MIKE HATTON - Shreya Lynch - evaluation

8/7/2019 MIKE HATTON - Shreya Lynch - evaluation

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For our A2 Media Coursework we were required to produce a Documentary and a Radio Trailer and a Double Page spread to go along side.Documentary - a film or TV program presenting the facts about a person or event.A documentary can not be neutral there is always some sort of bias.

Our first task was deciding the subject of our documentary. We chose Addiction Gaming Addiction. We realised that their waslimited resources available for the public. However we obtained majority of our information from the internet (statistics etc).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addictionThis is a typical Wikipedia site. Defining Gaming Addiction and providing us with facts about symptoms and causes. It also provided uswith examples of places where Gaming Addiction has affected people.http://www.video-game-addiction.org/This link gives evidence supporting Gaming Addiction is just like a Gambling Addiction with a few more facts and figures.

We researched other documentarys, i.e.

As it is a documentary we needed to oblain real life footage to give it the actuality needed.

We needed to look at different documentarys to see what they had done and theyd shown specific things i.e. shot types and angles we found the Noddy shot was most common when interviewing and recording vox pops.

In what ways does your media product use, develop pr challenge forms and

conventions of real media products?


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Similarities


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Usage of mise en scene - props

These are print screens from the actual document. They relate

to the content of the voiceover. The picture at bottom left (ofthe girl) shows that nowadays technology is more convenient.

Enabling young gamers to feed their addiction like any otherhabit.


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For the double page spread we looked carefully at other double page spreads in magazines newspapers and tv guides.

We found they all had images, eye catching layouts, drop texts and the style represented the genre.

Very colourful eye catching - Entice viewers

Dominant images of cars shows love for cars.

For males a lot of pictures very visual

A lot of text

Key photos primeinister

The text style in itself is very sophisticated

A presentable manner no explosive coloursetc.

Very bias lades in pink primeinister inblue. Etc.


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Heres how we tried to represent our documentary inthe double page spread The usage of bold strong colours

enhances the article makingpeople want to read it and

possibly watch it

The writing in

red stands outwith an official

statistic


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If I were to be honest, I would say I was really pleased with the final product of all three tasks. Itrepresented the key features of a real life documentary as well as the radio trailer and double pagespread. The interviews were good and stayed bias to our true meaning that gaming was bad. It had reallife footage and the reconstructions were a good representation of the issues and visual engagement.

I feel that I developed conventions by using them to show a subject that hasnt really been explored. Asa group we found it interesting, which fuelled our fire to wanting to know more.

As well as the product itself I think we targeted our audience well. From internet official statisticsfrom the BBC websites and other such sources. We found our target audience would be males between13-18. we realised we would entice a secondary audience such as females or parents as they may be ableto relate to the issues discussed.

It isn't just every male though. We found its mainly the middle class who engage in online gaming.

As the working class may not have the joyful affluent privilege as many of the middle class. This mayalso put pressure on the working class parents as peers may pressure their children into gaming thisdocumentary is an eye opener showing that gaming isn't all its made out to be.


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

To make our documentary get a stronger and broader audience, we decided to air it on

channel four, after extensive research on the five terrestrial channels, which you can seeon my blog, we decided channel four was best. This channel is already notorious for itsdocumentary making, and with such as strong audience already which correlates to ourtarget audience we decided to air it on here. We chose to air it at a suitable time anddate, Tuesday, 8 oclock, as our target audience being teenagers would be most likely in atthis time on Tuesday night due to commitments such as college and school, and with thisthey would most likely be watching television.We chose our double page spread to be in TV Listings, as this magazine is sold nationallythroughout the U.K and is brought in all corner shops, which is where the majority our atarget group will either be at one point during the week, and is likely to pick up a TVListings magazine.We chose our radio trailer to be played on Capital FM, as this radio station is played

nationally and is most common throughout the age range and gender and social class of ourtarget audience. We chose this because it plays similar music to what we had incorporatedinto our documentary and its a modern and new radio station .

All 3products tie in together as they reflect the same style.

i.e. the background music of the documentary is techno this is usually associated with racing games etc.It also stimulates the gamers brain. This type of music is something widely associated with gaming this

style of music was also represented in the radio trailer.We used very strong bold colours in our double page spread. Grey black red and white. This symbolisedthe bold colours in many games.

The content was very understandable. Using words that have or had been used in real TV. Adverts as itwould be wrong/bias of us to say we used language that majority of the population knew if the advertsdid it we should be able to.


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Our title double page spread

Official logo of game

Not too many words wont engage target audience

An example of typical target

audience we hoped for


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What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

AUDIENCE THEORIES

PASSIVE

Hypodermic needle modelMagnetic bullet theory

these models both state that theaudience acts as a sponge. Where we justabsorb every bit of information given touse. We are vunerable and believe it thisshows that the mass media do have a lot ofcontrol over us.

