Evaluation

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

For our A2 Media Studies coursework we had to create a documentary along with two ancillaries to advertise the film, in this case, a newspaper advert and a radio trailer. We had a meeting to think about what could work for us from the positive feedback detailing what our strengths were from our film precursors. We had already worked on a documentary for our preliminary entitled John, which followed the life of a paraplegic, we were very clear of the codes and conventions that would be found within a documentary of this type as it was for Liam’s father so it was close to home. These features include: using visually alluring cutaways (as well as interview narration over the top), to try and answer questions the audience would expect to know (when they’ve been interested to watch it beforehand) and use the Rule of Thirds to establish shots of interviews
 

This is the final draft of our newspaper advert; it took two drafts prior to this to get it the way we wanted from the style of the artistic attitudes of Channel 4 documentary advertising. However, audience feedback from our teacher mentioned that we’d forgotten the relevance to how the content of the film itself isn’t a typical documentary you would expect from a TV station like Channel 4. They often cover far more serious topics concerning societal problems that have had gained a lot of press preferably in recent times. For instance, the topic of benefits has been on the agenda and has gone onto to spawn debates such as Channel 5’s The Big benefits Row; this sudden popularity came after the release of the documentary series Benefits Streets, which showcases the lives of the unemployed living on benefits. I deliberated that shows like these were scheduled around times when these subjects are relevant to a specific period, it made me realise the key aspect of a TV documentary (in the standards of Channel 4 production) is a current topic for everyone to relate towards as it’s newsworthy to them. Often the appeal of a certain topic has an impact on an audience who live among or are a part of that particular group or sector of society like those living on benefits or even some relevance to a biker community like those depicted in our film.

  

Conversely, we challenged the conventions of real media products by using a hand-held camera for shots regarding cutaways and various types outside recording interviews. This was only by mistake because we had forgotten our tripod on the first day of recording, so we saved the interviews for another day for the next club meeting. By using ingenuity, we developed on hand-held shots by testing out with slow motion to slow down the frames per second providing us with lengthier shot movements to steady the juddering of the camera; provides, for the most part, a more professional look.


An example of The Rule of Thirds


We carried on the conventional shot technique of The Rule of Thirds used in documented interviews. Likewise to most documentaries, this rule signifies a personal conversation principally from the way interviewees are positioned on the side of the shot and the way they look away from the camera. This engrosses to the genre’s intentions of the films’ being sincere, and as a result, becomes an expected quality from the audience because documentaries are essentially honest interpretations of life, people or situations.

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

I believe that my supporting pieces for the documentary proved to be well orchestrated to the target audience’s needs. We had confirmed that the documentary would gather an audience of around 16-40 years olds as they are the demographic of most Bike enthusiasts as well as avid viewers of a specific television channel like Channel 4 or ITV that broadcast documentaries. We picked 16 as a minimum age of our preferred audience because we assumed this topic would be a success amongst the young generation as they’ll find an interest in motorcycles for at their age they can own one as they’re at a legal age to ride certain categories of Bike. We knew we would therefore have to produce our supporting pieces with much emphasis on these as they’re one of the main focuses of the documentary, this will give it a cultured look, avoiding making it look substandard and out-of-focus.

 

A shot providing a heavy focus on a unique
variety of vehicles.  

Our combination of our main product was effective as we used snippets from our documentary to transcend into both the ancillaries such as the original audio clips intentionally used for the radio trailer so that we showed continuity throughout our work. This is also put on view in our newspaper advertisement as we decided to choose an image that would meet the requirements of how they're personalities were presented in the documentary. I decided with the group of some of those featured in film. Within the editing phase, to make the newspaper advert, I used Photoshop to and toggle the brightness and darkness filtering to provide more emphasis of each member. Upon discovering Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on one of my research tasks, I took the Channel 4 advertisements for the show into consideration as a style model; the concept related to our film of exploring cultures.

In the planning stages of the radio advert, we didn’t use any research of documentary promos, which made it difficult to develop. I found no beneficial examples because most of them were outside our film’s field and intentions and so for that reason we relied on our intentions on how we would create it using the orthodox features mentioned in our research tasks. We were certain the radio trailer was consistent with our documentary as it uses the same audio clips and music from the introduction for its advertisement. This was integrated into the advert because of its appropriate use for the audience to relate both products with the same genre and avoid a misperception of the film’s premise. In retrospect, it had to be intricately edited with other varieties of sound such as voiceovers, so we then used my voiceover to announce its scheduling details and it coincided with the music. The value of the radio trailer can be dignified by the music and video clips working hand in hand and on top of that, a quote from the film that acts as a focal marketing ploy for the film, “it’s something you don’t see every day” renders the audience a feeling of desperation to find out the unexpected and to eventually reveal itself when the film debuts. For example, it’s common these days when you see trailers for comedy films use a similar approach to ours, towards the end of a trailer the music will stop and a joke will play, which turns the audience to curiosity of the kind of humour they’re expecting and they too will have the need to discover.

