Final Documentary for Media Evaluation

8/2/2019 Final Documentary for Media Evaluation

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Faye Shorrock

Advanced Media Evaluation

Adolesense: Bullying

The task we were set was to create the first 5 minutes of a documentary into a chosen subject, wewere also asked to carry out two ancillary tasks; a double page spread for a magazine and a radio

trail. We chose to base our project on Bullying as we feel this is a subject that is talked about a lot in

the media and a big issue getting worse in our country. We collected research into this subject, and

then planned out our documentary using storyboards. We then did all our filming and collected any

other secondary footage such as YouTube clips and photographs. To put our documentary together

we used Apple Mac computers. Using the programme final cut express we logged and transferred all

our footage and picked out the footage which was definitely going to be used. We then edited all

our footage and put our documentary together. For the ancillary task the double page spread we

used a normal PC as we thought it would be an easier computer to use InDesign on, as we had

already used this programme numerous times before this was not a hard task. The other ancillary

task of the Radio Trail was a little more complicated as we have never used recording devices beforewith the headphones and microphone and it proved difficult to get the sound level right on the

device. We then produced our radio trail on the Apple Mac using the programme Garage Band.

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

media products?

To make a documentary into Bullying using the correct conventions and make it as interesting to

the viewer as possible we analysed existing media documentaries such as Airline and Super-size Me.

Airline is a docusoap which means that it can leave viewers on a cliff-hanger for the next episode

or exaggerate peoples opinions for the sake of entertainment. The role of the documentary Airline

is to inform viewers of what happens in airports and the type of situations that staff their have todeal with. Most of the camera work in the documentary Airline is handheld, this is to give a more

realist feeling to the viewer, to show that it is real life situations. There are a few occasions of tripod

mounted camera shots, but these are mostly aesthetic shots to show pans of the airport, or a plane

taking off etc. The main shots used were medium close-ups to show the emotion of the airport

customers, and to further make the viewer seem involved. The documentary used a voiceover

narration instead of a presenter. The only other voices were them of the people in the airport and

the staff, no music was used in the documentary and the only music was the theme songs at the

start and end of the documentary.

In our own documentary the conventions that we took from watching Airline, were that we

decided that we would use a narrative voice over rather than a presenter. We made this decision

because we realised that during the filming stages, the narrator would have to be on screenconstantly, and more filming would have been needed to film gaps where the narrator would have

been speaking. We came to the conclusion that we would not have had enough time filming to

include this. We also took into consideration the conventions when setting up the shots that they

used when talking to people, on the most part when these occurred the shot was framed and the

interviewee was either to the left or the right of the shot.

Super-size Me is a direct cinematic documentary directed and presenter by Morgan Spurlock, the

aim of this documentary was to address and inform people of a serious issue that is affecting the

United States as a nation, it was to convey the point that the fast food industry is affecting peoples

health. Super-size Me is directed in performative mode meaning that the documentary maker

interacts with the subject. In Super-size Me Morgan Spurlock has decided to me an on screen

narrator of the documentary, this gives the documentary a more informal style, and helps him to

interact directly with the viewers. You can tell in this documentary that Morgan Spurlock has a


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genuine interest in the subject and wants to actually make an impression, he also gives a lot of his

own personal opinions of the documentary. Super-size me uses a large range of different stylistic

elements to create a very aesthetically pleasing documentary including; graphics, animation,

photographs, drawings, text and secondary footage. The non-diegetic sound used in Morgan

Spurlocks documentary is that of a very upbeat tone, combining this with the fast editing, and

montage style of the footage it helps keep the viewer interested. Documentaries usually presentfactual information about the topic in Super-size Me with in the first few minutes facts are present

to inform the audience and to convey public opinion. Actuality is the term for real film footage of

real life events, places and people in Super-size Me the actuality occurs constantly, when he walks

into McDonalds to order his meal and the camera crew just film him ordering and eating and also

when he walks into the doctors - this is not scripted, actors arent used and it is not an artificial set.

