In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
During the filming and editing of our documentary we maintained a technical level mostly by the different techniques we used with sound. We had to try and make the sound all the same volume as on some shots the voices were louder than on others. We also had to overlap the sound onto either different shots or we had to overlap it where we inserted a picture. Also at the beginning of our documentary we had to cut down our piece of music we used so that it would fit into the space we wanted. The technical part of all this was getting the music to overlap with the voice over we had and the background noise from out shots we had to make them all a good volume so that the sound would be practical for our documentary. Also we used a lot of cross dissolves in the beginning so there would be a smooth transaction between the different shots we used and it wouldn't just jump from shot to shot. We also decided to insert still shots this maybe conventional to editing in other documentaries because we used still shots of newspaper clippings and magazine clippings. This is also very common in most documentaries about subjects that have appeared in the news such as this one. We also used still shots from when Nick Griffin (the BNP leader) was on Question Time.
Our documentary reflects more that it challenges the conventions of documentaries because we used many things in our documentary that are also in lots of other documentaries. Like for example the different shots we used while filming interviewing people. We used a close up of there member of the BNP with lighting coming from the side to highlight his face. We did this with no interviewer in shot so the audience could focus on this one person. This i find is a very common feature in most documentaries with a formal interview. However while asking questions to the students we only used medium shot which is also very common in documentries and very common in our documentary as we used this shot the most through out. This documentary fulfills the nature of the genre mainly because of the content, it is a very common subject that has been in the news lately and therefore attention has already been bought to this particular subject.
We are trying to provide the audience with knowledge of what the younger generation think of the recent occurrences in the new and there views on politics.
During our research we each analysed a different documentary of our own which had some of the same features that our documentary did. I did Katie: My Beautiful Face. This had many of the same things w used in our documentary such as the interviewing techniques used like the hidden interviewer to keep the audience focus in the subject in question. Also the interviewing shots were the same too. Below is a like to my analysis and on there is a link to the documentary its self.
http://mediaa2ssn.blogspot.com/2010/05/shaunis-documentry-analysis.html2010/05/shaunis-documentry-analysis.html
How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
In our product we were trying to achieve awareness on young peoples views on politics and show the audience students views on these things my asking them what they though because its there generation. I think this was portrayed very well through our radio advert and our poster. In our radio advert we briefly told the audience what this documentary would be about without giving away too much detail just enough so they would want to watch it. We also used a clip from our documentary its self just as a sneak peak of what was to some. Secondly our poster doesn't have much text on it apart from the channel logo and the time of showing and the title its self becuase we wanted to keep it simple but effective. We cross dissolved three pictures one of Barnsley town hall, another of a BNP march and another of the Great Britan flag. All of there were relevant images for the subject in question and this also doesn't give too much about our documentary away. This is our poster below. We made this on photoshop as you can see.
Also a real advertising product i looked at was the documentary 'an inconvenient truth'. This documentary was about global warming and the main purpose of this was to make the audience wake up and see what is happening to our planet. I think they portrayed this very well in the poster that advertised this documentary.
The subheading is 'a global warning' instead of the regularly used saying global warming which is apply on words but is also giving the audicent and site to what is going to happen. The poster its self is rather plain but still gives the audience the main idea of what this documentary is going Tobe about like our poster. This has just a simple image of a factory with smoke coming out in the shape of some kind of swirl. This is to show the audience how much they have got sucked and it grabs the audiences attention. However while our documentary poster is very colourful and ye catching this one is not but its advertising this documentary very well. Both our poster and this one have simple images and simple lettering. However our simple images are all crossdissovled to make one picture which makes it look more busy than this one yet it doesn't give anything away at the same time.
What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
We automatically thought about this subject when we got to our briefing because it is a current issue in the news today and people seem to have alot to say on this matter weather they we for or against the BNP. However we didnt know how open the audience would be when we asked them questions, we didnt know if they would shy away and not want to tell us the truth about what they think.We also discovered that considering our target audience we would show our documentary on the dispatches series on channel 4 with our target audience been people from the ages of 18 to 25.
