james evaluation media

8/2/2019 James Evaluation Media

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In what ways does your media product use, develop or

challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

How I have challenged media conventions

The text used to introduce interviewees was comic

When people are being introduced in a documentary there is nearly always text, letting the

audience know who the person is so that they are not confused as to the person¶s identity.Generally this is done in very standard, simple font, like in the documentary µSuper size me¶,

but on my documentary the text used had a slightly modern look about it, as this is far fromthe norm it challenged traditional forms and conventions of actual media products. In

reflection though I do not feel the texts modern looks purpose was quite understood, or in factnoticed, as it was not clear the modern text was to symbolise the fact that the government

changes have created modern issues.

Below is both texts, on the left is the text from µSuper size me¶ and on the left is the text frommy documentary µUp in smoke¶, I personally prefer the text from µUp in smoke¶ as I feel it is

more legible.

Title of documentary across video ±

When documentaries are introduced it is usually

done by having a title screen that states the name of

the documentary with maybe and image/s behind it,

but in my documentary as a group it was decided thatthe title would look better if it was to appear on top

of a video as a pose to an image. As the video had to be relevant to the documentary, it was a video of

somebody rolling a cigarette. Although this did look quite tawdry in a way it did look different which sums up the documentary early on as its

purpose is to be different and challenge the conventional view of smoking.

We did not use still images to illustrate the voice over

The typical conventions of documentaries with voice over¶s to have still images on screen as

the narrator narrates, sometimes the image is paned across, sometimes zoomed out of. µIn

Super size me¶ there is a still image of a cartoon that the narrator is talking about and as thistechnique was not used in my documentary, and it generally is, it was a media convention

that was challenged. As I was pleased

with the results I feel it was challengedwith success, this is the case because

as a pose to using still images, veryshort video clips were used which I

felt made the



Documentary flow more smoothly and didn¶t seem to keep stopping.

A different side to the government¶s interferences in the smoking industry

My groups documentary µUp in smoke¶ were not necessarily controversial, but it did promoteopinions that most do not agree with. There are a lot of people that are very against smoking

so discussing the issue without slating it and giving a balanced argument on the subject issomething that a lot of people may disagree with, ethically. So for the documentaries subject

and views held, it challenges conventional media products as most media products that are

related to smoking, have one purpose and that is to discourage people from doing it.

The documentary mainly consists of interviews

My media documentary µUp in smoke¶ is very interview based, it is not like a standarddocumentary in that way as it mostly people talking about their opinions on the smoking

industry. The reason for the amount of interviews is that it the documentaries purpose is toconvey the opinions of different groups of people, so the documentary without interviews

would not serve its purpose. This was very different to the documentary µSuper size me¶ as

that contained a lot of footage of Morgan Spurlock doing other things such as eat fast food,

but my documentary was more to do with what people had to say so I feel what we did was a

good decision. I was pleased with the result of challenging this media convention as it was

made clear to the audience the amount of points of view there is on the industry.

Phone interview

Doing a phone interview in a documentary is a very standard thing to do and the fact it was

done in my media documentary was not challenging media conventions, but as the interviewwas happening, there was other screen play. In the documentary µSuper size me¶ there is a

phone interview and all the audience is watching is Morgan Spurlock on the phone. But in

µUp in smoke¶ there is a phone interview with the owner of Hollingsworth tobacconist, whistthe audio of the interview is playing, there is screen play of the shop from the out and inside.

Fly on the wall clips of the high street with intestinal low focus, and a clip of people walking

past a box of cigarettes, sped up to around 4 times the speed it was recorded at. I think this

was defiantly a good decision as phone interviews can be boring to watch, especially when

they are as long as the one in µUp in smoke¶, so the relevant screen play made it easier to

watch so the audience were not bored watching it.

The first image is how the µUp in smoke¶ phone interview starts, it is shown for a fewseconds and then the screen play starts. Part of the screen play is the high street clip, the

image in the middle. Even as stills it is clear that it is more interesting to have screen play, the

reason that Morgan Spurlocks face is shown as a close up during the interview is so that theaudience can see his emotion, as the interviewer (Me) has not



reason to be emotional in µUp in smoke¶ there is no reason to show the audience me on the phone.

