quotes

Drop caps

Use of columns

could have included either more information about the documentary or more graphics; this is to fill up the whiter spaces.

Radio TrailerDocumentaries use radio trailers to promote their TV listings and inform people what the documentary is about. In class we were given sheets to write down about different radio trailers. This was a good experience as we could analyse the way they work and what information they include.

Our radio trailer was created by recording the script with a microphone and camera, so we could upload this on to garage band. We again picked a backing track for the radio trailer. We kept a similar choice to our documentary upbeat soundtrack, as we decided a track with a beat like this would attract listeners. We included two different clips that were recorded into our documentary, to get across what the documentary was about. We were very pleased with our results, and of course we included the dates and time that it would be shown.

This is following the conventions of producing the music and putting it together with the script/voice over in order to make it successful. We used rhetorical questions in the script in order to gain the audiences attraction so they can hear the advert on the radio, and then carry on to listen to it to gather information about it. The scripts questions said “Worried about University? Or where to go next?” Which were spoken in an enthusiastic voice to be friendly and warming to the audience, specially the students. I learnt when listening to the different documentaries that they seem friendly to invite people in to listen. I used these techniques from the different radio trails in order to put this when creating my radio trailer.

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

The documentary, radio trailer and magazine article are all combined to make an effective brand identity. When creating all of these products, I made sure that they were all connected by giving the same information and making sure it reaches the same target audience. The target audience for our product is aimed for 16-18 year old boys and girls in college. It’s aimed at students in particular to help them for future references about going to university, or seeking a job. It gives them support and facts about what options they can do, and where they can go for help. Although it is aimed at students as the information given is for them, it is also aimed for their parents, or other people who may be interested in the subject of ‘Student Finance’. It is important that we portray everything for this target audience other wise the products wouldn’t be any good and wouldn’t gain the proper audience it is meant to. The documentary takes place at Sixth Form College, Solihull in the West Midlands. This doesn’t mean to say that it’s only suitable for people in this local area to watch it, as it records students in the college that may have a resemblance with other students around the UK. When looking back when watching ‘Super Size Me’ it’s purpose is about informing their target audience about obesity and healthy living/eating. In our documentary ‘Student Finance’ it also targets our target audience which is students, about student life and what to do when leaving college. Both documentaries are notifying their audiences on these social issues that effect a large population of them. The students are our target audience, and leaving college and thinking about their future is a big part of their college life. From my own personal experience I know how

Screen shot of using Garage Band

Several shots of student like, college and shots of resources students use.

Shown in documentary and

then used for article

hard college can be and choosing options, so this documentary can help students with this issue by gaining information about what to do next. The target audience isn’t for anyone in particular with certain characteristics. This means that the documentary is for different types of people as in no specific race, gender, disability or religion. This means it’s for a wider variety of people and isn’t stopping people from different backgrounds or who have a disability from also gaining the information about ‘Student Finance’.

DocumentaryWhen creating the tasks for the product, we made sure we used certain techniques so it suits the target audience. To show the documentary is for our chosen target audience, there is lots of footage of student life including students. We filmed at the Sixth Form College, Solihull where all filming was chosen from as well as interviews.

All of the footage is about students, and they can relate to this as they are watching it. As the documentary involves two expert interviews, this can help students as they can recognise the same people in the colleges they go. This is to help them to see where they can go and makes it effective as helps to get information across to students as its coming from someone who know what they are talking about. It shows how realistic the interviews are so students are more likely to gain more from it and enjoy the visual sided as well. The pictures used in the magazine article can also be seen in the documentary as well.

Magazine ArticlePeople who would have seen the TV listing inside ‘Radio Times’ will be able to recognise what they saw and read about, as they both match up effectively. A still shot of one interviewee was used for the article to show what the filming it about for the article. This connects both of the products together as we used actual footage that is going to be shown. The article as well includes lots of features that the documentary features, such as certain facts.

Its effective for the product and the target audience can’t be confused as the products match each other creating a brand. As the magazine article would be shown in the ‘Radio Times’, this gives a great opportunity for people to be attracted to the article and then watch the documentary. Using a reliable source like the ‘Radio Times’ can help update people about the upcoming documentary if they didn’t already know. ‘Radio Times’ is subscribed to over 2,280,000. Most of these people are actually from the older populations, which could seem a problem. This isn’t in fact a problem as about 580,000 readers are actually younger between 15 and 44 years old. This is good for the documentary and these people can read the article and be inspired to see the documentary. The older generations can also help out by letting people they know who are students, about the documentary.

