Media evaluation

A2 media documentary evaluation

Becky wagstaff

Our target audience

We decided that our target audience would be 16-40 year olds, both male and females.

We made this decision because we felt that this was the age range which apple products were most popular amongst and also for footage for our documentary we would be around college and getting opinions from college students and teachers so we felt this would be the average age range of the people in our documentary so it would therefore interest people of similar ages.

We also wanted to explore the idea that Apple gadgets had now become a fashion accessory, we felt this target audience were the main people that saw it as this.

We did interviews and vox pops with those that were

of a similar age to our target audience. Helping

our target audience relate to the documentary.

We kept an upbeat tempo throughout or

documentary with fast straight cuts, up beat music and interesting

footage, suiting our young target audience.

we chose to air our documentary on BBC

Three, a channel that is popular among our target

audience with other similar documentaries being aired on there.

Question 1

In what ways does our media product, use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

real media products?

Research into a professional documentary

To gain a better understanding of the typical codes and conventions of professional documentaries, we did research into a polemical, American documentary:

“supersize me” it had the purpose of informing and to entertain, a similar purpose to that we had in mind.

We felt that research into this documentary would give us good knowledge of the codes and conventions of documentaries so we could then include them in our own documentary and improve the professional quality of our own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHKCb0_2oD0

Documentary

We found that formal, professional interviews were often set up in their place of work such as an office and they were introduced with titles and introductory footage of them using the computer for example. This would then make the point they are trying to inform the audience with, more believable and trustworthy. We wanted to show that we had contacted people with good, trustworthy knowledge for our documentary so we then continued this convention into our own documentary.

‘Supersize me’ made a lot of use of vox pops and formal interviews. This showed us some good examples of how these should be set up effectively and professionally.

Professional mise-en scene to suit the person & title banners. Medium close up

shots

Next to apple macs to show they use products, have knowledge.

Supersize me

Our documentary

Vox popsSupersize me vox pops

Establishing shots to introduce vox pops

Our vox pops

We found that vox pops were set up on the streets near McDonalds or the area they were from to show the sort of person they were, therefore we thought it’d be suitable to set our vox pops up around college, we set them up near lockers and infront of college signs and posters to show where they were and add interest, appealing to our audience.

We got some establishing shots of around college to set the scene of the vox pops.

Editing

Regarding editing, we noticed that “Supersize me” made use of transitions to make the documentary flow better, making it more professional looking. Also to add interest and emphasize significance of some scenes.We therefore used the fade to black transition (also used in supersize me) to emphasize our important scene about iPods as we wanted to emphasize the effect of the advert song we had included to make it stand out and make the point about iPods.

Supersize meOur documentary

We found that Supersize me used fast pace straight cuts in its opening sequence and for the background footage when the voiceover was on. This was an effective technique that we chose to continue into

our own documentary in order to keep the audiences attention and make it more appealing, informative and the audience would take it more seriously, we found that if shots were left on the screen for a

long time, the audience would lose interest.

You can see above that we used fast straight cuts in our opening sequence and throughout our vox pops that were making a point.

Background music

We chose to use an up beat tempo piece of music for our background music. We kept this continually playing throughout the documentary at a suitable level so you could hear it throughout but also clearly hear the interviews etc. We had to alter sound levels and dim the music to a lower level at certain points (as you can see right) for example when we played the iPod advert, we turned the music off.

As we were only creating the first 5 mins of a documentary, we felt it was essential to include a backing track to build up the excitement towards the documentary.

Voiceover

A professional convention we noticed in a lot of documentaries was a voiceover. “Supersize me” had an on screen narrator as well as him being used as a voiceover.

We felt that for our documentary it wasn’t necessary to use an on-screen narrator as it wasn’t just expressing one persons opinion or one persons investigation, it was more of a general public opinion so we made us of a voiceover that narrated our documentary and explained everything.

Our voiceover was clear and easy to understand, at a suitable decibel level so that it could be heard clearly throughout the documentary. We wrote an appropriate script for the voiceover to explain each part of the documentary. We found that the voiceover completed the documentary and made it much more interesting.

Radio trailer

We did research into some BBC radio trailers as we had decided the channel for our documentary would be BBC three already. We did research into formula 1 radio trailers and wildlife documentary radio trailers which had the same aim as ours, to promote their programmes and encourage people to watch it.

We found that they used quotes and sound effects from their documentary in the radio trailers to add interest and build up suspense for what the documentary is all about.

