By Daniel Wilson

1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Whilst creating our documentary we got a general idea for the codes and conventions by researching past documentaries from websites like YouTube, 4 on demand and BBC Iplayer

FORMAL INTERVIEWS Professional Documentary Head space left Facing away from the camera Mise-en-scene Medium shot The Professionals Title
The two pictures above are screenshots from a documentary off of YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iS4X78dLUw), and our student documentary. Here we focused on the codes and conventions of the layout for a professional interview, one of the main ones being the Mise-en-scene. The Mise-en-scene should relate to the profession of the expert and to the topic of the documentary. This is why we have used Radio equipment in the back of our interview so that it shows that Lee is a radio presenter and therefore gains more authority and credibility. This is useful if you want the audience to take in what the professional is saying as it makes them seem more important. Other features of formal interviews we researched were the head space, which is left so that the interviewee does not look ill fitted in the shot, the use of medium shot, which is the perfect shot to use in formal interviews as it attracts focus to the interviewee, the title, which gives the professional more importance and highlights his authority, and the way the interviewee faces away from the camera, which shows professional camerawork and placement.

Revolution or Robbery

We also added various establishing shots to introduce the professionals before their actual interview. The point of having an establishing shot is so the audience gets a glimpse at their profession and how they do it.

Professional Documentary- Past media students

Revolution or Robbery/Our Documentary

As you can see all of these snapshots show a professional demonstrating their skill or profession. The professional documentary and our documentary have very similar establishing shots which show that we have followed the codes and conventions of a professional interview.

Professional DocumentaryDownloaded

VOXPOPS

Revolution or Robbery/ our documentary

Facing away from the camera

A voxpop is an interview with a member of the general public. By looking at a past documentary on YouTube, from previous media students(http://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=EnX1zsihuEc) we saw the different conventions of a voxpop and tried to recreate them in our documentary.

Mise-en-scene
Similarly to the formal interviews, one of the most important parts of a voxpop is the Mise-en-scene. Usually the Mise-en-scene of a voxpop is in a location relating to the topic, therefore both of our voxpop locations were places round the Solihull sixth form college such as the reception and cafeteria, because our documentary was aimed at students, and outside a HMV store in our local town, because our documentary was about the illegal downloading of music. To show that a voxpop is more opinion than fact we did not include titles for the voxpop interviewees, which is another feature of a voxpop.

Also we have the interviewees facing away from the camera which is a common feature found in all interviews. Lastly another important convention of a voxpop is the sound. It is important to leave any background noise in the interview as long as it is not to overpowering because it makes the interview more genuine and convinces the audience that it definitely was filmed in a public place and is filmed with the general public.

Music
The music is used as a support for the whole documentary; it fills the sections without a voiceover and gives the audience a something extra to listen to. It also keeps the audience listening and interested in what the documentary has to offer because it attracts attention. We researched 2 documentaries for their music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDcMzcGPruE&feature=related http://www.channel4.com/programmes/steve-jobs-ichanged-the-world/4od

Both of these documentaries use music to its best abilities by relating it to the topic and showing that it helps the fluidity of the documentary.

This is the name of the track we used for our documentary taken from music that was not copyrighted. The track is a sort of techno, dance track which falls into the target audience of young adults and also the pace of the documentary.

This is the actual track in final cut express for our documentary.

These little dots indicate where we have altered the sound levels of the music. We change the decibels of the music when somebody is speaking in an interview or when the narrator is speaking.

Editing
The editing is a very important part in the process of making a documentary as it brings the final product together. By looking at past documentaries made for younger adults such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnX1zsihuEc and the movie documentary supersize me, we learned the different editing techniques and what would be best for our documentary.

During our research one of the editing features we found was the different blurred shots. This makes the documentary more appealing to younger adults and allows text to be seen clearly. Here is a screenshot of the movie supersize me and as you can see the shot is slightly blurred which appeals to the audience and keeps them watching.

