Evaluation Question Four

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

With the increasing rate of new technology it was highly likely that we would be using new technology for each part of our coursework and not just the construction stage.
The construction part of the coursework was made up of the most technology as the construction part not only included the filming and the editing of the documnentary but both the ancillary tasks too. When filming we needed the camera equipment we used last year. Camera, battery, tripod, headphones and a tape. However as we were asked to create a documentary new camera equipment was introduced this year as we needed to film interviews and possibly at night. So equipment such as a clip microphone, a pad light, a boom and a boom pole. However most of the camera equipment was new to me as we worked more as a team this year. The camera equipment was easy to set up and to use, however what we found difficult was framing an interview correctly. It took us a few interview attempts to get the framing correct. All the equipment looks very complicated but its not once you know how.

For the voice over for oth the documentary and the radio trailer simple recording equipment was needed. Another type of microphone was used and a recording box. The recording equipment was very easy to set up. However it took a few attempts to find the right track- an empty one. Also for the ancillary task teh radio trailer. Final cut pro and sound track pro are needed. It is the first time I have used either programme and i was very lost at the start. As you start to introduce yourself to the programmes they become a lot eaiser to use. Fianl cut pro was also used for the documentary by the editor as much as i got used to final cut pro when doing my radio trailer i am still glad i was not the editor. Photoshop is used for the poster advertisment, this is also the first time i used photoshop and i found it much harder to pick up on than final cut. We had a small photoshop lesson to learn the basics of it, this helped me but i still did not find photoshop easy to use. Lastly for the construction part of the coursework a Macbook was needed for most of it. I have always found Mac computers confusing so even with the knowledge from last year I was still a little lost on these computers.

More computer based programmes were used within the research , planning and evaluation stages rather than practical equipment. Programmes such as Google, Youtube and Blogger were used last year or on a regular bases, so they were easy to use. Also programmes from last year such as Scribd and bubbl.us were used again, they are easy to use. Soundcloud and Photobucket were new proggrammes to me. Soundcloud was very easy to use it was clear and you understood what to do quickly. Photobucket took slightly more time for me to figure out but once you know what you have to do its quick to use. New websites were introduced to us this year for example Newsnight. News night is a news website that has a lot of documentries on it so this was helpfull when we were researching documentries for our coursework and final analysis.

The Evaluation stage of the coursework uses alot of the proggrammes used in the planning and research stage: Blogger, Youtube, Google and Microsoft Word. Also the evaluation stage uses equipment used in the construction part of the coursework - the camera equipment if we needed to film audience feedback. Youtube was used to upload our videos and google was used once again to research real media products. However Microsoft Excel was used to create graphs from the questionaires done on blogger that will also aid our audience feedback. A wider range of technology was used this year but once you know how to use a program they are quick and easy.

Evaluation Question Three

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Getting audience feedback is important as it gives a good insight to th product, how an outsider to the production sees the product and mostly how well the product will take off with the target audience.
We conducted audience feedback, asking six questions that we thought would give us full feedback asking one of each gender of our main target audience and one male slightly older than our main target audience but still falling into the catergory of our target audience.
Overall we got more positive feedback than what I was expecting. When we asked did you enjoy the documentary, all three participants answered yes and when asked why people claimed to like the set out of the documentary and the vaired amount of opipions. One girl said "I usually like to watch documentaries so i was looking forward to watching it, it's good." Also we got more positive feedback when we asked was the documentary interesting, factual and what you expected. Two of the three answered yes to this question saying it was both interesting and factual, that they got a lot of imformation abotu graffiti from the documentary. However we also got a 50/50 for this question but again the feedback was moslty positive as this person said "...all the right bits a documentary should have, it had." Did the documentary flow and stay on topic?, was the next question asked, we got a yes from all our questionees. Them saying that we protayed a balanced arguement with lots of peoples opioions. Lastly for positive feedback was when we asked has the documentary effected you in a good or a bad way? Two of the participants were asked this question and both said in a good way. "It was nice to listen to the graffiti artist and to get his views." One man said that he was interested in the graffiti topic and he was looking forward to watching the documentary. It is nice to get positive feedback about something that you have worked on.
However we got some negative feedback or suggestions if ou will which is also a good thing as positive critism only helps. We asked the people was there anything you did not like or found boring about the documentary? Two people said they did not find the documentary boring but one questionee said he didnt like the one of the music tracks as he felt like i didnt go with the documentary topic- graffiti. When asked can you suggest any improvements the people asked said we could have used more people interviews to get more points of view also they suggested that we could have used bigger names in graffiti such as Banksy more often.
We are glad we didnt just get positive feedback as if we was making the full documenatry we could now take this feedback and make the documentary can be as good as it can be. But overall the feedback was positive and that is nice, it was interesting to find out peoples different viewsa on the documentary.