Most of documentary consisted of close up shots

To vary documentaries and break the monotony of them, a wide variety of shots is used so

that the viewer does not become bored but as my documentary was very interview based, itconsisted predominantly of close ups, as the emotion of the interviewees emotion needed to

be captured. Although this may seem as if it would be boring to watch, it was a documentary

aimed at an older audience as it would capture the interest most of people that smoke and

hold political views. Due to the fact that it would mostly be watched by older people (over

18), the documentary did not need to be as fast paced as a documentary that was aimed at

people of all ages as adults hold more patience and generally do not wish to be rushed

through things that hold strong views on, they usually prefer depth and detail on issue close

to them.

Not much documentary sound in trailer

The radio trailer for µUp in smoke¶ was nearly all a vocal advertisement that was just a

spoken script summing up the documentary and only contained one short piece of sound from

the documentary and that was a piece from the phone interview. As it was from the phone

interview it was difficult to understand so listeners of the advert may have thought it was all

bad quality when in actual fact that was the part with the lowest audio quality. So this was not

a good move as I think there sound have been a different piece of audio from the

documentary, but only a piece about the same length and in the same place.

How I have developed media conventions

Having text to introduce interviews

Introducing new faces in a documentarywith text is a very standard convention

and one that it is almost silly to not

adopt, for this reason my documentary

did consist of text to introduce people,

this avoided confusion as to who people

were. I think this was defiantly a good

thing as the documentary opened with

the interview with Tom Kravec, so he

was not verbally introduced.

Off camera voice over

As the voice over is given by somebody off camera (out of shot) and it is spoken directly to

the audience, it gives an impression of authority. The reason this is a typical media

convention that people will listen to an authoritative voice and the voice

over¶s purpose is to be listened to, although this is the standard convention

it is still once again different to the documentary µSuper size me¶ as that is

presented for the majority of the way through so the sound is mostly

digenetic. I feel that this was defiantly an adoption of media conventions



for the best as in my opinion, when a documentary is presented it takes up time that just dragsout what is being said, also images and videos can back up what is being said.

Handheld cameras

Handheld cameras were used in short clip smoking montages, the clips were brief, very short

recordings on signs that said µSmoking area¶, people smoking ECT. The documentaryµSupersize me¶ was extremely similar in this way as there was a montage of clips around a

second long. This was when it was being said that America has the biggest everything,

³America has the biggest cars, houses, and people´ and every time something was said there

was a quick recording of one of them. Using this technique was a good decision was it made

the montages flow better a pose to just looking jumpy, but there was straight cuts between

them so it was still fast pace and didn¶t drag on.

A lot of the sound was direct

Nearly all of the sound in the µUp in smoke documentary was direct as it was directed straight

at the audience, meaning there was not fly on the wall sound, listening into actual events.

Although this is a standard convention of media products it is not like all of them, for

instance the US show µSuper nanny¶ is a program about children that misbehave and most of

the footage is fly on the wall. Not adopting this technique and using the more stereotypical

convention was defiantly a good idea as all of the people speaking in it were talking to get

their point across.

None diegetic music was used to fit the scene and the emotion of it appropriately

To stop the µUp in smoke¶ documentary from being boring to listenit was decided as a group that sound background music was needed,

as this was the case, we made a soundtrack on garage band. As it was actually two tracks that

were made, one sounding more like an intro and one sounding more like a chorus, there werealternated throughout, also sound levels were altered so that the sound flowed in and out. I

think this was certainly a good decision as it did not seem like the music came out of nowhere

and the music also fitted appropriately because there was two tracks to chose from at any one

time.

