Evaluation

Here is our powerpoint evaluation for our production work, press the next and play buttons to advance through the slides.

Media eval

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Feedback

The feedback we received was varied between a mix of positive and negative. Interestingly, good feedback came from our younger viewers whereas negative feedback came from our older viewers, e.g. some adults think that given the budget deficit, maybe higher fees are needed.

For example, Christine Engel, aged 51, said on Facebook: - “The music was in parts much too loud and the first lot of photos changed much too fast, so that I couldn´t always recognise everything. About the political views, I couldn’t agree more.”

On the other hand, Josh Nicholson, aged 17, said: - “I thought it was very informative, well laid and the interviews with Jo Baily and people at the protest was also professional. There were In-between shots that could have been cut shorter but nothing majorly wrong with it that stood out and really need to be changed. You involved lots of different people and didn’t just ask students, I felt represented. The music was also to my liking and helped it to establish what audience you were aiming for when it first came on.”

Radio Trailer

We were unable to do any previous research into existing radio trailers for documentaries, thus designing and producing our radio trailer was difficult. In order to target our audience, we used clips from the protest where they were chanting to capture the attention of our audience as they were very chaotic and lively. We decided against having background music throughout the trailer as it would distract the audience away from the speakers. The quick question and answers will appeal to a younger audience as they would get bored if they were too long or if it was the same person talking. Also, they are able to relate to the emotions featured in the documentary.
We created our radio trailer on Adobe Premiere. Here is the final piece...

http://www.4shared.com/audio/mUE7U-7I/D_Waite_M_Scrivens_M_Foster_St.html

Documentary

After the newspaper advertisement, we began our documentary. We used Adobe Premiere to create our piece to make it look professional. We started by cutting the most important clips out of each interview and choosing the best bits from the protest.
Here are a few print screens of the progress we made...




We needed to add background music throughout most of our documentary. We chose songs which would be appropriate to our target audience and which fit the genre of the documentary. Here are the songs we chose...

We began by dragging the interviews (principal and students) roughly onto the timeline. We then slotted clips of the presenter around them. We decided the interviews would go in the middle of the documentary extract as younger audiences often find talking heads very boring so we needed to ensure we had a lively introduction and a lively ending to keep the audience watching. In order to avoid boring talking heads, we varied the shots and made quick cuts between clips. Also, over the principal interview, we added a few quirky shots for the audience to keep interested. For the student interviews, we had the questions printed on screen for the viewers to read whereas we chose not to use any questions for the principal interview.
Then, we created the very start of the documentary which includes a short channel 4 title sequence to stick to the genre. We introduced the documentary and then kicked in with quick shots of whats about to follow.
We continued editing in this way, dragging the main clips down, then fitting clips of the presenter around them.
Finally, we added name tags to each person on the documentary to ensure it looked professional.
Here is the final piece...

Newspaper Advertisement

We began our coursework with the newspaper advertisement. We used Adobe Photoshop to ensure it looked professional.
Here are several printscreens of our progress to our final piece...

We chose to use images from the protest to capture the commotion that the student fee rise was causing, and because the protest was a recent event on the news and on the internet, therefore appealing to students who might be familiar with the ongoings or interested to see what went on. We decided to posterize our pictures to appeal to our target audience and to create an impression of the chaos in the documentary. We zoomed in on a couple of the posters from the protest to show the emotions towards the fee rise. Our main image of the man on a mega-phone gives the poster a lively, energetic feel.
The font on our poster was used to keep within the genre of channel 4. We chose to keep the name of the documentary off the poster. We did this to provoke an interest from our audience as they would have to search through TV listings to find out the name of the programme, hopefully encouraging people to watch it.
Here is our final piece...

Research

In order to make our documentary effective, we needed to carry out research into existing documentaries. We particularly focussed on channel 4 documentaries as we decided our documentary would be appropriate for their genre. We used the internet to look at 4oD, the online 'catch-up' for viewers. We watched a couple of clips, for example...
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/supersize-vs-superskinny/4od
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/big-fat-gypsy-weddings/4od
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/secret-life-of-the-classroom/4od

Watching these clips helped us to create an idea of what our documentary should consist of. They each contain quirky, fast-paced shots in order to keep the audiences attention. We decided to cut the most important bits out of our filming to ensure the clips weren't too long and boring.

We used the same research method for our newspaper advert by collecting pictures of existing advertisements for channel 4 documentaries...


