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

Formal Proposal
The coursework task set was to create a 5 minute opening to a documentary. For our documentary, we decided to create a one off documentary based on the touchy issue of unemployment for teenagers / young adults. The documentary would be a social documentary, focusing on social issues and pressures of which effects many in our society today. In preparation for this we had to lots of research and planning based on who we wanted our target audience to be. We based this research on other documentaries we have seen. We used this research to add conventions other documentaries used to our own to make our documentary as authentic and realistic as possible, giving it a sense of professionalism to our project.

Why Channel 4?
Due to our research we found that Channel 4 was the best channel to use for our ident (the channel of which our documentary would be shown) as this is the most popular channel with our chosen target audience.

Documentary Airing
Our documentary would be aired at about 8 or 9pm. As we would air the documentary during prime time television, it would attract a large audience for example teenagers, adults and also adults who deal with teenagers' everyday such as career workers etc.

Using Codes and Conventions

Each documentary is produced using particular codes and conventions usually with a particular purpose and audience in mind to separate the documentary from a drama or comedy programme. One convention would be actuality, this is used in a documentary as this is footage of real events, people and places e.g. Jack's Case Study, we followed Jack in his struggle to find work.

Why are thin people not fat?

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6-A0iHSdcA This youtube link shows many conventions we used in our research stage in producing our documentary. This 5 minute opening helped us to see the lay out in which documentaries are set up e.g. voiceover introducing the topic and title as the title appears on screen.

Use of Camera
We used a variety of shot types and different angles as this is necessary to keep the viewer entertained and focused on the screen. e.g. Medium Close Up MCU and Close Ups CU, conventional during an interview as it allows the audience to feel connected to the person speaking as they can clearly see their facial features making it more personal to the viewer allowing them to relate to our characters.

Transitions - transitions help our documentary flow well. There

was plenty of options for us to choose from out of transitions, but we didnt feel the need to use all of these transitions, so decided to use only two as we were consistent throughout. Transitions are used to tell the viewer this is a next chapter in the documentary. We used additive dissolve and page turner in our documentary.

Zooms - we use this convention during the introduction of Jack, while the voiceover introduces his
case study the camera zooms in and out on him reading a book in the library about Job hunting. Zooms are used effectively as they allow the viewer to get a look at the emotions and allow the viewer to feel they are getting to know Jack on a more personal level rather than just an interview shot using only a medium close up.

Establishing Shots
We used a wide range of establishing shots throughout our documentary, specifically in the montage. The montage is very important and we as a group put a lot of thought into this as this is what the audience will see in the first few seconds deciding to view or not to view. We used a range of short clips that connect to our chosen topics, such as establishing shots of Solihull, the Job Centre and Solihull Sixth Form College to set the scene of where this documentary was set.

Documentaries such as Educating Essex use establishing shots to tell the audience where the documentary style programme is set, Essex. Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxUShvUA_Vo&feature=youtu.be&has_verified=1

Montage of Images
We used a variety of images for our opening minute to build our opening montage. The opening montage is key for our documentary as this is what the viewer will see for the first few seconds of the documentary. Tuning them in or tuning them out of watching our documentary. For this we thought it best to have establishing shots of our location: Solihull (as shown above), images of our topic: Unemployment e.g. Job Wanted Signs and youth today as that it what our topic is focused on.

If I could have one improvement if I were to do it again, I would have liked to include more ranges of images and footage. As we lacked footage in our documentary we had to repeat some footage or images which made our documentary seem repetitive.

Presenter and Voiceover

Within our documentary, we used a presenter (Ami Rutter) to appear twice outside Solihull Sixth Form College. Ami introduced the topic, The Jobless Generation along with facts and statistics, and also the college "we are here at Solihull Sixth Form to find out how and why..." We used a presenter to make our documentary more personal and allow the viewer to see the person behind the scenes. However although Ami Rutter was the presenter I stepped in as the voiceover as Ami was unavailable to record for voice over recordings as she was focusing on other tasks, her own ancillary task: listings page. So although the presenter introduces the topic the voice over speaks to the viewer throughout the documentary to keep the documentary flowing and moving forward.