Showing how people are effected

This is a very common technique that is used in media a

lot, it is used in the µTHINK¶ adverts that show the

dangers of the road, in the adverts case a motor cyclist is

shown crashing into a car quite graphically. In the µUp in

smoke¶ documentary how people have been effected isshown through interviews when people are voicing their

opinions on how they feel about the changes the government have made. This is the purpose

of the documentary to see how people feel about what the government have done so their

emotion and the seemingly biased way they talk about certain issues is what the documentary

is all about. Showing how people are effected was defiantly a good thing as it¶s something

that is not often considered by people when they think of the smoking industry.

Fade to black



Use of fade to black is to let audienceconsider what they have just seen, it gives

them time to consider the footage and form aquick opinion on it/ absorb it, before the next

part of the documentary starts. Also it is used

to break up footage if the media product is

moving onto a different subject. An exampleof where this is used is in the documentary

µSuper size me¶ after the first scene when there is a large group of children singing about fast

food, at first seemingly harmless, but when the audience have time to consider it over a long

fade, they realise the implications of it, also it breaks it off nicely. The fade is used in µUp in

smoke¶ a lot as there is a lot of difficult issues being tackled and a lot of opinions/ points of

view, that people may not have heard before and need a couple of seconds to µdigest¶ it

before another scene comes straight at them.

How did you use media the technologies in the

construction and research, planning and evaluation

stages?

Garage band to make the sound track

As the documentary sounded quite empty with regards to audio, it was agreed as a group that

a soundtrack was needed in the background. To make the soundtrack, the technology that was

chosen was garage band, it contains lots of very small, copyright free, musical samples that

the user can put together to make a track. Instead of making one long track, we made two, thefirst sounded like a song introduction and the first sounded like the song chorus. This gave us

the ability to mix them together appropriately, so for example we played the first track whilstsomebody was talking, then when they say something important, the tracks can change for

dramatic effect.

Garage band did allow us to get a good end product but it was a

tedious process to get to it, this was because the software is not

particularly user friendly. This was the case because there were a lot of

options that novice users, such as me and my peers, were unsure of.Although the end result was very professional, and our song was

completely copyright free, I do think the program is very good, just not as easy to use as itcould be with regards to the amount of options and operating the time line/ adding music

pieces to it.

On the right is an example of the amount of options presented to the user before they start

making their track.

Video camera to record footage

The main media technology that me and my group used was a

video camera, we used it to record every single piece of footage

that was in our documentary. The quality of the recordings weregood as they were very clear due to the high resolution of the



camera its self. The camera allowed us to be able create good effects, such as shots with poor focus and silhouette shots that hid the face of the person being recorded. One drawback was

the poor sound but a microphone could be used to enable the interview sound to be clear enough for the audience to be able to hear it without difficulty. So this was a problem that

was easily fixable but it would have been easier if the interviews could have been done

without a microphone, but in fairness, even a lot of professional video cameras require

microphones to get the good quality sound.

Microphone to record sound for interviews and radio advert

The microphone that we used for the documentary and radio advert had a

very good sound quality so the recording came out very clear, this was a

positive of the microphone and was the most important feature so the fact

that it did record well, was very important. But the microphone did have a

draw back and that was its size, this meant that the transportation of it was

Awkward and holding it still for long periods of time was a pain. This was

not a major issue by any means, the microphone did not need to be so big, it could have quite

easily have been a third of its size and weight.

In conclusion it served its purpose well so was very good, but physically it was not ideal due

to how big it was.

Tripod

The tripod we used was very compact, it could hold the camera around 5

feet in the air, and be folded down to around 2 feet; this meant it was easyto carry with regards to its size, but it was very heavy, without a proper

handle to hold it by. The tripod held well so it gave good still shots when

appropriate and had a rotation device so smooth pans were easy. Also thetripod could be used on uneven surfaces as the four legs could individually

be made longer or shorter so they were adjusted accordingly. The tripod as

a whole was very useful and had a lot of strong points but needed a proper

handle of which it could be carried by.

