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

The brief we was given at the beginning on this coursework was to create the opening five minutes of a TV documentary and 2 ancillary texts; a double page spread for a TV listings article and radio trailer to promote this documentary. Baring in mind we only needed to create the first five minutes out of an hours documentary we had to research what is was that we wanted to include in this opening section. Documentaries tend to fall under different categories. These include things such as; light-hearted, optimistic, pessimistic, serious, resigned, uncritical, ironic, condemnatory etc. In the opening sequence our documentary we created aspects of light-heartedness through the use of our humorous parts in some of our vox-pops, seriousness and pessimism through the use of our formal interviews and shocking statistics. This set the tone straight away for the viewer and gave them and idea on the type of documentary this was going to be. Before starting this coursework we began looking at Bill Nicholls theory of documentary modes by looking into the different types/styles of documentaries that there are. These consist of the expository mode, observational mode, participatory mode, reflexive mode and performative mode. The expository mode addresses the viewer directly to advance and argument or recount history. It is characterised by a hidden, authoritative, omniscient narrator whose voice is supported by images and this mode is subjective and often polemical. The observational mode shows events which are observed and recorded objectively with no authorial intrusion and uses a fly on the wall style. The participatory mode is where filmmakers appear in their own work, interviewing and expressing views to the camera, this contrasts the expository mode but like the expository mode, this mode is also polemical. The reflexive mode is where the documentary frequently reflects on its own artificiality, drawing attention to this. Finally the performative mode is a much more personal approach to the participatory mode and is where the film maker tells their own story. This mode is often political as it usually shows stories told by members of minority groups. The expository mode was most similar to our documentary in style as we addressed our audience directly through the use of our narrative structure by using voiceover throughout and we advanced an argument by bringing our point across through the use of our interviews and statistics. Before creating my own documentary I watched many others, particularly as I was responsible for doing research into similar products. This showed me that although documentaries can be very different, many of them will use the same conventions as each other. I spent time analysing documentaries such as Super Size Me, Party Paramedics Festival A&E, Teen Trouble, Ready Steady Drink and Booze- a young persons guide. I picked up conventions on the use of camera in these documentaries. The type of shots included in these documentaries included shot types such as Close Ups, Medium Close Ups, Establishing Shots/Long Shots and Extreme Close Ups.

In our documentary we used Medium Close Ups for the majority of our vox-pop interviews to show the interviewees facial expressions clearly but without getting uncomfortably close. During the voxpop interviews we also used a hand held camera so that the audience felt more involved in these interviews as if they were there, as we wanted the audience to be able to relate to the interviewee and what they was saying. Hand held camera was something which was also used in Supersize Me and we felt that this technique was effective. The use of a tripod was also common in many of the documentaries I watched. We used a tripod on many occasions such as when we did our formal interviews as we wanted these to look more professional due to the serious message trying to be put across by the interviewees and their higher status. We also used a tripod when filming background footage for our documentary. The tripod meant that we could keep the shot steady and easily use the skills that we had learnt from the AS Media course last year such as Pan, Tracking and Zooming, whilst still maintaining the professional look of our footage. When watching other documentaries something I noticed was that commonly when filming formal interviews, there was footage also shown before or after the interview of the person they were interviewing. When we came to filming our formal interview with Julie we also got footage of her working. We did this to show her higher status and give the audience and insight into her profession.

Sound is an important part of TV documentaries. The type of sound included in the documentaries I watched was Background music, Voiceover/Narration, Presenter, Diagetic and Non Diagetic sound. We needed to choose background music that went with the topic of the documentary but didnt over power the voiceover. The songs used in Supersize Me were copyright songs from other bands such as Big bottom girls by Queen. This song related to the topic of the documentary at the time as it was showing the levels of obesity due to amount of Mcdonalds eaten by people in America. We needed to find music that related to what we was saying and that was non copyright free so that we were allowed to use on our documentary. For this we used a website provided on our College computer specifically for media students to use in their work. We chose two tracks. Our first one

was a more upbeat dance style music which you would find young people dancing to in a club. We used this for our more fun section of our documentary, particularly where vox-pop answers were being shown. As this related to the more humorous comments being made on peoples past experiences and set the scene for our footage. We also used a slower, darker music for the more serious part of our documentary where we was showing our formal interview of PC Patel talking about the Fatal side of binge drinking. We did this to set a dull atmosphere and give the audience a feel of threat and worry to make them reflect on the dangers of binge drinking.

