Monday 13 December 2010

Evaluation

Q1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our media product uses codes and conventions from documentaries which we analysed at the research stage of our documentary making. In the powerpoint presentation below you will see how we have used the codes and conventions that we learnt from analysing the documentaries comparing them with one from a professional program and the documentary that we filmed.

http://www.slideshare.net/upload?from=fblanding



Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The Audio clip below talks about our Print Poster and how good its combination with the documentary was.

The Audio Clip Below talks about our Radio Trailer and how good it combination with the documentary was.




Q3. What have you learned from your target audience?

I uploaded our documentary up to my own personal Facebook page and also up on to my own Youtube page and invited my friends to watch it and tell me what they think about it.


Below is a screenshot of the comments on the Facebook Video.


Below are the comments for the Youtube Video


From putting the documentary up on my own personal Youtube and Facebook page, it let me get feedback from my friends about what they thought about the 5 minute sample of the documentary. I got good feedback from my friends but some of them did not enjoy. This is because they are not into that type of music which makes me believe that our documentary will only be watched if people are into that type of music shown in the radio trailer and in the image shown on the print poster. But some of friends who are into different genre's of music like RnB commented saying they really enjoyed because it opened there eyes up to their own music scene.



Q4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?



For the research and planning of the documentary, I used several media technologies. For the researching I used the internet to research some of the ideas for documentaries that we come up with as a group. Examples of some of the sites used would be mainly Google, Google Images and Youtube. The internet was also used to further research our ideas once we had narrowed them down and it was also used to get ideas for different bands and lecturers to interview once we had the category we were doing our documentary on which was about Local Music Scenes. Finding extracts, archive material and cutaways was used with the internet and to analyse and research different styles of print posters and radio trailers.












Microsoft word was used to construct the questions for the questionnaires and Microsoft Excel was used to create the graphs of the results for the questionnaires. Microsoft Word was also used for scripts for the radio trailer and the voice over.








For the construction of the documentary there were several media technologies used. For the filming of our documentary, First of all we used the camera provided by college which was a Hanon Mx2. We used to film our interview's with the two University lecturers and the interview with the band Flowers for Helen. The camera was also used in filming the Vox pops and the 'Flowers for Helen' gig.






A 3 legged tripod and a microphone was used during the filming along with the camera. For the vox pops we used the tripod high up and had the frame as the interviewee's head and for the interview's we had the interviewee's to either the right or left of the frame a medium height on the tripod. This was a problem with band interview as there was 5 of them positioned to them right of the frame and the height of the tripod was wrong so the framing was off which forced us to re-film the interview with the band. We learnt from the mistakes from the first interview and got the positioning and the framing right when we re-filmed.





A Digital stills camera was also used to shots of us filming for the diaries and also it was used for the print poster and also I used my mobile phones which is a Samsung Tocco to take photos.







For the editing of our documentary many different programs were used, the main one being Adobe Premier Pro. Adobe Premier Pro was used to edit our documentary, we uploaded everything we recorded and put it on here to decide what we wanted to keep and what we didn't need. Also still shots and archive material was put on here used as cutaways.







Adobe Photoshop was used for the construction of our opening titles, to edit some of the still images and for the making of our print poster.




For the construction of our radio trailer and our voice over we used the radio studio which enabled us to get a voice and sound quality from the microphone so there no outside noice interference.











For Question 2, My phone was used again to record my audio voice over for the explaining of the effectiveness of the ancilliary texts and our main product.








For Question 3, I used Facebook and Youtube to advertise our documentary for them to watch it and to give me feedback on what they thought of it. I also used paint for when I had print screened the comments and used paint to crop out useless information and to keep people's opinions anonymous.









For Question 4, My phone was used again for images, Paint was also used for when I print screened things and need to crop pieces out and also Google was used to get some extra images.




And mainly I used Blogger.com to write all of our information onto for easy viewing.

















Saturday 4 December 2010

Production Schedule

Production Schedule

Name Of Programme: Making It Big?
Directors: Lisa Whitby, Rhiannon Lewis, Ryan Pye
Producers: Lisa Whitby, Rhiannon Lewis, Ryan Pye
Client: OCR

Date production Started: 27th September
Formal Proposal Started: 3rd October Completed
Storyboard Started: 5th October
Shooting Started: 7th October Completed: 11th November
Post Production Started: 8th October
Rough Cut Submitted: 10th December
Final show tape completed: 15th December
Sent To Client: 17th December

Location Equipment Required:
Camera, Tripod, Microphone, Headphones

Friday 3 December 2010

Audience Feedback

Questions:

Please rate the following;

(on the scale 1- 5, 1 being very poor and 5 being very good)


How informative was the documentary?

