CODES AND CONVENTIONS - Print Advert

• One strong image


• slogan but words kept to minimum


• scheduling info


• channel logo prominent

I researched adverts on the link below to have an idea of what the print advert should look like.

http://www.4creative.co.uk/flash/#/print/press_and_poster/

Below is the finished product of our print advert for our documentary 'Virtual Insanity'

FILMING - Logging sheet

Whilst filming and editing we made a note of the times each shot was taken on the camera and how long the shot was and what the shot contained, this made it easier to keep track of the footage we had captured and easier to determine which footage we'd use in the final cut of our documentary.

This was all put into logging sheets, which are shown below

PLANNING - Storyboard

EVALUATION

Question 1.
In what ways does your product use, develop, or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The three products in which I completed do not develop or challenge forms and conventions of documentaries, newspaper adverts and radio trailors. To show how i have used the forms and conventions i will compare my documentary to a real product.


Framing:










screen grab of an interview from our documentary
















screen grab from The Jackson family documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUmwTcf8r2A







Cutaways:

screen grab of a cutaway from our documentary

screen grab of a cutaway from Philip Pullman 'His Dark Materials' documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iHgbvmSeuI

I used cutaways to break up large segments of the interviews to make it entertaining. We also did this to cover the editing of questions we asked so this avoided jump cuts following the forms and coneventions of a typical mixed documentary allowing the audience to see an image or even create an image of interviewee is talking about.

Graphics:

screen grab of the use of graphics in our documentary

screen grab of the use of graphics from The Jackson family documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUmwTcf8r2A







Archive Material:




I filmed a clip of the Lily Allen - Smile video from youtube to use as archive material in my documentary, when talking about the success of Lily Allen's Myspace page. Ialso filmed a clip off youtube of the bands Hippys on the Hill performing at a gig, and this was used as a cutaway during their interview.



Voice Over:



We used a female voice over to follow the conventions of many famiy type documentarues. We found that a female would be stereotypical for this genre of documentary, as a female voice sounds like she is a giving a 'mothers' opinion about their childs safety and use of the internet, and we thought this would be appropriate to use in our documentary.



Music:

Question 2.
How effective is the combination of your product and ancillary?


The title is the same throughout:



Print ad -














I added an arrow onto the print advert to highlight the title 'VIRTUAL INSANITY?'


Documentary -




Radio Trailor -

"virtual insanity"

Using a consistent title, it linked our print advert, radio trailor, and documentary together. On our print advert we made sure our title was the largest text as it would be able to stand out the most and the audience would instantly know what the title of the documentary was. The title is featured at the end of our radio trailor as this is the last thing the audience will hear and therefore are more likely to remember it.


Channel and scheduling:

I added an arrow to show the channel and scheduling of our documentary.

The channel and scheduling for the radio trailor come after the title, and this is so that it is the very last thing the audience here and therefore will remember it.

Voiceovers:

The voice over in both our documentary and raido trailor are the same, and we did this as it follows the conventions of a typical family documentary which would be shown on BBC One.

Slogan:

I added an arrow to highlight where the slogan is.

Our slogan was 'Who's Watching You?' and we use this in our print advert and radio trailor which creates a coherance by linking them together. We chose this as the it acts as a question in which the audience can choose to think about, and as the audience is for adults we thought this would be suitable.

Style and Addressing the Audience:

Across our three products we create a coherance by encorporating the same style throughout. With the print advert we used a red background as this was a convention of BBC One, but it is also a colour which can be associated with danger which also anchors with the genre of our documentary. Our radio trailor's voiceover is quite formal and serious, and this is because the audience is for parents, however the song in the background is quite upbeat and we chose this as it would balance out our radio trailor. For our documentary we used this same formal voiceover as we did on the radio trailor, and therefore this approach created a coherance across all three projects.

Appeal to the Audience:

I created this picture to show which newspapers my print advert would be published in. I chose the Daily Mirror as young family mem bers who may want to watch the documentary might read this type of newspaper. I chose the Daily Mail as it is a popular tabloid newspaper and a lot of people may be likely to buy it, including members of our target audience. I chose The Independent as another newspaper as it addresses current issues and I believe that the genre of our documentary raises a popular issue which is talked about a lot on the news.

