shaunis evaluation

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.

http://mediaa2ssn.blogspot.com/2009/09/channel-to-be-shown-on.html

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.

shaunis documentry analysis

The documentary i am going to be analysing is Katie: My Beautiful Face. A Cutting Edge documentary by Channel 4 about a 24 year old model who was viciously attacked and had acid thrown in her face which then destroyed her face. This documentary follows her and shows her trying to build her life back up and gain the confidence she once had.

This documentary starts with Katie and her head is facing a television screen which is showing this things she used to do in her career such as her previous modeling and television presenter work. All the time Katie is talking over this about how much she used to love doing her work and loved going out with her friends however to build up the anticipation of what happened to her, her face is not shown during the first few minute or so of this. In the background over her talking and there is music just soft music to set the atmosphere of the documentary. However in between some of the shots you can see close up shots and extreme close up shots of Katie cleaning her mask and putting bandages on her arms. Then however as the subject changes to the accident and what happened there is a close up of her face and then the title, 'Katie: My Beautiful Face' comes in this centre of the screen in white, this colour has the connotations of goodness. In the title the word 'beautiful' is emphasised and is a bigger word than the rest. This shows that even after what has happened she is still beautiful.

After that the images fades into black and then the shot changes to a long shot of Katie just walking around her house doing the things that she does every day so she feels safe in her own home. Next there is a voice over woman who is telling the story of what happened to Katie and her face all the while Katie is still doing the same things she does every day. There is then an extreme close up to Katie and her mum emptying all the medicines she uses onto the table to show the audience how much medicine she has to use and how much is has effected her life.

The lighting in this documentary is very light to show the positivity in her life now that she wants or is trying to get everything to go back to normal.

Audience Feedback

During our editing process we trialled aspects of our film to our target audience. We allowed students to view different clips of our documentary and asked them to write a review or paragraph on what they thought, positive and negative points welcome.
Below are some of the opinions:

'i didn't know how many people in barnsley wanted to vote for the bnp. A good short documentary about a good issue'

'Very good interview scenes with the BNP supporter Simon Casket, i liked the use of lighting in these scenes i thought it was a good idea to light up one side of his face as it looked effective. the background also seemed to reflect the BNP due to the colours. I think their should have maybe been more indepth interviews with students to see if any of them are actively opposing the BNP e.g. what students can do to try and stop the BNP gaining power. Good work.'

'Very relevent issue, good use of music i like how it changed when the title to your documentary was shown. Enjoyed the simple interviews with students they weren't too long but got their views across.'

'Overall a good documentary highlighting current issues. Good that the veiwer sees opinions from the BNP and from those opposing. It's good to see students my own age giving their opinion on important issues like politics.'

'I found the interview with George Arthur too long, my attention wandered a little at that point as there is no interesting background or anything. The editing was quite smooth and i thought the establishing shots on the introduction to your doc flowed well.'

Research Shona

Political documentaries contain many of the same conventions as other documentaries such as talking heads; interviews conducted in a plain room or room reflecting the subjects position or character, archival footage and voice over narration as seen on the site
http://www.documentarysite.com/conventions.html

Whilst researching political documentaries and how they are targeted at a specific audience i came across a chart created by CinemaNet Europe which shows how they research concepts when considering a new programme

Radio trailers research Shona

Radio adverts are an effective way of promoting film and television as they use a different medium they enable the advert to reach a wider audience. There are various types of formats of radio advertisement such as dialougue- peformed by two or more voices, monologue (where the voice acts as a character rather than a mere narrator), jingles and finally our chosen method which was straight read with music in the background.

When trying to find examples of radio adverts promoting documentaries impaticular political ones results were virtually non existent, so we took our inspiration for ones used to propmote films, in that they give an indication to what the programme is about, we had extracted audio from our film and included background music.

Evaluating video production Natalie

Evaluating video production

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

At a technical level within our documentary we used sound overlaps where the sound carries over from one shot into the next, this worked particularly well with the fade transition effect we put on most of our shots, by using overlaps it allowed the fades to appear more smooth as the sound didnt suddenly vanish. During the introduction to our film we provided smooth transitions between three establishing shots of Barnsley town centre it allowed the viewer to feel as if there was one long continuous development of action rather than messily put together shots that do not flow. We refrained from using continuity editing such as eyeline matches or match on action technique as they were not needed at any point within our documentary. We inserted a still shot

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.

