Lauren Berridge4016

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

conventions of real media products?

Our documentary follows many typical poetic documentary forms, by using inspirational shots from other relevant documentaries and developing them in order to produce our

own take on a documentary.

This can be established by comparing shots and clips from other documentaries and analysing them against our own.

There are many shots in our documentary which makes it conventional this includes:•Introduction•Voice overs•Archive footage•Location shots•Interview •Conclusion

Each of these shots were inspired from other documentaries which we then edited in order to fit the form of our documentary.

Introduction

Click on each video to play

During the introduction stage my group and I had research other introduction sequences which we could portray in our documentary in order to make the documentary more interesting. I had found a interview on Levi Roots on the BBC website and watched the opening sequences. The opening is archive pictures added to a

Music, where the pictures are in sync with the beat to the back round music. This idea seem very conventional and is a way in attracting an audience. The video on the right is the BBC example of this sequence. The video on the left is our portrayal of the shot, which we had created using Windows Movie Maker. I knew

We wouldn’t have been allowed to use this footage therefore decide to create our own and insert this into the opening of the documentary.

Voice overs

Voice overs are a typical feature which you would find is most conventional documentaries such as poetic, expository, performative, reflective, observational. Voice over are used to narrate a scene whilst displaying an image or a clip.

Click to play each video

We used voiceovers during our documentary for numerous reasons. One in which to help the audience understand the scene with a descriptive narrative over the clip.

We had research other documentaries which also used voice overs and one we had found was a documentary on ancient Egypt. Although the documentary lines are completely different the use of voice overs are very similar. They had used voice overs in order to transition between clips, this keeps the documentary rolling, we had used this technique in our documentary in order to convey the same purpose.

Archive footage

Archive footage is very common in documentaries as it allows the documentary maker to use footage taken by other and use it to represent a point which may be in the documentary

The archive footage which I had used in the documentary was originally from Levi’s First appearance on dragons den. We were able to use a short snippet of archive footage in the documentary and though having his first appearance on dragons den was the best idea as it where his journey begun. Following the archive footage of dragons den I had also added clips of where Peter Jones talks about his success. The footage of Peter Jones was archived from a documentary on Levi Roots on the BBC site.

Click the video to play

Location Shot

Location shots are very common in typical documentary conventions, you will find location shots in poetic genres, this is because they use the location to tell the story. We have used a location shot in our documentary as it is a story on Levi Roots and his journey from rags to riches.

Our location shots are used at his restaurant where we had interview Levi, this location shot sets the scene for the clip.

Our second location shot was set at Tesco where we used the facilities their to portray his success this was inspired by documentary I had seen on channel 4 where they had used a location to show the journey they had taken and the success they have achieved.

Click on the video to play

Interview shots

Interviews are very commonly seen in poetic documentaries as they are used to talk to the subject to explain their story. A footage which inspired our interview was one found in a documentary on Levi roots which we had found on Youtube. In this scene it shows the interview but breaks up the interview by adding in images and other archive footage. We had taken this idea and developed on it by taking our interview and adding images related to the topic being discussed. The video on the left is a clip which I have extracted from the interview on the documentary I had found on youtube and the video on the right is our take on breaking up the interview.

Click on the videos to play

There are loads of ways the documentary can portray an interview, using different shots, for example:

•An over shoulder shot, so the audience can focus on the interviewee

•Informal diary style mid shot, which adds a variety of angles to the interview and is mainly used when document or blogging on a various subject

•Three shot, this shows the boundaries between the interviewer and the interviewee

•Informal diary style mid shot but of the interviewee expressing their own story.

All of these shots we had researched from other documentaries and most of these shots had influenced our interview during our

documentary.

To play the video above click.

The video above was our take on the interview shots which we had researched online and how we would use them in our documentary.

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

For my supporting pieces I have created 5 posters in order to advertise our documentary as well as a double page spread magazine article with an interview with Levi Roots

I believe that my supporting pieces were very effective in advertising our Levi Roots documentary and will do well when attracting our target audience. Our target audience is 16-25 year olds, this is because most of this era are demographic that would watch dragons den therefore will know of Levi Roots, this way they are more likely to watch the documentary as they know of who he is but not of his story.

Knowing who are target audience is means that we had to aim our supporting pieces at them by making the pictures look professional and refined so that they attract the target audience. Overall we had created five advertising posters, this is so that each one can attract a different type of person, all 5 design are different except for 1 as we thought changing the view of the photo slightly would make a whole new effect.

How this poster attracts our target audience

This poster was inspired by Levi’s cookery book. The style and back round is very similar to his cook book but obviously the font has changed

The use of vivid colours make the poster stand out and are beneficial when attracting our younger generation target audience.