Interviews and Vox Pops

To make a successful documentary you have to use a variety of interviews, thus showing peoples opinions on this topical discussion. We used a variety of age and gender to allow different opinions on the matter. Specialists in the subject such as: Emma Hurst from College Careers Office and Sharon Greenall from Connections Centre were also featured in this documentary. We did attempt to get an interview someone from the Job Centre in Solihull but unfortunately they did not respond to our letter. If we were to do it again I would hope to get more interviews with males as we lacked in this, however we did have a case study featuring a male student.

We also used Vox-Pops from Students around the college to provide a view from "normal" female and male students about the pressures and struggles they have of finding a job as a success or not.

Our Documentary

Real Documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhs3uGCNetI

Case Study
We decided to use one of ourselves for a case study featured in our documentary as we would be able to produce footage easily as we would all be there during our lessons. Jack Bradbury was used as a typical 17 year old student at Solihull Sixth Form College as we followed him throughout his journey in getting a job. We used a range of establishing shots, zooms, medium close ups when filming Jack to make our documentary as authentic as possible to a real documentary.

Mise en Scene
We thought long and hard on which setting we wanted our documentary to be set. As this is about youth and our target audience was aged from 16 and over we decided to film mostly at our college, Solihull Sixth Form, because as well as easy access to the Colleges site we also had many students there willing to talk to us about their search for a job or what they wanted to do when they leave College and how they plan to get this.

Captions and Texts

Joe Ferrari as Student D he was in charge of captions and texts, we used captions to introduce our interviewers (Emma Hurst and Sharon Greenall), presenter (Ami Rutter) and case study (Jack Bradbury)

O r

Documentary We also produced Credits at the start of the documentary to give credit to ourselves as producers of our documentary.

Real Documentary from: BBC Panorama

Music
Most media products such as documentaries will use some form of background music. Music chosen for our documentary was chosen carefully as we wanted to make sure we set the right tone for our piece. We were not allowed to use any copyrighted music so used tracks approved by the media board at our College.

Ancillary Tasks Listings Page this was produced in a software called InDesign. When producing
our listings page we had to a lot of research into the layout and typical set up of a listings page advertising a programme. We were also given feedback on our listings page, improvements we could annotate given to us by our fellow class mates and target audience. Improvements such as giving our title, The Broken Generation? a drop shadow making the title bolder and more able to stand out to a reader.

In doing this research we found many conventions and ideas that we picked up on to produce our listings page to seem as realistic as possible e.g. column layout, title bold font eye catching to the audience, pull quotes, many images such as a dominated image, drop caps, credits and picture credit, page reference etc.

Radio Trailer - this was produced in software

called Garage Band. For this we had to also do lots of research in radio trailers and radio channels as we would be thinking of which radio we would want our radio trailer to be on, again

linking to our target audience as we would need to research the popularity of radio stations and which one our target audience listened to the most. Through research we found conventions such as sound, length of clip and the levels they are at which all make up the radio trailer are important as the viewer cannot see anything they can only hear and the sound levels are important to set the right tone to the documentary and radio trailer. We had to pick our sound bytes carefully as they had to be important quotes given from our interviewees. We also had to write a script for our Radio Trailer we used 4 different voices: Radio Trailer Presenter, Documentary Presenter, Sharon Greenall interviewee and Jack Bradbury case study, to make our trailer sound authentic. Using a presenter Joe Ferrari and important sound bytes / quotes taken from our documentary to capture and interest the listener to watch our documentary. It was important to tell the audience when and where they can watch our documentary Channel 4 8 Oclock this Saturday Night

Script for our Radio Trailer:

Presenter: New and exclusive to channel 4, a one off documentary Ami Rutter (presenter on the documentary): This is the jobless generation Presenter: This Saturday night, channel 4 investigates the struggle young people go through in life after college. Sharon Greenall: Quote from the documentary about younger people not having the correct experience. Presenter: In 2012 it brings a new generation to the difficulties of the economical climate of the 21st century. Jack Bradbury: No they said there werent any jobs available, so Im just going to have to keep looking really. Presenter: Saturday Night, 8pm, this is your future.

