Media Evaluation

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

As part of a group, I was required to produce a 5 minute opening to a documentary which would be suitable to be aired on national television. To go with this documentary I also had to produce two other tasks, one was to produce a radio trailer to promote the documentary and the other was to do a magazine spread again promoting the documentary. Watching a lot of documentaries in the build up to the task I had to research what would be acceptable to go in the opening 5 minutes of my group’s documentary.

There are many different styles and types of documentaries aired on television. There are factual, historical, educational and entertainment purpose. My groups documentary was based around the topic of ‘childcare’ and it used both factual and educational elements in the opening 5 minutes. We used a voice of god narrative throughout the opening 5 minutes as we thought that would be the most effective method to use when you compare it to other factual/educational television documentaries such as ‘One Born Every Minute’.

A documentary theorist Bill Nicholls categorised documentaries into 6 separate modes: poetic, expository, observational, participatory, performative and reflexive. In the research we did previously before the main task we watched an American documentary ‘Supersize Me’. In ‘Supersize Me’ it uses an array of the documentary modes described by Nicholls. The documentary uses poetic, participatory and performative. This is because all these modes require the documentary maker to be involved in the documentary as ‘Morgan Spurlock’ is. These 3 modes tend to follow the intentions of the narrator and maker but would not have been a suitable method to use for our topic of ‘childcare’.

Our documentary heavily uses what Nicholls would describe as the Expository Mode as on our topic of ‘childcare’ we proposed a strong view-point and opinion using a voice of god narrator throughout the 5 minute opening. The use of the voice of god narrator allowed the group to take a side in our topic (and we took quite a biased side towards childcare being too expensive) which would make the

viewer more likely to agree with what was being said by the narrator. The images used are in support of what the narrator is saying and are used more as a visual aid to the viewer, they help back up the argument. The expository mode is a mode that is synonymous with the educational/factual documentaries and that was the prime reason we chose to use an omnipotent voice of god narrator.

Camera

To get an idea of what variety of techniques should go into our documentary, I have watched and analysed a variety of documentaries to try and pick up ideas of common conventions that should be a part of our documentary. Documentaries that I have watched for inspiration are ‘Supersize Me’ ‘One Born Every Minute’ and ‘MY Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. Throughout in all these documentaries they use a variety of camera shots that are used at effective times. Shots that are typically used in these documentaries are, Close ups, Medium close up shots, extreme long shots and group shots. Extreme long shots are commonly used as an establishing shot to show the main topic from a whole perspective as used here in ‘Supersize Me’. This is a technique we used in our documentary when introducing the nursery we visited as this was seen as a common convention used in documentary making when introducing a building.

To get this shot as steady as possible like in the real documentaries that I have watched it was important that the camera was on a tripod to ensure the quality of the footage would not be wrecked. The tripod was used at a number of points in our documentary to record footage, especially with the interviews and voxpops we filmed as it is important there was no camera movement at these points. It allowed us to simply use the various zooms and tracking mechanisms on the camera whilst maintaing the highest quality of shot. Our main focus for this shot was to get the sign of the ‘Teddy Bears’ nursery into it.

During the interview process from watching documentaries it is clear that they use a rule of thirds in terms of the positioning of the interviewee and where they are to look on camera. The interviewee is to always look across the dead space in the camera shot so there appears to be less unfilled space to the viewer as shown here in ‘Supersize Me’ and our docuemntary ‘You Children’. The use of this technique made our documentary have a more professional feel about it like those aired on national television.

Sound

Sounds is a crucial part to a documentary. Most documentaries adopt a technique of either using a presenter on screen or using a voice of god narrator. In ‘Supersize Me’ they used both and as it was an informative documentary it worked very effectively. In our documentary we only adopted the voice of god narrative which on its own was more effective but it we wanted to add a more personal touch and really relate to the audience, it would have been a good idea to use both styles if we would look to improve our documentary next time. But we found our method of using a voice of god narrative ws effective as it allowed you to talk the viewer through what is going on at each particular stage.

