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

We were given a specific brief at the start of the A2 course and this was to create an opening 5 minutes for a Television documentary based on a topic of our choice. As well as this we also had two ancillary tasks to complete, which was to create a radio trail to go the TV documentary and a double page spread for a TV listings magazine this was to advertise and support the documentary. This also was to encourage people to want to watch our documentary, this made us realise the importance of correct advertising and how to successfully appeal to our chosen target audience. To ensure this was done professionally and effectively we had to undertake a lot of research and planning. Furthermore, with an hour long documentary in mind we had to research and plan what should go into our first 5 minutes to really capture the audience and make them want to watch on. Documentaries can be split into different categories; they can sometimes be under several of these titles. The categories are; serious, optimistic, ironic, lighthearted etc. Furthering on from this, Bill Nicholls theory of documentary modes 2001, is something that my group and I looked at and took into deep consideration as this can make a clear route to what sort of audience and TV channel you would be looking at. The 6 different styles of documentaries are; Participatory, poetic, reflexive, performative, observational and expositional. We will look into this further. Participatory and performative modes are very similar as they both include the film maker in their actual documentary, such as; Supersize Me an American Film documentary made and presented by Morgan Spurlock himself. This is a more personal type of documentary and is more about the own intentions of the film maker. This could be effectively used for our chosen topic of Homophobia, however, we chose to instead of expressing our own opinion, show the opinion of fellow students and this is to make the documentary more bias. As well as this, the performative style of documentary is very autobiographical and almost follows the film makers life around. Poetic documentaries is a very subjective style, this is very artistic and expressive and is clearly shown in their documentaries where it tends to be more emotional and rhythmic. The observational mode follows the subject around and is described as a fly on the wall this is because it observes the subject closely, so in our instance we would observe homophobia at Solihull sixth form. However, if we were to do this we wouldnt be able to have a voiceover or background music as these sort of documentaries dont tend to have this. The expositional style of documentary was probably the most sorted to our own documentary as it has a voiceover narrative and factual. So with all the research we done we filled our documentary with shocking facts, such as; 55% of homosexual people are bullied at school due to their sexuality.

As our documentary had a narrative structure, this was to guide the audience through those little 5 minutes, this meant our documentary was quite rhetorical. This can be quite persuading towards an argument and although we said our documentary would be bias, in my opinion, our documentary edged towards in favour of homosexual people and merely to educate the audience about homophobia and to show homophobia in a negative way. Therefore, the expository mode being the best suited for our documentary. This is because we could directly relate to the audience using our camera shots, voice over and motifs. We used some argumentation schemes, these included; history of homophobia, illustration (re-enactment) and authority (speaking to experts). However, to finish off our documentary we used the enigmatic code, which means our documentary is a problem thats discussed but not solved, as homophobia is only a growing problem.

Throughout this year I have watched many documentaries to inspire myself for my own documentary and to collect ideas. Documentaries are in fact very different, however, they use much the same conventions. The main documentaries I analysed is Supersize me and A good smack. Most of the conventions from this was used by the camera. They used a range of shots such as; Close ups, Medium close ups, extreme close ups, long shots and medium close up establishing shots. In Supersize me the most used camera shot was probably the medium close up, this is so it is clear to the audience what is happening, so they can follow the documentary easier however, still able to get the presenter in the camera shot and thought about mise en scene. We can also clearly see the interviewers expression with a medium close up. Supersize me uses a lot of handheld camera, however, in our documentary we decided to use a tripod to make our documentary look as polished and professional as we could. The below is pictures showing you how we used a tripod to film our documentarty interviews. This is examples of mid pans, tracking, zooming. So here we have a print screen from our documentary. This was our interviewer billy. You can see we have clearly used a tripod and kept rule of thirds in mind as his face is the top right.

The rule of thirds is a main convention of documentaries. This is mainly used when interviewing people. The interviewee should be looking into a clear space, which is shown above. Below is an example of supersize me using the rule of thirds.

This is an example of different camera shots we used in our Homophobia documentary. This is an extreme close up of my hands researching about homophobia clearly on camera. This is a print screen from our documentary.