Mac¶s

A lot of the research, planning and production of my media product required the use of a

computer, I have only really used computer that run on a windows operating system, so using

an apple computer was very different from what I was used to. Mac¶s work very differently

to windows, for instance the way to access programs, is different and none of the short cuts

are the same which was very frustrating at first. Once I got used to working on Mac¶s I didthink they were better than windows computers, but so different, it was

hard to adjust to them. So I do feel that using Mac¶s was more appropriate

for the tasks at hand, but being somebody that is used to Windows

computers, it would have been preferable to have the option to not use a

Mac, that way I would not have to waste time working out how to do

things, because I would already know.

Headphones



As we used a microphone to record some of the audio of our documentary, we needed to hear how clear the sound would come out. This was to avoid finishing an

interview, only to find out later that the sound quality was poor. Thesolution to this was to use head phone so that we could hear how the sound

was being interpreted by the camera. The very standard head phones could

play quite load, were adjustable and gave a clear sound, there is no

question of their performance but they were quite uncomfortable to wear for any length of time, luckily wearing them for a length of time was not

really necessary.

Final cut express

I very rarely use Apple Mac¶s so when I first used final cut express

I was lost in regards to how to operate the program, but during the

start of the editing process I have learnt not just how to use it, but

also how to use it to its full capability and get the most out of the

programme. Some of the things that the software gave me the

ability to do was adjust sound levels where video¶s were too load, fade sound throughout a

video and transitions that broke up the documentary nicely. The program was very user onceyou got to know your way around it so at first the amount of things you can do is quite

daunting, but once you learn the purpose of the key controls, it is a very simple to use program. In conclusion Final cut was a great piece of software in which to edit µUp in

smoke¶, but it did take some getting used to at first.

The blog

All of the research and planning for the documentary had to

be placed somewhere, in this case a blog was used. I really

liked the blog as it enabled me to upload posts at any time,

from any computer as long as it has access to the internet. The

blog allowed me and my peers to upload text, pictures and

videos, once they were uploaded they could also be edited and viewed by other members of the group, these reasons I think the blog served its purpose perfectly.

Photoshop

The final piece of media technology we used for our media product was Photoshop to create

the two page spread. The software was more than adequate for

what was needed as it allowed the text to be arranged in

appropriate columns, the title to be in the selected font, and the

images to be placed where needed. All in all it gives a much

more professional look than a program such a MicrosoftPublisher could so I thought the program was fantastic, andthere are no floors I can think of that it had.

How effective is the combination of your main product

and ancillary texts?

Effectiveness of radio advert



Personally I feel that the radio adverts strong point is that it contains more than one incitingfact that viewers would hear and not know, demonstrating that from watching the

documentary they would learn interesting things. An example of some of the interesting factsare;

³Smoking has been proven to reduce anxiety, paranoia, depression the risk of Alzheimer's,

Senile Dementia and Parkinson's disease. And if you smoke 20 a day for 20 years you willhave already spent more in taxes than it costs to treat someone for lung cancer´

After hearing this I think that listeners would be surprised by the facts and want to hear more

similar ones, there for be tempted to watch the documentary as they would want to be further

educated on the subject of smoking.

The radio adverts¶ purpose was to make people want to watch the documentary, but thiswould be pointless if they were not told when it was on or what channel it would be on. But

the advert stated clearly when to watch it, and what channel to watch it on, ³Channel 4 at 9O¶clock´.

People will often make a judgement on a documentary based on how it is advertised, without

music our advert sounded quite boring and monotonous and we did not wish for people to

think the documentary would be like this, so we added music in the background. This I feel

helped the advert promote the documentary as with the music in the background it make the

advert sound quite energetic.

A part of the radio advert I thought did not help the promotion of the documentary was the

audio that was taken from the documentary it¶s self as it was part of a phone interview so

lacked audio quality. This may have made listeners think that the whole of µUp in smoke¶

would be of the same audio standard.

Effectiveness of double page spread

The images used in the double page spread are very appropriate for the documentary as there

are four images, three of which are of the documentary its self, and the other is of somebody

smoking. All of the images are good quality and professional so they hint to the audience that

the documentary is professional and well shot, for example if the images looked amateur and

bad quality, it would put people off

watching it.

