Tuesday, 3 January 2012

Evaluation Question 4 - How did you use Media Technologies in the Construction and Research, planning and evaluation stages?

Blogger

All the way through our project we used blogger to upload posts to keep track of all our planning and work. I quite liked using this website because its easier to use than most other websites. It keeps everything in order by the date and time of the posts.  Publishing it on a website in this way shows the process we’ve gone through to get the final product.



















I used this website to keep everything we did on there for the evidence of everything. The first image is of part of my research, this keeps it all together and I have laid it out well too which makes it look tidier. The second image is of our ‘interview questions’ so we have them on this website with everything else and we can get to them easily. The third and fourth images are of our poster advertisement on my blog, I have added text below each image giving an explanation of what I’ve done after each step of making the poster.








I’ve put the running order, questionnaire and questionnaire results on here too to show the planning of our documentary, and the procedure of how we plan our work as we go along.


 







When we filmed we used the canon XMZ, when filming we also used a tripod and a microphone when interviewing people. This improved both the quality of the sound and the steadiness of the filming. The microphone we used was one that you plug in and clip onto the chest of the interviewee, we used this to make sure the sound was of good quality. We used both the tripod for cutaways too, to make sure we got everything that we needed. We also used the camera when doing the voice over so the sound was better working through the camera with the microphone. To film we used a DV tape. The filming with this camera was quite difficult to begin with but after using it a few times it gets slightly easier to use. With this camera you can use the screen to watch back what you’ve recorded and film again if you need to. The only problem we had with this was when we interviewed Heather the microphone didn’t work the first time, which was hard to tell while filming, we only noticed this when we uploaded our interview to Premiere and the sound wasn’t working, this is when we learnt that next time we filmed an interview to make sure the microphone was on and working. 



Adobe Premiere
When we put the footage on the computer we used Adobe Premiere to cut and edit our documentary. This was quite an easy task to do, however sometimes the filming didn’t capture either the beginning or the ending of our clip. This happened on the third time of filming our voice over, it cut the start of our recording which essentially meant we had to do it again. We used the record button to capture our  video clips that we were going to use. They then saved on to our library which is the area on the left of the image, this is the area that holds all of the clips we’ve cut from the tape. Most of these needed cutting further to make sure the time was spot on, this was quite a difficult part to make sure that every word we needed was in each part and that they all linked up together.

We captured all our clips and dragged them on to the time line as we went along we then built our documentary around all the different clips. We did this and then decided on music, to add the music we just uploaded it and dragged it onto our timeline where ever we wanted it, we could change the volume as a whole or change the volume at different parts of the song. We just decided to have the music fade in at the beginning and fade out at the end in order for our documentary to run together smoothly. We also had the music of a low volume when we had the voice over on as well, so we can hear the voice over and the music in the background and then raised the volume when the voiceover wasn’t on. When we had everything in order on the timeline we then could add our graphics so things such as dip to black between shots, titling and sound effects. I thought that the adobe premiere program was quite difficult to find the things you needed but once you knew what to do it was quite simple. As a group we all knew different things about the program so we worked well together in the editing process.



Photoshop
This is what we started our print advert with, this is two pictures that we took, of two different people. We wanted to make the image quite interesting and strange. We cut around the body making it quite edgy and messy, we then cut around the head and did the same with this.
After doing our research, we wanted to use a puppet as an idea to give the impression that the media controls the public. We did this by taking a picture of a hand and again cutting this out so that it was quite messy, we added the string effect by drawing lines.
We took out the 'a' in 'Worth Pain?' because we wanted to use something that linked in with the subject of our documentary.
We found these fonts on dafont.com. This is an example of where we got the text from. and same with the other text as well for 'Worth Pain?'
We took a picture of the tools for the back ground and we also made an 'a' out of the tools which were used in the back ground image.
We then went back to Dafont.com and found a more simple text for the 9pm Tuesday, we wanted the text to be similar to the text for BBC Three. We also added the rhetorical question is a Gray font so it linked in with the puppet character on the right hand side.
We then added the light background which linked in with the topic of our documentary, we used quite a light colour so it wasn't too much for the background.



Hardware
We used a lot of hardware throughout the making of our documentary. We used a scanner for when we did our storyboard, this made it a lot easier than taking pictures of each individual picture, this would have been hard to display on blogger. We also used zip drives for when we did our own work at home, such as the bar charts for the results of the questionnaire. We all did an equal amount of these and put them on to zip drives so it was easier to get them to college to put on to the college computers. This made it easier for us because all our files came together and we could all save them to our users.