1 2 3 4 5


How informative was the radio trailer?

1 2 3 4 5


How informative was the print advertisement?

1 2 3 4 5


How entertaining was the documentary?

1 2 3 4 5


How was the technical quality (sound, editing, and continuity)?

1 2 3 4 5


Was the pieces eye catching?

1 2 3 4 5


Results

How informative was the documentary?

80% thought that the documentary was good (3)

20% thought that the documentary was quite good (4)


How informative was the radio trailer?

20% thought the radio trailer was poor (2)

80% thought that the radio trailer was good (3)


How informative was the print advertisement?

80% thought that the print advertisement was good (3)

20% thought that the print advertisement was quite good (4)


How entertaining was the documentary?

80% thought that it wasn't really entertaining (2)

20% thought that it was quite entertaining (4)


How was the technical quality (sound, editing, and continuity)?

80% thought that the technical quality was good (3)

20% thought that the technical quality was quite good (4)


Was the pieces eye catching?

30% thought that the pieces weren't really eye catching (2)

30% thought that the pieces were a little eye catching (3)

40% thought that the pieces were really eye catching (5)

Radio trailer timeline


0 secs - 5 secs: Vox pop's and 'Making it Big'

5 secs - 12 secs: Narration "Ever wondered what it is like to be in a band and to try and 'make it big' in the music industry? Well on the 9th May, Channel 4 has the answers."

12 secs - 17 secs: Lecturers sound bite.

17 secs - 21 secs: Narration "Have you considered the hardships faced by unsigned bands?"

21 secs - 26 secs: Interview sound bite.

26 secs - 30 secs: Tagline "Could you smash the charts?" Explosion sound effect.

0 secs - 30 secs: Airbourne - 'No way but the hard way' playing quietly in the background.

Codes and conventions of radio trailers

General codes and conventions of radio trailers
  • Sound bites from the program/documentary
  • time, name of the documentary, channel and what it is about
  • Ident
  • Presenter/Narrator is used
  • Dramatic language
  • Background music
  • Poses questions but doesn't answer them
  • Creates enigmas

Analysis of radio trailers
  • Sound bites used throughout
  • Controversy
  • No idents

Creating our print advertisement

Ideas - Below are some the images that we used as inspiration. We went through many different ideas before coming up with our final print poster. We started with the idea of having instuments being destoryed or on fire.


Burning Instruments





The images above is a guitar that is on fire which gave us the idea of having an instruments being destoyed maybe even being on fire signifying to the audience that rock band culture is slowly dieing out but then we came to the conclusion that this would be too dangerous and also it would take several shots to get the perfect one of the guitar smashing and we didn't have enough money between us to keep buying guitars to set fire to.

Empty stage


After we came to the conclusion that the burning/destroying instruments would be to expensive and also too dangerous we came up with the idea of just having a empty stage just with instruments on it symbolising that band culture is slowly fading away but we came to the conclusion that the image would lack detail and would be hard to get the message across.

Band members smashing guitars


We came up with this idea at the same time as the burning instruments idea came up and came to the conclusion that this would also be too dangerous and expensive incase we accidentally broke something.

Band members playing instruments


This was a good idea but it possibly wouldn't get across the aim and the point of our documentary so we decided to go against this.

First Attempt



Print screen of the making of the final print advertisement


The screen shot above shows the editing process of making the print poster and shows the idea that we had finally narrowed it down to.


Final Print Poster



This our Final Print Poster which was originally a gig ticket but we edited the text off using photoshop and put all the print poster codes and conventions on there including the title of the program, the channel, time and date and it also has the tag line of the documentary which is 'Could you smash the charts'. It also has the channel 4 ident in the bottom right corner and also has a ticket price and number which makes the audience think at first glance it is a gig advert but as they look at it longer they release that it is a program.









