Evaluation question one

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

Our brief was to create the opening 5 minutes of a television documentary, along with two ancillary tasks: a double page spread and a radio trailer to go alongside the documentary. As the documentary was an hour long, we had to research into what would go into the first 5 minutes of it, as well as research into what goes into a double page spread and a radio trailer.

Bill Nichols theoretical modes is something we looked into when planning our documentary.

As seen in our planning we looked at the different types/styles of documentaries that there are; poetic, expositional, observational, participatory and performative.

Our documentary uses expositional mode as it is in our subjective view of binge drinking and we use footage that strengthens our spoken narrative. We use a narrative structure in our documentary which persuades an argument against binge drinking. We do this by presenting a reasonable argument, repeating motifs and addressing the audience directly using our voiceover. To further strengthen our view we use professional interviews, we spoke to experts e.g. a police man, and this shows authority and so gave across a persuasive argument. Another way we strengthen our argument is by using facts and statistics to support our point about rising numbers of underage binge drinkers and the dangers with this e.g. rising numbers of alcohol related crimes, by using facts we are able to prove our point and therefore create a stronger argument.

In preparation for creating our own documentary, I have watched many others to look for similar codes and conventions that they use. From watching documentaries such as Supersize Me, Laura Hill : My battle with booze, and Airline I have found common conventions such as the use of camera. This includes shot types such as long shots, establishing shots, medium shots, medium close ups, close ups and extreme close ups.

When doing the reconstruction, we used a handheld camera to do our point of view shot. This added to the sense of realism and helped give the viewer get a feel for what is going on. This was used a lot in the documentary supersize me and has shown to be effective in ours

For the rest of our documentary we mainly used a tripod. Tripods are used in most documentaries and films to give accurate professional shots. We used ours on many occasions such as establishing shots of the college, our professional interviews and our vox pops, and for our background shots. The tripod enabled us to use many skills that we have learnt such as using a Pan or Zooming.

When watching similar documentaries we made notes of typical shots that were used, we then used these shots when making our own documentary.

Our Documentary

An establishing shot is used in a lot of documentaries to set the scene about where the documentary will be taking place

Cutting edge: My big fat royal gypsy wedding

Another convention used in documentaries is that they will include professional interviews as well as vox pops.

Professional interviews genuinely use the rule of thirds, they will be positioned about a third of the way in, with their eye level a third of the way down looking into an empty space. Another convention used with a professional interview is that their name and occupation will be stated at the bottom and the mise en scene will represent them in some way e.g. in the two shots above they have a professional educational background (books and computer).

Our Documentary Supersize me

Vox pops genuinely use one or two people, they are short shots of peoples opinions and answers to questions and are commonly used in documentaries. They type of shot that is mainly used is the medium close up. The mise en scene genuinely seems to be plain and have no sort of relation to the people on the shot. The names of the people are not included – no details of the people in the vox pops are given

Our Documentary

Supersize me

We have used special effects in our documentary. This is done in real documentaries such as supersize me. Some of the effects we used were changing the focus, zooming, overlapping shots and changing the opacity to make them blur into each other, and fade ins / fade outs etc.

Our Documentary Supersize me

Another important part of the documentary we had to take into consideration was the sound. We had to think about the background music, the voiceover, whether to have a presenter, and diagetic and non diagetic sound. We chose to have no presenter in our documentary and just a voiceover instead just like in airline to inform our viewers what is going on as our documentary is a more informative one. We also had to find background music that fitted well with our topic mood but wasn’t too over powering so that it would attract attention away from the voiceover. We wasn’t allowed to use copyright music and so we made our own on garageband using simple beats.

This is our final magazine double page spread which we made for the radio times. We looked at many other articles before making ours so we knew which codes and conventions we needed to use.

I will compare our double page article with this secondary one from the radio times to show how we have followed codes and conventions.

The masthead is the title of the page and is always used in magazine articles. They are sometimes the title of the programme but can sometimes be based on the characters or plotlines. We have chosen to do the title of our documentary as ours is a series. The masthead should be easily seen on the page and should stand out therefore we have made ours big and bold and used the colour white as it contrasts with the bright colours on the picture behind it.

The standfirst is the bit under the title and before the article which is used as a quick summary of the article. It is used so that people can quickly read it before the article before deciding whether or not to continue reading. It should be bolder and slightly bigger than the rest of the article and be about one or maybe two sentences long.

Just like the other article we have used one main image which is very large and takes up about a third of the whole double page spread. The image used should be striking to intrigue people to read it and should relate to what the article is about.

Many magazine articles use a number of images. These tend to be shots from the documentary or shots of making the documentary. We have included shots from our documentary including our professional interview to show people who they should expect to hear from. Every image should include a caption explaining what is going on or who the person is.

Drop cap used at the beginning of article

Pull quotes

The use of columns

ALSO USED…

Date, Channel and Time

Name of magazine and date at bottom

Page numbers

Radio trailer

Before making our radio trailer, we listened to a number of real ones to get an idea of the conventions that they use in order to use the same in ours. I listened to ones from different radio stations and noted down things such as the tone of voice, sound effects, the use of music and how many tracks were used, the sound levels and the length etc.

From listening to the radio trailers I found the following conventions to be common in many: - The average length is 30-45 seconds - They use direct address as they use words like 'you' to intrigue the audience - They use appropriate music and sound effects - They use extracts from the programme - The voiceover outlines the programme, they may ask a question that will be answered in the programme - Volumes are controlled so voices are clearly audible and music is kept at a level that doesn't interfere - The scheduling information is given at the end of the documentary: Channel, time and date, title

“We have a frightening look at the dangers binge drinkers are bringing to British society and themselves to really see how much is too much. Recent NHS figures have shown that alcohol related incidents have risen by an astonishing 52% over the last decade; however 45% of these incidents are 15-16 year olds that participating in binge drinkingIncluding an exclusive interview with PC John Whelan - extract from interview with police officer Extract from interview with students (for getting drunk) Tune in to channel 4 at 9pm this Thursday to really see how much is too much”

Our radio trailer also used these conventions…

- The duration was 35 seconds long

Our voiceover outlines the programme

Extracts from the programme

Scheduling information at the end of the trailer

We had to choose appropriate music for our radio trailer that would fit in with our documentary

We used two different layers when creating our radio trailer. One for the music and one for the voiceover and extracts from our documentary. This made it easier to control the voice levels so that music would be kept at a lower level so that it didn’t interfere