Our film both challenges and follows certain conventions of the genre we are working in. Our film in once sense is quite generic with how it is structured following most conventions of political documentaries. We use voice overs at the start of our product which are used in almost all documentaries for the introduction. Also a further common atribute of documentaries is the interview process. We chose to have a hidden presenter using the technique of vox pops when conducting the interviews with our main characters George Arthur and joe casket, which alllows the audience to concentrate solely on their opinions with no interviewer in sight. 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.

We were aiming to provide information and insight into the political opinons of the youth in barnsley, often people enjoy watching documentaries about the BNP as they are such a controversal Party. An example is the widely watch documentary BNP Wives http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6145793487676011977 .

Richard Dyers theory of entertainment describes the ways the audience gain entertainment from the media, some of his five main points apply to our documentary, we used transparency(our main characters real opinions are exposed), education, socialisation and community in that it focuses on a local area.

I analysed another product of the documentary genre which was shown on channel four, My big fat gypsy wedding. Although it was a different subject matter and was more light hearted, it stilled carried the same conventions as our documentary, vox pops are used throughout with the same interveiw style as our own conducted with an unseen presenter.

http://mediaa2ssn.blogspot.com/2010/04/natalies-analysis.html

How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

In our main production we were trying to achieve an informative and insightful documentary aimed towards the younger generation of 17 to early twenty-year-olds. Within our documentary we wanted to discover the youths opinions on a particular political party which is on the rise in their area. As the student population in Barnsley are approaching their first election process and that recently the political party in question, the British National Party, have been prominent in the national news causing unprecedented controversy, we felt this to be a relevant and current topic. As the BNP received the highest number of votes in this area we aimed to reveal that not all of Barnsley especially the young adults agree with this parties views. We particularly wanted to approach the subject with an unbiased view so wanted to interview people for and against.

Our two advertising products the radio trailer and poster for our documentary seem to reflect the main aims we wished to achieve. The poster was easy to create through photoshop. 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.
http://mediaa2ssn.blogspot.com/2010/04/radio-trailer-and-doc-poster.html

The two ancillary texts are effective in selling our production as they include vital information but do not give away too much of what our documentary is about. The poster is interesting as we chose to cross dissolve many images to create one interesting main image. The poster would ultimately sell our documentary as it is eyecatching and appears controversial enticing the audience. We found it difficult to find any other similar documentary posters however an alternative poster i analysed was from the documentary 'FUEL' in comparison to our poster this one appears to be much more simple and uses only one main image in contrast to our three. This poster also uses more taglines ultimately explaining more and giving the audience a bigger insight into what the documentary FUEL will entail. We chose not to use many taglines as we wanted the main images in our poster to be the vocal point so the audience could not be distracted by any text, also because our poster uses three images combined and has no empty backrground the poster is busy, the use of any text would have made the poster appear too cluttered. These posters although advertising the same genre of product are very different however both capture the audiences attenion ours with images and FUELS with text. The radio trailer likewise captures the audiences attention as it is fast paced and in a short amount of time uses music, quotes and information to sell our product.
Both illustrate the objective of the documentary without giving away too much information.

The poster for FUEL.

This is the other advertising product i looked at when researching other products similar to our documentary. http://mediaa2ssn.blogspot.com/2010/03/natalie-analysis-of-film-poster-fuel.html

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

When we first started out on this project we decided we wanted to concentrate on the topic of politics as it was relevent as at the time of filming the BNP were in the news weekly. However we needed to know if there was an audience for this type of documentary so we devised a questionnaire to determine what age we should aim our documentary at and what channel would allow our product to recieve the biggest audience. We discovered that the average age of the audience would be 18 to 25 and that the channel that was most preferred was channel 4.
http://mediaa2ssn.blogspot.com/2009/10/blog-post.html

Taking this into consideration we begain to decide how we could relate our idea of a documentary about the BNP's rise in Barnsley to the youthful audience and the cutting edge new documentaries that channel four are known for. Therefore this is when we decided to add more originality into our idea. There are many political documentaries around, however there seemed to be none aimed solely at a young audience all others seemed to have the elder generation in mind for their target audience, including interviews from adults with no comment on how politics affects the young. Therefore taking our qestionnaire into mind we came up with what points in our documentary would attract a 18 to 25 year old audience these being, we would include on the spot interviews from students of barnsley hearing their own personal views of the BNP, information on social events such as the festival for 'love music hate racsim', youthful music, and interviews from important elders however they would be asked questions on what would be important and not boring to the younger generation.