For background music in our documentary as we were only allowed to use music that wasnt copyrighted by a record label. This meant our choice for background music was very limited to what was on Garage Band. Unlike in ‘Supersize Me’ them using copyrighted music like ‘Fat Bottom Girls’ by Queen we chose a beat that related to the genre of our topic of childcare. WE found a beat that had an investigative feel about it as our documentary opening was a very informative and factual based. The music we chose though had to not compete with the voice of god narrative but still add atmosphere to the documentary to avoid the viewer getting bored. The only time the background music was not running is when the interviews or voxpops were on screen. To improve our choice of background music we would need to be allowed to use copyrighted music that would really relate to our chosen topic area which would keep the viewer much more interested than the little variety we had from Garage band.

The use of our non-diagetic sound during the interviews was something I found was particularly effective though. During the interviews with the Nursery workers and owner, we delibaretely didn’t remove the background noise of the children making noise. This was because it gave the interview a

real atmospheric feel of what a nursery environment is like. Also the children making noise didn’t intervene with the sound of the interviews and you could still clearly hear the interviewee.

Overall we had a mixture with our sound levels in the final product. Sometimes they were spot on and sometimes they were to high. This is something i would look to improve if i was to do the task again. The reason we had a mixture of sound levels perhaps could be due to we only ever listened to our documentary through headphones which were not of the greatest quality rather than listening to the documentary outloud through the speakers of the imacs.

Research

Research was a cruicial part to our documentary. With our documentary being informative and educational it was vital we could provide an abudance of facts and figures that will shock the viewer if they were unaware of them. In ‘Supersize Me’ an array of facts an figures are used and with that documentary being informative it was obvious to our documentary we needed to bulk a lot of our documentary with facts that would keep the viewer interested. So we placed numbers on screen and used the voice of god narative to further exclaim the point. The use of a visual aid backed up by the voice of god narrative seemed to be an effective method used a lot in ‘Supersize Me’ so again it was a technique we used which added to making our documentary look as professional as possible.

Special Effects

Special effects are something that are commonly used in documentaries to help keep the audience interested. This is no change in ‘Supersize Me’. In our documentary ‘Your Children’ we used as many variety of special effects as we could. As unlike Supersize Me which was also made to be entertaining to the audience, our documentary was solely to be informative and educational. Our main sources of special effects came when editing using Final Cut Pro as we didn’t use any effects that the camera can produce. A special effect we used that was effective and quite commonly used in ‘Supersize Me’ was the blurring of the background image while putting text over laying the image. It was important that the image wasn’t to distorted and it was also important the background image related to the topic as in our documentary we blurred images such as, playground equipment and babies cribs.

Radio Trail

To help decide what techniques and conventions we would use in our radio trail we listened to a variety of professional trailers from a variety of radio channels. In my planning I analysed a radio 5 live trailer promoting the Italian Grand Prix. I also analysed a radio trail from heart FM as this was our target audience for the radio trail. This helped us pick up techniques that Heart FM uses so we could also use them in our radio trail.

The majority of our radio trail was used extracts from our original documentary as we believed this would give the listener plenty of information which is very important. We asked personal questions such as ‘Do you know how much it costs to put a child through childcare?’ This helped as if it related to the listener then they would be more enticed to want to watch the documentary.

We used a simple beat throughout the radio trail as it was not the beat that would interest a parent or a potential parent. We believed the words they were listening to would be more important.

A common convention of radio trails we used was having the narrator say the time, date and channel the documentary will be on. This was crucial as the audience need to know where and when they can watch it or else the purpose of the radio trail is pointless.

The majority of the radio trails we listened to online were between 30 and 40 seconds and ours last 24 seconds. This is something we could look to improve on if we was to do it again. We could have put more relevant information into the allotted time to ensure that the listener would want to watch the documentary.

More improvements I would make if we were to do the radio trail again would also have the narrator using more rhetorical question as this is a good technique to make people want to watch your documentary as it makes them want to find out the answers to the question. Also our sounds levels were very inconsistent so this is something we would have to improve as one moment the sound was too high and next the sound levels were too low. Also another change I would make is to have the narrator saying more things rather than using so much footage from the documentary. Also at times the backing music we used to the trail intervened with what was being said so we would need to lower the decibels of the beat top ensure we could produce the best quality radio trail possible.

Overall

We tried to stick to as many conventions of radio trails as possible but I believe we could have used more if we wanted it to be perfect. The trail was effective but I believe because of our selected target audience the trail needed to be more sophisticated to entice people to watch it.