We chose to use the same background music from our documentary in our radio trailer and also include some catchy, memorable quotes from our documentary to show how interesting it was and what it was all about, we wanted to give them a quick taster. The music built up the excitement well and represented the documentary well as it was the same background music used, so it gave it that brand identity, it’s memorable.

Another technique i found interesting that they used was a voiceover that introduced the documentary and about it and they also gave quotes from newspapers that had given comments about the documentary, giving it credit and making it sound more appealing and something everyone wants to watch. We used the same person to do the voiceover as we had used for the documentary.

Our magazine

Large main image

large headline title

Banner to attract attention and emphasize channel and time

Columned interview. Q+A style.

More images/factfile

Black and white colour scheme to keep with brand identity and apple logo colour scheme

Apple logo, recognizable, stands out

You can see from this professional magazine article that our magazine article has followed some of the same codes and conventions, however in this one they have used conventions that we now realise we could have improved on such as adding a third colour into the colour scheme(red) to make it more striking and interesting and also more images. By analyzing magazine articles such as these, it allowed us to create a magazine article that looked professional and helped us understand the typical codes and conventions.

Question 2

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

Brand identity

• We

We did our best to create a clear brand identity between our 3 products, keeping consistency between them all so that our documentary was

memorable to the audience, clear, attractive and appealing.

We used the same background music in both our documentary and radio trailer to continue the up beat effect, this kept some continuity between the

two products.

We used quotes from the documentary interviews and vox pops in the radio trailer to give them a taster of what the documentary is all about, this

shows we have continued some of the aspects of the documentary, some interesting quotes, in our radio trailer.

We chose to air our radio trailer on BBC Radio 1, which has a similar audience to that of the channel of our documentary; BBC Three. Choosing to

air our products within BBC keeps consistency and keeps aiming it at our target audience.

We used the same person to record the voiceover as we used for the documentary, this kept the same tone for both our documentary and radio trailer. The audience will recognise this voice from our radio trailer to our

documentary.

You can see that we included a large image from our documentary as the main image of our magazine. I think that if we had the chance to do the magazine article again I would make the main centre image more appealing and interesting but this image is consistent from our documentary as it shows part of it.

We made sure we included the Apple logo that was significant and stood out so that as soon as the audience looked at the article, just this image and the large bold title “The Apple Takeover” would make the audience aware of what it was all about.

We used quotes in our magazine article from our documentary to tell them all about it, a similar technique we had used in our radio trailer to keep consistency.

We consistently mentioned the date time and channel in our radio trailer and magazine article to emphasize when it is on and make it memorable for the audience.

Our radio trailer and magazine article successfully promoted our documentary,

I think that our magazine successfully promotes our documentary, it has a clear black and white layout which is striking and attractive and goes with the Apple logo (black and white) theme.

The article also clearly states the date time and channel of the documentary, emphasizing this throughout the magazine and radio trailer will make it more memorable for the audience.

The radio trailer is catchy, upbeat and memorable, with our upbeat memorable music from our documentary, it gives it that brand identity and gives a good atmosphere and expectations to our documentary. We used catchy quotes and I came up with the idea of using quotes from newspapers regarding our documentary to show that it had been tried and tested already and trustworthy sources liked it.

Question 4

What did we learn from our audience feedback?

Questionnaire

We chose to construct a questionnaire in order to gain audience feedback regarding our documentary. We felt this was a good way of getting feedback because it allowed us to ask the questions we wanted, it was straight to the point and gained us a lot of data to analyse.

We tried to make the questionnaire easy for the audience to complete, asking closed questions with options for answers so that they could fill it in easily whilst watching it, we also asked a few open questions to get some more wide range feedback.

How would you rate our documentary on a scale of 1 – 5? (5 being the best)

3

18

5

scale

12345

This was one of the questions we asked in our questionnaire, we were really pleased with the response we got as the majority of people (18 people out of 26) rated us highly with “4 out of 5” and 5 people rated it at the best of “5 out of 5”. This shows people must have enjoyed our documentary and thought it was of good quality.

How effective and professional do you think our camera shots are?

very

poorpoor

okay

good

very

good

05

101520

0 0 2 18 6

Series 1

How effective and professional

Am

ount

of p

eopl

eitl

e

poorv.poor

okay good v.good

We wanted to find out if our camera shots and angles were suitable for our documentary and whether they were of a good quality.

We used a range of shots, from over the shoulder, high angle, establishing, mid long etc. All for varied effects and to improve the professional quality of the documentary.