I created the above picture to show that The Times would be the main newspaper in which our print advert would be published. I chose this newspaper as it encorporates a lot of news and current issues, and as our documentary raises a popular issue i thought it would be appropriate to publish it in this particular newspaper.

The above picture indicates which radio stations my radio trailor will be broadcast on. They are all BBC stations as my documentary will be shown on BBC One, and I chose specific stations which would be suitable for my target audience of adults and parents.

Question 3.
What have you learned from your audience feedback?

We gathered a focus group consisting of 10 people together in class to look at all 3 of our productions, and we asked them certain questions to see their opinion on our products. After class I asked a few members of the focus group what their individual opinions where, and i took pictures and recordings of these.



After listening to my radio trailor and looking at my print advert, does it make you want to watch the documentary?


Sue Roberts aged 40

"yes it does because the clips of the documentary in the radio trailor make me wonder what else will be in the documentary. The print advert also makes me wonder what the documentary involves as it is not clear in the image."









Jenny Littler aged 20





Rebecca Hanson aged 17


In class, one person from the focus group said that the print advert didn't make it clear what the documentary was about as the main image was vague. However the other volunteers in our focus group said that yes they would watch our documentary.


Do you think the first 5 minutes of my documentary looks professional?


Tom Jackson aged 19


"Yeah I think it does, if I didn't know that you had made this i would of thought it was professionally done. I think it looks professional because of the use of music and images you collected which match the genre of the documentary."









James Johnson aged 18



When asking the focus group this question, 8 people said yes it does look professional, however there were 2 people who said that in some parts the documentary did not run smoothly, and this affected the professional quality of the product.



How do you think my documentary compares to other documentaries?



Christiana Oldrid aged 17

"the different music throughout goes really well with the genre and the topics being spoken about, and this also happens in professional documentaries."











Alice Eaton aged 18





Jenni Roberts aged 16

"the cutaways during the interviews link the documentary together and make it look smoothly, and this compares to other documentaries because there are cutaways in professional documentaries too and they are used in the same way."





All of the people in the focus group said that it compares to other documentaries because of the cutaways and music. 4 people commented on the archive material and said that it helps he documentary look more professional, as it made it look like a real documentary.


How effective do you think our production is in terms of how entertaining it is?



Matthew Vaughn aged 19

"I think all 3 products are pretty effective. The image from the print advert makes you think about what the documentary is about, the clips from the documentary in the radio trailor make you want to find out more, and the actual documentary makes you want to carry on watching."







Naomi Littler aged 17

"after watching the first 5 minutes of the documentary, i wanted to carry on watching to find out more. i thought it was very entertainig."









100% of the focus group thought that the documentary was entertaining.


Question 4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

CODES AND CONVENTIONS - Radio adverts

These are the codes and conventions of a radio trailer for documentaries:
-The title of the documentary features in it
-The Scheduling of the documentary, the channel name it appears on, the day it is on and the time. -There is always a music bed
-Extracts from the programme appear, usually involving a key element from the documentary -There is a voiceover- outlines the narrative, sometimes poses questions that will be addressed in the programme, sometimes used to tease the audience, the voiceover is always appropriate to the programme.

PLANNING - Voice over

Voiceover introducing the topic:

Today 50% of our active users log on to Face book and other social networking sites. Some say the internet is changing the way we communicate, and in the next 30 minutes you will hear different facts and opinions from different professions about all aspects of social networking sites.

Voiceover introducing Jules

In Weatherhead High School in Wallasey, there are IT Experts who have the responsibility of filtering what content student can access online and They are accountable for the online safety of the entire school

Voiceover Introducing Jon (internet radio presenter)

The internet is now an often used device for personal promotion, more and more people are now setting up accounts on social networking sites solely to advertise their own projects.