Radio TrailerTo reach out to even more students and the target audience, the radio trailer would be broadcasted to inform people. We decided to reach out more to the younger people, by choosing Capital FM to broadcast the trailer. Capital FM reaches out across the UK having over 7,000,000 listeners. Their target audience is ranged 15-34 year olds, (information found at http://www.thisisglobal.com/radio/capital/) and is said to be ‘UK’s No.1 hit music station’ so you would expect lots of listeners. With their repetition, we are able to reach out to students across the UK to inform them about things that students worry about. As the ‘Student Finance’ documentary was part of a series, using a radio station like Capital FM can help the series be more popular amongst the younger population to help them for future references. Using a popular radio station like Capital helps to connect the radio trailer and the documentary as our target audience is students – young people. As the radio station is especially for the same target audience then it gains the population we need for the documentary.

OverallAll of the 3 different texts make a clear brand identity for ‘Student Finance’. This is because they all use the same information that is given about the upcoming documentary and connect by using the texts in each other. This was seen when the magazine article included quotes of what was going to be said in the documentary, and on the radio trailer. As they all use the same voice over, this is effect as well as people are able to recognise the same voice, tone and information given by the voiceover. It’s important for our brand identity to include the same things so the product can be clearer to the target audience and they aren’t confused by hearing or seeing different things from all 3 products. We made sure the brand was apparent for the listeners and readers of ‘Capital FM’ and ‘Radio Times’ as these were the organisations we would use to help spread the word about the documentary that would be showing. Using these organisations helped to promote the documentary by using the information about what it is about, as well as promoting to the same target audience. Our target audience is important in this documentary and there wouldn’t be much point of it if students didn’t see it. ‘Capital FM’ and ‘Radio Times’ were able to support our documentary by showing the article and broadcastings about the documentary to help our target audience be interested.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

During the research and planning for the documentary, we had to do a questionnaire regarding what people like to see in documentaries. (This can be found in our blog posts). We created these questionnaires so we were able to get feedback from students and some teachers from our college, to see what they thought about the subject of student finance. We got some good feedback about the subject as we wanted to find out what people thought of the idea and things if they didn’t have a job or didn’t know what to do when they leave college. Other feedback we got was what they like to see in documentaries, such as visual effects. People said they

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enjoyed to see transitions, different shots including special effects and interviews and facts as it looks more interesting to see. We used this feedback questionnaire to help create our filming and produce our documentary, radio trailer and the magazine article. It helped us to see what our target audience wanted to see from these products. So eventually when we finished creating these 3 products about ‘Student Finance’, we have done another feedback questionnaire with our classmates to see how we done in relation to what the people wanted to see. Here are the questions asked and results;

Before asking questions about each individual product, we asked personal questions to help build our documentary on. We asked our candidates to state weather if they were unemployed and if they were planning to go to university. 6 people said that they were unemployed in their current state. This was good information to gain as we were able to apply this in our documentary. Over half of the students we asked said that they weren’t employed. We used this information to help students in our documentary on where to look for jobs and how to apply for them. We found statistics to show that the age most unemployed people are 16-24 years olds in the UK. The employment rate has recently increased over the last couple of years, so we were able to gather this information to use in our documentary. University is another option students may take when leaving college. With these results that only 3 people are planning to go to university which seems a very low number. We knew that the fees for university have now increased, so wanted to see if anyone leaving college soon have planned to go to university, even due to the increase in fees.This was useful for us as we decided that as there weren’t many people who said they were planning on going to university, that we would include this into the documentary.

TV DocumentaryWere there any problems with the sound levels?There were a few problems with the sound levels of the documentary as we found out when watching it back. The results are as show and 7 people agreed that there were problems with the sound levels. The music was overpowering the script and speeches of people being interviewed. It did ruin it a bit as people couldn’t hear that well. This slip up was noticed by ourselves, and we know what we would have to do to change this in the future. I agree with these comments, but as well I think that the sound levels did work well on the occasions they didn’t mess up. I think that the script of the voiceover worked very well as it was all of the same sounds level and wasn’t too quiet or loud, which is something we worked hard on during Final Cut Express.

Was the music suitable?The results were spilt for this question as people said different things. The background music we used was different and we thought blended well into the background for the documentary. Some people said that the music did make them loose interest a bit as it became irritating to them. As the music was at times increased over the documentary’s voiceover and interviews, then this would be

In the questionnaire, we always asked questions about the visual side of the documentary, everyone commented that the transitions worked well, the documentary kept them interested

and also they learnt something new from the documentary.

noticeable for the audience to see. It would put people off trying to hear a voice over loud music. This would be something we would have to change when doing this again, by slightly changing the volume of the music, sometimes even cutting it off completely at times. I think listening to more documentaries could help solve this situation. This would mean not changing to music as 8 people did say that it was suitable, so I just think the levels need tweaking.

