Evaluation, Question 4

This is my evaluation with the 4 questions being headed at the start of each post and I do apologise for the images having to be at the bottom but them go in numerical order from top to bottom but this was the only way I could get the images onto the blog as I exhausted all other possible solutions

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

New media technology proved to be a great help when creating this project all the way from start to finish, it wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the media technology. The actual documentary itself required new technology to what I had previously got to know throughout last year such as a PMD660 (see Figure 8) used to record the voiceover by Toby Marshall. I found piece of equipment very simple to use at it simply required batteries to use and a microphone which was just plugged in by an XLR cable, the PMD660 didn’t cause us any problems during our process. There was however, new elements of new media technology that I had previously not encountered which caused us some difficulty; our website (see Figure 9). The website, which was implemented in order to give the public a greater insight into our documentary, contains our radio trailer and newspaper article as well as links to our group and individual blogs. The problem we encountered with the website is that of putting links onto the website and creating a background for the website. There was a limited selection of ways you could set out the website due to restrictions being placed upon it because it is only a free domain, these preset template were not to our liking however so we ended up wasting time looking for different way in which to get around this before finally giving up and settling on one of the preset templates. Another piece of new hardware that we had to learn to use was the clip tie microphone (see Figure 10) which was used in all our interviews by being placed under the subjects top and clipped to the neck area of their clothing in order the get a crisper, clearer sound than using the shotgun microphone that was go used to last year. We did not experience any problems with the clip tie microphone until it came to interviewing WPC Lawrence and her microphone didn’t work so although I recorded using the built in microphone of the Sony DVCAM PD170 which we used last year we still needed to re-film in which the microphone worked well. In addition, there was the piece of new media technology that we encountered this year as opposed to last which was the audio uploading software SoundCloud (see Figure 11) on the internet. This software was used to upload our radio trailers onto so they could be link with our website and give the audience a chance to hear them. Finally, a new, somewhat annoying piece of software became indispensible when editing my newspaper article; GIMP (see Figure 12). Although I found this annoying and hard to use throughout I also saw it as an invaluable tool when it came to editing as without paying for programs such as Photoshop there is no other way to edit the images to the specifications I desire. In conclusion, I believe I used new media technology very well throughout and even if I did find some elements hard I tried and succeeded to overcome them.

Evaluation, Question 3

This is my evaluation with the 4 questions being headed at the start of each post and I do apologise for the images having to be at the bottom but them go in numerical order from top to bottom but this was the only way I could get the images onto the blog as I exhausted all other possible solutions

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Our post documentary audience feedback can be found on YouTube at the following URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQA_J2oYoDI
From our audience feedback we learnt essentially how to construct our interview and what to include and exclude. We used a questionnaire with our audience to get a feel for what they thought was necessary within an interview before we started filming. This feedback which can be found on our group blog essentially explained to us what our target audience saw to be necessary components of a documentary about the public drinking ban. Our pre-documentary questionnaire which was aimed mostly at new drinkers (ages 18-21) essentially told us that we needed to have interviews, cutaways, and informing voiceover and facts and figures in order to make it appealing to them, this was heavily taken into consideration when creating the documentary. An overwhelming majority also told us that it was better to include someone who had knowledge of the topic and deals with the issue on a daily basis in an interview than it was to have someone who in influential in society which again, was taken into consideration when organising interviews which led us to interview people such as a WPC and the person who helped organise the London Tube Party. After taking the pre-documentary results into consideration and creating our documentary we asked our audience for feedback on the documentary, so we sat them in a room in a somewhat structured interview and asked them questions (see URL above and Figure 7). This gave us a great insight into how our target audience viewed our documentary. For the most part we learnt that people liked our documentary, however, there were some elements that could be improved. These elements included the use of cutaways, a member who was questioned stated that he felt that there should been a better use of cutaways as he felt that some of them didn’t necessarily directly relate to the topic and another audience member noted that he felt that some of the interviewees had said somewhat irrelevant subject matter. There was fortunately praise aimed towards our documentary as well as constructive criticism. One good point that was raised by the female audience member was that she felt that the graphics were “really really good” and “kept her interested”. Another positive point that was raised was also that we had a good quality of speakers which we hoped to achieve after taking what our pre-documentary questionnaire told us as the specific speakers that the audience member pointed out were mostly non influential people within society but those which has a deep knowledge of the subject of the drink on different levels such as the barman and the drinks connoisseur. The questions raised can also be seen on our group blog consist of:
1. What aspects of the documentary did you think worked well?
2. What do you think could be done to improve the documentary?
3. What codes and conventions, if any, did you notice within the documentary?
4. Did you find the documentary was biased or non biased in any way?
5. Was you able to get a clear idea of both sides of the argument?
6. Do you think the documentary was informative?
All these questions prompted mostly positive feedback however, as previously noted there were the inevitable negative elements such as some of the cutaways and some of the interviewees answer but also the voiceover as one audience member pointed out that although the documentary was formal “it didn’t dominate that documentary” as it came across that “it didn’t blend in as his voice was a bit low and he sounded a bit nervous”. All this feedback both positive and negative would be taken on board were we to re-create this documentary or create a new one fresh and we would attempt to have a clearer, bolder voiceover, have more concise speakers and more precise cutaways where every single cutaway fits within the context of the documentary.