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
Documentary
Our main task, our documentary was based around Youth Unemployment and how this has progressed and increased over the years. The audience watching the documentary could relate to this as they could be in this situation or know someone affected by this topic. As we say

Ancillary Tasks
Both the Listings Page and Radio Trailer purpose were to promote and advertise our final, completed documentary, to create a brand image by connecting all three tasks together and to get a bigger audience to watch our documentary. Our main target audience were students or young adults aged 16 22, both of male and female gender, affecting all ethnicities. Our Radio Trailers purpose was to advertise our main task. We did this by trying to connect the two tasks, by having a brand identity. Also by having grab quotes taken specifically from our documentary; this gave the audience a feel or a sneak preview into what they would be watching this Saturday night. We used a male speaker for our Radio Trailer presenter and had a male and two female speakers from the documentary. As jobs is not a gender issue as it was 50 years ago but more an age issue as it says in the documentary and radio trailer some are saying they need experience to get a job experience comes with age. The title is stated by the documentaries presenter, Ami Rutter and then repeated by the Radio Trailer presenter, Joe Ferrari including the day and time. With our radio trailer we didnt have time to state what radio station it would be played on as the radio trailer is 30 seconds long and we didnt have time to introduce the station. But if we did I think we would have chosen Capital FM as these are local radio stations that are popular with our target audience as they play current Pop or R&B music, so hopefully it would have helped with our promotion for our documentary.

Our Listings Page articles purpose was also to promote and advertise our documentary. As our documentary is called The Jobless Generation we decided to call our listings page The Broken Generation although changing the word Jobless to Broken we kept to the theme and brand of generation as we are talking about the current teenage / young adult generation of the 21st century and the unemployment crises in the current UK. Using images such as Job Centre and Job newspapers this links nicely to our topic and idea of the discussion of unemployment. As our target audience was our class mates we could get feedback easily if necessary to help with annotations and improvements. This specific target audience probably would not read a newspaper as it wouldnt appeal to them to read therefore it would be best to set this article in a television magazine such as the Radio Times (as it says next to the page reference), something my target audience would read.

Title (Big & Bold with Drop Shadow) similarly named to programme.
Title, Date, Time, Channel for programme

Image Dominated
Subheading (summarise programme)

Other Images from programme

Grab Quotes

Drop Caps

Date, Title of Magazine

Page Number

Column Layout

The article gives the audience and idea of the documentary, it has images from the documentary and introduces our interviewees and case study: Jack Bradbury expressed in the picture caption as Emotionally Drained. The article gives a brief introduction about the documentary and the number of expert opinions includes. The article has quotes to fascinate the audience into reading more:

These particular quotes may make the reader think, yes I get the same problem and interest the reader to read the article and/or watch the documentary. Mutual colours were used so our target audience couldnt be restricted to only one gender, we aim to target at both male and female audience so the mutual colours allows us to do this successfully. In all three tasks the brand name The Jobless Generation was mentioned to advertise to the audience the title of our documentary, a clever name as this tells the audience it is about a certain age period of which are struggling with employment. Allowing the reader and viewer to ask why? Which is what we would like to answer. Although the radio trailer and listings page may not be as popular with my target audience it is more a promotional tool to a wider range of people (our primary and secondary target audience) to advertise the main event on Saturday Night at 8pm, our documentary. I would also probably advertise through the internet, on popular websites such as Facebook or on television breaks between popular programmes that interest my target audience such as: Holly Oaks or The Simpsons.

3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?

After completing our documentary we felt that it was very important to get a variety of feedback from our peers. It gave us a chance to see how successful our documentary, listings page and radio trailer were and where we could improve if we had the chance to do it again. We handed out questionnaires (provided by the teacher) to our target audience to get their views and opinions. We did understand that this was a very limited resource as there was very few (20 people) viewing our products from our College. To get more of an accurate result we would have widened our research into feedback, and allowed a bigger audience to view our product(s).

Primary Target Audience:

- Both Male and Female - Aged 16 22 Multicultural British Audience (as it is about Unemployment in the UK) Mainly Social Class C (students and part time workers) We made profiles from our survey to do with who our target audience, who would be linking with gender, age, area and occupation.

Secondary Target Audience:

Close relation to our target audience e.g. parents, career workers, teachers etc. Channel 4 not only targets our target audience but a wide range of viewers so we wanted to take advantage of that and attract a range of viewers to the programme.

Feedback on our Documentary

Above are images of fellow students giving feedback on our documentary (filling in our questionnaire). The questionnaire asked for the target audience to give their views on how successful we did the task, asking them to rate the documentary as either: Excellent Very Good Good Satisfactory Poor

Below are bar charts I produced on the basis of our feed back given from our audience.