This poster displays more information about the documentary than the others, the bold black writing stand out most as it presented in an interesting style.

The guitar and the pattern which is marked into the back round are original from the cook book as well as his signature sign.

How this poster attracts our target audience

The create this poster I had used PhotoShop in order to blend the money leaves with the top of the bottle. This relates well to the title from rags to riches.

The bottle has a label which displays the detail of our documentary, this ideas was very interesting as it is the original back round to a normal bottle of reggae reggae sauce but the text has been edited to advertise our documentary

Having a rhetorical question appear on the poster makes the audience feel engaged and would want to know more therefore watching the documentary

The back round for this photo was edited in photo shop. The shading was used in order to entice the audience and focus on the actual advertisement of the documentary which is present on the bottle.

How this poster attracts our target audience

The bright colours used on the label stand out on the white back round

The label design is just like an original reggae reggae sauce bottle so people will immediately notice the bottle and then notice the text is different as it is advertising our documentary.

The slanted bottle makes the poster look more engaging as you have to focus on the bottle and the label therefore you will be reading the description of our documentary

How this poster attracts our target audience

The highlighting effect used on the bottle was done in PhotoShop. This was to make the main focus of the photo the bottle. The highlighting of the bottle really takes the main stage in the photo and forces you eye to focus on the bottle.

The darkening of the other bottle surrounding was done in PhotoShop, this was to take the focus of the original reggae sauce bottle.

The label we had created using Photoshop and we just inserted the text we wanted to display, we then printed this off and stuck it on the bottle using selotape. In this photo is is clear to see that the labels are different, this is why we had taken the photo surround by original bottle to make the different clear

The text displayed in white at the top is to advertise the documentary but is displayed in white so that it stand our to the audience on a darker back round and makes it clearer to read.

How this poster attracts our target audience

This poster is very similar to the previous poster the only difference is the angle at which the photo was taken and the zoom.

The most noticeable difference is the zoom which has been used to focus on the bottle. We had chosen this photo to advertise our bottle as I believe the different use of shot will attract the audience as they have to focus on the bottle as there is little else in the picture. The lighting effect which has been edited also and emphasis on to the text making it more attractive for the audience to read.

The blurred out surroundings make it noticeable that the photo was taken in a supermarket, this shows the audience that Levi’s products have been well established.

How this magazine article attracts our target audience

The large image displayed in the middle of the spread was previously used in one of the advertising posters. This is so the audience can relate the poster and magazine together.

The competition advertisement which is displayed in the bottom hand corner of the article is used to attract the audience, by encouraging them to take part in the competition

The use of colour to display the question was in order to relate the theme of Levi Roots to the article. By using the signature colours of Jamaica, yellow, red and green.

The pull out quotes are used to entice the audience to read more, having a random pull out quote which the audience may read first is used to encourage them to read more about the article, this technique is very common in magazine article

The simple black font is used so that the audience is able to read the article clearly showing that it is a simple yet interesting article.

The titles font is the font which is found of the reggae sauce bottles, this is so the audience

can relate the heading back to the product and the producer Levi Roots

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Filming feedback

YouTube feedback

My group and I had posted our documentary on youtube in order to get feedback from the general public, this way we are able to evaluate whether our documentary was successful in gaining peoples attention and whether other may watch it. The youtube feedback I thought was a clever idea as it allows us to find other peoples views on the documentary and what they liked and what they didn’t like.

Many of the comments which our documentary had received were positive, one comment which we received from diba28 has said:“Love the questions and the clips woven into the interviewGood close up shots of his productsNice highlight effect on the £30 million on the wikipedia pageLove the ending song! And the fading out effect”

This comment was very encouraging as it shows that people were impressed by the editing of the footage.

This user has also mentioned an improvement which shows us that there is room for improvements“To improve, the music at the beginning made things a bit hard to listen to” – diba28

After looking over all of the feedback which my group and I had received from our audiences it is clear to see that there is room for improvement in our documentary but overall the filming seem to be quite successful.

We received many good comments about the use of images and transitions in the documentary as well as the good questions asked in the interview.

“I liked the way that during the interview the interview there were fades to other video footage - keeps the interview interesting!” – Calzine

Another comment which our group was very happy with was the introduction comments. We had created the introduction with the intention of making a dramatic affect, by syncing the images with the music. We achieved this by simply editing the music length and edit the clip in order for it to sync together.

“ I thought the way you synced the pictures to the beat of the music was brilliant, makes the documentary up beat” – Josh

More feedback which we had received after playing the documentary to a small audience were comments like

“I liked the questions asked in the interview but would have liked more images inserted to break up the interview.”