Another important part of editing conventions that we found while researching documentaries was the transitions between different shots. Here we have used an edge wipe while introducing the Solihull sixth form college and the wipe flows nicely from a static shot of the colleges sign to a wide pan shot of the Similarly to our documentary whole college supersize me uses transitional shots to cut between parts of the documentary but we opted for a wipe transition rather than a fade transition but they both provide the same use and entertainment. We also used a centre wipe for any other time we needed a transition. We used the same type of wipe for good continuity which makes the documentary look much more professional.

Supersize Me

Supersize Me

Ancillary Tasks
Radio Trailer As well as the production of our documentary we also had to create two Ancillary tasks (side tasks) in the form of a radio trailer and a double page article which were to promote our documentary. Firstly we did the radio trailer but before we started to produce it we researched some past radio trailers from students and real radio stations. We produced the trailer in final cut express which was the same programme as our documentary and below is the finished product in the timeline of final cut express which I will break down into the different codes and conventions of a radio trailer.

This is a quote from our original documentary which we include in the Radio trailer so that the audience can listen and hear a few opinions and what the documentary is all about before seeing it. Quote from this extract to me this problem is that this is a crime that so many people are involved in

This is one of the sound clips from the voiceover we recorded. The voiceover in a trailer is used to give the information to the audience about when and where the documentary is on and to encourage the listener to come and watch it. Quote from this extract-

This long sound clip is the background music for our trailer, similarly to the music in the actual documentary the music in the trailer is used as a support and something to keep the audience entertained and gets them to keep listening.

New documentary explores how the music industry is being affected by illegal downloading with professional views and public opinions

Double page Article

The other ancillary task was a double page spread for a magazine. We decided to place our article in Radio Times magazine, which is a popular listings magazine, because the readers are so widespread that it would reach out to our target audience of young adults between the ages of 14-25 and beyond. These are a couple of articles from Radio Times magazine that we researched. The article on the left is the layout and style that would be more acceptable for our target audience and therefore we followed the codes and conventions of it more and the article on the right is much too formal and text heavy to be suitable for our target audience of 14-25 year olds. Below is the final magazine article which contains the following codes and conventions

The headline of the article and the information about when and what channel it airs

A pull quote placed in the middle of the text to make the layout more interesting for our target audience

There is a Dropcap and larger text in the opening paragraph to signify the beginning of the article. Image credits

Paragraph crossheads that show a question being asked

Different images from the documentary to give the potential audience a taster of what is in the programme

Similarly to the radio trailer, our magazine article follows the conventions of most TV listing magazines or just magazines in general. I think we achieved a good product with the article because it is built for our target audience of 14-25 year olds. It is suitable for our target audience because it has an interesting layout which makes the reader want to read on and find out about the documentary and it is not to text heavy which we were worried was going to happen. We are also proud that it looks like an article from Radio Times magazine and this was our chosen publisher.

2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I think our main product combined very well with both our radio trailer and our article. Our ancillary tasks are there to promote our final product which is our documentary and I think we did that quite well. There are consistent links between each product that would help promote our documentary in the real industry, for example these three screenshots from our documentary;

Were used as images to promote the documentary in the article

Also in our radio trailer we used the same music as in the documentary so that people will remember the track from the trailer and then know that it is our documentary that they are watching. Something we could have improved on though is didnt have the same person doing the voiceover in each product which is a minor problem but it breaks the continuity of the 3 products.

Also our radio trailer has a young adult doing the voiceover just like our documentary which is in keeping with our target audience of 14-25 year olds

Another example of our good brand identity was the headline in our article. We fashioned the headline to look like a CD with the name of our title on it. We got this idea from the title we used at the start of our documentary. We wrote the title of our documentary on a disc and had it come out of a DVD player. After letting the disc eject we left it for a few seconds for our title clip.

This also shows good brand identity as the content of the article includes various quotes from the professionals and images from the final product. This is all to appeal to the target audience and to promote our documentary so that people want to watch it.

I think we also did a good job in keeping the target audience the same throughout each of the products, really the only thing out of line for the target audience was the radio trailer may have been a little slow paced, and the only thing that contradicted our choice of channel for the documentary was the beginning thirty seconds could have been sharper and a lot more jam packed with information but other than that we succeeded with creating a product suitable for our target audience of 14-25 year olds with a social class of D,C2,C1.