Some double page spreads can look quite

bare as they are quite empty, but the one

promoting µUp in smoke¶ was not like this

at all, it was full but not over crowded, thismade it look very attractive and the fact it

was pleasing to look would make people

looking at it think that the documentary

would be the same, therefore promoting the

documentary.

It was also clear that a lot of effort had gone into the spread, it had not just been thrown

together, this was shown by the clear attention so small details that on their own were very



subtle, but together made a big difference, and such as the fact the three pictures were exactlythe same size. This was a reflection of the documentary as it was made whilst concentrating

on the finest of details, such as the flowing of the sound from voice over to interview.

The double page spread also looked very standard, in a good way; it was how you wouldexpect a double page spread to look. This was both good and bad, it was good because it

would not put people off from being too different, but bad because the documentary wassupposed to be different, and show alternative points of view to the standard ones accepted by

society.

One of the bad points of the double page spread was its lack of colour due to the fact, that

other than the digital graphics, it consists solely of black, white and grey. The colours do go

very well together but is just not very eye catching, it does not look as if it would capture the

attention of people flicking through a magazine. So this badly promotes the documentary as

people may not bother reading it at all.

The only other bad point of the magazine, being quite pedantic, is the fact that the text is very

compact so is quite off putting to read, this could have been avoided by breaking it up,

Audience targeted by radio advert

possibly with images, although this is not a major floor, it is just something that could have

been avoided. If this was the case in a magazine article it would not be a problem but as it is

advertising a documentary, people may think the documentary is going to be very

information based and be quite boring.

How well the three texts combine

All three of the texts created were of course targeted at the same target audience, in order to

assess how well they target the same target audience I will go through them individually andsee what audience they target to see if they are the same.

Also the documentary was aimed at people aged around 15-25, and interested politics as thedocumentary did look at the political side of smoking, so the radio advert would need to

demonstrate the fact that this was a documentary aimed at academics,

not at the uneducated, or people that are politically and culturally apathetic. To get this across

and attract the target audience, the advert would need to be well spoken, as it was I feel thiswas key in promoting the documentary as it would have leaped out at the target audience.

Also to further back up the radio adverts target audience being educated adults the third fact

in the advert states that smoking has been proven to reduce the risk of three serious diseases(Alzheimer's, Senile Dementia and Parkinson's), these diseases are very complex conditions

that, categorically, young people would not have a real understanding of.

It is recommended that the bed time of a school attending child is nine o¶clock when they areaged around 11 years old, as the radio advert clearly states that the documentary starts at nine

o¶clock, so by the time its being shown it leans away from young children watching it, so

therefore targets the older audience.



In conclusion, due to the fact that the radio advert states that the documentary is quite political, contains references complex illness¶s and is on at nine o¶clock it is clearly not

targeted at children. As it is clearly not targeted at children, it is quite clear that the targetaudience is teenagers/adults; I personally would say that the radio documentary targets 16-30

year olds, so slightly older than the intended target audience.

Audience targeted by documentary

The documentary was also intended to target 15-25 year olds and I feel that it did as it was

simplistic enough to be understood and followed by people aged fifteen, but not to the point

that it would be patronising to people aged 25.

As the documentary is clearly focused on smoking from a political and psychological

perspective and these are issues that are only really ones that interest teenagers and adults thetarget audience is reached fairly well. But I think that like the radio advert the documentary

would probably interest people over the age of 25 as well.

In conclusion I think the target audience was hit, but the documentary would also interest

older people, so the fact it would appeal the other people is not exactly a bad thing.

Audience targeted by double page spread

Generally younger people will read things in magazines that are not very text based andconsist of lots of bright colours. The double page spread is made up of one large piece of text

and plain colours so would detour younger readers, this means that it will be targeted more atolder people, I would say aged 17-25 so in my opinion the double page spread reaches the

target audience the best, but I¶m not sure if this is a good thing.

In conclusion the three texts target roughly the same audience with the documentary and

radio advert targeting a little more, so although the double page spread targets the targetaudience the best, at the same time I feel it will appeal to less people, which is not necessarilya good thing.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As the documentary was shown to a group of people, ten questionnaires were passed aroundin order for the audience to give us an insight on what they thought of it.