We were really pleased with the response as again the majority rated them as “good”. To try and get this response up to majority “very good” I think we could have made our shots more steady at certain points as at some points during our background footage, the camera was a bit shaky and not always steady.

For vox pops and professional interviews do you think the mise en scene is appropriate?

Column1

not veryprofessionalvery

Not very

professional

very

For our interviews we did our best to set up an interesting mise en scene appropriate for the person being interviewed. We did this so that in the interviews the professional opinions would be proven as reliable and believable.

We were again pleased with the overall response with 16 people answering “professional” and 9 people answering “very” we reached the upper end of being the best at this, judging from this feedback, so I think we achieved our aims for the mise en scene.

Do you think the sound quality was of a professional standard?

not very

professi

onalve

ry02468

10121416 Series 1

Not very professional very

Sound quality was a majorly important aspect of the documentary for us because it was essential for them to be able to understand and hear it clearly in order to understand the main message.

You can see from our feedback that again we achieved high end feedback with most people saying it was of a professional/very professional quality.

I think that some people may have chosen “not very” because the voiceover was at times a little too loud and our interview with Richard wasn’t very loud.

We selected an upbeat, electronic choice of background music. Do you think that this was the right decision, did it work well?

yes no0

5

10

15

20

25

30Series 1

yes no

Everyone answered this question “yes” therefore agreeing with our choice of music. This shows we made the right decision and it must have created a good atmosphere for the documentary and suited the subject.

Were the changes in the sound levels appropriate throughout the documentary?

not veryappropriatevery

Not very

appropriate

very

With this question, again we got positive feedback with the majority of people answering “appropriate” or “very” I think this was because we kept to certain decibel levels throughout so it had consistency and we turned it down at the correct points. I think at some points the voiceover and backing track could have been turned down a little more and the iPod advert may have been a little too loud but I think overall it was of a good standard.

How informative and helpful did you think our vox pops and interviews were on a scale of 1-5? (5being the best)

1st Qtr

2nd Qtr

3rd Qtr

4th Qtr

1

2

3

4

5

We were pleased to find that we again achieved average to really good feedback on this, it shows that the formal interviews we had managed to arrange were effective and useful for our documentary and the audience found these interesting. The vox pops opinions clearly also played an important part of achieving the documentaries aims of informing the audience.

Did you find our voiceover clear and easy to understand?

Sales

1st Qtr2nd Qtr3rd Qtr

Not very

satisfactory

very

Our voiceover was rated really well in our audience feedback with 19 people rating it as “very” clear and easy to understand.

We felt it was important to make sure our voiceover was of good quality because it had a big impact on our documentary. We made sure our voiceover was clear and spoken at a steady pace so the audience could understand it and take it in.

Do you think the editing and transitions of footage were appropriate?

Category 1 Category 2 Category 30

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

Not very appropriate very

Although we didn’t use much editing or transitions, those that we did use obviously had a good effect and were appropriate to the documentary without taking the serious tone away. I think that we used the fades, straight fast cuts and fade to blacks in the appropriate places, and clearly so do our audience.

Name two facts you’ve taken from our documentary

“iPods are the most popular gadget” “Macs designed with creativity”

“Apple sales have boomed over the last few years”

“Apple has a key brand identity”

We were pleased to see that the audience took away new knowledge with them and remembered facts from our documentary, this question allowed us to see if we had achieved our aims of informing the audience all about Apple as a brand and company and we were pleased to see we achieved this.

Magazine feedback

What do you think of the colour scheme that we used on our double page spread?

Category 1 Category 2 Category 3012345678

excellent good poor

The modal response to this answer was “good”. We chose a black and white colour scheme to go along with the black and white Apple logo colour scheme. We thought this was effective and striking but I think we could have made it even more striking if we had included one more other bright vibrant colour to add interest and emphasize certain points.

Did the article persuade you to watch the documentary?

Sales

1st Qtr2nd Qtryes

no

Our magazine article clearly achieved its purpose and our aims to promote the documentary and persuade people to watch it. All of our audience answered “yes” saying it did persuade them to watch it. This was the desired effect so we were really pleased.

Do you like the idea of one main image or would you prefer a number of images?

1 main imagenumber of images

From this feedback we can understand where we could have improved on our documentary. We can see that our audience would have preferred lots of images instead of one main image.

I think that we could have made our main image more exciting and striking and added more images throughout the article.