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To gain audience feedback from people we created a questionnaire and gave it to classmates so they could fill it in while they watched the documentary. We also produced a questionnaire for our radio trailer and our double page article as well. The following graphs are the results of each question on our questionnaires. Questions 1 and 2 were where the people answered with their age and gender and we found that the people were in-between the ages of 14-25 and there were 10 females and 10 males.

17 people strongly agreed and 3 people agreed that the first 30 seconds of our documentary was interesting enough for them to want to continue watching. This also shows that the product appealed to our target audience of 14-25 year olds as we interviewed people between the ages of 14 and 25.

19 people strongly agreed and 1 person agrees that the music we used worked well with the theme of the documentary and also the pace. It also shows that our brand identity was good as the music is one of the conventions we used in more than one product.

1 person strongly agreed, 14 people agreed, 4 people thought fairly and 1 person disagreed about our documentary giving them new facts and statistics. Illegal downloading is quite a common thing and many people know the basic facts about it. This is why people have said agree because they know facts about illegal downloading but we have searched deeper and found more detailed facts.

14 people strongly agreed, 5 people agreed and 1 thought fairly about whether our background footage was relevant and the results show that we made good use of the background footage we had in interviews and during the voiceover.

11 people strongly agreed and 9 people agreed that our setup for the formal interviews looked professional. This shows we successfully used the codes and conventions of formal interviews in our documentary such as the head space, interview facing left or right and the Miseen-scene.

4 people strongly agreed, 10 people agreed, 3 people thought fairly and 3 people disagreed that the voxpops expressed how much of a problem illegal downloading is. I think the voxpops are where we could have improved and the results show it. We should have made the voxpops slightly more serious instead of having them upbeat.

Double page article questionnaire results

5 people strongly agreed, 13 people agreed and 2 people are unsure that our article would appeal to teenagers and young adults, which shows me that our article was quite successful in reaching our target audience of 14-25 year olds

2 people strongly agreed and 18 people agreed that the article was effective in promoting the documentary which shows me that if our article was in a real magazine it would make people want to watch our documentary.

4 people strongly agreed, 10 people agreed and 6 people were unsure if our article belonged in a TV listings magazine such as Radio Times. The results show that people thought our magazine looked similar to a tv listings article but I think we could have made it look a lot more like a Radio Times article which was our target publisher.

Radio Trailer Questionnaire results

3 people strongly agreed, 16 people agreed and 1 person was unsure that our radio trailer would appeal to young adults and teenagers. By the looks of these results I believe that we successfully achieved our target audience of 14-25 year olds but we probably could have had a faster paced final product to really keep the target audience hooked.

4 people strongly agreed, 11 people agreed and 5 people were unsure that the sound clips and voiceover in our radio trailer were easy to understand. These results tell me that our voiceover and sound clips were clear enough but we could have used even clearer ones. We got some verbal feedback that stated The sound clips were good but the voiceover could have been clearer

7 people strongly agreed, 12 people agreed and 1 person was unsure that the sound levels in our radio trailer were equal and clear. By the amount of people that agreed I believe that our sound levels were equal and clear and only 1 person was unsure of this. At some points in the trailer the music could get a bit louder than the voiceover, but this was only brief.

10 people strongly agreed, 7 people agreed and 3 people were unsure that our radio trailer was effective in promoting our documentary. These results show that many of the 20 people we asked did think that we were successful in promoting our documentary, but obviously there was still room for improvement such as the sound levels and the quality of the voiceover.

Overall for our documentary I thought the feedback was very positive, we had verbal comments such as The way you showed the source was good by using the voiceover and titles, Good cutaways linking the subject, The sound mix was good throughout, Mise-en-scene used equipment to add to the professional feel of the documentary and Really relevant information shown. This feedback was given by the people who answered our questionnaire and also more media students who are doing a BTEC in the subject. We also got feedback on what we could improve on such as Use different interviewers as using the same ones can be quite boring, The voiceover could have been smoother at the start of the documentary and You could improve the sound mix in parts.