Question 2: How effective is the combiantion of your media product and ancilliary tasks?

The ancillary tasks we were set to go a long with the documentary were to produce a radio trail and a double page speard in a magazinhe to promote the documentary. For the ancillary tasks it was the target audience which had a huge impact on our decisions of what direction to go in.

The target audience for our documentary were parents or people who are think about becoming parents. As through research we found out that England is the oldest country in Europe where women think about having children as they start thinking about having children at 30. Therefore the age bracket that we set to target was from 24-36. Also as our documentary was not just about childcare it raised the issue of cost so we were targeting people from a wokring class background as they are the people who are most likely to be concerned with how much childcare is likely to cost them in the short and long term. In some ways our documentary raises the question to potential parents are the financially suitable and ready to raise a child as the facts we found out should really open the eyes of the listener. I think that the target audience is suitable to both males and females as they have an equal role and responsibility in being a parent. Location would play a factor though as this is because we would look to taget specific areas that have a higher child birth rate in places like Birmingham and Manchester as aposed to areas such as Cornwall.

Radio Trail

In our radio trail we used quotes from our documentary that if somebody watched and listened to both products would immediately be able to notice. We also used the found footage from our documentary of Nick Clegg’s preposed scheme on Childcare. It was important we used quotes from the documentary to the radio trail as it helped the two taks combine well and effectively. WE also used a similar background music for both the documentary and radio trail, a beat that wasnt to imposing as we believed the words of the narrator were more important to the target audience rather than keeping them interested with a fancy beat. I think the radio trail really does inform the target audience of what they will find in the documentary and i think it is on the right radio station of Heart FM to reach that target audience.

From this chart it is clear that Heart FM generates a lot of listeners and consistently has for over a decade. This is one of many reasons why it is a suitable radio station to air our documentary on. Also Heart FM has a similar age group for the target audience ranging between 18-35. This is effective as this covers the age range that our documentary and radio trail are aimed at.

Heart FM also covers all the major cities in England and these are the areas with the highest birth rates in England. This is effective as the more people the radio trail reaches the more people that are likely to watch the documentary. This shown from our research that we wanted to target the areas in England that have the highest birth rates as these are the people from those areas that are going to be interested in the documentary. Also the channel that we decided to place our documentary on ‘Channel 4’ has a similar target audience for both our target audience and documentary which again is a major factor in our decision making process. Over the clips we used from our documentary in the radio trail and our decision to use Heart FM all combine effectively to ensure our documentary is reaching the intended people it is for.

Magazine Article

We chose to take a picture of a cute child as the main image for our magazine article, this is because children are something that attracts the attention of people of all ages. I believe the image is very striking and really interests the reader into wanted to read the double page spread. I think this helps link to the documentary as it makes the documentary so much more appealing to watch to someone who has seen this image and has read through the article.

I believe that the magazine article appeals much more towards our target audience than the radio trail does though. There are many techniques we used that the Radio Times used (our chosen magazine). The main technique we used was the simple layout and structure which appeals more to people who are interested in the actual article rather than the fancy titles, which we considered our target audience would. I think our magazine article has a very professional style to it which you would expect from an article in the Radio Times. We also kept the structure simple due to the seriousness of the topic we were covering. All the techniques we used accounted to making the magazine article to be effective to the documentary as the article entices more viewers to watch the documentary which was the aim from the double page spread.

Our main reason for choosing the Radio Times to publish our article was down to the fact of how popular it was as a Christmas edition sold a staggering 11 million copies making it the biggest selling single edition of any British magazine at the time. Even though the target audience was slightly older than those of our specific target audience we believed with the average circulation of a Radio Times magazine being very close to 3 readers, we believed that one of them is likely to be in the age bracket that our target audience is in.

When people think of Radio Times, they stereotypically think as an older persons magazine but they cover a variety of topics and articles which appeal to people of all ages such as ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Children In Need’

Overall we used Radio Times as it is a very factual based magazine which we felt related to our topic for the documentary very well. Also due to its vast popularity through the country we believed plenty of people would be able to see it which would all promote the documentary therefore the choice of using Radio Times to publish the article was a very effective decision between linking the documentary and magazine article.

