In what ways does your media product use, develop pr challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?

For our A2 Media Coursework we were required to produce a Documentary and a Radio Trailer and a Double Page spread to go along side.
Documentary - a film or TV program presenting the facts about a person or event.
A documentary can not be neutral – there is always some sort of bias.

Our first task was deciding the subject of our documentary. We chose Addiction – Gaming Addiction. We realised that their was
limited resources available for the public. However we obtained majority of our information from the internet (statistics etc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction
This is a typical Wikipedia site. Defining Gaming Addiction and providing us with facts about symptoms and causes. It also provided us
with examples of places where Gaming Addiction has affected people.
http://www.video-game-addiction.org/
This link gives evidence supporting Gaming Addiction is just like a Gambling Addiction with a few more facts and figures.

We researched other documentarys, i.e.

As it is a documentary we needed to oblain real life footage – to give it the actuality needed.
We needed to look at different documentarys to see what they had done and they’d shown specific things – i.e. shot types and angles
… we found the Noddy shot was most common when interviewing and recording vox pops.
 We researched the kind of things a documentary should have;
• Real life footage
• Expert interviews
• Vox pops (general public opinions)
• Background music
• Voice over's
• Reconstructions

We chose to include expert interviews and vox pops as it anchored the actuality of the theme.
When concerning audience we wanted to entice them to watch our documentary, so we made our exposition as clear as
possible and straight to the point. This is important as it creates the viewers first impression

Our first shot was glide shot sliding across the store CEX as they specialise in gaming and other technologies such as
cameras and phones.
This anchored what the documentary was all about as it was a real life source of gaming.
Our voice over needed to be very clear and at an easy pace. We chose a female voiceover.
Which may be criticised as many people think it is just men who play games and we should reflect
this as much as we can. But in our findings – we found many gaming minorities such as women are
increasing in numbers.
The purpose of a voiceover is to provide the viewer with information/explanations and opinions.
Documentaries aren't usually too ‘wordy’.
We included reconstructions such as people playing a PSP… internet games and iPhones. This was to create effect and
visual images to relate to the voiceover content.

The genre of our media products is gaming, which can link into other genres such
Radio Trailers promoting public to watch
as sci-fi and fantasy, so our target audience that we decided on was that it felt
something ususally invbolves the audience with
stronger toward a male influence, although some females do play games, and with
rhetorical questions or interesting facts –
an age range of about 13-18 years old, and with our group being in that age range,
we could relate to the audience watching, as well as this we chose on the social We used this to our advantage and our opening
class’ of B (Middle class) – C2 (Skilled Working Class), we chose this because the sentence involved the reader asking them if
issue of gaming addictions could fall into these social groups as these people can they were one of the 1.4 million people that
afford to ‘game’ and purchase the console and games. bought black ops on its release date – so
straight away people who game a lot will be
alert to the radio trailer.
Similarities
Usage of mise en scene - props

These are print screens from the actual document. They relate
to the content of the voiceover. The picture at bottom left (of
the girl) shows that nowadays technology is more convenient.
Enabling young gamers to feed their addiction like any other
‘habit’.
For the double page spread we looked carefully at other double page spreads in magazines – newspapers and tv guides.
We found they all had images, eye catching layouts, drop texts and the style represented the genre.

Very colourful – eye catching - Entice viewers A lot of text

Dominant images of cars – shows love for cars. Key photos – primeinister
For males – a lot of pictures – very visual The text style in itself is very sophisticated
A presentable manner – no explosive colours
etc.
Very bias – lades in pink … primeinister in
blue. Etc.
 Here’s how we tried to represent our documentary in
the double page spread
The usage of bold strong colours
enhances the article making
people want to read it… and
possibly watch it

The writing in
red stands out
with an official
statistic
If I were to be honest, I would say I was really pleased with the final product of all three tasks. It
represented the key features of a real life documentary as well as the radio trailer and double page
spread. The interviews were good and stayed bias to our true meaning – that gaming was bad. It had real
life footage and the reconstructions were a good representation of the issues and visual engagement.
I feel that I developed conventions by using them to show a subject that hasn’t really been explored. As
a group we found it interesting, which fuelled our fire to wanting to know more.

