Genuine Productions

EVALUATION

IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCTS USE, DEVELOP OR CHALLENGE FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS?

• We watched various different documentaries as part of our research in which we as a group could relate to when it came to key decision making with our final product.

• We focused on Panorama (BBC one), Dispatches (Channel 4) and various others on YouTube.

• Conventions both Panorama and Dispatches used are:

- The use of a voiceover. This convention was powerful to use as voice overs interacts with the audience, explaining what is going on. Our genre being a documentary a lot of what is happening would need to be explained.

- An interview with an ‘expert’ - it is used to authenticate the views which have been expressed. We followed this as it is important to have an experts view so the audience believe what is being said as an expert is someone who is trusted.

- Use of real life footage/undercover footage - is a key convention as real life footage would help the audience believe what they are seeing.

- Natural lighting is another convention they used as it portrays the realism of their documentary. We partly followed this, - when filming interviews outside the pub.

• However, during filming we had to change the lighting on the camera. When we were filming the undercover footage, the lighting had to be adjusted to make it look more realistic. The lighting inside the location at the time was to light for it to be shot as an undercover scene.

Ancillary

• For our ancillary task, we were given the choice to pick 2 out of 3 choices: a radio advert, a double page spread magazine or a newspaper article.

• We decided to do a radio advert alongside a magazine double page spread.

• We chose to do these 2 as we felt it would work well with the type of documentary we were making.

• As our documentary is on binge drinking we thought the awareness of binge drinking would be put across strongly to our target audience (youth) via a radio advert and a magazine.

Magazine

• One magazine we looked at closely was ‘the radio times’.

• ‘Radio times’ uses bright vibrant colours which make the articles look fun and as if they should be taken light heartedly.

• We decided to do the opposite using simple colours such as black and white as the subject of underage binge drinking is serious and a major issue in the UK.

• The image on a double page spread magazine tends to have the picture on the left however we went against this by having the picture on the right it would capture our audiences eye when turning the page.

• We used drop cap to start of our article which is used in majority of articles.

Radio

• After several hours of research we found that the conventions of a radio advert are as follows:

- Music being played occasionally

- The time

- That channel the documentary will be on being mentioned at the end

- It is roughly 40 seconds long

- Voiceover’s are used

- It contains the same voice (Sonam Kerai) as the on screen presenter used in the documentary

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OFYOUR MAIN PRODUCTS AND ANCILLARY TASKS?

• Throughout all three of our products we aimed to be consistent.

• This was done by:

- Having an easily identifiable presenter that the audience will immediately be able to recognize

- Using an easily recognizable image related to youth. The main product was based on youth and underage drinking, therefore to follow on this continuity, we used images of youths to promote our magazine and voices including them in our radio advert

- The presenter who was featured in the main product was also used in the radio advertisement to help follow the continuity

• However, the presenter wasn’t featured in the magazine.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNT FROM AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?

Documentary:

• In order for our group to build a basic plan of our product, we had to know the type of documentary our target audience would watch and what aspects of it they would find interesting.

• For our research and planning we used ‘Facebook’ where we created our own page for our group, enabling us to receive feedback really easily.

• We used this social network site to our advantage by posting up a questionnaire in order for us to gain feedback on what type of documentary youths prefer to watch and why.

FEEDBACK: QUESTIONNAIRE On screen presenter wanted

Why a documentary on binge drinking would be interesting to our target audience

Documentaries are watched mainly on BBC channels (1,2,3)

FEEDBACK: QUESTIONNAIRE

Needs to inform and educate

Prefer to know the effect it has on the human body

Prefer to watch it on BBC

• From our audience research via our Facebook page, we learnt that youths prefer to watch a documentary that:

- Refers to real life issues

- Informs them

- Makes them aware of things they never knew

- Contains information that they can relate too

- They would prefer to have an onscreen presenter

- Footage that reveals the truth of underage binge drinking

FEEDBACK: ROUGH CUT• The positive feedback gained is the:

- Use of statistics

- Live action footage used

- Lighting

- End is good - footage of the next day

• However, we also received constructive criticism which helped us to make improvements to our product. We learnt:

- The order of shots used were not appropriate, making the documentary seem confusing

- The voiceover did not flow and was also a bit jumpy

- Soundtrack is needed over our opening title

FEEDBACK: DOUBLE PAGE MAGAZINE SPREAD• Audience feedback we received from our double page magazine

cover:

• Positives:

- The layout

- The heading

- Image used

- Facts

- Easy to understand

• Negatives:

- Talk about resolving the issue

HOW DID YOU USE NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION, RESEARCH AND PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGE?

• In the construction, research and planning and evaluation stage we used new media technologies such as:

- Youtube

- Wordpress

- Facebook

- iMovie

- Apple Mac

• We used Youtube to host our rough cuts and final product which helped us upload our videos quickly and efficiently allowing the public to view it. Furthermore, our blog was not well known to the public and as Youtube is known by everyone, it made it easier for others to view our rough and final cuts.

www.genuineproductions.wordpress.com

• Wordpress allowed us to upload our rough cuts, magazine drafts, plans and our final products. Using Wordpress enabled us to post our work at all stages and was really easy to use. The whole group knew how to use it which made Wordpress a really effective way of storing our work.

• The widely used social network site, Facebook was used to broadcast our magazine drafts, gain feedback and attract a wide audience. When we had a great amount of people in the group we had created, we then used viral marketing as we constantly sent out messages to everyone keeping them updated of what we had been working on and if we needed feedback. As a group we felt that our product progressed quite strongly as we were able to receive feedback through a widely used social network site.

• The software, iMovie was used to edit our final cut and allowed us to use several techniques such as adding effects and text. When adding voiceovers to our final product we found it was really easy as all we had to do was click on the microphone and the part of the clip we wanted to and it does the rest for us. We found this software really effective as recording, transferring, placing and editing the voiceover to fit into our product could be time consuming.

• The majority of our work was done using Apple Macs. Using the Mac was a really simple process which allowed you to put work onto it quickly without any problems and it contained all the software we needed which made constructing our final piece much more easier. Furthermore we thought that the media technologies which we had used helped make our work less time consuming, and without these media technologies, producing our final product would not have been as simple and easy as we would have liked.