4) How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Throughout the whole process of creating our documentary we used different hardware and software, some of which we were familiar with having used them before but most we were unfamiliar with. The first thing we started on for our project was the research and planning. This was ongoing all the way through the production of our documentary but most of it took place at the start. This was where we were introduced to blogger. Blogger is a website where an individual or a group can start a web blog and post different things onto it. This was the foundation for all of our research and planning, where it will all be kept and moderated on at the end of our completed project. This was a very useful programme/website to use as it keeps all of our information in one place without us being bombarded with pieces of paper and notes, it is also very easy to use as to publish post onto your group blog, all you have to do is write your information in the textbox provided and click publish post, it will then appear on your group blog. You can also edit your posts once they are published if you need to go back and include extra information. As I said before Blogger was the foundation for all of our research and planning. To gather this information we decided to watch past documentaries from other media students and professional directors. To watch these documentaries we visited different websites with archives of past documentaries such as YouTube, Channel 4 on demand, and BBC Iplayer.

These websites are where we found different documentaries to research such as Another past media documentary- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS4X78dLUw Downloaded- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnX1zsihuEc Steve jobs ichanged the world- http://www.channel4.com/programmes/steve-jobsichanged-the-world By researching these documentaries we found the different codes and conventions used by the professionals and this meant we had the knowledge to make our documentary look more professional. But to upload non digital information onto our group blog we used a vital piece of equipment which was a scanner. We used the HP ScanJet 5370c Scanner to scan any data or research that we had on a piece of paper, onto the computer, so we could then upload it to our blog. This was very useful as it allowed us to be able to put anything that we had created or researched up on the blog so there were no restrictions. Then after plenty of research and planning into what our documentary was to be about, the target audience and organising interviews we started production. The camera that we used (Canon HG20 HD camcorder with hard drive) had an essential hard drive built into the hardware so all we had to do to upload the footage to the computer was insert a USB connector and connect the camera to the mains and that would upload anything that was on the hard drive, onto the computer. The camera also had a snapshot function and a camera mode, so just before we filmed an interview we could take a photo with the camera function and upload it later onto the blog. To capture the sound as we were filming we used a professional AudioTechnica Directional microphone which allowed us to get crystal clear sound from the formal interviews and the voxpops. As it is a directional microphone, it has to be in the direction of the person who is talking to obtain the desired quality of sound. After the filming process we began to edit all the footage we collected. The majority of all the projects after filming were performed on an Apple imac. Personally I think that the Apple imacs were brilliant for everything that we needed to do in post-production, the software is easy to use even if you have never used it before and the hardware is very smooth and straight-forward. Compared to a PC or a windows computer, the imac is superior and much better for editing and creating media products. For the editing of the documentary we used a program from the imac called Final Cut Express. This is editing software created by Apple, and we had never used it before. Although this was the case, as soon as we

learned most of the basic tools and techniques it was an easy programme to grasp hold of. This is the layout of the programme Final Cut Express and the timeline is showing the first minute and six seconds of our finished product. This is the browser where all the clips you have uploaded onto the software are kept to be used in the documentary. This is the clip viewer which allows the clips that have been logged and transferred to be seen before any editing takes place. This is the canvas where everything that has been placed on the timeline is shown, and this shows the final product in action.

This is where the sound and video from the timeline is plugged and unplugged. Unplugging a line will mean that when you drag a video or sound clip in, it will not show on the timeline.

These two green strips on the timeline are the sound. The top one is the audio from interviews, voxpops and the voiceover and the bottom one is the music.

These are all the video clips that have been cut and edited as well as transitions and text.

This is the toolbar for editing clips including the pen tool for sound levels and the razor tool for clips.

This bar is to show sound levels and the decibels, the best place to be is in-between green and red which ensures perfect sound quality

The first process to do in final cut express is to log and transfer each clip from the camera files into the actual programme, this can be quite a long process depending on how many clips you have to log.

This is the layout of the log and transfer window

This is the drop box where you drop the clips from the cameras hard drive and they appear in the log and transfer window.

This is where you title the clip so it is easier to spot in the browser on the main editing page.

