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

Megan Waite & Kira Brookfield

Documentary

My documentary was intended to use conventions from a real like media text to establish a recognisable image that would appeal to our intended audience. For research, we looked at general documentaries that would appear on TV. Then we recognised a presenter named Cherry Healey who observes problems in society in an entertaining way within documentaries. We noticed that these examples were very contemporary and held technological characteristics which allowed them to look professional which encouraged us to create upon these terms to gain a similar outcome, as this is the way we wanted to portray our media text.

Conventions we used from real media products.

The way we linked our piece to a Cherry Healey documentary was the way myself presented our documentary. As the presenter, I adapted my personality to fit into Cherry’s bubbly and exciting approach. Cherry interacts a lot with her guests on her doc’s which encouraged me as the presenter to interact with Kira, my chosen main guest, in a way to show a positive relationship and a comforting atmosphere which would contrast the conversation that we we’re discussing within the story.

Our Documentary follows these conventions…

• Vox-pops• Voice-overs• Direct Interview Technique• Relevent mise-en-scene during interviews• Presenter• Cut away clips during direct speech from Kira and

interviewees (images of the college etc.)• I also added a caption to Kira’s video to explain where

it was extracted from and it’s name so it could be found by viewers etc.

MusicThe type of music which we used in our documentary held positive connotations and reflected the emotions we wanted our audience to feel as our aim was to create equilibrium between younger and older generations in order to cut out teenage stereotypes. This is to encourage their view on the situation as we felt that matching the music to the actual emotions would also make the audience feel just as bad rather than sorry for the character within the documentary. Our music used when introducing Kira had a slower pace and had stronger bass which we felt would encourage the feeling of the audience feeling sorry for her.Particular genres of documentary have different effects and iconography which meant that the choice of music was important to allow us to get the right point across. Also, within research, I found that having the perfect music mattered and increased the strength of the message within the film aspect.

Conventions we challenged from real media products

We didn’t really challenge any conventions to a large extent as we we’re avoiding setting the wrong intentions and we wanted to follow a correlation rather than drifting off onto different tangents. We felt the way Cherry Healey presented her documentaries were very similar to the way we wanted to portray ours. Cherry doesn’t use anything other than recent music and clean, swift transitions that relates well with everyone as it catches the audience attention enough without going over the top majorly which would become over-exciting. We more or less followed the conventions of Cherry and other media products rather than devising our own.

Challenges from real life

Although we didn’t challenge conventions from media texts, we challenged society by displaying teenagers in a positive way which would rarely be displayed in real life as well as media texts. In research, I obtained some online newspaper articles which displayed negative headlines and contents. I did not come across positive headlines which encouraged me to focus on this theme. There are a lot of TV programs which display teenagers in a negative way. For example; 16 and pregnant and the popular American series, Sweet 16 etcetera.

Double Page Spread

The DPS conventions of real life media texts, from a TV Guide, contained certain aspects which we were able to work with as we had gained research and creative skills from AS coursework. This allowed us to find the specific research we need quickly and apply special effects in a more developed way. The layout and colour scheme linked well with the documentary so it matched and followed our work colour scheme.

Newspaper Advertisement

By looking at real life adverts in a newspaper helped us create this aspect of the brief as the conventions where easy to follow. As we were developing a strong theme to base our documentary on, we felt that increasing the imperatives and features of the texts was necessary to get the effect we was hoping for. We wanted to create equilibrium over younger and older generations and to make the audience feel belittled and targeted was a way to achieve this outcome. As the media has created this stereotype for teenagers, we wanted to use opposing strategies for this effect.

Conventions the Print aspects follow…

DPS:• Page numbers• Images• Air date/time of the documentary• Range of interesting graphology within text• Engaging quotes/headlines/subheading etc.• TV Guide characteristics (descriptions)Advert:• Relevant images• Brief info, short/snappy• Eye catching, use of colour/font etc.• Logo for Chanel 4• Clear viewing time/date• Persuasive features (direct imperatives, addressing the audience)• Graphology – models looking directly at the camera created an illusion of them

looking directly at the reader which would challenge their emotions.

Print: Challenges of media texts DPS:• Contained a full interview which would not be displayed in a real life TV

Guide but we felt it helped the reader to understand Kira in a more detailed way. This would be used in real media text, but in a increasingly summarised way.

Advert:• Our first draft was really abstract and dark which challenged our

message as a whole, it supported the negatives about teenagers whereas our final product had a more uplifting colour scheme which would avoid portraying the wrong message. Also, it contained spoken features which was audience specific towards older generations. This particular aspect had a main audience whereas the film aspect and DPS had a general audience as well as the main. This meant that the targets where different between each piece although we felt it wouldn’t have a large impact as it would be obvious who it was intened towards.