                               Example of a comedy film using its marketing ploy

What have you learned from audience feedback?

Audience feedback is an important aspect in deciphering the needs of a target audience for their feedback during the pre-production stages is vital for making decisions needed to be made for the film and hopefully satisfy audience feedback after post-production. The audience plays vital part for enabling the gradual process of the product to be perfected to meet all expectations. Having this constant feedback ensures the gradual success of the product and something that not only the film-maker will be satisfied with but the audience can enjoy it as well, under the conditions, that the film-makers such as myself are staying true to the material set by a client or film studio. In hindsight, I should have reminded myself more regularly to check back with peers and leaders on our products to make sure we didn’t make the mistakes like the wrong channel idea and the low level of proficiency the documentary reached as said by the teacher. 


Shot from the Documentary, John.
Our previous true story adapted to moving image.

When the idea for the documentary began through pitching to our class, I never realised the potential it would have from receiving the feedback as coming up with it was initially figured out minutes after the task was set. Our media teachers, saw this potential from the completed criteria of the preliminary task, John, it detailed the story and stuck to the synopsis as much as it could, but more importantly, the theme of disability was a strong point that the teacher felt we had the affection towards John as a palpable character from an true story we could distinguish from someone not observing his impairment as lessening his chances of living. I could see how committing to the project proposition of documenting Burnham Bike Knights as working when you combine both the theme of disability and a group of Good Samaritans giving back to the community specialises a story depicting the existence of 'good in the world'.
 
In relation to Post-Production, receiving feedback from the teachers was an important factor in the development of the project. the main flaw with creating our product was dealing with the confusion in regards to how the direction was slightly off-putting for our teacher. The way the clips were positioned in the film can often confuse certain people with a different perception that the film would fall under (e.g. the film concentrating primarily on just one member). This issue was then decided amongst our peers who would suggest ways of rearranging clips whilst others would agree with another's advice, which was a major boost; knowing that a select number of people sharing the same advice and praise is accommodating for a film attempting to suit a commonly said desire rather than facing hugely varied decisions catering to only a bare minimum of those with particular interests.

How did you use media technologies in the construction, research, planning and evaluation stages?

Considering the modern world is symbolised as the era of the digital age, with technologies constantly updating to the highest standards of potentially completing life's complicated restrictions. For instance, the capabilities of media products from the beginning were limited compared to their descendants of today. In the matter that, cameras of today capture photos in high-definition and video editing software conveniently handles every element of film that was once described as time-consuming and strenuous.

• For the construction of our film the most essential piece of equipment was the camera. In terms of modern cameras, we only needed one that could cope with a range of lighting and environments for it to be an invaluable part of the product's construction. Luckily like most modern cameras, we couldn’t find a fault during filming or uploading footage to the computer. The Sony Handycam camera can record film in 1080p HD and the results for the film were as it expected: clear and crisp. This camera never let us down when using modes like slow-motion, which was incredibly useful to work with a camera specialising in recording functions (like slow-motion) instilled in the camera to heighten the performance of the shots.

• For audio recording, we used the Zoom H1 Microphone. It was vital to able to use this to pick up sound from one voice to save us the annoyance of editing with background noise from the camera itself.

• We had our own tripod as expected to create still shots of all the interviews.
• Final Cut Pro is a professional editing software that fulfilled the criteria of edits we planned before post-production and a software we were very familiar with on how to use it with our experience of using it and re-writing the mistakes we did editing our foundation portfolio.

Note: The use of the Internet felt like the primary source for each stage of the process as it was necessary to find methodical results swiftly. 

The process of this portfolio has to be closely monitored to keep updating the work onto the blog to the website Blogger. Blogger was picked by me as a website of choice to display my work to achieve my objectives; (Research and Planning & Process) for example, it allowed me to organise each area of the task to be placed into separate sections since it's straightforward to read if it was made to be accessible for everyone to read. Furthermore, it was receptive to me at school and home to continue work in both settings to complete deadlines for miscellaneous tasks.      

Well-renowned website as the first choice to show my work.

 

We used a file-sharing website called SoundCloud as a platform for our radio trailer to present to the public on a website that is popular for audio distribution which allows collaborations and promotions for audio recordings. And so, uploading the radio trailer on this website becomes a culmination of advertising the film to an expanded audience including the choice of sharing it online comparable to the option of incorporating its embed code onto the blog so it can played on Blogger via SoundCloud to generate more interaction and accessibility.

SoundCloud is easy to upload audio clips.