Sound is also very important in TV documentaries as you need to make sure all the same is the same volume. This includes; voiceover, on screen presenter, diegetic, non-diegetic and background music. We used an on screen presenter as well as supersize me this is because we saw how well it worked for their Film documentary. We also felt it relates better to the audience as well and made it more personal. To film the on screen presenter we used a tripod, camera, headphones so the other team members could analyse the sound well and a plug in microphone. We also had the same person who was the on screen TV presenter to speak the voice over, therefore, our documentary flows smoothly and everything links.

Figure 1; this is our voice over on garage band and to the right is a print screen of our on screen presenter.

Background music was vital in our documentary as all other documentaries have this. We made our own music for our documentary so we could determine and control the mood of the documentary perfectly. We made our music on Garage Band. We put acoustic sounds together to collect a sound just right for our documentary. A thing we had to look out for was not to use any music that has already been created by somebody else. As the copyright on this is very complicated and would have not been allowed on our documentary. We used garage band to create our background music, this way it was simple but effective.

This is a print screen of us using garage band. We are sampling different sounds here, trying to choose something suitable for our documentary. We then imported our track as an MP3 into Final cut express so we could put it into our documentary. The music its self was good and worked well with our documentary, however, when it came to editing, the music did not flow as well as we would of liked so therefore, as a result could definitely be something we could improve if we was to do this again. We researched our topic of Homophobia a lot before we actually started any camera work or filming. This is so we had a clear knowledge of our topic of choice and for the entire group to have a basic interest in the topic as we would be spending a long time studying it. We did primary and secondary research, however at first we had to first hand research, we did this by creating a questionnaire that we put on the internet and sent the link to people via facebook. We thought this would be better to do this by technology rather than on paper as this was easier for our target audience of young adults. This would not have been suitable if our target audience was any different. We also then did secondary research where we researched endless facts about homophobia; we did this by the internet, newspapers, the news and radio.

Magazine article This was our final magazine;

We produced this for the radio times. However, before we decided this we studied lots of other magazines suitable for promoting TV documentaries however in the end we decided to go for radio times as we thought this is best suited. We kept the colour scheme pretty simple as just basic black and white however, with a touch of red to resemble love and sexuality. This indicates to the reader straight away the sort of TV documentary it would be and if it would appeal to them or not. Magazine articles for other TV documentaries will always have more than one picture, this is because it is very visual, and tends to be shots from the actual documentary. In our TV listing magazine, we put a picture of our onscreen presenter, an interview and our real life story is our main image. We then put a picture of two girls holding hands, just to make it clear what our documentary is about.

The masthead which is the headline, this is vital and is always used in a magazine article. We decided to make our masthead the actual title of our documentary. Sometimes this can be a pun however, as our topic is quite serious we decided to keep it simple and to the point.

A drop cap is nearly always used in magazine articles as well. Only at the beginning, so we used it to look professional.

We used a pull quote as these are used in real magazines. This is normally an interesting quote that is included in the actual text. This could be an interesting or shocking fact or some speech. Magazines use this to pull the readers attention. The date, time and channel and the name of the program is often below the masthead so the reader knows exactly when and where to watch this.

Radio Trailer: For the radio trailer we listened to the radio for a bit to listen to their adverts. This was so we could get an idea of conventions of radio trailers. We listened to Radio one, bbc one and capital. As we decided to put our radio trailer on radio one as this has a very diverse listener and would be best suited to our target audience, Radio one is where our main focus was. Before this we did a power point listing the type of person that listens to all the main radio stations. This was so we could be sure to pin point the right radio station for us. We took the music we made from garage band and clips of speech from the actual documentary so it all linked and flowed properly. We also got our on screen presenter and voice over to speak the radio trail as well. The topic of homophobia is a serious topic however, as our target audience is young adults we still kept it light hearted and to inform and educate watchers instead of telling them off almost. We kept the voice over for the radio trail quick, short and full of enthusiasm to capture the listeners. Overall: Over all, we stuck to main conventions of TV Documentaries and didnt really challenge conventions. The only time we did was on final cut. The most common cut in documentary making is straight cut, however, as we did use the straight cut we also included dissolves to make it more appealing to the viewer.