The first question was, ³Was the topic on a subject that interested you?´, unfortunately two

people did not answer the question so there was only eight results, but they were as follows,

five people said ³Yes´ and three said ³No´. From this I learnt that smoking was a subject thatinterested over half of the population, categorically speaking, so the subject we chose to base

the documentary around was a good one. I was not surprised by this result as smoking is thehighest cause of preventable deaths in Britain, so it is an issue that effects most people. The

second question was, ³Did the documentary change the way you view the smoking industry?´all ten people answered this question, seven people answered ³Yes´ and three answered

³No´. I was very pleased with the fact that the vast majority of the audience surveyed felt thattheir views on the smoking industry had been changed as this was the aim of the

documentary. Despite the fact that all ten people did not feel as if their views changed I was



still pleased as the ten people surveyed were not all of audience that the documentary wastargeted at. I was slightly pleasantly surprised by the results of the survey as I did not expect

70% of people to have had their views changed, to be honest I expected slightly less thanthat. The third question was, ³Was the background music used effectively in the documentary

and radio ad?´, out of the ten people surveyed an incredible 100% of them answered ³Yes´,

meaning not a single person answered ³No´. I was ecstatic at this statistic as I put lot of effort

was put into the sound levels of the background music, so knowing that the time was notspend in vein, was great. I expected over half of the people surveyed to say ³Yes´ but I had

no idea everybody would answer it, so the result of this question was brilliant. The fourth

question was ³If real, would the ad make you want to watch the real documentary?´ nine

people answered ³Yes´ to this question, and only one answered ³No. This result was really

satisfying because so long was spent on the documentary, due to poor time management

skills, very little time was left for the radio documentary, as the advert was rushed I was

thrilled to see that the audience still found it to be effective. So I was surprised by the result, I

expected it to be around 50:50 for people voting ³Yes´ or ³No´

The fifth question was ³Did the documentary look professional?´, once again nine people

answered ³Yes´ and only one person answered ³No´. As me and my group were all amateurs

when it came to producing documentaries, we knew all along that

the hardest thing to do would be to make it look professional. From our audience feedback itwas clear that they thought we did, so I was again very pleased by this result. I was fairly

surprised as I once again expected the results to be about 50:50, so getting 90% answer ³Yes´was great. Also there were a few things in the documentary that could have been improved;

this result was defiantly one of the ones that was the most pleasing. The sixth question was asfollows ´The documentary ended abruptly, if the rest was made would you watch it?´, eight

people answered ³Yes´ and only two answered ³No´, so it was another question with acomplementary result. This was a really good result as it made us realise that the

documentary we had made was not only a piece of course work, but something that genuinely

interested people. I was quite surprised by this result as it made me realise that the

documentary may well have a wider target audience than I first anticipated, which can only

be a good thing as it means if made professionally, it would be more popular.

Easily the most disappointing result was question seven, which was, ³Did you feel the soundlevels were adjusted properly´, six people answered ³Yes´ and four answered ³No´, so

although more than half of the people surveyed thought the sound levels were adjusted properly, it was not by a large margin. I found this result very surprising as I felt the sound

levels were fine, I was not expecting 100% of people to answer ³Yes´ but the result was still

the least complimentary one.

Question eight was another audio question that was ³Do the changes from interview to

voiceover flow smoothly?´ all ten people answered ³Yes´ which was another fantastic result.I was not surprised by this result because the audio flow was very smooth due to an effortful

process, but admittedly, I was surprised that every single person agreed with me.

The final question, question nine was, ³Did you learn anything about smoking from either the

doc or radio ad?´, again everybody answered, ³Yes´, which was a result that of course I was pleased with, but not particularly surprised by. The aim of the radio documentary was to state

lots of surprising facts about smoking to make people want to learn more, therefore watch the



documentary, so I would have been surprised if everybody knew all of the facts, but it wasstill good to see that every single person surveyed learnt something new.

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