Evaluation - Question 4

Evaluation - Question 3

Audience Profile Notes

Audience profile notes

Channel 4’s target audience is young adults aged between 18-30.

Big users of social media, YouTube, internet etc. Spending an average of 90.6 hours per month on their smart phone apps.

66% of them post about something they have seen on TV or a movie.

Only 53% of them enjoy reading

They spend a 1 at the most listening to the radio

They are the mostly likely to stream music with 45%

90.12 million People in the US watch documentaries 29%

Channel 4’ audience is 65% female and 35% male, 50% of its audience is below the age of 30

Unemployment rate- 13%

Full time employment- 43.6%

Married- 44.2%

29% of the audience still live at home

Women spend up to two thirds of their disposable income on fashion and clothes whereas men spend up to a quarter. 84% of them spend less than £10 on music per week

The average household spends a total of £1,217 a year on clothing and footwear, our target audience spends up over this amount.

Most of them spend very limited amounts of time outside doing things

80% of them play computer games, 92% of them watch TV

The top 3 things they borrow money through Student Loans, Credit cards and Personal Loans

32% of them are in debt and are not financially confident

Evaluation - Question 1

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

The institution that we decided to follow was Channel 4 as we believed that the distinctive style that have works well with making their products stand out from others and we therefore wanted our products to do the same. By following the Channel 4 style we had to ensure that our documentary followed the typical forms and conventions of a Channel 4 documentary in order to make our products look professional and consistent. To follow the typical Channel 4 conventions, we made our documentary based on real life moments which shows what homosexuals think and feel rather than what people generally believe or the opinions of the public. As we think that the topic of homosexuality is a very opinion based topic, we wanted to receive information from a homosexual which is what would happen in a typical Channel 4 documentary. We followed the conventions of a reflexive documentary which bases the subject on real life moments and opinions rather than re-hashed facts as we feel that it was the best way to grab the attention of our target audience.

In terms of our newspaper advert, we again wanted to follow the typical forms and conventions that Channel 4 would have done. Therefore, when editing our photo for our newspaper advert, we ensured that we used the lighting effects to portray the meaning of the image in addition to what was in the image itself. We developed this by making our main character (Dean) appear in low key light which represents that he is seen as an ‘outcast’ in comparison to the public which was our background that we made to appear bright. However, we challenged this by having Dean dressed in slightly coloured clothes, so that even though they were dark they still had colour in which portrays that even though he is stereotypically different from everyone else he is actually the same. Another way in which we used the forms and conventions of Channel 4 newspaper advertisements is that we did not include a lot of writing on our advertisement. The text that appeared was the title of the documentary along with the time it was being shown. We also made sure that like Channel 4, the writing was in the bottom corner which therefore gave the audience more of a chance to focus on the visual content.

When creating our documentary, newspaper advertisement and radio advertisement, we had to make sure that they looked consistent and linked to one another. One way that we did this was by using an appropriate font. Channel 4 have their own font, therefore we found some of their font and used it in both our newspaper advertisement and throughout our documentary to ensure that our products look like Channel 4 products.

When thinking about the conventions of a documentary, we used the typical conventions that are seen in a documentary to make it more appealing and ‘real’. Firstly, we used voiceovers within our documentary; voiceovers are normally used to encourage the audience to think that they have some kind of specialist knowledge and therefore are encouraged to believe that what is said is the truth. The unseen commentator explains or tells story during a documentary stating what is happening and/or adding extra information such as facts. Within our documentary we used voiceovers to set the scene and ask rhetorical questions in order to get them thinking more about the topic on which our documentary is about. We also used voiceovers to introduce our characters/interviewees so that the audience knew who we were talking to and why we were talking to them. Using voiceovers taught us that you can give information to an audience without necessarily having someone on screen telling them. This is useful as it allowed us to show other footage relevant to our topic whilst giving the audience information as well as something to think about.

Another convention of a documentary would be that they use real footage of events that have occurred in order to further convince the audience that the documentary is real. We used real footage within our documentary in order to attempt to ‘raise awareness’ that homosexuality is more than normal and that there are millions of homosexuals throughout the world. We realised that using real footage as well as our own footage it shows that we haven’t necessarily created the documentary to convince people to think in a certain way but to see the reality of today’s society.

Another convention that we used within our documentary is that we used as much natural lighting as we could. This gave our documentary more of a sense of realism and shows that our footage wasn’t heavily edited to portray a specific message.