<iframe frameborder="0" height="295" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/iDC71InmCgQ?fs=1" width="480"></iframe> (our audience feedback video)

Evaluation Question Two

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Advertising is something the world generates around, without advertising we would not know about anything from new jobs to prices of things and to know when programmes are on television.
Advertising is very important when new programmes come on television it helps the public know when programmes are being shown and gives them a taster of the programme. Its the same with documentaries. There are different ways to advertise products such as poster advertisiments, billboards, television adverts or radio trailers.
For our coursework our ancillary tasks were to create a newspaper advertisment and a radio trailer these in my opipion would aid the documentary well. The poster is a visual aid to the documentary. It can be featured anywhere from magazines to newspapers and bus shelters to buses. So a wide audience would be able to see the poster. But it does relate to our target audience more as we decided to show our poster in magazines etc. So we would ensure our documentary could be seen. However putting the poster up on buses or bus stops will also ensure a wider audience. The radio trailer on the other hand is much more aimed at our target audience. Our target audience probably drive and are likely to listen to music whilst they are getting ready.
This is all advertising. Because of these advertising technqiues our ancillary tasks aid the documentaries take off. We hoped that with the ancillary tasks more of our target audience and a wider audience will learn about the documentary so they can make the time to watch it. I think the ancillary tasks work will with the documentary. Also it shows more creativety than just a documentary. Alon with different platforms.
The three most common forms of advertising are radio adverts, television adverts and poster adverts. Every media product in the world is advertised in one way or another so to make our main product as realistic as possible we used two of the three most common ways to advertise, to advertise our product.
As said before the poster and the radio aid the documentary well, the different platforms are similaer but stand apart from each other. The poster advertisment is a visual aid to the documentary. With a picture we took as a cutaway actually used in the documentary so the target audience will be able to identify the indivdual poster pictures when they watch the documentary. In that case the radio trailer is a spoken aid to the documentary but again footage such as interview snip it's are used in the radio trailer from the orginal documentary so again the audience will recongnise certain parts of the documentary before they have even watched it once, which creates a positive impact on people from the start.
In conclusion I feel that the combination between my main product and my ancillary tasks would be very effective if this as to be a real media product.

Evaluation Question One

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

Certain products in the media world have codes and conventions that should be followed to make a successful media product. However these codes and conventions that should be followed to make a succesful media product. However these codes and conventions may be challenged or developed by the producer to make the best media product they can with their ability.
The most common codes and conventions featured in documentaries are music, cutaways, interviews and a clear standard English speaking voice over, these are the conventions we would base our documentary around. We thought these would give us a good bases to start forming our documentary.

(image 1- screen shot from textual anaylsis-text)

Our documentary is on graffiti as we decided to keep the basic form of documentaries we discussed what people we would like to interview. We decided to go for the obvious interviewees and a few unobvious choices such as a caretaker or an art manager. This is a developmental technique from the conventions of a real media product. We decided to keep our cutaways and voice over very contentional. Having cutaways that spesfically relate to the topic and of what is being said. Also decided to use a clear, standard english voice over with recieved pronounication as in our textual analysis we found this a dominate convention. The music for our documentary both develops and sticks to the conventions. We have two strings of music one is more formal introducing the documentary but an upbeat tune is also played to keep to the theme and the topic of the documentary. That of real media products music is very important in keeping the audience entertained.

(image 2 screen shot from textual analysis-interviewing)

Our documentary develops the codes and conventions further with extra pictures added in that are not classed as cutaways. We wanted to develop the conventions of a real media product as much as possible to make it stand out. Making our documentary stand out was the main basis for choosing our topic in the first place. Text is also used in the documentary to develop it. The text is not used in place of the voice over it is purly a visual aid to the voice over which hopefully adds some indviduality to the documentary. In real media products we found that moslty the only use of text is when the name of the person being interviewed is shown. Along with text our documentary icludes quotes from other people we have interviewed or spoken to. The voice over staes these quotes so they are not spoken by the orginal speaker as it makes it different from an interview.

(image 3-screen shot from textual analysis-interview and name)

Our documentary uses the codes and conventions and develops them much more than challenging them. We wanted to base our documentary as much as possible on codes and conventions so that the documentary could look like a real media product however we used a slightly different set up to make it as indivdual as possible. Also due to the way we protayed the topic and part of the music chosen it makes the documentary less formal than what may have been expected.
We tried to make our documentary as unqiue as possible form the way we its set out to the topic chosen nut we also didnt want to drift away from real media products as the aim of our coursework was to make our documentary as realistic as possible.

Lauren's radio trailer 2010 by peterotus

Lauren's radio trailer 2010 by peterotus
This my radio trailer, i tried to include everything that wouold be recongniseable yo our target audience like an upbeat piece of music for example, also i used interviews from the documentary so that when our target audience watch the documentary they think back to pieces of my radio trailer that they remember. I tried to keep the voice over short and sweet just getting the main points down so that the readio trailer didnt drag on for a long time and it just captures what it needs to, to make it as real as possible.

Radio trailer script

Graffiti; is it art, vandalism or political free speech. HCTV investigates.

12th March 2011. Graffiti is seen as vandalism, it is now illegal to sell spray paint to anyone under the age of 16. 7pm. Many graffiti artists are paid to spray walls for private events, bedrooms or even shop shutters. So surly it is a form of expression? HCTV produces a graffiti documentary explaining the controversial topic in a non-biased way.

You decide... Art, vandalism or political free speech. 12th March 2011 7pm on HCTV. 
www.graffitiart.com

Newspaper advertisment

This is the final draft of my newspaper advertisment, i completely changed my idea after we had been out filming our cutaways for the first time. We came across a graffiti artist graffiting on a wall at south bank. I took a picture of this and decided to use to for my newspaper advertisment as it is a more realistic picture and makes more of a clear statement to what our documentary is about. I masked half of the picture so that the word graffiti would stand out. Putting a shadow behind the word to create a bigger impact. The rest of the title is on the floor of the picture in white so it stands out. The red writing is to colour coordinate with the logo and the website address. The date and time is bigger so that is can be seen and i hope that the main picture makes an impact on the target audience so they understand what our documentary is about.