Question 3 – What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

In the research and planning stage of our task we conducted a questionnaire. This questionnaire was for the basis of finding out things such as ‘do people watch documentaries’ and what things they expect to see in documentaries if they do. As our topic is on childcare we handed out the questionnaires at nurseries and got feedback from parents which were a specific target audience. Further on from this we then conducted a second questionnaire but this time only got feedback from students aged 16-18 which could be considered a problem with our feedback due to students not being our target audience as they will have little to no interest in our documentary.

Television Documentary

Have you learnt something you didn’t already know from watching our doc-

umentary?

yesno

Were there any problems with the sound levels?

YesNo

We thought due to our documentary being factual and educational it would be sensible to ask if we have achieved this. From the results gathered from the people who filled in the questionnaire 16 out of 18 agreed they had learnt something new. Though this is a high percentage of the number of people asked its disappointing to see that not all the people had learnt something new. This is because due to our documentary being factual and educational our aim was to inform every viewer in some way possible. We placed plenty of facts in our opening 5 minutes of the documentary and even used the voice of god narrative to explain each statistic we gave. To improve this in the future I believe that we could make the documentary more entertaining so that when the statistics and facts are delivered the audience is watching and taking note of what is being said. As I believe the reason that the 2 people said they had not learnt anything new was due to the fact

they were uninterested with the documentary therefore they didn’t listen as thoroughly as we would of hoped.

We then went on to ask the audience were there any problems with the sound. From our audience feedback it is clear that we had issues with our sound levels throughout the documentary. From the 16 of the 18 people who agreed that we had issues with our sound levels they said that the noise levels were to inconsistent as one moment they were to low then in the next shot the noise was too high. This was the case for both the found footage we used and the voice of god narrator. It is clear we needed to manage the sound levels better if we were to do this task again. To improve this we would have to listen to the documentary through higher quality speakers rather than through headphones as the quality of sound through our headphones suggested that the sound levels were equal throughout. This would be the key way to improve our documentary if we wanted to give it a more professional feel about it.

How would you improve the documentary

Sound LevelsMore FactsLess Background NoiseNeeds More Pro-fessional Features

From the 18 people who completed the questionnaire we asked them to rate our documentary on a scale of 1-10. (1 being the worst 10 being the best) I calculated the mean of the 18 scores and our documentary scored 7.4 overall.

Magazine Article

The audience feedback for our magazine article was extremely positive.

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Do you think the article is suitable for Radio Times?

We finally asked the most important question to audience. It was important we got audience feedback on how they would improve the documentary given the opportunity. Four points were made from the 18 people who gave the feedback on our questionnaire and the main way they would improve our documentary expectedly was to manage the sound levels better. This would be our main objective if we were to do the task again. Other issues we would look to add if we were to do this task again would also be to add more professional features. By this I assume we would have to follow more conventions of educational documentaries. To do this we could watch more examples of educational documentaries so we could learn more conventions and use them in our documentary.

In our audience feedback on our magazine article 18 of the 18 people that filled it in agreed that our article was suitable to be published in the Radio Times. The main reasons they believed that it was suitable to be published in the Radio Times was because of its simplistic but suitable layout which is a key convention of Radio Times magazine article. They agreed that as the Radio Times aims to attract a more sophisticated audience we were right in making the article more about the text rather than using plenty of images with titles that have fancy effects on them.

Yes No02468

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Do you think the article is relevant to the topic?

Colour Clash

Add Title Use Drop Shadow

Make Title Stand Out

More

Could Not Improve It

0123456789

10

How would you improve the mag-azine article?

Our audience feedback on the magazine article continued to be very positive as everyone who took part in our questionnaire agreed that the article was relevant to the topic and advertised our documentary perfectly. This was a very important feature as the main objectives of the auxiliary tasks were to advertise the documentary. We used plenty of space on the article to be able to describe what the viewer can expect to see and find out which was an important factor for a magazine article. We tried to follow conventions of magazines as close as possible and from our audience feedback it appears to have paid off as everyone appears to believe it is suitable and professional enough to be published.