Interviews are a main documentary technique. These allow the people being filmed to express their

opinions on the topic in Super-size

Me Morgan Spurlock interviews

experts on medical health and 'vox

pops' to get different

opinions. During an interviews

the rule of thirds must be

applied, the eyeline must be in

the top third of the frame, if

standing on the left hand corner

the person being filmed must look to the right hand side of the camera and vice versa.

The conventions that we took from Super-size Me was that we used the same montage style of

editing at the start of our documentary when explaining what will be going on in the documentary.

We were also able to see some conventions of documentaries in Super-size Me such as the rule of

thirds when framing the professional interviews.

Super-size Me has a rhetorical style meaning that, there is a question asked, discussed and then the

way for it to be changed and helped is shown. In this case, the problem is health problems in the

USA due to the growth of the fast food industry. Morgan Spurlock talks about this and justifies the

truth behind it by talking to professionals and carrying out his own experiment to prove the health

implications of fast food, he then discusses how this problem can be changed. We liked this style on

documentary because it is a good way to convey a serious message. As our documentary was about

bullying, we wanted to show a clear message and how to change this problem. We started the

documentary subjects by discussing what the problem was, and questioning how we can change

this, we then justified our points with clear knowledge and understanding and also answered the

question on how we can stop bullying from happening.


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There was a lot of non-digetic sound in Super-size Me, including sound effects and music tracks, this

was often layered in the documentary. In the first 5 minutes of the documentary there was a lot

upbeat music used, this combined with montage footage and quick cut editing meant that it quickly

drew the viewers into the topic with interest. We decided to use a similar approach by using music

that fitted the subject and the speed of

our documentary to further interestthe viewer. We also used the same

convention that the volumes of the

sounds would be altered in consistency

according to voiceover. As is the case

in Super-size Me and other

documentaries I have looked into we

can see that when there is voiceover,

or someone talking in footage the

sound level decreases, then increases

again where there may be no talking.

Many documentaries including Super-size Me and Airline use cutaway shots, these are aestheticallypleasing shots, used to keep viewers interested in the documentary and to give a further indication

into what the documentary entails. In airline the cutaway shots used were mainly of the airport

processes, such as luggage collection etc. In Super-size me cutaway shots were used of McDonalds

menus and the fast food

restaurants in America. In

our own documentary we

used a range of cutaway

shots that appealed to the

nature of the

documentary, such as

posters, location andelectronic devices used in

cyber bullying.

All these cutaway shots

were linked to what was

presently being talked

about to keep the viewer

interested in what was

being talked about using a

visual enhancement. For

example, when we were discussing bullying in aschool we had this cutaway shot, of the St.

Alphege Infant School.

Another type of shot that we used was an

establishing shot; this means that before talking

about something or before interviews and vox

pops, the scene was set. For example in our

documentary before our professional interview

with the principle of The Sixth Form Solihull we

chose to show a shot of him sitting at his

computer typing, this set the scene of what his

job may entail and who he is.


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Like many documentaries we decided to only use straight cut edits, this is because our documentary

aims to convey a serious issue and if we were

to use fancy editing such as fades or dissolves

it could stand out more than the serious

issue. Straight cut also worked well with our

documentary because we used fast paceshots, meaning that there was a lot of visual

very quickly. To keep the viewer interested

we decided that this would be an appropriate

editing method so that our documentary

flowed quickly without confusion. We did

however use a cross dissolve when putting

text on our professional interviews and when

sourcing our secondary footage. This worked

well because it meant we were able to take

the text of the screen gradually without

drawing attention to it so that viewers wereable to concentrate on the footage rather

than the effects.

We also carried out two ancillary tasks. The first being a radio trailer for our documentary. After

researching by looking into many different radio trails for different documentaries, we found that

they mostly have the same structure and conventions. By comparing these conventions we were

able to decide with our own radio trail which conventions to use and how we may challenge these

conventions.