As well as the product itself I think we targeted our audience well. From internet official statistics
from the BBC websites and other such sources. We found our target audience would be males between
13-18. we realised we would entice a secondary audience such as females or parents as they may be able
to relate to the issues discussed.
It isn't just every male though. We found its mainly the middle class who engage in online gaming.
As the working class may not have the joyful affluent privilege as many of the middle class. This may
also put pressure on the working class parents as peers may pressure their children into gaming… this
documentary is an eye opener showing that gaming isn't all its made out to be.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

To make our documentary get a stronger and broader audience, we decided to air it on
channel four, after extensive research on the five terrestrial channels, which you can see
on my blog, we decided channel four was best. This channel is already notorious for its
documentary making, and with such as strong audience already which correlates to our
target audience we decided to air it on here. We chose to air it at a suitable time and
date, Tuesday, 8 o’clock, as our target audience being teenagers would be most likely in at
this time on Tuesday night due to commitments such as college and school, and with this
they would most likely be watching television.
We chose our double page spread to be in TV Listings, as this magazine is sold nationally
throughout the U.K and is brought in all corner shops, which is where the majority our a
target group will either be at one point during the week, and is likely to pick up a TV
Listings magazine.
We chose our radio trailer to be played on Capital FM, as this radio station is played
nationally and is most common throughout the age range and gender and social class of our
target audience. We chose this because it plays similar music to what we had incorporated  
into our documentary and it’s a modern and new radio station .

All 3products tie in together as they reflect the same style.

i.e. the background music of the documentary is techno – this is usually associated with racing games etc.
It also stimulates the gamers brain. This type of music is something widely associated with gaming… this
style of music was also represented in the radio trailer.
We used very strong bold colours in our double page spread. Grey black red and white. This symbolised
the bold colours in many games.
The content was very understandable. Using words that have or had been used in real TV. Adverts as it
would be wrong/bias of us to say we used language that majority of the population knew… if the adverts
did it … we should be able to.
 Our title – double page spread

Official logo of game

Not too many words – wont engage target audience…

An example of typical target

audience we hoped for
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
AUDIENCE THEORIES
PASSIVE
• Hypodermic needle model
• Magnetic bullet theory
… these models both state that the
audience acts as a sponge. Where we just
absorb every bit of information given to
use. We are vunerable and believe it – this
shows that the mass media do have a lot of
control over us.
Our preferred reading would be that majority
of the people who took part in the
questionnaire said they were engaged, they
learnt something new, the documentary
showed the severity of the issue, if they saw
the double page spread would they be keen to
watch… and if many people answered positively
to these questions it meant we had don’t what
wed set out to do.
ACTIVE
1. Encoding – Decoding Theory
• Preferred Reading – what producer aims/ wants to be the reaction
• Negotiate Reading – agree a little, disagree others. i.e. judging people
but being okay with people in their family doing the same thing…
• Oppositional Reading – the opposite of preferred
• Abberant reading – random, cant be predicted
2. Users and Gratification
It’s a theory by blumer and katz that states the audience has power – not
the media. it states the media is their to meet their needs
• Diversion/escape – i.e. x-factor
• Personal Relationships – things you discuss with peers i.e. Big Brother
• Surveillance – news … panarama
• Personal Identity – measuring your own values in a character i.e. ‘oh I’d
have done that’
3. Reception Theory
States who we are… determines the way we see/ read things.
The facts that change this are gender, culture, age, race, ethnicity, class,
etc…
 In order to know what the audience thaught we asked out class (they also represent the target
audience) what they thought of our documentary double page spread and radio trailer... Here are the
findings. They ticked a box between 1-5; 5 being good. And yes and no answers.