ACTIVE

1. Encoding Decoding TheoryPreferred Reading what producer aims/ wants to be the reactionNegotiate Reading agree a little, disagree others. i.e. judging peoplebut being okay with people in their family doing the same thingOppositional Reading the opposite of preferredAbberant reading random, cant be predicted

2. Users and GratificationIts a theory by blumer and katz that states the audience has power notthe media. it states the media is their to meet their needsDiversion/escape i.e. x-factor

Personal Relationships things you discuss with peers i.e. Big BrotherSurveillance news panaramaPersonal Identity measuring your own values in a character i.e. oh Idhave done that

3. Reception TheoryStates who we are determines the way we see/ read things.The facts that change this are gender, culture, age, race, ethnicity, class,etc

Our preferred reading would be that majorityof the people who took part in thequestionnaire said they were engaged, theylearnt something new, the documentaryshowed the severity of the issue, if they sawthe double page spread would they be keen towatch and if many people answered positivelyto these questions it meant we had dont whatwed set out to do.


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How well do you think it represented the reality of theissue?

How well does it portray the severityof the issue?

Were you engaged did it interest you?

If it was to be broadcast on real TV wouldyou watch it?

In order to know what the audience thaught we asked out class (they also represent the targetaudience) what they thought of our documentary double page spread and radio trailer... Here are thefindings. They ticked a box between 1-5; 5 being good. And yes and no answers.

three

four

five

three

four

five

three

four

five

yesno

Documentary questionnaire


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Radio Trailer questionnaire

three

four

five

Does it present itself as something youdlike to watch?

three

four

five

yes

maybe

no


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three

four

three

four

Is it visually engaging how well is it presented?

yes

no

Double Page Spread questionnaire


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From the findings I could conclude that our double page spread was the most successful with10/10 people saying from seeing it they would want to watch the documentary.

Many people said it represented the reality of the issue and opened their eyes to the theme.

From the radio trailer which in my opinion was probably the hardest thing when it comes topromotion 7 people said they would like to watch it.

We did have a few negative comments such as 5 people saying from watching the 5mindocumentary they wouldnt watch a real one if it was put on TV. This showed us we did have apreferred reading but that the reception theory is infact very true!

Conclusion of results


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While creating the documentary radio trailer and double page spread. Their were a number of hardware and software programmeswe used.

HardwareCamera Canon HG20

This camera enabled us to be able to film the footage we needed for our documentary. We werent all familiar with the usage ofthe camera but all of us had a go. The camera enabled us to get our real life footage. It was easily portable and convenient, whichhelped as we did have to travel to get footage going to touchwood. The cameras battery was sometimes unreliable, so we had tomake sure we were prepared for the worst. It was also a worry when walking through the park with the camera incase it gotrobbed of us.Headphones SonyThe headphones were of use so we could hear the sound and judge the quality during and after filming. These headphones wereplugged into the camera. They were comfortable and the sound was good. However the lead was a bit too long

MicrophoneThe mic was vital as we used it for the voice over the camera quality of recording wasnt very good. It was easy to connect sotheir werent any problems.TripodThe tripods were a real help as it didnt mean us having a steady hand. It enabled us to take the exact shots we wanted with outhaving to worry about dropping the camera, it made our documentary look professional, and gave a smooth panning shot if weneeded it, but their was a tripod with a bit of a limp leg where it would tend to fall down a little. We just tried to avoid gettingthis one.Mac computerMACS TOOK A LOT OF GETTING USED TO! It was vital we knew what we were doing as it was the most important piece ofhardware, as it contained all our film data and it contained the relevant software we couldnt get on a normal p.c., the screen has ahigh resolution and quality and after getting used to it became very easy. Some thing were a bit harder. i.e. using word or

powerpoint and trying to change the font

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


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SoftwareFinal Cut ExpressWe used this to piece together our documentary. It was easy once you knew but usually we would save our work

have a mess around with the buttons to see what different icons did, it contained lots of good tools to pieceevery different scene together. Looking at it was straight forward as the voiceclip/audio was right underneathand our teacher said it was sort of like a birdseye view this helped us comprehend when and where to put theaudio so it fitted with the visual.

IndesignI used this programme last year when making a doublepage spread. So I was glad I could do this again. It was easy

to use and more straight forward than final cut express.

PhotoshopThis was to help us adjust any images the ones we put on the double page spread. It was a little hard to use but I

used it last year so I was quite familiar with it and the different effects you could use.

GarageBandFor a while we had a mess around on this. But it helped us when we were making the radio trailer.We did get our audio for our documentary off a techno producer who owns an independent label.Safari the internetTHIS WAS AN IMPORTANT PROGRAMME! We used this to obtain our official stats and read up on any other

information we wanted to add. It enabled us to view other documentaries and radio trailers from such websitesas www.youtube.com .

Microsoft wordWe used word to create questionnaires when obtaining audience feedback. It was also used for small quick drafts we

might have liked to included in any of the 3pieces of work.

Microsoft ExcelExcel was good when making graphs (pie charts) to show results. I did learn how to do this at GCSE but I had to

refresh my memory again. Once I got the hang of it I was fine.

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MIKE HATTON - Shreya Lynch - evaluation