The target audience for this radio advert is B, c1, mature men, aged between 40 65 years old,

who clearly take an interest in David Attenboroughs work and appreciate what experiences he s hadduring his life time. These people might like literature as that is what you associate with him. The


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tone of voice used is normal, sounding very direct as if everything is truly getting through to the

audience. Theres a slight tint of enthusiasm in his voice, this helps attract the audience as it isnt all

expressed the same and helps get the main points across. No sound effect are used during the

making of this trailer, this is because it has a serious meaning to it. The music adds a sense of drama

and adventure to the advert, without this it would be dull and the audience wouldnt be attracted to

it. There are 3 tracks all together, the one music one runs throughout the trailer. The other is DavidAttenboroughs voice and the other is the presenters voice. The music increases towards the end, it

was very low to start with and eventually it speeds up and increases in volume, this draws the

audience in, and sometimes will make them remember the advert by the music, which makes them

want to watch the documentary. It is approximately 40 seconds long.

We took some of these conventions and used them in our own radio trail, the main convention we

took from analysing David Attenboroughs radio trail was that the sound levels for the non-digetic

sound was altered throughout the radio trail. In this case the music seems to increase further to the

end the of the radio trail, this could be to build a climax and keep the listeners interested for the end

in which they

are told where

they can viewthe

documentary.

We chose to

use a similar

style by using a

sound effect

loud at the start

and the end of the radio trail to attract the listeners. We also used the convention that when there is

any voice over or clips from the documentary the non-digetic sound would be altered so that the

voices could be heard over the music. All the radio trails that we listened to had clips from the

documentary, the clips taken were usually the most exciting parts of the documentary or parts thatcould be quickly understood and linked well to the topic of the documentary.


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The other ancillary task was to make a double page spread magazine article for our documentary. To

create this we used InDesign, we already had previous knowledge of double page spread

conventions and InDesign from our AS project. We used many of the conventions of a double page

spread including:


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How affective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?

Did the documentary, radio trail and double

page spread all link together to portray theideas of the project on Bullying?

This is a question that we asked on our

audience feedback questionnaire. We wanted

to find out if all our products worked well

together and linked.

The result was positive, as 90% of people

thought that it linked well.

Our Documentary will be aired on BBC3 as it has

a good target audience ages between 16-34

years. This is linked to the radio trail played on

BBC radio 1 and BBC radio 1 extra with a similar

target audience age range. Also our as our

documentary is going to be aired on BBC it would

make sense that the BBC would use its own radio

stations to promote this.

The double page spread will be produced by TV

Times magazine owned by IPC Media.

IPC Media produces over 60 iconic media brands,with print alone reaching almost two thirds of UK

women and 42% of UK men almost 26 million UK

adults while our websites collectively reach over 20

million users every month. TV Times is one of the UKs

best-known magazine brands, with over fifty years of

TV heritage. It enjoys an excellent reputation within

the TV industry and has enviable access to Britains

favourite stars and their programmes. After major

research and development, TVT has been refreshed to

reveal a modern and vibrant look, with a clear vision of

what today's reader wants from their favourite

television magazine. Theres even greater emphasis on

big star interviews, more soap coverage than any other

TV weekly title, and the most easy to use digital listings for simpler navigation. TV Times is

positioned in the premium sector as a

quality TV weekly magazine, popular with

all the family.


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By looking at this we can see that TVT is a very popular magazine, reaching 2 thirds of women and

42% of men in the UK. Therefore by publishing our article in this magazine, we can assure coverage

and promotion of the documentary across the UK. TVTIMEs mainly focuses on soaps yet it does

advertise documentaries targeted at 20-50s age range. Although our target audience is 16-35 I feel

this will be a suitable magazine to advertise our documentary by our double page spread as it will

reach the bulk of the people who we presume will be watching it. Also if somebodies parent readsthe article they will be more likely to tell their children about it to encourage them to read it.