I liked the humour aspect used at the end when Levi sings to the camera, I though It was really engaging and made the documentary seem more enjoyable to watch adding a bit of humour.

After looking back through all the comments we received during our video as well as on You Tube i would say that I have learnt many things revolving around editing sound clips. Most of our comments were about the back round noise, which is understandably uncontrollable yet can be edited so that it is hardly noticeable. This is an improvement which I can take in to consideration and maybe work on a bit more if it is need in the future.

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

evaluation stages?

During all stages of creating the final piece I had used a variety of media technologies in order to achieve my final goal of creating an intriguing documentary. There is a lot of work that goes into the production stages and most of this work is done using different kinds of

equipment which helps speeds up the process. It is through the use of digital media people are able to create such documentaries that film the real emotion and depth that the

audience can relate to.

It is during the construction stages where most digital equipment is used. During the construction stage I had filmed and edited the documentary meaning a lot of equipment

would be used in order to make the documentary look and seem professional, which was our aim. We had access to most of the equipment need at school but were also able to

access equipment from our homes and borrow from friends.

During my research and planning stages the use of media technology was also present. We were able to illustrate the process that was taken during the research and planning

stage by blogging it as well as using media technology to do the research and planning.

During the evaluation stages we used media technology to evaluate the documentary as well as present the documentary to others and post it on my blog.

Construction stage

The most common piece of digital equipment that my group and myself used was our Dell laptops, most

other groups used Apple Macs but my partner and I both were not too familiar with the tools on the Mac

Books therefore thought we would be better off using our laptops.

I wouldn’t say that as we used our laptop instead of the Mac Books that we were at a disadvantage as we

had access to very similar programmes and were able to edit a lot faster with our own laptops as we knew the tools and their functions therefore did not have to waste time learning the tools on the Macs

As well as using our laptops we had the benefit of working on our project at home, the only

disadvantage we had was having to keep moving the files from one laptop to the other so that we could

both work on the documentary.

We were able to edit our documentary in the same way as other using a programme called video pad,

which we downloaded of the internet, as well as movie maker, Photoshop, Cam Studio.

In the final documentary there are voice overs which I had recorded which explains certain parts of the documentary and about Levi's achievements. To

record the voice overs we had used the schools yeti. The yeti is a large micro phone with Tri-capsule array 3

condenser capsules which can record almost any

situation. The yeti delivers a high quality sound which give the documentary a more professional sound. An advantage the yeti ahs over other microphones, is it

plug straight into a laptop or computer USB, this makes the recording process a lot easier as we did not

have to convert any files.

The photo on the right is a print screen during the editing process of our construction using Video Pad. Video Pad is a programme which we had downloaded online allowing us to edit the documentary adding in sounds, voice clips, transitions, pictures and fading

techniques. Video Pad allowed us to mix music tracks as well as add sound effects which were available on the programme to use in the documentary. A benefit

which the programme supplied was video stabilization, this reduces camera shake that may have occurred during filming. The programme was

very helpful when editing the main parts to the documentary.

Windows live movie maker is another programme that was used to edit our final documentary. The programme was already installed on mine and my partners laptops therefore was easy access for both of us. I believe that this programme was very useful when editing the final documentary as it has many tools which were very useful for our documentary.

This is the slide show section where the clips that have been inserted are edited. This is where we were able to split video insert pictures and sounds as well as organise clips. It was very simple to use as everything is very basic but very good.

This section is the main menu, this is where the editing choice are made. Here you are able to add video and photos, music, titles, captions, credits and rotate clips. you are also able to choose different transitions for each scene as well as change the visual effect to make more of a dramatic statement. The menu bar also allows you to trim and split clips in order to edit the whole video. When inserting a music clip of a sound you are able to edit the volume, the sound effect, fading in and fading out motions. All of these options allowed us to edit our documentary to the best of out ability.

This is where the video will play. This section allows you to play back what you have just edited. This was very helpful as we could document each process we took in order to edit the documentary.

For the photos we used in our documentary and supporting pieces, we had used Amir’s Sony Handycam cannon 450D SLR, the reason for this being the photograph is a lot more crisp and looks professional. We had used the camera when we were filming to take photos of surroundings as well as during the interview, this was so we could blog about the filming as well as gain some example photos for our supporting pieces.

The camera was very helpful when taking photos for our supporting posters as we were able to produce high quality

photos which makes the campaign look more professional as well as more interesting. The photo displayed on the right is an example shot which I took in order to show the definition of the camera. As you can see it shapes the bottle really well and shows the intensity of the shot. This sort of outcome was what our group was aiming for when producing our supporting posters. A lot of our posters that we had created involved the reggae reggae sauce bottle therefore we needed photos that displayed the bottle in real definition in order to attract viewers.