Evaluation, Question 2

This is my evaluation with the 4 questions being headed at the start of each post and I do apologise for the images having to be at the bottom but them go in numerical order from top to bottom but this was the only way I could get the images onto the blog as I exhausted all other possible solutions

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

I believe that our main product and the ancillary tasks have a close relationship in which the ancillary tasks which consist of the radio trailer and a newspaper article in the form of a poster share the common goal of enticing the audience into noticing the documentary and in turn getting them to watch the main product. These tasks allowed me use a different medium of communication to get in contact with the different audiences including that of our target audience which was both males and females of the age of 12 upwards. This may seem a broad spectrum but as explained on our blog our research showed us those children as young as 12 from both sexes were drinking in both public places and in private. The different mediums we used consisted of the visual form in terms of the poster which was created with a view to be being put into a newspaper to advertise the documentary, this was an interesting task as I found it interesting learning what essentially makes a good and bad poster as through my drafts I experienced both of these. The verbal element that I implemented in my ancillary task would be the radio trailer I created which was a very engaging activity as I have never created a radio trailer before and every element was something new to me. The radio trailer as a whole caused me problems from the outset in terms of how to set it out but I based it on a simple but effective template; introduce the documentary with time, date, and channel, play a exert from the documentary and then repeat documentary title, time, date and channel. As most people are quick to blame politicians for matters of this sort such as the public drinking ban I was quick to point out via my radio trailer that perhaps everything isn’t they’re fault and they shouldn’t be blamed it the ban is deemed as a failure so I decided to use an clip from paramedic Kim Wheatley’s interview in which he explains that he believes that “A ban is only as good as the policing of it” which I believed to be a powerful statement and apt enough to be put into the ancillary task. For the voiceover in my radio trailer I naturally used the same person who performed the voiceover for the main product to aid with continuity, Toby Marshall. I also chose Mr Marshall as he has what might be deemed by some to have the accent of the masses, meaning that he doesn’t have what could be perceived as an upper-class accent which would make him somewhat disjointed from main audience as it is stereotypically the lower/middle classes from the E, D and perhaps C2 social demographic sections of society that would participate in public drinking. By repeating the time, date and channel as well as the name of documentary within my trailer it anchors the elements within the audience member so as they have a greater chance of remembering and therefore watching the documentary. I would like to think that my poster is unique not because of its format as I have already stated that it has a generic format but in its content and in its efforts to help the main product succeed. When doing my poster I originally was rather lax in my approach as wasn’t entirely sure how I wanted to set it out so I simply took some photographs of a friend from different angles with the title over the top and the website in the corner (see Figure 4). Not surprisingly, this was a very poor first draft of my poster which neither enticed nor kept the attention of the audience. I then metaphorically went back to the drawing board and came up with an idea in which I would get someone to pose on a park bench (being in the public area) with beer cans littered around them, this then posed a problem as none of my friends said they wouldn’t be willing to be deal with the social stigma that the photo might bring so I decided to take it upon myself to get my grade to step in and be in front of the camera instead of behind it. I then chose to edit this image using the free photo editing software “GIMP” by de-saturating it, giving it a greyscale effect (see Figure 5) and then in colour to add emphasis I added a no drinking in public sign on to the leg of bench I was laying on (see Figure 6). The combination of these 2 ancillary tasks with my main product therefore creates a somewhat co-dependent relationship between the 2 in that they both need each to be seen otherwise the main product will not be seen without the advertising and the advertising would not make sense without the main product, this then creates a very effective combination.

Evaluation, Question 1

This is my evaluation with the 4 questions being headed at the start of each post and I do apologise for the images having to be at the bottom but them go in numerical order from top to bottom but this was the only way I could get the images onto the blog as I exhausted all other possible solutions

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

When making my media product; the documentary “The Public Drinking”, I discovered one of the most important elements was to use the element seen in most documentaries, impartialness. I found it increasingly necessary to incorporate this convention element into my documentary as, not only was it supposed to be created with the ethics of the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) but it is important when showing an argument to give both sides an equal say and to not try and influence the audiences opinion. I believe one of the key conventions that we utilised well was the somewhat obvious convention of interviews. I believe our interviews were well constructed with good questions put to the interviewees in order to give the audience an accurate view of both sides of the argument of whether the drinking ban is right or wrong. Some of our interviews were also framed well, in particular the interview with Justice Of The Peace (JP) Dennis Smith (see Figure 1) in which you can clearly see that there is a sufficient enough amount of head space so that the subject doesn’t look to large and imposing on the screen but not too much which would make him seem distant from the screen and the audience. Another convention which I think we incorporated well into the documentary was the use of graphics on the screen to inform the audience of what is going on. In Figure 1 you can see that we used graphics to inform the audience of who is speaking at the time and their job or why they are relevant to our documentary (see Figure 2). A third convention that I believe we used and developed was the use of the voiceover. It is the purpose of a voiceover to further the story onwards from what the interviewees and cutaways are saying and to inform the audience of what is going on and general information on the subject. I believe we implemented this convention well although there were some points within the documentary where the voiceover seemed jittery and somewhat unsure about what they were saying however we were unable to redo the voiceover due to other commitments the speaker had made. The final convention that I believe we applied to our documentary would be the cutaways. This particular convention is used within all documentaries so as the audience don’t get bored and are just seeing people sit there answering questions. Our cutaways are used to relate to the subject of the drinking ban and I believe that we used this convention to our advantage as in our post audience review where we asked audience member what they thought they noted that the cutaways was one of the elements they most enjoyed as they was “relevant to the topic” and they kept the audience engaged (see Figure 3).

Third Poster Draft

This is my third poster for my documentary on the public drinking ban. The elements that have been included since the first draft include the date of release (March the 16th 2010) and I also have added a no drinking image in colour to juxtapose the grayscaled image and to add some irony to the overall image. In addition to this I have also slightly moved the HCTV logo and website address.

Second Draft of Poster

This is my second draft of my poster, I decided to completely change the image as I felt my first image was sufficient to get myself a good grade. There are, however, still changes that need to be made and I will upload the final image soon.

First Poster Draft

This is my first draft of the poster I would use to promote my documentary about the public drinking ban.