Overall Rating

Overall Rating poor satisfactory good very good excellent

0 0 6 5 1

excellent very good

good

satisfactory poor
Choice of Topic

Choice of Topic poor satisfactory good very good excellent

0 0 1 8 3

excellent 0 very good good

satisfactory poor 0 2 4 6 8 10

Editing

Editing poor satisfactory good very good excellent

0 0 5 7 0

excellent

very good

good

satisfactory

poor

Sound
2 4 6 8

Sound poor satisfactory good very good excellent

0 4 6 2 0

excellent 0

very good

good

satisfactory

poor 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Transitions
Transitions poor satisfactory good very good excellent 0 1 4 6 1

excellent

very good

Strengths of Documentary:
Good Cuts
good

Good use of interviews (variety and relevance to topic) Good editing

satisfactory

Good concept of a job search (content) Good locations of the filming (content)

poor 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Overall I am really happy with the feedback that we received for our final task. As well as advantages there were also weaknesses as there is always room to improve.

Weaknesses of Documentary: - Poor sound quality (music being too loud, or too quiet in parts, not being able to hear people
in the shots Shaky camera movement Microphone in some of the shots (3 people commented on this)

We would have loved to reshoot some footages due to sound quality, movement and the microphone in the shot. But due to the time limit we had available we were unable to do this.

Radio Trailer Feedback: Advantages: - Good background music - Good voiceover - Presenter was informative, helping to understand the topic - Good cuts and quotes - Flows well

Disadvantages: - Sound bytes could be more exciting - Sound levels varied - Sound was fuzzy in places - Sound levels were not balanced and inconsistent throughout
For our Radio Trailer we were scored out of 10. These results were as follows: 9, 9, 9, 8, 8 and 8 therefore giving us a grand total of 51 / 60 which I am very pleased with. If I were to produce the Radio Trailer again I would have loved to reshoot some dodgy sound bytes therefore improving the quality of sound and the information given from quote.

Listings Page Feedback Advantages:- Good layout - Good use of images

Disadvantages: Could have improved images using Photo Shop - More colour could have been added, make title stand out more Coloured background

4. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Research and Planning
YouTube was a very useful website when doing our research into documentaries; we were able to watch many different documentaries through searching them on this video broadcasting website. These websites allowed us to pick up on useful codes and conventions that were used, so we could add them into our own documentary to add professionalism and also look at the range of opportunities there were. It also helped us to make decisions, like what topic we would base our documentary on, we viewed several genre documentaries on YouTube to help us make our decision and Youth Unemployment we found we as teenagers aged 17 18 could most relate too as we ourselves are experiencing this topical subject. We could easily find research online and access specialists into this topic as we go to Solihull Sixth Form College. Channel 4OD was also a website we used for our research and planning, as a group we decided on a target audience, and then research through questionnaires that channel 4 was the most popular among our audience channel 4 on demand allowed us to view previous documentaries aimed at our audience, by doing this we could analyse the codes and conventions used, like having informal interviews and possibly adding humour. For my particular part of research and planning I viewed the Fairy Job Mother and Educating Essex.

The Fairy Job Mother: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-fairy-jobmother/4od

All of our research, planning and evaluation work was all uploaded and posted onto our blog on www.blogger.com. When first being introduced to this website at the start of the year it did confuse me as I had never used this before. The blog was accessible in college and at home, this allowed us to access our work. This was useful to keep up with our deadlines for each piece set when blogging. As we created our documentary as a group, it helped us all by uploading individual work allowing us to get credit for the amount of work we have all contributed. We therefore knew what stage we were at during production so could see what was needed to be done or improved. Time management was also important as all work was dated and timed so it would show if we met our deadlines. Our Profile: http://c03documentary11.blogspot.com/

Blogger enables us to annotate our work, by adding photos, videos and giving examples such as print screens of our production. This helped give evidence of the work that we had done and make the blog more appealing. During our course work project we used the internet a lot, and Google search engine for research into facts and statistics or other documentaries about Youth Unemployment.

We used Hotmail to email Sharon Greenall from Solihull Connections Centre, to ask permission for an interview to get an insight into her views on job rates etc.