We have linked all our media products including the

documentary and both ancillary tasks to appropriate

media institutions BBC3 we chose because we felt

that it had similar documentarys already in the type

of documentary it was however did not have one on

our specific subject. We then linked our radio trail to

our documentary by using the obvious choice of

advertisement BBC radio 1 and 1 extra because a

documentary aired on BBC would use its ownadvertising resources and because these radio

stations had a similar target audience. Our magazine

double page spread linked with the documentary in

the way of target audience because it was an easy

read and not too time consuming. The colour

attracted the target audience along with the pictures

that attracted the target audience range of 16-34 year olds as it was a picture of people in this age

range. We decided that our article would be published in TV times magazine

Overall they link together because of target audience and suiting it to the publisher of the products.

What have you learnt from the audience feedback?

We first gained audience feedback before we started our project. This was to determine what

people preferred in documentaries and what people already knew about our chosen subject of

bullying.

These are a few of the results from the initial questionnaire that we found helpful :

Whos opinion on bullying

would you value more?

-Support Worker

-Psychology teacher

-Sociology teacher

-Academic coach

-Principle of school/college

From these results we were

shown that most people

would prefer to listen to

opinions from a support

worker on bullying. Least


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Would you prefer to hear a

narrator/on screen presenter

or a voice over narration?

Over half of people said theyprefer voiceover to a on screen

narration. This was and the

fact that we decided that we

could not allocate any extra

time for filming on screen

narration was the reason we

decided to use a voice over.

They were the most important thing that we learnt from our initial research questionnaire into how

people would prefer our documentary too look and its content. It was very helpful to put thisquestionnaire together and use the feedback because it showed us that many people had the same

opinion on certain documentary conventions, and by taking the results and using what people prefer

we hope it helped make a documentary that people will be more interested in watching.

We also carried out another questionnaire after we had completed our documentary and ancillary

tasks; this was our audience feedback questionnaire which we carried out to find out what people

liked and disliked about our project and what we could improve about it.

These are the results we found from our questionnaire:

Overall how would you rate our

Documentary Radio Trail Magazine

We can see from these pie charts that out of our documentary and ancillary tasks that our

documentary excelled above the ancillary tasks and that the magazine was the poorest rated

product. Most people rated all of our products as either good or fair and people only rated the

magazine poor.

excellent

good

fair

poor


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How suitable were our products?


We found that all of our products were deemed mostly suitable rather than unsuitable. The

documentary was mostly all voted suitable whereas the magazine was voted suitable by just over

half of people. This was the result we had predicted.

Did the documentary, radio trail and double page spread all show clear evidence of research into

bullying?


The questionnaire results revealed that all of our media products did have clear evidence of

research; however some people thought that the magazine article had the least evidence of

research. We were happy with these results because we did try to make sure that the statistics that

we put into our documentary and ancillary tasks was well researched and documented in the

products we created.

We also used open questions in our audience feedback questionnaire to get a deeper understanding

of what people thought worked well or what they thought we could have improved. We asked:So overall what improvements do you suggest we could make to our documentary, radio trailer and

double page spread?

Overall, we had mostly positive comments. People said that the main think that they thought we did

well was sound levels in the documentary; they felt that all the sound levels were equal and merged

well when changing the levels of the music. Someone said that it was a well throughout

documentary and kept the viewers interested throughout. The good things that were said about the

radio trail was that the sound levels were good and appropriate clips were taken and used from the

documentary. The magazine was said to have followed and used magazine conventions well and that

it also included all the necessary information. Improvements people suggested was that we should

have made to the documentary was just that the lighting needed to be improved on the principle

interview, we may have forgotten to change the white balance on the camera before filming.Improvements needed to the radio trail were that the sound levels were a little too high at the start

suitable

unsuitable

yes

no


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and the end of the trailer. Improvements made to the magazine article were that people found that

there was a bit too much white space around the text and the images didnt anchor the text well. To

improve these pictures could have been enlarged or more text could have been included, also more

pictures could have been inserted.