When we trialled aspects of our film we received various praise and contructive critisim.

We gained the knowledge that the interviews with students was well received as someone stated 'its good to see students our own age giving their opinion on important issues like politics.' It seemed to be quite well received, the postive aspects we found that people commented on were the interview scene with joe casket 'i liked the use of lighting in these scenes i thought it was a good idea to light up one side of his face as it looked effective' the music and the editing on the introduction. In contrast to this we did receive some constructive critisim 'I found the interview with George Arthur too long, my attention wandered a little at that point as there is no interesting background or anything.' This was extreamly helpful as it made us realise in compasrion to the rest of the documentary that this scene was quite slowand uneventful. Therefore we were inspired to try and overcome this by trying to break it up with insert shots. We included posters, newspaper articles and leaflets to try and illustrate better what George is trying to say and at the same time it manages to create more interest for the audience when watching.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

During the making of the documentary we used a numerous amount of new media technologies. We used HDV1000 cameras to capture all our raw footage and zoom recorders to record the sound during interviews, voice overs and for our radio trailer. We found the camera easy to use it was fairly simple to change settings and allowed easy transportation to our various locations. However we did have a problem when using the cameras microphone outside in windy weather, the same problem occurred with the zoom recorder. As a result some outside footage we filmed could not be used, this slighty hindered our creativity as the orginal interesting location of the town hall in barnsley could not be used. 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.

The group used Photoshop to create indvidual poster and then came together to create a final group poster. Photoshop was an incredibly useful resource as it enabled us to be extreamly creative. We found it fairly simple to use and we were happy with the outcome of our final poster. Photoshop allowed us to use tools unavailable on most other programmes resulting in a professional look. This year we used final cut express as our editing resource it proved to be a lot more advanced than the IMovies software used in our AS year. 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.
Along with blogger we used other internet sites such as youtube to broadcast our product and to gain a wider audience, also facebook was useful to gain audience feedback for our documentary. we used internet search engines also to help with research.









None of this software really prevented our creativity as all allowed us to develop our ideas. Although sometimes we found it hard to use the final cut software to edit our film we managed to resolve most of our problems.

Research on other documentaries Natalie

Documentaries are a popular genre of programme they are widely watched throughout the uk and are easy to come across on the televison and widely available to watch on the internet some sites that were useful to us when researching were.

http://www.channel4.com/
This website had a whole section on documentaries all available to watch on 40d. This was conveniant as this was where most of us watched the documentaries we analysised.

Other useful documentary websites we used:

http://www.documentarytube.com/
This website was useful as a section devoted to politcal documentaries was available, allowing us to watch others similar to ours and discover any conventions


We found the information on this website which is about documentaries in general useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_documentaries
It describes the history of documentaries and also has a section on the beginning of the political documentary.

http://www.youtube.com/ was also useful when researching documentaries as there are various videos which have been posted under the genre of political documentary

Location Photos Natalie

The Barnsley college

The town centre where we filmed many of our establishing shots shown in the itroduction to our documentary.

We chose the computer room at the college site to interview George Arthur a member of unite against facsim. We wanted the setting to appear more formal and orginally wanted to show George a BNP website which he later refused look at.

This is the Honey well college site corridor it is where we filmed interviews with students of the college. We wanted the setting to be informal and to catch students unexpectedly so we comuld gain their real opinions without them having time to script answers.

Natalies Analysis

Documentary analysis: Cutting edge My Big Fat GypsyWedding

This documentary was shown on channel 4 and was part of the cutting edge series, it highlights the culture clash of 21st century Gypsy weddings as their ancient traditions meet their modern tatstes and fashions. The documentary follows four gypsy or traveller weddings with interviews from the family, the brides and grooms, other travellers and the wedding dress designer.