Rate documentary overallWe asked our candidates to rate the documentary from; Excellent, Good, Fair and Poor. These results turned out very well as no one rates it as Poor. We are pleased that we were rate ‘Good’ 10 times and ‘Excellent’ once. This is good feedback for the documentary but there is room for improvement. I think that main thing for the documentary was sorting out the music sound levels specially when there is a voiceover or an interview. This could be done by turning the sound levels down or completely off.

Radio TrailerWhen asking about the radio trailer, we got great feedback. All of the questions that we asked specifically about the radio trailer all got 100% positive feedback. This is really good feedback for our group as we enjoyed putting together the radio trailer, and personally I think it was really good. We wanted to make sure that all of the products were good bye each aspect of the product is good and works well. This shows that we have put a lot of hard work into the radio trailer and by using the techniques we used, shows we done well to meet the criteria. The positive feedback shows that everything links together and works well to meet the target audience. As we included the rhetorical questions and clips form the documentary, it catches people attention and feedback even included “If I heard this it would make me want to watch the documentary”. This shows that using the clips from the documentary and the way we put the radio trailer together, it catches the right audience and keeps them interested to keep on listening.

Rate radio trailer overallThis rating was very good and helped to show how people really think of the radio trailer. 4 people rated the radio trailer ‘Excellent’ and 6 said it was ‘Good’. This is good as no one rated the trailer as ‘Poor’ or ‘Fair’. Even our teacher said that it was very good, and from all this feedback I think it’s hard to see where improvements can be made. These results show that we created the trailer in the correct and good amount of time.

Magazine ArticleDoes it grab your attention? The results back from this question are that 2 people said no and the rest said yes. This is good as only 20% of the people asked gave a negative feedback to it. From looking at the results it is good as people did say it did grab attention. To agree with the 2 people that attention the magazine didn’t grab, I think because the colours where very simple and not eye catching. Although the pictures and title people said grabs the attention as it’s bold and stands out clearly.

Next we asked if the layout looked good and if the articles relevant, which got positive feedback again. Everyone answered these questions as yes, again being 100%. This is good and we can see from these results that the target audience like the way it looks which is good as they will be interested to watch the documentary. These are pleasing results as we know we are attracting our target audience which is what we need.

Is there enough imagery?It features two different imagery pictures, which one was a still shot from the documentary. The feedback from these results is spilt half and half which can be hard to analyse. Because of these results, I think that it depends on peoples opinions as well. Some people may prefer articles to have a lot of imagery or lots of writing. I personally think that there is enough imagery but I think there was some white space that could have been covered. I think if we

improved the article this would be a reason to improve it, but I wouldn’t say to add more imagery as I think there is enough.

Rate magazine article overallThese results were good again even though there was one person who rated it as ‘Fair’. I think that there could be improvements made to the article by either change colour scheme or adding another pull out quote to cover up white space areas.

 

Overall I have learnt from this exercise that there is always room for improvement. We had good feedback and it was both critical and positive. I think the mixed results can help to make improvements and also it’s a positive way in seeing the good parts of the products. One of the improvements would be sorting out the sound levels on the documentary, with the music. The sound levels on the documentary didn’t match and weren’t that well, whereas the radio trailer had good use of sound levels. To improve the sound levels of the music on the documentary, I would turn them off during interviews and turn them down more when the voiceover is narrating. This would improve this straight away and would be less distracting for the audience so they can stay interested. Other improvements would be for the magazine article. There was some negative feedback about the attraction for it and not having imagery. To resolve this I would say to have more imagery in order to grab the attention that it’s missing. Also maybe to change the colour scheme to a slightly brighter colour scheme, but not too bright as it wouldn’t have the superior look about it, as it’s for an informative documentary. From the results of the overall rating of the project, we got good rating which didn’t include being rated at ‘Fair’ or ‘Poor’. People must have really enjoyed the products and understood to concept and how they all linked together.From the feedback I was surprised in some of the results, like the fact that most of the products got good feedback and we only had a few improvements to make over the 3 products. I was surprised because as the topic was ‘Student Finance’ you don’t know if people will like it and use the information given on the show, or dislike it as the subject it is about. I hope that people gained information from the trailer as we used real life facts about finance for students. I was glad that the feedback contained specific improvements to make as it helps use to create something better next time and we can gain the knowledge.