Finally this is where you add the clip to the queue in the browser. Then the clip is available for editing in final cut express.

After this we took the clips from the browser and drag them onto the timeline where we could manipulate them in whatever fashion we wanted. This is where we added cutaways, wipes, transitions, fades and text.

This is a fade out. We used this to fade out the text instead of it just cutting straight out. To do this we used the pen tool and put two dots where we wanted the text to fade out

We also used the same tool to change the sound levels of the music and voiceover to make the documentary sound more professional

This is a text overlay which we used in our documentary to show statistics on the screen and titles for the formal interview

All the transitions and filters come from the effects tab on the browser.

This is the wipe transition we used to show a change in shot. We were consistent with using the centre wipe to keep the continuity of our documentary up. You drag the transition you want into the clip on the timeline, render the clip and the wipe should show on the final product.

To get the blurred effect for our walking background footage shot we used the defocus blur, in the video filters menu. This blurred effect allows the text to be seen clearer.

Also to get the desired text where it looks elevated off of the screen, we used the drop shadow tool. This is a great tool to use as it makes the documentary look very professional.

To shorten the clips that we got from the browser we used the razor tool. This tool creates a little blade which you can hover over a clip in the timeline, click it and the clip will be cut in half. This is useful for tidying up all the clips that you have in the timeline which in turn makes the documentary look more professional.

For the production of our magazine article we used the software Photoshop and InDesign. Photoshop is a programme that allows you to manipulate images and text I whatever way you want. We used Photoshop briefly for all of the images in the magazine article. To create this image we used the elliptical marquee too located on the Photoshop toolbar. We just positioned the shape that we wanted on the original image to create a trimmed photo. We repeated this three times in our article with three different images so that it was interesting to look at and suitable for our audience of 14-25 year olds as well as the publisher we chose which was the Radio Times magazine. Shown here is the toolbar from Photoshop and the tools we used from it were; This is the shaping tool with the elliptical marquee tool within it. We used this to create the shape of the images used in the magazine This is the cropping tool that we used to crop various images from our magazine article, such as the iPod on the first page. This is the text tool which we used to create the title of the magazine. We got an image of a blank disk and simply put manipulated text onto it. This was good brand identity because this is the same concept that we used for our title in the documentary which was a CD with Revolution or Robbery written on it

The other software we used was InDesign. Indesign is a programme which allows you to structure text so that it is ready for print making it perfect for magazines and magazine articles. This is the InDesign toolbar and from this we used; This is the mouse tool that we used to move images around freely and without hassle. This is the text tool that we used to draw text boxes and put the written content in the article.

This is the placement tool that we used to move different images and text boxes around in order to get a professional structure just like an article

At the right hand side of the InDesign software there is a tool called the swatches tool. This is a simple tool where you can save different colours so that when you need to use the same colour for some text it is already saved and this makes the article have good continuity as well as looking very professional. We used the colour cyan for the paragraph crossheads to show that there are questions being asked and we used the colour red for the drop quote in the middle to make it stand out from all the other text. One of the final tools we used in Indesign was the Drop Cap tool, which allows you to enlarge the first letter of the first paragraph in the article, which is a convention of most magazines and newspapers.

For our radio trailer we decided to use Final Cut express. In hindsight we realised that the radio trailer might have been produced slightly better in GarageBand because this is software made solely for sound creation and sound editing but Final Cut Express worked alright. Most of the same tools from final cut express were used for our sound editing for the documentary;

We used log and transfer again to get our clips into the browser and place them on our timeline.

And to put just the sound into the timeline we used the attach and detach tool for the audio and video. By clicking on the tool highlighted, it would stop the video being put into the timeline which saves time instead of putting both audio and video in and then having to delete the video.

Overall I believe that our documentary met the standards of a professional documentary although there could have been improvements throughout which would have made quite a lot of difference. This is the same with our ancillary tasks, I believe that we created a sufficient radio trailer and magazine article for the target audience of 14-25 year olds of social class C1,C2, and D, and I also think we did a good job in creating a product for our developers and publishers like channel 4 for the documentary, Capital FM for the radio trailer