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

In the initial stages of our planning we used media technologies a lot to research and plan what our

documentary was going to be about. We used it to begin with to see if bullying was something that

appeared in the media often. To do this we used Windows PC to research news websites and anti-

bullying websites set up to raise awareness. We looked a newspapers every day to see what articles

were included on our chosen topic and to see how the media portrayed the issue of bullying. We

used the internet to watch current documentaries using catch up TV services and to watch Super-

size Me and Airline. We used catch up services such as channel 4OD and BBC iplayer.

Blogger.com is a website we used throughout the whole time from planning to evaluate our

products. It is a blogging website where you can upload posts quickly and easily for the viewing of

anyone. We used it initially to upload statistics and research we had found from different media

sources. We later used it to keep a log on how our filming was planning

out, and to show different skills that we have learnt throughout the

process. It was a useful website because it allowed us as a group to

upload research that we have done individually and share it with each

other so we all gained that knowledge and understanding. The only

issue with Blogger.com was that when uploading YouTube clips or

photos to the blog it was time consuming and restrictive to where the

image could be placed and what size the image is.

YouTube.com proved very helpful to our planning and

research stages as we were able to use it to see how

people were blogging about being bullied or how

people can help them if they are being bullied. Therewas a lot of support to people being bullied on

YouTube, which showed a large number of people have

experienced it themselves but also shows that a large

number of people agree that something needs to be

done about it as many people have watched these sort

of videos. YouTube also provided us with a log of past

and present advertisements and anti-bullying

campaigns from charities such as Anti-bullying Alliance

and Childline.


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When planning our documentary we used

storyboards and Mind maps to plan the layout

and content of our documentary, to show this

on blogger.com we used a flatbed scanner to

send them to the computer and then upload

them onto the blog as an image.

In planning stages we also used Microsoft

Word and Excel to create questionnaires and

analyse the results. When

analysing the results we used

Microsoft Excel because we feel

that this was an appropriate easyprogramme to calculate data and

analyse using graphs and charts.

To create graps and charts in Excel

you simply insert the data in a

chart, highlight it all then click the

graph button and it automatically

organises the data into a graph of

your choice.

I then transferred these graphs

into Microsoft Word to analyse all

the results, I then copied this ontoBlogger.com.

When we created the documentary the most

important technology that we used was the digital

camera. The camera was a piece of technology

that none of us our group had used before. This

meant that we took at least two sessions getting

to grips with how to use it and how to get

effective footage either handheld or using the

tripod. To start recording you press the centrebutton on the control dial and again to finish the

recording. To switch the camera from recording

mode to playback mode you switch the dial from

red to blue. On the pull out LCD screen there is

other recording options. To change the exposure

or contrast you press the joystick control down to

choose which mode you want to change to. Once

you have selected the mode you move the joystick left to right or right to left to alter it. To change

the white balance, press the function button at the bottom of the LCD screen to open the set up

menu. Then select the white balance, this was used when we were outside because sometimes the

brightness was too high. None of the other functions were changed because we can do any otherediting in the editing stages of our documentary.


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We used a tripod when filming our interviews and vox-pops we used a tripod

to keep our camera still and level. Sometimes this was an inconvenience

because often setting up the tripod too a lot of time as you had to make sure

it was completely level and on some concrete ground it was very difficult to

keep it level. We also had other attachments which we had to set up when

filming the interviews and vox-pops. This includeda microphone which we had to insert into the

camera and make sure all the microphone

connexions were correct otherwise the sound may

be compromised; we also inserted headphones into the camera to make

sure we could hear the interviews and make sure that the sound levels

were right whilst recording. The whole process of recording the actual

professional interviews was very hard because it always took a while to

set up the camera and make sure that the right balance of the camera

was. We did however manage to get some very good shots using the focus

function.

We used apple Mac computers for all of our editing stages of the project; generally I would say that

using the apple Macs for creative purposes such as our project was better than using a PC because it

is designed for that. It was hard to use at first as it is not my normal type of computer to use, but

after getting used to it and learning all the new controls we were able to use it to our advantage and

produce a better project than that on a normal PC.