Codes and Conventions of print advertisment

  • Branded
  • Grabs the audiences attention
  • Enigmatic
  • Image represents the programme
  • Usually shows main characters
  • Usually has one central image
  • Simple graphics
  • Limited use of words.
  • Channel logo is used
  • Time and date is shown



  • Sunday 14 November 2010

    Storyboard






    Edit decision list, Logging sheets and Single Frames

    Edit decision list


    Logging sheets






    Single frames and vox pops



    Editing Diary

    When we got the footage we have filmed uploaded onto the computer we then began to edit the documentary. We used some portions of music videos and still images of bands to relate to what the interviewee's were talking about. Here are some examples of still images and portions of music videos we used most of which were cut aways relating to what the interviewee's were talking about i.e who are there influences for the band and what type of image a band have for the university lecturers. To calcel out jump shots we used a number of different shades and dilvolves from one shot to another to avoid jump cuts to make the documentary look more professinal.




    Music Videos
    The Saturdays - Work



    We used this to relate to what the university lecturers were discussing. They were discussing about bands images and how that effects their style music. They mentioned The Saturdays so we played over part of the Saturdays video 'Work' with the music also playing under them discussing.






    Examples of Still Images

    We used still images as cutaways whilst the University lecturers are talking about band images and whilst the band 'Flowers for Helen' were talking about their musical influences to give the audience something to look at and something to relate to what the interviewee's are talking about.


    Kurt Cobain



    Artic Monkeys





    Young Guns




    We used these cutaways to relate the the band images which the university lecturers were talking about. They mentioned band images and our first thoughts of bands were the Artic Monkeys and Young Guns whose image is important to the type of audience they relate to. These cutaways were also used when Flowers for Helen mentioned their influences and so we used a picture of the iconic Kurt Cobain who was a big influence to the rock genre as a whole.


    Print screen of editing of the documentary



    Once we had got all our filming done, we noticed that there was alot of speaking and it became quiet boring and so we needed to add alot more cutaways during the interviews to keep the audience concentrated.

    Studio



    Most the cutaways were later added were still images but in the interview with Flowers for Helen they mention there that they have a Facebook page so when they are talking about it, we edited in someone on facebook scrolling onto their page and showing the content they provide whoch gives the audience a visual stimulant.

    Documentary Diary - Vox Pops

    We went out on several occasions and filmed Vox Pops for our documentary. We went into the streets of Warrington and approached random people asking them "What is a bands main goal". Alot of the people we spoke to answered "Making it Big" which is what we needed so there is quiet a few good vox pops to use.

    Friday 12 November 2010

    Documentary Diary - Flowers for Helen Re-filming

    On 11/11/2010 Rhiannon and Lisa went and re-filmed the Flowers for Helen interview at the Taxicab Driver Sports & Social Club in Walton. They asked the same planned questions they did in the first interview.

    What went well was the location was much better than the last, it was quiet when filming and the lighting in the room was good which were the two problems with the first locations. The band also answered the questions much better in this interview.

    The only problem was that one of the band members was unable to attend the interview but we have footage of him playing at the gig.

    Thursday 11 November 2010

    Documentary Diary - University Lecturers Interview


    On the 19/10/10 we went and interviewed Russell Dyson, Senior lecturer in Commercial Music Production and Jim Mason, Senior Lecturer in Commercial Music Production who teach at Chester University in Warrington. We wanted to interview them in front of some of music production equipment but some of the students at the college were using it so we interviewed them in some rehearsal space.

    What worked was that they answered the questions fully and went into detail and the framing of the interview was good.

    What didn't work as well was one of the lecturers wasn't looking the right way and we had to move locations from where we originally were hoping to film.

    Questions below are the original list and the ones in bold are the questions that we didn't ask on the day.



    Some information about yourselves.

    General positive and negative points about the music industry.

    Brief overview of the industry and how it works.

    Brief overview of how music is made


    Questions

    Does a band/artist need any knowledge of the industry to make?

    What exactly is popular music?

    Is marketing important when selling records?

    Is a bands image important?

    Is downloading music becoming more popular than buying CDs leading to ‘extinction’ of the CD?

    Is downloading music illegally becoming a big problem for bands and artists?

    How do bands/artists promote their music?

    How do bands/artists get into the industry?

    Is it better for bands/artists to have a manger or manage themselves?

    What is Fan Culture?

    What is music law and what types of laws are there?

    What exactly is commercial music making?

    How do record labels work?

    How does the music industry work and what are the latest issues affecting it, if any?

    What is the cultural politics of music and how is it linked with industry matters?

    What is the relationship between popular music and race/gender identities?

    How music is talked about and consumed?

    What is the role of music in society as a commodity and force for social cohesion?

    What is the cultural significance of popular music?


    Is there a realistic outlook on the industry?

    What are your views on auto tune?