As good as the audience feedback was from the questionnaire there are always improvements that could be made. From the feedback there were a few suggestions made from a couple of the participants but the vast majority couldn’t find a way to improve it. If we were to complete the task again we would consider the audience feedback of how to improve and to have a different colour scheme may be a good idea as I believe it could have been a more sophisticated colour pattern due to the Radio Times generally being a magazine advertised at a sophisticated reader. Some of the feedback we received though I disagree with as 2 people suggested we use a ‘drop shadow’ to illuminate the title on the page. But for the Radio Times this would go against the simplistic conventions they use so that is not an alteration I would look to make if we were to complete this task again. The large majority agreed though that our magazine article looked professional and fitted our desired target audience ideally which was our main objective of the double page spread.

From the 18 people who completed the questionnaire we asked them to rate our magazine article on a scale of 1-10. (1 being the worst 10 being the best) I calculated the mean of the 18 scores and our magazine article scored 7.4 overall.

The Radio Trailer

The audience feedback for our radio trail produced very indifferent results.

Yes No02468

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Do you think the radio trail is releveant to our topic choice?

Good Okay Bad0

5

10

15

What do you think of the choice of music?

Even though the audience feedback for this question came back with a large proportion agreeing the radio trailer fitted our topic choice, we would have hoped everyone agreed. As the purpose of the auxiliary task was to advertise the documentary you want it to clearly relate to the main project. This is something we would look to change if we were to do the trailer again. We would have to use an array of different footage to ensure that the audience for the trailer would be able to associate that the trailer is advertising the documentary. From the feedback it is clear the audience were not quite aware of the purpose of the trailer which is something we would have to improve on if we did the task again.

The background music to a radio trailer is an extremely influential as it adds mood and tone to the advert. Again the vast majority of the people who completed our questionnaire agreed it was an effective choice of music we used which enhanced the advert. From the 3 people who thought it was an okay or bad choice they believed it didn’t fit the topic very well. They suggested we use a more serious piece of music as it is a serious topic our documentary covers and form the stance we take in the documentary we consider it a problem. For the majority they agreed it was a beat which would keep them interested in continuing to listen which was an important factor. I think more previous audience research in the planning part of the project would have ensured that we could have had everyone agreeing the music we chose would have been relevant to our topic for the documentary.

Sound Le

vels

Make I

t Last

Longe

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Add More

Effect

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10

How would have you improved the radio trailer?

From the 18 people who completed the questionnaire we asked them to rate our radio trailer on a scale of 1-10. (1 being the worst 10 being the best) I calculated the mean of the 18 scores and our radio trailer scored 6.2 overall.

From the audience feedback there were a lot of things we could have changed from their opinions in order to improve our radio trail. The main factor was to alter the sound levels which I would agree. They were not consistent enough to make the trailer sound professional for radio which was the aim of this auxiliary task. The sound levels are also a crucial part to any radio trail as it is the clips or the narrator’s voice which the audience is listening out for. Also our trailer did not last as long as the radio trailers we analysed in the planning stage of this task so that is something we would have to change if we were to perform this task again. I also agree to make the trail more professional we could of added more effects to make it fit for radio. An example of this is we could have faded the sound of the music at the end rather than just cutting it dead. Again this is something I would change if I did the task again.

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

Research and planning

To begin with, in the opening research and planning techniques not many media technologies were used. To begin with we mainly constructed mind maps and story boards by hand. We mind mapped potential ideas for our documentary topic, we mind mapped our target audience and we also mind mapped the potential channels, radio stations and magazine which would be suitable for the documentary and auxiliary tasks. Once all this was established we drew up a mind map which was an inaccurate plan of how we wanted things to look as eventually we changed a huge majority that went into the final product.

Once this part of the planning process was complete, then we started using media technologies to construct our media product. First thing we did was to use a variety of websites on the websites to find out facts as our documentary is educational. Through the use of Internet explorer, we used websites such as BBC News and DayCareTrust.

It was extremely important that with all the research we were collecting to ensure that our documentary was packed with information was being stored and saved. AS part of the project we had to prove all of our research and upload it as a group to blogger.com. This website was a visual way of displaying our work and made it easy and efficient for us to find the research once we needed it again to write out the script for the documentary. More importantly, blogger allowed us to store videos and images which was important. This is because in our research we found footage on YouTube on Nick Clegg proposing a scheme that fits perfectly to our topic idea so we were able to save that video to our blog and come back and use it when we need it.