When editing our supporting pieces we needed to change the back round for two of them this involved removing the image in the back round. To do this editing my group had used a programme called Photoshop.

Photo shop allowed us to edit photos by removing back rounds, adding shading, edit colours on the original photos, apply artistic photos onto layers. The photo displayed on the left is a print screen of the editing we did to produce our second supporting poster. We had used the rubber tool to remove the back round which was originally in the photo in order to get just the bottle, this was so we could edit the bottle on its own.

The photo displayed on the right is a print screen of an action about to take place. Photoshop allowed us to

remove the top half of the money tree and embed it on to the original bottle. This was to produce our last supporting

poster to represent Levi Roots from rags to riches. The photo on the left is the final poster after the editing

Photoshop allowed us to do.

Planning and design stage

During the planning and design stages of the documentary we used many digital resources in order to research and display our research. As my documentary was based around Levi Roots and his success we had to research back round facts about Levi Roots as well as search previous documentaries on Levi Roots for inspiration. This involved using the internet to look at archive footage which we had planned to use in our documentary.

We documented our planning and designing stag eon our own blogs which we created at the beginning of the process, this was to display all the work we had done and all the research and planning that went into creating our final product. I had used a site called blogspot in order to document all my work. This blogging site was very useful as I was able to add video clips, sound track and photos to display the planning and research which had gone into creating the final documentary.

My partner and I had many other ways in which we decided to plan and design our documentary. We had though of a way which would display all the basic and we could edit the changes if we wanted to. The picture on the left shows Amir’s white board, this is where we storyboarded all our clips as well as organise our schedules during filming.

This is was very helpful as we could look back to these boards and edited them simply by rubbing out and writing again, this allowed us to make changes and allowed us to be creative.

I loved the idea of using a white board as our stage as we were bale to create ideas together and produce these ideas.

Another way in which we had planned was by writing on diamonds and clouds. This was very beneficial at the beginning of this process when we were first deciding what to do. As well were able to express our idea on paper it was a lot easier when it came to discussing them and deciding our final idea. The clouds and diamonds also helped when designing our documentary and what will be included.

Once we had chosen our final idea my group and I had created a prezzi in order to display our final idea and research about our topic Levi Roots. Our prezzi helped in many ways as it allowed

us to be creative when planning our documentary and was able to show others what we have been researching.

During the planning and design stage I had create a word cloud in order to brain storm documentary ides including documentary conventions and typical forms.

Creating a word cloud allowed me to be creative and write down all the possible ideas therefore making it easier when deciding the documentary form.

I created the word cloud above using wordle which is a website that allows you to design your own word cloud and upload on to blog or documents, I had uploaded this word cloud onto my blog to demonstrate my research.

Evaluation stage

When it came to evaluating the documentary we had used two ways in order to display our documentary and gain feedback from other audience. We had posted our final documentary on youtube in order to gain publics feedback. You Tube is an internet site which allows users to upload videos and it enables other users to comment on.

This benefits us when evaluating our documentary as we are able to view feedback from the general public therefore get an overall view on the success of out documentary.

Another way in which we were able to evaluate our documentaries success was by filming the presentation of the documentary then filming feedback from our class mates. Once we had edited this feedback we posted it on youtube in order to post it on our blog

We used the schools Sony camera in order to film our feedback, then edited this feedback so that it was presented professionally using Windows Live Movie Maker. We edited the length of the whole clip so that it runs smoothly without faults.

How has the use of technology advanced from foundation to higher?

Most of the technology that I had used during higher media studies I believe is not that much different, this is because we had used similar equipment during both foundation and higher therefore the technology advances weren’t that dramatic

A couple things that I could say differentiate between the years would be:

•My confidence when using equipment, having previous experience with the similar equipment has allowed me to expand my ideas when creating this documentary as I am able to understand and use the equipment more efficiently where as compared to last year, it was my first time using such equipment therefore I was more nervous if something went wrong.

•This is similar to my confidence when using the editing programmes, although in the previous year my group had used an Mac Book to edit our product, this year I was able to use a programme which I am familiar with therefore allowing me to complete my work faster but still in good quality. I had used Windows Live Movie Maker in order to edit my final documentary.

• One last thing that I can say which shows that the use of technology has advanced from foundation to higher would be the confidence is achieving better as well as producing something which is more extreme compared to the foundation year. During the first year most groups thought of ideas which at the time we thought were very exciting and thought the use of our resources was to the highest extent but comparing this to the higher level, you have the confidence in order to go outside the box to produce something more by using all kinds of resources you never thought you had.