The documentary starts by breifly introducing the theme of the programme, this is portrayed using an establishing shot of a church and insert shots of intricate details of wedding dresses. A narrator can be heard over the wedding march song commenting on the dreams of having a perfect wedding. The characters who are primarily followed during the programme are four gypsy families including the four sets of bride and groom and the dress maker Thelma MaDean, the number one dressmaker of the travelling communities.

The interviews and narration within the documentary use the vox pop technique, where an unseen voice is used to ask questions and narrate. This is effective when analysing this certain documentary as it allows the audience to concentrate on the characters being interviewed without being distratced by a presenter. This therefore brings focus onto the opinions and views of the people included in the programme. The narrator also uses statistics to illustrate the vast amount of Travellers living in the UK and the average ages for Gypsy girls to be married contrasting this with the average age of 'normal' girls. By comparing these statistics it manages to create a shocking impact on the viewer.

Many shots are used throughout including insert shots of hands sewing wedding dresses, this demonstrates how intricate the designs are and how much detail the gypsy girls choose to have in their dresses. These shots are mostly used during the first two minutes of the documentary they create an interesting focus point while the narrator is talking. Long shots are used to introduce main characters and to show the extravgance of the wedding dresses made for these women. The title shot creates interest as the title is written in a white font which relates to the weddings, however this is juxtaposed with a messy colourful background to contrast with the travellers vibrant tastes. It also suceeds in making the writing more noticeable, standing out to the viewer.

The lighting in this programme is mainly artificial as it takes place mostly inside the dressmakers shop and churches. Music from the traditonal wedding march is merged with old traditional travellers music highlighting the contrast of the Gypsy culture and traditonal wedding values. throughout the rest of the documentary upbeat instrumental music is often played portraying the lightheartedness of this documentary. Fast paced editing is used in the introduction to the programme with many cut aways to gypsy caravan sites and gypsy wedding days. this is an insight into what the documentary will include but also manages to create contrasts of how the travellers live in day to day life with their expensive over the top wedding days.

Radio Trailer and DOC poster Natalie shona

critically evaluating video Shona Easton

Critically Evaluating Video Production

Our media product is a documentary named Barnsley’s New Party based on the premise of there being an influx of votes for the BNP in the most recent election, our programme was designed to represent the views both for and against the party, as well as those of the public, in particular the view of the younger generation. In order to do this we followed a conventional structure of a documentary by using the formulaic layout of other real media products.

We observed the conventions of continuity in documentaries by watching similair programmes and by researching websites and textbooks such as; http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Continuity_editing, within our film we used smooth transitions between the opening establishing shots of Barnsley town centre enabling the viewer to feel as though it is a continuous action that develops chronologically rather than a series of separated shots bunched together.
Whilst researching the genre we found there are numerous styles of documentary which can be used such as fly on the wall where the protagonist of the film is followed as though the film crew aren’t there or participatory documentaries where the presenter becomes involved in the situation they are filming in order to gain a better insight (eg Ross Kemp on gangs). As we followed the generic layout of a documentary which uses Vox pops rather than an on screen presenter we did not use continuity editing techniques such as eye line matches (eg man looking off screen to the left and then the next shot cuts to what he was looking at) or the match on action technique. What we did do included sound overlaps, where the sound from one shot carries through onto the next this worked particularly well as we used another technique of a fade transition between the different subjects whom we interviewed, as it makes it seem a smoother fade away from one shot into the next if the sound doesn’t vanish suddenly.
We did briefly include an intertextual moment within our film where we referred to another programme when speaking to the leader of Unite Against Fascism, George Arthur, he spoke of Nick Griffin’s appearance on the political programme Question Time so we inserted a still shot of this appearance in order to illustrate to the viewers the mannerism’s which George Arthur is describing.