To edit our work we worked on a Flatron L1753S which is a flat screen computer, this was quite easy to use as its simple and quick. This was good for our editing. We also used the Sync Master T200HD this was above the other computer, it’s a lot more clear to view things because it’s got a lot more technology on it, it has a mini DV slot for the tapes we used for our filming. It also has DVD video slot, which are all in HD, when watching it on this computer it’s a lot more clear and its easier to rewind and fast forward.


Evaluation Question 3 - What have you Learned from your Audience Feedback?

Audience Feedback ResultsWe collected our data and made graphs to show the results of this. For the questions with no numbers as a result we wrote some of the things that people had said.



















With in our documentary it was about half and half of things that went right and what went wrong. One thing that went right for us would be the editing of the documentary, this worked quite well as all four of us have different abilities with the programs we used. we wanted to merge the first few shots together of people in their underwear, we had to download different programs in order to do this, which was too difficult to do. The cut aways in our documentary worked quite well for us too. Most of these were filmed when we went to different places to film as some of the places had things that really linked in with our theme. We had a lot of ideas for the cut aways at the beginning of our planning, but some of these were quite difficult as we needed permission for lots of the different places.

Our poster worked well from the start, we thought about this for quite a while because we wanted to come up with an image which linked with the documentary. We decided on the font for the documentary and decided to use the same for the poster. We also decided to one of our images for the back ground, we put this faded picture behind to give it a bit more detail. We were happy with our advertisement as a group. When recording our radio advert we had to do this five times as the microphone wasn't working 3 of the five times and the last time was done by phone and the quality wasn't good enough. Our voice over includes parts from our documentary and the music used in the documentary.

When we filmed Jade, both doing her make up and filming her for the interview. This went well for us the first time we did this. The only struggles that we had was setting up the camera but we got it in the right position and i think this is a very strong piece. When getting our font for our documentary this worked well for us and was quite easy to do.

When filming our interview with Heather this went wrong the first time as the microphone didn't work for this, the interviews in warrington with the public went wrong the first time too, this meant we had to do this two times and get permission twice.

Evaluation Question 2 - How Effective Is the Combination of your Main Product and Ancillary Texts?







We used the same font on both the advertisement and our poster advertisement. Our poster advertisement contains the same text as our documentary, this is so when people these two things they associate them together so people understand it the same thing and these then link together somehow. We tried to portray the same message through the poster and our documentary. In our documentary we tried to give the message that the media influences the public and makes them think of them selves differently. In the poster we wanted to show the same message through a picture. This is when we came up with the idea of a puppet, this demonstrates people being influenced/controlled by someone or something, in this case, it would be the media.

Our radio advert contains the same voice over as our documentary, similar to the poster advertisement we did this so they link together and people will associate them together. Our radio advert informs the viewer of what is going to be involved but also makes them ask questions. Our aim of our radio advert was to attract our target audience to watch our documentary..

Evaluation Question 1. In What Ways Does Your Media Product Use, Develope or Challenge Forms and Conventions of a Real Media Product?

Documentary, Radio Advert and Print Based Advert.






Monday, 2 January 2012

Collecting our Audience Feedback
















Audience Feedback Questionnaire

Audience Feedback Questionnaire
1.     What is your age? Please circle appropriately.
16-20  21-24   25-28   29 or over
2.   What is your gender?
Male    Female
3.   Would you watch this documentary if it was on television?
Yes   No
4.   Do you think the music with-in the documentary links in with the theme?
Yes   No
5.    Does the opening to the documentary make you watch to watch more?
Yes   No  
6.   If so… Why?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
7.    Would you say there are a variety of camera angles in our documentary?
Yes   No
8.   Do you think the graphics work well together in our documentary?
Yes   No
9.   Does the titling link in with the theme of our documentary?
Yes   No
10.                      Did you find the interviews were relevant to the documentary?
11.Were any of the interviews not relevant? If so, which ones?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

12.                       What did you like about our documentary?
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
13.                       What would you change about our documentary?
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
14.                       Would you say our cutaways were relevant?
Yes    No
15.                       Was our voice over relevant and informative?
Yes    No
16.                       Do you think the setting was relevant in the interviews?
Yes   No
17.                       Do you think our print advert gave an insight to our documentary?
Yes   No
18.                      Do you think our radio advert was relevant and informative towards our documentary?
Yes    No