After searching on YouTube and the channel 4 website, we found it difficult to find any existing trailers for a documentary. This made creating the radio advertisement challenging as we were unsure as to what it needed to contain. To overcome this problem, we listened to past pupils work to get an understanding of how to advertise a documentary through radio.

Presenter

As we have decided to do a documentary, it is important to pick an appropriate presenter that will fit the genre and appeal to the target audience. Therefore, we chose Lucinda Hurst, a student with a lively attitude who would create a relationship with the audience.
We used our presenter as a narrator throughout the documentary, thus providing her with a script to learn...

http://www.4shared.com/document/dRM2TWQc/Presenter_script.html

When asked to, press 'Download Now' and wait 20 seconds then the file should be ready to open

As the presenting is a very significant role, we filmed some clips several times in order to create the best effect for our purpose: we needed the presenter to be able to interpret emotions from a variety of people about the student fees. Here are a few clips of Lucinda...

College Student Interviews

To continue with the interview process, we chose several students to answer questions regarding their thoughts on the student fee rise. The questions were as follows:-

• How do you feel about the student fees rising?




• If you were in the year below, would you still consider going to university?




• Do you think education is a right or a privilege?




• Is university worth paying so much money for?

We decided to interview our fellow college students as this was the primary target audience we decided to aim for. We studied the clips carefully to pick out the most appropriate footage for our documentary. The students seemed to have a very strong sense of opinion about the fees rising as displayed in the video clip below.

Manchester Protest

On Saturday 29th January, we went along to the student protest in Manchester to capture the atmosphere and rage from students. One of the reasons we decided to attend and film the protest was so that people who view our documentary will feel more involved and will witness the reality. The protesters ranged from young to old and in order to get a better insight into their view points we interviewed several people.

When arriving back at college, our group selected the most effective video clips in order to create a feel for what we aspired our documentary to be like.

Principle Interview Follow Up

The principle has agreed to do our interview which is brilliant!
We sent some questions onto her P.A to forward them to her so that she knew what we was going to ask her so she could have a better idea in her mind of what she was going to say.

Below are our Questions we put forward to her: -
1. Student Fees are rising, what implications will this cause for the college?
2. Do you believe that overall educational quality decreasing would be a consequence of the fee rise?
3. If you were an MP, would you have voted against the fee rise?
4. Is education a right, or a privilege?
5. Finally, what advice would you offer your students to cope with the rise in fees?

First Interview

First Interview

For the first interview, we decided to jump straight in and interview our principle.
We think that her answers would be very useful as they would be the most intelligent due to her experience as a top teacher and having been to university herself rather than if we were to interview students who of course would be biased and probably be a lot more rowdy.

We will contact her P.A and request a time and date of the interview and hopefully, the principle will agree to do our interview.

Selected Idea

In the end, we decided to go with the ‘University Fee Rise’ Idea based on the fact that it is current and something that would not have been done by A2 media studies in previous years due to the fact that it was only announced that they would rise very recently.

Also, we could interview lots of people for the documentary in the college proximity. This could be pupils, teachers, and local stakeholders of our college and of course, the principle.

We are not doing this because it is easy at all – but because the answers we would receive probably would be more genuine than any other topic we could have chosen.

Blogged By Daniel from Sydney NSW, Australia

Ideas Stage

Ideas Stage

Because there is such a broad amount to make our documentary on, we decided as group that it was best to stick to current issues that are in the news on television but also something that was relevant to us as students.

Below are our Ideas on what documentary’s we could do: -
• Student/ Young People Car Insurance Prices
• Alcohol and Drugs & Young people
• Sex and Teenage Pregnancy
• Student University Fee Rises
• Young People and Education – Day in the life?

Blogged By Daniel from Sydney NSW, Australia

1st Blog Post

1st Blog Post
Hello and this is our 1st blog post!
For our A2 media course work, we will be making a documentary!

Originally, we was going to make a News Report and planned to get in touch with a guy who works for himself as a journalist to ask for help regarding how to produce a report script and best places to look for people to interview as well as record it!
We contacted him on Twitter with the below message!

“@Paulhurst, think you could help us with a little project we have going in college, we need your help on producing a script!”

However, before he replied, we changed our minds too making a documentary! Typical!
As Daniel knows him, he contacted him on Facebook privately and told him we had changed our minds before he went through the trouble of replying!
We are not quite sure what to make it about yet but on our next post we will be listing ideas!

Daniel, Megan and Michelle

A2 Group 4