The film was created with the purpose of entertainment, education and socialisation in that it provides a social talking point for viewers due to the fact politics are a thought provoking, opinionated topic. Following Richard Dyers theory of entertainment our film would provide audience gratification as it includes transparency within the characters who were interviewed as they are open and confessional to the viewer, with the BNP supporter Joe Casket in particular, with the way he was honest about his beliefs despite the taboo around the subject matter. There are also highs and lows of emotions in the documentary which as part of the theory supposedly provide entertainment as the passion on both ends of the spectrum both for and against the party are shown by both students and the main protagonists of the documentary (George Arthur UAF leader and Joe Casket BNP supporter). The final gratifying feature described in the theory which we used in our film was the sense of community as viewers from the area of Barnsley or surrounding localities will be most entertained by our video as its subject matter applies directly to them.

I am quite confident that we managed to be both informative by including numerous facts, as well as being entertaining by using interesting cut aways and a fast paced interview style by breaking up individuals interviews with students opinions rather than one long interview making it less laborious to watch.

Before making the documentary I watched and evaluated a similar style programme, this documentary is part of the channel 4 dispatches series which highlights social and political problems throughout the world. This is a follow up documentary, which returns to Africa where children are being tortured, outcasted and even killed with the belief that they are possessed by witches. http://http//www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-43/episode-1The documentary starts by briefly recapping what happened during the first documentary and how their footage shocked the world and caused a change in African law, in order to do this newspaper clippings and headlines are shown using insert shots. It revisits the people interviewed in the first series, the people who helped pass the child protection laws and also discovers that child witch condemning is still occurring in Africa.
The programme primarily follows two main characters whom are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of the topic the documentary is focused on. Firstly there is the charity worker Gary Foxcroft who has devoted his life to save the children from being condemned as witches and established the first shelter for them and conversely there is Africa’s leading evangelist who makes a living through establishing which children are so called witches and conducting exorcisms in order to ‘save’ them. There are also interviews from the children themselves and other people involved in both the condemnation and the saving of the children. This is similair to our documentary as there are main characters within our documentary but we also include short interviews in order to show views and opinions of the larger majority of people who are affected by the subject of politics.
The interviews and narration used throughout the programme are conducted by an unseen voice this technique is known as vox pops, which we also used. In this situation this method is quite effective as it means the viewers attention is not focused on a presenter or persona who is illustrating the situation but it is focused on the issues and situations at hand. Statistics are used by the narrator in order to portray the vast amount of torture that is occurring in this dispatches film, we also included statistics about the number of people voting BNP in order to push the message across.
Insert shots of photographs of children who have been tortures and murdered under the belief that they are witches, these insert shots are impactive due to their horrific nature, there was also insert shorts in our film of important newspaper clippings and posters in order to break up a long interview and show the mass media coverage showing the politics of the area to be something which also has affect nationally. Numerous other shots are used throughout the dispatches film, most notably is the establishing shot in order to show a change of scenery and the kind of place this is happening in, we followed this technique in illustrating the kind of area Barnsley is by including establishing shots in the opening sequence.
The film is filmed using all natural lighting and only a small amount of sound is used in the form of haunting music during the point where the children’s injuries are being shown, this music is upsetting and adds to the emotion of the viewers whilst seeing these images. This differs to ours in that we tended to use artificial lighting and only included music in our titles.


How affective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?

I wanted our documentary to come across as an entertaining yet informative film documenting the rise of the BNP and showing the opinions of people in the area in order to gain an insight into the kinds of people who invoked this rise in popularity. Our two ancillary products being a poster intended for billboard or magazines/ newspapers and radio advertisements are created in order to give people an insight into what the programme is about and entice them to watch.

In our poster we cross dissolved three different images all representing what our documentary is about, we used the town hall representing Barnsley, a union jack flag which the BNP use as their logo and a protest of people opposing the BNP's views, this made our poster more vibrant and self explanatory without the use of text. We included the vital information of the date and time to be shown as well as the well-recognised channel logo. We wanted to keep the poster simple with a minimum amount of text so that the images were more impactive. The only text we included is the title in the acrostic style. We used the stencil font for our title giving an almost military effect showing the serious of the subject matter and which is also used on many political campaigns.