During our filming and editing we tried to make it as clear to the audience what the subject of our documentary was going to be all the way through. We made sure by the questions we asked when interviewing the different people always referring to the subject in hand. When filming we made sure of this just even by little details for example 'Joe Casket' a member of the BNP, when we were interviewing him we had a backdrop of the Great British flag in the background because we know they are the colours of the BNP sign. When editing we also decided to inert newspaper clippings of things about the BNP in the press for example in the papers and on leaflets. We edited these in after we edited everything else just to show that we researched it that little bit further. When we were filming we constantly had to think about the audience becuase we were asking them questions there fore we had to ask relevent questions the be polite and consider there feelings even if they were a memeber for the BNP we has to be biased and not have an oppinion. There is only one interpritation of our film and there are both sides of the argument in there and i think that we potrayed this subject very well.
How did you use new media technologies in the consturction and research planning and evaluation stages?
There differnet technology we used helped us make the film we have today to film all the footage we have we used a HDV 1000 camera. We found the camera fairly easy to use as it was pretty straight forward. However becuase the camera is so big it was hard to film some scenes outside becuase the wether was so bad so we wouldnt use some of that footage.
We also used a zoom recorder for our voice overs and for our radio trailer this was also very easy and straight forward and it also didnt pick up any backgound noise which was good becuase sometimes we were filming and recording in coridoors with students just walking past. We also used photoshop, this helpedus create our poster for our documentary and this proved very useful. The main thing we used was final cut express. We used this to cut edit and finish our documentary on. 
Another thing we found useful was garageband. We used this to create our raido trailer we also found this rather easy to use. We used blogger this year which is something we didnt use last year. We used this to help us plan things and so we would know where we are and what needs to be done. This also allowed us to work on things from home. We also used youtube to allow people to see if and we also used social networking sights such as facebook so this could allow our friends to see it and comment on our finished products this proved very useful in audience research.
of Nick Griffn's (leader of the British National Party) apperance on question time over the top of an interview with George Arthur a memeber of unite against facism, by involving this intertextual moment during the interview we succeeded in allowing the audience to ultimately see Griffins mannerisms as George was speaking about them.
In comparison to this our documentary challenges the convention of political documentaries because of its target audience. In most or all documentaries concerning politics the target audience is above 25 as the issues being dicussed do not generally interest a young audience, also they seem to never be asked of their opinions. We deliberately chose a young audience as we felt it important that their opinions about politics were to be listened to, we wanted to portray the youths perspective of the changing politics in Barnsley, we did this by using opinions of the student population in Barnsley college. 
Our poster consists of the town hall of Barnsley which shows the location, the union jack flag faded into the background a prominent symbol used by the BNP, a number of young protesters to illustrate the opposing side and finally the title which portrays that the BNP are on the rise in the area. The text we used for our title was kept simple in black and white font with the first letter of each word black to illustrate the accrostic feature. Overall it includes every point that is risen in our documentary itself, it subtley shows the public what the documentary will include.
Our other source of advertisement was a radio trailer created on Garage band, which ultimately is an enticement to watch the documentary so holds back information giving the audience a quick and vague insight. We used student’s voices to highlight the main points ‘your area, your views, your politics’ this also puts across our target audience. It leaves most to the imagination but as our time limit was 30 seconds we had to limit the information included. However we managed to reflect the main aims of our documentary as we included dialouge clips taken from the documentary of for and against quotes concerning the BNP along with the fact that it included student voices.
A zoom recorder was a simple piece of equiptment allowing us to easily record our voiceover and trailer, a negative aspect was that there could be no background noise or the recorder would pick up unwanted sound, therefore we had to find empty rooms to record in. 
This had various tools which were extreamly helpful, one being the wire framing tool which enabled us to reframe shots that had too much bare wall space above the subject. A further software we used was garageband to create our radio trailer on, this was similar to final cutand allowed us to layer sounds, we found this fairly simple to use. 
Using blogger this year resulted in an easier planning process for our documentary, as paperwork and the task of handwritten work was eliminated. It also allowed us to keep all our work in one place where we could all access it at home or at college. 