The programme we used to edit our documentary was Final Cut

Express, designed for advanced editing of digital video and the

consumer version of Final Cut Pro. This was the first time any of our

group had used this programme, so it was quite difficult to get thehang of, the most time consuming part was the log and transfer of

footage from or digital cameras. This took us two sessions to

complete as we had a lot of footage to go through and decide what

would be essential to our documentary and what was too weak to

include. Even though we only made a short part of our documentary

the first 5 minutes it still took a long time to log and transfer the

footage and pick which ones were best. Once we logged and

transferred we renamed footage to find the clips we wanted quickly,

all this footage then appeared in the browser and was then easy to

drag onto the timeline.

We started then to add clips together and decide what we wanted

in the start, middle and end segment of our 5 minute clip. We found it easy to work like this because

we could fill any gaps later and this also helped us to plan the script for our voiceover. Although we

did get many good ideas from our initial storyboards we found that we lead astray from this a lot

when producing the film as sometimes it seemed harder to do what the storyboard said rather than

what we had the knowledge to do using the programme.

Some of the clips that we inserted from the browser we had to cut and swap or the sound levels

needed to be changed. We did all this after we decided on the sequence of the clips. To cut the clips

we played through them and cut a new start and finish then took the excess away. To change the

sound level of the clip we dragged the sound up or down using the mouse, this was simple but hard

at the same time because it was hard to determine if we had made the sound levels accurate.


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We did also use a tool to speed up one of our clips, this was too show the amount of people walking

in and out of college, it was a good shot and worked well when sped up and was aesthetically

pleasing.

Overall, Final Cut Express was a very complicated expert programme, considering nobody in our

group had used this programme before we started our project I feel that we have learnt a lot about

the programme and used its range of resources to the best of our abilities. However, it was a timeconsuming product as each process took a long time. This was the hardest technology that we used

in the whole project.

InDesign was the programme that we used to create our double page

spread. We decided to use this programme on the computers as we were

already familiar with the programme on PC from our previous projects.

Adobe programmes are considerably more complex than that of Microsoft

such as Microsoft Publisher, which may have been easier to create the

document. However, InDesign has many features that can be useful when

creating a professional looking magazine. For instance the colour palette

allows you to select a series of colours to use for your magazine that workwell together and saves them colours allowing you to pick the same colour

and easily change it. Another good feature of InDesign is the picture tool,

when selecting the picture tool you have to draw a box out on the page, by

drawing the box exactly in the proportion you want it on the page you can

then insert the image afterwards to make sure it stays the same size. A

disadvantage to using InDesign is that writing the actual article was difficult in the programme itself

which meant that we had to first write up the article using Microsoft Word and then transfer this

into InDesign.

For the radio trail we decided as a group to use the programme

GarageBand on the Apple Mac. GarageBand is used mainly forcreating or editing music and audio sound. The reason we used

GarageBand was because of its huge library source of beats and

tracks we could use to enhance our radio trailer. In the library we

were able to pick from different instruments and genres to pick out

an appropriate track for the backing of our radio trail. We decided

to choose an upbeat track to attract listeners and make them

excited about wanting to watch our documentary. To insert the

tracks we simply dragged the media from the library onto the

timeline, we then imported our clips from the documentary and

imported our recorded voice over. These clips were also dragged

onto the timeline and rearranged accordingly. To cut our clips we

used the same process as on Final Cut Express. The way in which

GarageBand proved easier to use was that when changing the

sound levels in which was very important on the radio trail. To do

this on GarageBand we only had to use the mouse to put pin points along the timeline at the stages

we wanted to edit the sound levels we then dragged these pin points up or down to decrease or

increase the sound levels. These sound levels then automatically increased or decreased gradually

keeping the sound smooth throughout the radio trail. We then found sound affects in the library and

decided to attract listeners using these at the start and end of the radio trail. We kept these at a high

sound level but after consideration we feel now that we should have lowered the sound level of

these slightly. I believe that overall GarageBand was the simplest programme that we used which

was neither time consuming or complicated. It allowed us to do what we wanted with ease and

proved easy to navigate.

Documents

Final Documentary for Media Evaluation