As a comparison this poster advertises the documentary ‘Supersize me’ about a man who challenges himself to eat nothing but McDonalds for an entire month in order to monitor the affects of the food served their on the nation.
The Title of the film is written in red and yellow, two colours which are used by the McDonalds franchise in their logo, the word ‘me’ has also been stretched so it looks abnormal this is indicative of the affect the food will have on a person. The tagline is ‘a film of epic portions’ this also relates to the food aspect of the film as it pokes fun at the large portions at McDonalds. Our title is also bold but we do not have a tagline as the title itself is quite self explanitory.
The various awards and nominations the film has been credited with are also included on the poster in order to increase its appeal to the audience as it shows its recommendations from the industries professionals. A comic affect of the image of the man with lots of French fries in his mouth shows that the documentary has a light-hearted tone, the image is also attention grabbing as it is a white background and the man stands out due to his bright red clothing which has connotations of both danger and the McDonalds logo . We used numerous overlapped attention grabbing images on the same subject matter in order to draw the audience in we did not include awards or recommendations
The films website is also included on the poster so that the audience can find out more about the film if they wish to. The people and companies and companies involved are also featured on the poster, again this can increase credibility if it is associated with a well known company such as Odeon.
Finally quotations from magazines such as rolling stone feature and give high praise to the film making the audience more likely to see it if it has been spoke well of, the font is yellow and matches in with the red and yellow theme used throughout the poster. We maintained a simple black and white font throughout our entire poster.

Conversley whilst researching radio trailers for documentarys it was virtually impossible to find an example so we created it based on the basic premise used when advertising films on the radio, a 30 second long clip with background music which gives an insight to the programme without giving the entire plotline away whilst informing the listener when and where the programme will be shown. Also from our research when we looked at advertisements for films and gained the knowledge that they usually include a voice over narrative, extracts from the film and background music, all of which we included in ours as well as the channel and date and time it will be shown.

What have you learnt from audience feedback

When we were intially developing the idea for our documentary we created some questionnaires in order to establish the kind of audience who would want to watch a programme like ours we concluded from these results that our target age group was 18-25 year olds and that they would

expect to find a programme like this on channel 4. By gaining this insight it meant we could develop our ideas to work around this age category which now becomes our target audience, one way we did this was by including interviews with students of barnsley college in order to give a youths perspective on the rise of the BNP. This is a unique perspective as most political documentaries are aimed at a higher age range so this new angle breaks the conventions of political documentaries.

During filming and editing we ensured meaning would be apparant to the audience by including an equal amount of time to both for and against the BNP in order to not sway the audiences opinions and allow them to develop their own conclusion, we did this by interviewing Joe Casket using the talking heads method at the beginning of the film and George Arthur the leader of Unite Against Facism at the end whilst interspersing with opinions of students.

The response from the audience when we trialled aspects of the film were mainly positive in that they felt we had created a visually stimulating yet informative programme, we did take on the advice that one of the interviews was too long so we broke this long shot up by adding insert shots of posters and flyers whilst George Arthur was discussing these products. The film is more likely to be interprated differently by people from the Barnsley area as it is an issue which is more pivotal to them and creates more of a sense of community and socialism than it would to viewers outside of the local area.


How did you use new media technologies?

Digital technology did help us to develop creatively within our production and even helped us correct mistakes following filming although sometimes it did prevent us doing some things we wanted to, we filmed all our shots on a HDV1000 camera,
filming in high definition in order to give us a clearer quality image, the only difficulty we faced with this camera was that the microphone on it was not as affective when outdoors in windy conditions or near traffic we also used a digital voice recorder but the same problems occurred with this equipment. This was a hindrance in regards to our creativity, as we originally wanted to interview the leader of Unite Against Fascism’s George Arthur outside the town hall, in order to provide visually stimulating and relevant backdrop however the fact the town hall is located near a main road meant that when we came back to review our footage the sound was too severely distorted, we then had to re-shoot the interview in a less interesting location- an office.

We edited our film using the software Final cut express this programme helped us achieve the final touches to our documentary we wanted, an example of this is the wire framing tool enabled us to reframe shots we had taken, this helped us during our interviews there was often too much bare wall space above the interviewee's head, this tool enabled us to reframe and zoom making the shots more asthetically pleasing as you saw more of the person rather than the background. It also enabled us to change the white balance on certain shots which due to weather conditions had a blueish tinge and were rather harsh looking.


