Evaluation - Question 1

I what ways does your media products use, develop or challenge froms and conventions of real media products?
Before creating my own documentary I firstly watched a number of documentaries to establish the codes and conventions of filming and editing real media interviews. Before the production work began as a class watched 'In the teeth of Jaws - Part 1' and 'The Simpsons 20th anniversary special', from watching these we noticed a number of codes and conventions. When filming the interview the interviewee was always in medium shot:

Interviewee: In the teeth of Jaws - Part 1
This man is framed in a medium shot, also
behind the man there is the sea which relates
to the topic of Jaws and its a Shark.

Interviewee: Christine jones a trichologist

which we interviewed for our documentary,

we framed her in a medium shot to the left of

the screen, this is like the 'Jaws' interviewee.

Interviewees always look at the interviewer not directly at the camera and the framing follows the rule of thirds- eyeline is roughly a third of the way down. Also another example from the clip above is the editing it is vital for the interviewee to answer all questions in full for the viewer to understand. Also this is to avoid jumps between the interviews and the questions cutaways are used they also support what the interviewee is saying.Also when this is done there tends to be a thought about mise en scene to help the audience visually understand what the interview was talking about or what their job was.

Interviewee: From Michael Shumacher Part 1

The mise en scen behind this man is a pitstop

were drivers stop in races. The background

relates to the documentary.

Interviewee: Craig, a hairdresser who we

interviewed in our documentary, he is a

hairdresser so the mise en scene has got hair

products in. We stages this mise en scen to it

related to the documentary.

They are also placed either in the left or the right of the shot and they are looking to the opposite corner of the camera to were they are sitting. Also when the interviews do this they alternate from left to right to create variety.

Also from watching a number of different types of documentary I recognised that they had all been brought together with a voiceover. I noticed this was to introduce the programme and help link all the interviews together. The voice over in all the documentaries I watched was important to help the viewer inderstand the direction of the programme. Also before we could begin with the print add as a class we looked at the codes and conventions of print adds, and we looked a number of ads for different channels. We found that all of the print adds that we looked at have a strong central image with the information of when and were, the channel and the name of the documentary.

There is a strong eye catching image which

makes the audience question what the

programme will be about. It shows the channel,

the title. date and a slogan.

We also follwed this and used a strong central

image, there is also a question of what the

programme will be about.

Also before we began to create the radio ad we have to develop an understading of the codes and conventions of radio ads. When we listened to exsisting radio ads we noticed that most of the ad is voice clips which were from the documentary itself. Therefore we couldnt create the radio ad before the documentary was complete. We also noticed that there was a different voice at the end of the documentary to tell the audience when the documentary will be on, what channel and also the title of the documentary.

The trailer begins with different clips from the

documentary. Then ending with a different voice

over to tell us when and where the documentary

will be.

When looking at exsisting documtaries i didnt believe that we could achieve something which looking anything like them, but by simply folloowing what these exsisting products do it was easy to recreate. I think all the framing of our interviews are as good as existing therefore i am confident that we have followed the codes and conventions closely