We also needed to use technologies to place the information we found into documents which were recordable, therefore we used processes such and Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. This were 3 easily recordable methods which allowed us to place as much as our research as possible in.

Filming

After our planning stage was completed we were allowed to go out a film and record the footage that would be used on our documentary opening.

The camera we used was a Canon HG20 HD which was a very simple and effective camera to use for this project. It had all the components and use all the techniques we wanted to use to ensure we could collect the best footage possible. It was able to record video footage and take still images for us which came in handy as we planned to overlay text over still images in our documentary. If we wanted to zoom in and out it was very simple as on the top of the camera there was just a knob which you push from side to side depending on whether you wanted to zoom in or out. Lighting was never much of an issue with the Camera as instead we just ensured that when we were filming, it was in areas that had very good natural lighting as this made it simple for us and it looked more professional in the documentary when uploaded to the iMac computers. At times using a handheld camera was effective for us as the naturalistic shots you could take of the children in their environment really added to the verisimilitude of the documentary which is important. If we wanted to portray the chaotic nature of children which at times we did, we just had a group member to handheld record the footage rather than place the camera on a tripod.

The Tripod was a very important piece of equipment in the construction of our documentary. It enables us to produce the best quality of shot available to ensure our documentary had a professional feel about it. We mainly used the tripod when we were recording a expert interviews and voxpops as these are the times when it is important to diminish the camera movement and focus on the person in the shot. The Tripod is very good tools to use as it also enables you achieve a profession pan shot or zoom shot.

To ensure that we had our sound quality as high as possible we used a directional microphone and headphones which attached to the camera. The directional microphone would be held as close as possible to the noise in the shot without being visible by the camera. Then you had to ensure through the use of the headphones that the sound quality was strong enough. When in a nursery it was hard to control the background noise coming

into our shots but for the script recording and radio article we used a quiet room with no-one in so the background noise were minimal.

Editing – Final Cut Express

Once the filming process was complete we moved onto the next part which was the editing of the footage we had recorded and stored. Throughout the editing process we used Apple IMac computers which had the software Final Cut Express installed into them. The first task that was to be completed on Final Cut was to transfer the footage we had saved on the Macs originally into the software so it could be edited into our documentary. It was a simple log and transfer processing which you just dragged the footage into a ‘drop here’ area and the software would do the rest for you.

Edited visual and audio footage

Time

Editing Tools

Window for viewing documentary

A prime tool we used which we chose to do through Final Cut rather use the camera for was to make freeze frames. It was a very simple process. To begin with you just needed to ensure that the frame you wanted to freeze in the viewing slot. You would then go to modify on the tool bar on the IMac and then you simply just dragged the image onto the timeline of the documentary. (ADD FREEZE FRAME PRINT SCREENS)

Once this freeze frame was made we were able to blur the image to distort it in the background but you would still be able to make out what the image was of and then onto overlaying text over it to leave us with a finished product like this

To get the image blurred like this and to put text over the top was again a very simple process. There was an option to use the ‘effects’ tab bar which gave you a multiple of techniques you were allowed to use. If you scroll down you are given the option of ‘blur’ where if you click that toolbar it gives you a variety of effects to choose. To overlay text, we used a similar process as in the effects tool bar it gave us the option to overlay text once you found the section for that. Once you clicked on ‘text’ it came up with a caption where you could write what you need and change the colour, size and format of the text.

This is the typewriter effect taking place which we introduced to the documentary. This effect is a commonly used when introducing someone to a documentary, it’s a bar at the bottom of the screen which gives the interviewees name and position.

Typewriter effect on the timeline.

The effect the typewriter adds to the documentary

We then moved onto editing the sound levels on the output of the documentary. It was important that all each individual piece of audio footage was edited on its own as all the footage was not recorded at the same time so the background noises or the voice of the narrator may be higher or lower on different days

The sound levels were very easy to change using Final Cut it was just a case of altering the decibel bar on each audio clip.

Razor Blade Tool

Sound Levels

We deliberately changed the sound levels for each different piece. For the music in the background when we wanted that to stop, instead of just letting it finish we faded it down to nothing to give it a more professional feel. Then if we wanted the music to play again we just used the razor tool to cut the audio when we wanted to and then we can get it started at the specific point it ended again later on.