Interviews with ‘experts’ are also used within many documentary as people tend to want to hear the information from professionals in order to believe that what is said is true or false. Interviews are typically used to give factual evidence rather that an opinion in order to influence the audience to believe what is being said. Furthermore, interviews allow people being filmed to speak directly about events prompted by specific questions. Filming and interview also gives the opportunity to capture the emotion of a person whilst they may be telling a personal story. In the documentary that we created, we included two different interviews. One of which was an interview with an ‘expert’ as they are a psychologist. We interviewed a professional as we felt that it was important to give the people an insight into what they think. A way in which we challenged this convention in the interview with the psychologist is what we allowed her to give her own opinion rather than facts which doesn’t normally happen in documentaries about a serious topic like homosexuality. The other interview that we used within our documentary was with Dean, a homosexual sixth form student who is also head boy. This interview was used to show the audience how an individual thinks and feel when discovering and telling people that they are gay. We were also able to show true emotions and feelings to the audience by using this interview.

Finally, another convention that we used within our documentary is that we used the ‘bridge’ effect. This is where the voice is bridged over from one scene to another. We done this so that we could show the audience multiple shots and scenes whilst they were still able to listen to an interview. This was effective as it was more appealing to the audience as they didn’t have to watch certain shots with no sound to them.

Overall we think that our final products were convincing as we followed all of the typical forms and conventions as well as the conventions from a Channel 4 product. All here of our products also link up well and are completed to a professional standard which is eye catching for our target audience. We found that we were able to reflect the topic of homosexuality well as we discussed our original idea of how the ‘acceptance’ of being homosexual has changed over time and also how people view homosexuality in today’s society.

Final Documentary - The Secrets of Homosexuality

Final Radio Advert

Final Newspaper Advertisment

Newspaper Advertisement Discussion

We, as a group, had a discussion about how we were going to edit our photos so that we conveyed a certain effect by using lighting rather than just the effect of a long shot.

We had a discussion about maybe reducing the colour for the background so that it represents that true society is maybe bleak and that the individual (Dean) is bright and colourful because it is playing to the stereotypes of homosexuals being different from society and they are also represented in a bright and colourful way. But we thought that this did not convey the message of our documentary well because it is possibly showing Dean in a more positive light and that because he is different he is almost better than society.

Because of this, we then decided that we would make Dean almost colourless and dull because this would show him in a negative light similar to which our documentary would represent. Changing Dean made for a good effect but we thought it would not be as noticeable therefore we decided that we would edit the background so that it is bright and and vibrant compared to Dean; this would then empathise the effect we have created and it would also look like the individual is almost being repressed and shunned from society.

Practice Time Lapse

As a group, we decided to conduct a practice time lapse using the GoPro camera. We done this in order to understand the different features that the camera has. It also gives us an understanding of how the time lapse will look when we record it for our final documentary and also if there are any alterations we would need to make to improve the quality of the footage for next time.

Production Update

During our production process we have come across an issue regarding some of our footage. We recorded our interview scene with Dean in the school library on a school camera; however now that we have come to the point of reviewing the footage, we have found that the camera that we used for our two shot had been stolen. Therefore, we need to film the whole scene again in order to be able to use all three shots that we want to include within our documentary. We then recording the interview scene again, however this time we had to film in a classroom as the library was taken on the day that we wanted to film. Later on, we reviewed our footage and found that the new footage was better and to a higher quality in terms of lighting. To stop this issue from occurring again, we will ensure that after we record any footage, we will save it onto the computer straight away rather than leaving it on the camera. Therefore our footage is safe just in case of any further incidents. 

Photos taken during our shoot for the newspaper advertisement

Below are all of the photos that we took during our shoot for the newspaper advertisement.

We are thinking about using this photo (below) as our base photo for our newspaper advert because Dean is the most in focus and more of the background is blurred due to the long exposure. 

Research for Radio Advert backing track

For the radio advert we have already created a radio script, however we will also need some backing music to make the advert more professional and intriguing for our target audience. Therefore we carried out some research to find suitable backing music to use in our radio advert. These are some of the tracks that we came across throughout our search for a suitable track. The tracks that we found were in our opinion not suitable for our radio advert so we will therefore carry out further research in the future for a suitable track.