We felt that this music worked effectively with our footage, however the second track over powered our voiceover slightly. This is something we would improve to make the quality of our documentary more like that of a real TV documentary. When watching Ready Steady Drink I noticed that they used an on screen narrator as well as a presenter. This was effective as it made the documentary more personal to the audience as it made me feel like the presenter was talking directly to me. However we decided that as our documentary was based at a college and was more of an informative piece we only needed a voice over. Research is a very important part of a documentary as it is vital that you include a good amount of interesting statistics and facts to entice your audience and make them want to watch your documentary. When watching Supersize me we noticed that this documentary is filled with loads of first hand and second hand research and that the opening section was very informative as it contained loads of facts and statistics said by the voiceover which were illustrated with on screen visuals. We made sure that the first five minutes of our documentary was contained with many facts and figures backed by interesting visuals to grab our audiences attention. We used visuals of us pouring Ribeana (which we used as Wine) in wine glasses one at a time whilst the voiceover explained the effects on a person after each glass. We felt this was effective as it entertained our audience whilst still educating them on the dangers of alcohol and getting across a serious message.

Special effects were also used in the TV documentaries which I watched. When using the camera to film our footage we used the effects of zooming and changing the focus. However when we came to editing we wanted to use special effects to make our documentary look more professional and run more smoothly like that of a real documentary. We looked at real documentaries for ideas on how

to do this. One of the ideas we got on how to make our footage more effective was by using dissolves. We used this were the cut from one clip to another looked to sharp so that the clips ran more smoothly.

Here is an example of where Supersize Me have used a cross dissolve to make their clips run more smoothly.

Another idea we got from Supersize me was to change the speed of our documentary. Supersize me increased the speed on parts of their documentary such as where they changed the speed of people walking in and out of Mcdonalds in order to emphasise how many people visit Mcdonalds. However we decided to slow down certain parts of the sound on our interviews where the voice sounded too quick so that the audience could understand it properly.

Radio Trailer Before making our radio trailer we listened to loads of real ones to get ideas on the conventions that are used and what makes them effective. We also filled in these sheets to analyse the radio trailers which we listened to. The aspects we analysed included the music, target audience, tone of voice, effects, sound levels and length etc.

We used rhetorical questions in our radio trailer such as A night to remember?, A time to party, let off steam and have fun, a story to tell your friends? and or one crazy disaster?. These are personal questions which we used to get the reader thinking and make them want to find out more. If what is being said appeals to the listener then it means this documentary could be of interest to them.

We used the same two tracks in the background on the radio trailer as we used in the documentary. We used the upbeat dance track and the enthusiastic young of a young person for our voiceover because our documentary is targeted at a younger generation so we needed to use music which would catch their attention and avoid the chances of them getting bored and losing interest straight away. We also used the slower, darker track to bring across that even though there is a comedy side to our documentary, this documentary is still on a serious topic. All radio trailers have the time, date and channel of the documentary in them. This is so that the reader knows where and when they can find the documentary. We added this on to the end of our documentary by saying Binge drinking, fun or fatal?, find out for yourself on Channel 4 this Friday at 9. This linked our radio trailer two our documentary and made it more professional and realistic. Most of the radio trailers we listened to were between 30-40 seconds long. This is so that they have long enough to get all the information across that they need to in order to get the audiences attention and inform them on the documentary, but not too long that they bore the audience and lose their attention. We made sure our radio trailer was also around this length of time as this was long enough to get our point across and sell our documentary. Finally we also used clips from our vox-pops and formal interviews in our documentary. we used these to counteract the questions that the voice over was saying. For example on the first three questions we asked we used an clip from our interviews to show otherwise/argue against the question as a way to show the negative side of binge drinking and get the serious message across but still use humour through the clips to attract our target audience. The last question was the only one where we used a clip which related to the question and we wanted to prove that binge drinking can be a crazy disaster as this is part of the message the whole documentary is trying to portray.

Magazine article This is the Double page spread TV listings article we produced.

Magazine articles always have the Masthead (title of the page) presented in big letters in the top right hand corner of the so that they stand out and catch the readers attention. We developed this convention by also using an image under our title to illustrate the topic. It is also common for magazine articles to include a banner under the title showing the day, channel, time and type of program that is being advertised. Again this is something we used in our own article

Both articles use captions in the bottom right hand corner of the image. This is common in TV articles to explain to the reader who is in the image or what is going on When it came to making our TV listings article, we used real articles such as this one as a guide to give us ideas on what to include, and how to layout our article Magazine articles commonly include subtitles within the text itself in a different colour to introduce a different topic in the article and separate the text so that it isnt just one massive bulk of writing and it looks more appealing for the reader, therefore persuading them to read it. This is a technique we used to separate the text in our article.

Both articles used a column format for their text. This is always the format used in TV listings articles, so we used this as a key convention to show the audience that our article is a TV listings article. A drop cap is almost always used in magazine articles at the beginning of text. Like the real article, we used a drop cap in our article to make it look more professional.

Although it was not used in the real article we looked at many magazines use pull quotes to grab the readers attention and show something which may interest/appeal to the reader and make them want to read the article. We used a pull quote in our magazine to show one of the humourous answers given in one of our vox-pop interviews to add comedy and attract our target audience.