Our original plan was to have a collage of Apple products as the main image but unfortunately this didn’t work

To what extent would you say our double page spread follows the codes and conventions of a real media product?

excellentgoodpoor

Everyone rated our double page spread as being either good or excellent at following the codes and conventions of a real media product.This shows the article appeals to the audience as professional and that they would take the article seriously.

What would you change in order to improve our double page spread?

“more images” “more colour” “change the main image”

From this open question we got the feedback we hoped to get: some improvements we could make. I agree with the feedback and think that if we could improve it we

would change the main image to a more striking one that was interesting and appealing and also include more images and add interest. With this simple but striking black and white colour scheme i think it is important to include other images. Also, they said more colour, we could have added one more vibrant

colour as most professional magazine articles stick to 3 colours for their colour scheme rather than two.

Radio trailer

For the radio trailer feedback we did a focus group. We found that by doing this we got open feedback of a wide range.

In the group we established that the radio trailer was “interesting and memorable” “the music was good and got your attention” “it built up excitement and anticipation for the documentary” and “it would persuade people to watch the documentary”. They also liked that we had used newspaper quotes, they thought this was “a good effect, it makes you want to watch it more”

The feedback we got was mainly positive which we were really pleased about however they did say that we could have used more interesting quotes to improve it.

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

Internet for research

The internet was a useful tool in doing all of our research for the documentary, it allowed us to watch other documentaries and radio trailers on websites such as 4OD and BBC iPlayer.

It also allowed us to do research into Apple, exploring the Apple website and other websites allowed us to get a lot of facts and statistics for our documentary

Video camera

We used “canon hg” video cameras provided at college to get footage for our documentary. We used a tripod to support it in getting a steady shot and to allow us to get pans and tilts steadily. I was not used to using video cameras prior to this but soon got used to it. We had to understand contrast/composition and focus of shots on the camera in order to get the best quality shots. Having a camera of a good quality like this, we realised was essential in creating a good documentary of a good standard.

Video cameraWe had to input the microphone and

headphones into the camera, we made sure that we tested whether sound levels were appropriate before recording or setting out as it saved a lot of time so that we could get our footage and sound perfect first time.

After recording we had to upload our footage onto the Apple Macs via USB. This was quick and efficient, the Macs were really useful as they did everything efficiently. We then stored our footage in appropriate folders, labelled and dated so that it was easy to find when we wanted it.

Microphone

We used the microphones to record our sound for interviews and most importantly our voiceover. We learnt that the microphone was to be held at a good position, not too close to the person and definitely not in windy weather conditions, in order to get the best sound quality.

Final cut express

Final cut express was probably the most important tool that we used in the making of our documentary, it was essential that we understood how to use it properly in order to create a brilliant documentary.

Final cut express

We began by logging and transferring all of our footage, sorting out what we would use and what we wouldn’t and labelling it all, ready to be put into our library of footage that would be ready for us to edit and put onto the timeline at a further stage

Final cut express

• Once we then had all this footage we could begin a new project and start cutting, editing and arranging our footage onto the timeline.

• We soon picked up easily how to do this and got used to doing it. We used the range of tools available on the software: transitions (fades, fade to blacks) cuts, the pen tool to change sound levels etc.

The toolbar used to cut/select and change sound levels.

pen tool to change sound levels

Cut tool

Select tool

Final cut express

• Overall it was a vital tool and once we got used to using it, we used it effectively and efficiently to create a documentary of a professional standard with appropriate, good edits and transitions.

• Although it took us a while to get used to, we picked it up and really enjoyed using it because it had a really creative aspect and we had to be precise and take care over each thing we did. The programme had loads of really useful tools to help you out such as the timeline with timings on and the side toolbar, ready to be used, instead of going into file, edit, etc.

In design

We used in design to make our double page spread, we were used to using this programme from last years work, so we understood how to add text and images effectively, and edit it appropriately and effectively. I think this was a good program to do this on because it allowed us to edit it in all the ways we wanted to, such as edit the text effectively etc.

Microsoft wordWe used this to create our

questionnaires, it is a tool we are all very familiar with so it was really easy to type up and print out our questionnaires quickly and efficiently, ready to get our feedback.

PowerPoint

I used PowerPoint to do my evaluation because i think it’s an effective way of displaying my work with a more visual aspect because everything about the documentary and creating it is visual and PowerPoint allowed me to demonstrate this well.

Blogger

we used blogspot to keep track of our progress and everything we had done, this was a really useful tool because it allowed us to show everything, such as include images and links etc. And we could see it all together visually rather than on loads of paper. It also saved the environment by not printing everything off, we could edit it all and see it all online.