We used the dissolve on the title ‘your children’ to bring it off screen in the opening credits of the documentary. This made the documentary look more professional and fit for purpose as a documentary being aired on Channel 4.

In our documentary we used mainly the straight cut as this is what’s typically used in your standard documentaries so it doesn’t confuse anything. But at the beginning of our documentary we decided to use a fade to introduce our title screen then use a dissolve fade to get rid of the title screen. We did this to add to the interest of the documentary we felt we needed to give it a professional feel for people to watch it and this is what the use of the dissolve gave us. The transitions we used were extremely effective and worked well with the flow and the topic of the documentary.

Radio Trailer

This was the choice of beats we were going to use in our Radio Trailer. It was a simple process as by using the mouse we could drag the edge of each of these bars to stretch and extend how long each piece of music we wanted to. We could also put two tracks together if we liked and Garage Band would successfully link them together for us.

It was simple to use throughout as this was the main toolbar you would use. It is clearly labelled and it enabled us to play, pause and fast forward or rewind the beat we selected. It has a time bar so you are aware of how long the radio trail is going to last and also has a volume option where you can alter the sound levels which is vitally important. Just like the documentary you need to balance the sound levels so that the music is not interrupting the narrator’s voice. It was simple to use Garage Band as previously we had used it to perform a very similar task as part of our AS course. We had to create an anti-smoking advert which lasted a similar time as the radio trail for the task. This enabled me to have the skills to put together an advert fit for professional radio.

For the radio trail we completed it in final cut in terms of putting the narrator and audio clips. But we used Garage Band to select a beat that we thought was appropriate for our trailer. We had to use beats that were custom made from Garage Band as there are copyright laws on us using music produced by artists. It was a very easy application to use as once we found a beat from the variety available (such as Urban. Country, Techno) we just had to save the individual track and export it as an MP3 track so we could work with it in Final Cut.

The radio trail we created was a very simple process. Once we exported the beat to final cut, it allowed us to use footage that we had already used in the documentary in the Radio Trail which is an important convention of adverts on the radio. We used found footage of Nick Clegg and the narrator stating facts that we used in the opening 5 minutes of our documentary. To finish we just had to export the file which was then ready to be used as an MP3 file.

Magazine Article

We created the magazine article in Adobe InDesign which allowed us to structure the double page spread how a profession magazine would such as Radio Times. We did though complete the written article in Microsoft Word and then copied and pasted it into InDesign once we structured and positioned everything in the magazine spread as we wanted. To begin with we used a simple white double article page which we split into two. We kept the background layout simple to keep with the conventions of Radio Times.

As you can see there is a wide variety of beats to choose from that are already customary made for use by Garage Band. Still to improve the quality of our Radio Trailer it would have been effective if we could use copyright music. This is because if we were able to use copyrighted music it would keep the audience more entertained and will make them more likely to listen to the trailer more carefully. Even though there was a wide variety to choose from we struggled to find a beat that was appropriate for our documentary topic of childcare. This affected the quality and delivery of our Radio Trailer as it was not as good as it perhaps could have been at achieving its purpose of advertising our documentary.

A lot of the tools we used for the construction of the magazine article were tools which we used from completing our music magazine from our AS studies. By using the text tool in InDesign we were able to place a pull out quote in the magazine article which was a key convention of magazine articles if we wanted ours to look professional. Also by using the image placer tool we were able to place a side image amongst the article text. This was all a simple as it required skills we had developed throughout media over the last 18 months.

This is the drop cap tool which we used as it is one of the most common conventions used in magazine for article writing. This made the article look a lot more professional. We had the ability to change the size of the drop cap and the style as if we wanted it to look ‘serif’ or ‘self-serif’. We adjusted ours to the size of 85% as we felt that looked right on the page.

For our magazine article we didn’t use many tools as like stated before ‘Radio Times’ uses a very simplistic layout and style with little emphasis on the effects used. It is mainly about the

For the main image of the magazine article we put it into Photoshop as we strengthened the eye colour of the baby to make it stand out. We wanted the image to be striking to make the page a more appealing read to the reader.

quality of the written article and the appeal of the image which we believe we have nailed on. We wanted to produce a magazine article which was true to its conventions and look as professional as possible and we believe we achieved that through the use of InDesign and Photoshop.