Documentary questionnaire
Were you engaged – did it interest you?
How well do you think it represented the reality of the
issue?

three three
four four
five five

How well does it portray the severity

of the issue? If it was to be broadcast on ‘real TV’ would
you watch it?

three
yes
four
no
five
 Radio Trailer questionnaire

How well do you think it represented the reality of the

issue?

Does it present itself as something you’d

like to watch?
three
four
five

yes

How well does it portray the severity maybe

of the issue? no

three
four
five
Double Page Spread questionnaire

How well do you think it represented the reality of the

issue?

Is it visually engaging – how well is it presented?

three
four

yes
no

How well does it portray the severity

of the issue?

three
four
Conclusion of results

From the findings I could conclude that our double page spread was the most successful with
10/10 people saying from seeing it they would want to watch the documentary.

Many people said it represented the reality of the issue and opened their eyes to the theme.

From the radio trailer – which in my opinion was probably the hardest thing when it comes to
promotion… 7 people said they would like to watch it.

We did have a few negative comments such as 5 people saying from watching the 5min
documentary they wouldn’t watch a real one if it was put on TV. This showed us we did have a
preferred reading but that the reception theory is infact very true!
How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

While creating the documentary radio trailer and double page spread. Their were a number of hardware and software programmes
we used.

Hardware
Camera – Canon HG20

This camera enabled us to be able to film the footage we needed for our documentary. We werent all familiar with the usage of
the camera but all of us had a go. The camera enabled us to get our real life footage. It was easily portable and convenient, which
helped as we did have to travel to get footage – going to touchwood. The camera’s battery was sometimes unreliable, so we had to
make sure we were prepared for the worst. It was also a worry when walking through the park with the camera incase it got
robbed of us.
Headphones – Sony
The headphones were of use so we could hear the sound and judge the quality during and after filming. These headphones were
plugged into the camera. They were comfortable and the sound was good. However the lead was a bit too long…

Microphone
The mic was vital as we used it for the voice over – the camera quality of recording wasn’t very good. It was easy to connect so
their werent any problems.
Tripod
The tripods were a real help as it didn’t mean us having a steady hand. It enabled us to take the exact shots we wanted with out
having to worry about dropping the camera, it made our documentary look professional, and gave a smooth panning shot if we
needed it, but their was a tripod with a bit of a ‘limp leg’ where it would tend to fall down a little. We just tried to avoid getting
this one.
Mac computer
MACS TOOK A LOT OF GETTING USED TO! It was vital we knew what we were doing as it was the most important piece of
hardware, as it contained all our film data and it contained the relevant software we couldn’t get on a normal p.c., the screen has a
high resolution and quality and after getting used to it – became very easy. Some thing were a bit harder. i.e. using word or
powerpoint and trying to change the font…
Software
Final Cut Express
We used this to piece together our documentary. It was easy once you knew but usually we would save our work –
have a mess around with the buttons to see what different icons did, it contained lots of good tools to piece
every different scene together. Looking at it was straight forward as the voiceclip/audio was right underneath
and our teacher said it was sort of like a birdseye view – this helped us comprehend when and where to put the
audio so it fitted with the visual.

Indesign
I used this programme last year when making a doublepage spread. So I was glad I could do this again. It was easy
to use and more straight forward than final cut express.

Photoshop
This was to help us adjust any images – the ones we put on the double page spread. It was a little hard to use but I
used it last year so I was quite familiar with it and the different effects you could use.

GarageBand
For a while we had a mess around on this. But it helped us when we were making the radio trailer.
We did get our audio for our documentary off a techno producer who owns an independent label. 

Safari – the internet

THIS WAS AN IMPORTANT PROGRAMME! We used this to obtain our official stats and read up on any other
information we wanted to add. It enabled us to view other documentaries and radio trailers from such websites
as www.youtube.com .

Microsoft word
We used word to create questionnaires when obtaining audience feedback. It was also used for small quick drafts we
might have liked to included in any of the 3pieces of work.

Microsoft Excel
Excel was good when making graphs (pie charts) to show results. I did learn how to do this at GCSE but I had to
refresh my memory again. Once I got the hang of it I was fine.