Layout Sketches for Newspaper Advertisment

We decided that we would create some layout sketches in order to briefly plan what we want our advert to look like. First, we had another look at existing adverts from Channel 4 to give us some inspiration for our own. 
 


 These are the layout sketches that my group and I have come up with for our Channel 4 style newspaper advert. These sketches will go through all the content on the advert and where they are placed on the advert, we have tried to make them as much like a Channel 4 newspaper advert as possible so we looked at most of their previous one online as well as our textual analyses. 



We have decided to choose the first layout sketch because it has more in common with the Channel 4 newspaper adverts that we looked at throughout our planning tin comparison to the second one. This is because they both include the correct content but the first one places them in a way that is similar to an original Channel 4 newspaper advert.

Newspaper Advertisement Discussion

After looking at existing newspaper advertisements that has been produced by Channel 4, we have decided to have a discussion about the research that we carried out for our newspaper advert, the types of research we did were textual analysis and questionnaires. From this discussion we intended to gain some knowledge about what we wanted the newspaper advert to look like and what content we wanted to include. 
After a short discussion we came to the conclusion that we wanted our newspaper advert to have a long exposure shot to give an impression of someone standing out or being out of place. 
This works with the theme of separation and individuality within society because the rest of the "public" are blurred and the character in the center is clear showing the clear difference. Also this makes the audience focus on the character because they are centrally composed and clearly stand out from the crowd.







We had the idea of then doing a photo shoot within our town center so that there are more people that can surround the individual and the effect of society will be greater than if there are only a few. Therefore we need to find a busy time and a time where we are all free. We will also have to do some research into how to do a long exposure so that we can get the best shot possible.

Equipment List

Final Pitch

As a group we have summarised our final concept and ideas for what we will take forward and use in our own documentary. After conducting research into our selected institution and forms and conventions of a documentary, we have concluded the different features and shots that we would like to include in our own documentary. Combined with the results that we received from our questionnaire as well as our focus group, we have also concluded that our main focus of the documentary is to show the truth of homosexuality in comparison to other documentaries who tend to give you facts of which you are unsure whether or not they are true.

In terms of the overall structure of the documentary, it will begin with a time lapse that has a voiceover. This will set the scene and inform the audience of what the documentary is about and what we are hoping to find out from the documentary itself. We will then fade to black which will be our title screen so that the viewers know what the documentary is called. Continuing with a voiceover, we with then include shots of real footage in a short montage just to show generic options of homosexuality before we go into the interview. After the montage, we will include and establishing shot of the school to show the audience that we will be interviewing in a school environment. Next is an interview with a school student in which we will use a two shot, over the shoulder shot and a close up shot. Throughout the interview, we have decided that we will have short shots that will directly link to what our interviewee is talking about with the voiceover from the interview playing over the top of these shots. To finish we have decided to show an ‘After the break’ scene which will show another interview, but this time with a psychologist in order to share their opinion.  We thought that this would be a good way to keep the audience intrigued into what may happen in the rest of the documentary.  

Continuity Editing Task

This is a video of Robert walking through our school, we did this by taking multiple shots of him walking through various corridors. After this we then edited it so that it was one seamless video and the audience would not know that it was pieced together from different shots.

We were hoping that we would have a good editing software on our computers such as Adobe Element, but we had to use Movie Maker, this was disappointing because Movie Maker was not the best editing software because it was very basic and only allowed us to cut and piece together the shots. This was alright because this was a research task and was only done so that we know how to make one continuous video without any mistakes or things that do not look right. When it comes to producing our final product, we will edit using a software such as Adobe Element so that it gives the documentary more of a professional finish.

Costumes and Props

Costumes

When we film Dean for our documentary, we have decided that he will be wearing school uniform which is business wear. We decided this so that he is clearly represented as a student in a school however makes him look smart which makes him look like he has some authority. With the newspaper advertisment, we decided that he again should wear the business wear clothes to again show that he is a student and to also keep the consistency throughout our products. 

Props

We have decided that when we film our documentary, we wont necessarily make too much of an effort to physically place items where we want or need them to be. Especially when we were filming in the school, we decided that we are going to use the natural surroundings as our prop rather than making certain items be in the shot. This means that our documentary will have genuine shots of the school environment which will make the shots look more realtistic. 
However, there will be moments where we intentially make a prop be in shot. For example, we will ensure that antibullying posters are present so that we are able to add them into our documentary.