We also used our colleges contact system called ILP, this allows us to all our contact our teachers around the College. We used this to contact our Colleges careers adviser: Emma Hurst.

Final Cut Express

This software we used to edit our documentary footage and images, bringing our documentary to life and together. At first it took me time to get to grips with the software as I had never used this before. However it was very useful as it allowed us to select the footage that we wanted to use in the documentary and cut it into our final project. We also added sound and text using this programme. Bins / Folders with footage Replayed the footage from the timeline it would play here

Click here for transitions Captions Credits Images Ident Out of Sync

Timeline Sound

I also learnt how to log and transfer my footage this means I would play back my footage and edit the important footage I would like to use in my documentary then transfer this onto the main database.

Camera use stills, shots, footage

During our planning stage we used a camera to take stills and images for our story board (produced on Comic Life) and image montage, we considered the images that would be relevant and appropriate for the genre, when taking and filming the images, we always considered the mise-en-scene, every detail the viewer would see on screen is of importance. For example during interviews e.g. Emma Hurst has a computer screen in the back ground with the www.apprentiships.org website on screen. The angle of each shot was also very important, e.g. close ups and zooms out when voiceover introduces Jack Bradbury, our case study to see his facial expressions and the books he is reading about jobs. We took a lot of images and then chose from the best, bearing in mind that we needed a variety to keep the audiences attention. From doing this I learnt to always be aware of the angle of the shot and to take a variety as the first picture isnt always the best. The mise-en-scene as it adds to the professionalism of the overall documentary. When filming the footage, we had to use a tripod with every shot as this contributed to the realism and professionalism of the shot. As it would make it more focused and centre, also important was that the bubble would be in the centre meaning the tripod and camera was level to make the framing more accurate for the footage and shot. Filming the footage was one of the most important processes throughout the making of the documentary, as this is what the viewers are going to see, so we aimed for good quality. If I were to do this again I would have loved to redo some footage and some was not framed properly and some footage had the microphone in the shot (although we did

our best to reframe this and hide this). Also we were unable to use some footage we had recorded as the sound quality was bad.

Organisation was very important during production as if we were to lose our footage, sounds or work then we would have to redo that piece of work again. The majority of our documentary production took place on the apple macs in our college, I have never worked on one of these until now and found them of really good quality and modern as they offer many programmes and softwares I have never used before. e.g. Final Cut Express, Comic Life, iDVD, Garage Band.

Final Cut Express was easy and simple enough to use. You would import the files for music and images and log and transfer the footage you wanted in your documentary.

Comic Life was used to create our Story Boards for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th minute and overall documentary. We selected a layout that we wanted to use and dragged onto the empty white page. We then added text and images. We highlighted and clicked bigger for larger font and smaller for a smaller font to keep the text inside the textbox.

Layout Selection

Drag the text boxes next to the images and type what is happening in the picture.

Lettering, allowed me to title the storyboard

Speech Bubbles

Finder would search your folders to help you find your images. Once found just dragged the photos into the boxes.

We used InDesign to create our Listings Page. This was helpful as it allows us to create columns, add images, add drop caps and drop shadow (specifically on our title The Broken Generation?

And Garage Band for our Radio Trailer, this allowed us to see the timings of the trailer and how long each section was, we could adjust the volume settings easily using this software.

Sound Bytes Track Sound Byte Track Volume

Music Track Music Track Volume

Master Volume

Timeline

Finally we used IDVD to burn the documentary onto a disk to complete the coursework and enable us to show the class this was very simple we just clicked burn disk and selected our documentary and it burnt to DVD for our coursework, we also made spare copies for ourselves.

Evaluation
Once all the construction, research and planning stages were done I did my evaluation. I used a number of techniques to complete this, like screen shots of my work using the Print Screen Button and then copying and pasting images into my evaluation. I also copied images from our blog that we had previously print screened and blogged about. I used a range of font sizes and colours and also types of font to keep a variety. I did my evaluation on Microsoft Word but also used Microsoft Excel to produce bar charts of feedback and results. Then after completing my evaluation I intend to copy it to Scribd and post it on my blog.
Overall Rating

excellent very good

good

satisfactory poor 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Summary of

Overall from doing this task my technical knowledge has really grown and I feel very confident in using a wider range of softwares than I did before this course. Eleanor Davies