MySpace voiceover:

Since the beginning of Myspace new and up and coming music artists have launched their careers through the site. Lilly Allen was just one of many upcoming acts who utilised Myspace to begin her career. The site gave her the exposure that led to her success and today she still uses the internet to promote herself and is now a number one selling artist


Hippies on the hill voiceover introducing band:

Hoping to emulate such successful bands as the Arctic Monkeys, are the new unsigned teen band hippies on the hill who are following in the footsteps of such artists by promoting their music through myspace. Already their page has attracted attention and the band firmly believes that it has contributed to their career so far.

EDITING

Throughout our producted I used a range of editing techniques.

During editing our documentary, we experienced only a few problems and this was when editing the questions out of the interviews so they could not be heard. We had to re-do the editing of each interview to make sure each one looked professionally done so that the questions were unheard and the answers from the interviewees flowed. We did this by using the razor tool, which I found particularly easy to use once I got the hang of it. Using the razor tool helped our documentary to flow and make it seem professionally done.

Another editing technique which I used was a cross-fade which was on the visual transitions file, and I put these on the cutaways so that they flowed with the rest of the documentary.

For our opening titles we wanted it to seem as if the letters were typing, so we imported a 'twig breaking' sound file and dragged it underneath each individual letter which we wanted to appear seperatley, and this created a type-writer effect and we chose this as it fitted in with our genre.

To keep our audience entertained, we added music which would be relevant to the genre of our documentary, for example, we added the song Virtual Insanity by Jamiraqui as this is the name of our documentary, and we added Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell as this anchors the slogan of our documentary. We faded the music in and out to make sure that it flowed with the rest of the documentary.

When editing interviews, we added visual name titles so that the audience knew who was being interviewed and why they are relevant to the topic, and this is a code and convention of a typical documentary.

When editing our opening titles, we originally had our documentary starting off with an MP talking about how the world of social networking sites and the internet has turned into a sort of 'big brother' scenario. However, we changed this as the opening titles were far too long than they should have been, so instead we decided to film shots of different social networking sites such as facebook, myspace, bebo and twitter. We added all these shots and made them last atleast 3 seconds and made sure that it flowed with the song Virtual Insanity which would be playing in the background.

I believe that the editing process went successfully as we did not have any major problems, and we made sure our whole documentary ran smoothly so that it fit in with the codes and conventions of a typical documentary.

Below are screengrabs we took as evidence of our editing process.

FILMING

I participated in the whole of the filming process. First of all we started off by filming a voxpop for our documentary, but the first issue we had with filming this was the framing of each shots, and this meant having to re-do filming for each person of the voxpop. After attempting to film a voxpop atleast 3 times, we decided to cut the vox pop out of the first 5 minutes of our documentary and not use it at all. Instead we replaced it with an interview with Jon Dutton about his raido show which he promotes on facebook. The two images below are of the filming process and the mise-en-scene when interviewing Jon.

We also filmed in the library of Weatherhead High School as we needed cutaways for our interview with Jules Hatchard as she talks about girls using the internet inaproppriatly in school, so we got shots of girls in the library using computers. We had no problems when filming in the library, as the shots we where getting where only for cutaways.

We then went on to film more cutaways in the common room of Weatherhead High School, as we wanted to show how students use different technologies in school such as laptops, mobiles, ipods etc and this would therefore be encorporated into the genre of our documentary.

Whilst filming the interivew with Jules Hatchard we had to re-take the filming 3 times. The first time the framing was incorrect and, we as the interviewers, where also positioned incorrectly as when Jules would look at us she would be looking upwards instead of directly next to the camera lens, which would be seen in a typical documentary interview. We also had various problems with microphones as one we used did not work, and this caused more trouble as we had to postpone the interview just to get a different microphone to use. However the third time filiming things ran smoothly as we had learnt from our past mistakes when filming the interview.
Below is evidence of the mise-en-scene with the Jules interview

We went to a local area in Wallasey, called Liscard, and filmed cutaways of people using various technologies in the street, mostly the use of mobile phones. This was to exaggerate the main question of our documentary, which is, is everybody becoming obsessed with using the internet? And as people can now use internet on their mobiles, we wanted to show this through cutaways.
Below is evidence of me and the rest of my group filming in Liscard forcutaways for our documentary.