In creating our ancillary texts we used other softwares, whilst making the film poster we used photoshop elements which allowed us to be more creative in that we could lap and overlay images making a more visually complex image. Garage band is the programme we created our radio advert on which was useful in that it enabled us to tamper with the sounds we recorded as well as having several sounds playing at once, this meant we could have background music whilst people were talking.

The use of blogger was a useful thing in helping us develop creatively in that we as a group could document clearly our research and plans such as shot logs and scripts. We also posted our video on youtube in order to get the video to a wider audience http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KaosnCVepo, we also wrote about the video on social networking sites such as facebook in order to further promote the programme.

Analaysis of poster Natalie and Shona

In our poster we cross dissolved three different images all representing what our documentary is about, we used the town hall representing barnsley, a union jack flag which the Bnp use as their logo and a protest of people opposing the Bnp's views, this made our poster more vibrant and self explanitory without the use of text. We included the vital information of the date and time to be shown as well as the well recognised channel logo. We wanted to keep the poster simple with a minimum amount of text so that the images were more impactive. The only text we included is the title in the acrostic style. We used the stencil font for our title giving an almost military effect showing the serious of the subject matter and which is also used on many political campaigns.

shaunis poster

In my poster i chose two images of the BNP. One of Nick Griffin and another of members of the party. I crossdissoved these to show the link between them and basically to highlight what our documetary will be about. I also used the BNP logo to stand out at the audience and to again draw attention to the main focus of us making this documentary. For the times of the documentary and the title i used a simple font and a dark colour to stand out against the background. I chose the fade the background to make the BNP logo stand out more and grap the audiences attention more. I also used the Channel 4 logo so it would be obvious to the auidene which channel our documentary would be shown on.

Equiptment Natalie Shona

We used a tripod to steady our shots when filming with the HDV1000 camera
We used a samsung Digimax camera to take our location photos
We used a zoom recorder to record our sound during interviews and voice overs

We used a HDV100o camera to film all of our documentary

Our documentary BNP Barnsley's New Party?

We used new media technologies in order to get our documentary to a wider audience. We uploaded our video onto the website Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KaosnCVepo

Call Sheets Natalie

Various call sheets used throughout out filming process

Title: Barnsley's New Party?
Shooting Date: 12th November 2009
Shooting Time: 11.00am
Crew Details: Director: Natalie Wroe Sound: Shona Easton Camera: Shauni Cessford
Cast: George Arthur
Equipment needed: Sony HDV 1000 Camera, Zoom recorder
Location: Barnsley Town Hall
Estimated Wrap Time: 11:30pm


Title: Barnsley's New Party?
Shooting Date: 9th November 2009
Shooting Time: 11.00am
Crew: Camera: Shona Easton Camera: Shauni Cessford
Cast: Extras (Public)
Equipment needed: Sony HDV 1000 camera
Location: Barnsley Town Centre
Estimated Wrap time: 11.30am


Title: Barnsley's New Party?
Shooting Date: 17th November 2009
Shooting Time: 3:30pm
Crew: Interviewer: Natalie Wroe Camera: Shona Eatson Sound: Shauni Cessford
Cast: Simon Casken
Equipment needed: Sony HDV 1000 camera, tripod, lamp
Location: Barnsley College radio studio
Estimated Wrap time: 4:15pm


Title: Barnsley's New Party?
Shooting Date: 10th December 2009
Shooting Time: 1:30pm
Crew: Camera: Natalie Wroe Camera: Shona Easton Camera: Shauni Cessford
Cast: Various students of Barnsley College
Equipment needed: Sony HDV 1000 camera, tripod, Zoom recorder
Location: Barnsley college Honeywell block corridor
Estimated Wrap time: 2:00pm


Title: Barnsley's New Party?
Shooting Date: 12th january 2010
Shooting Time: 2:oopm
Crew: Director: Natalie Wroe Camera: Shona Easton Shauni Cessford
Cast: George Arthur
Equipment needed: Sony HDV 1000 camera, Tripod
Location: Barnsley college .Honeywell site. Computer suite
Estimated Wrap time: 2:30pm

Shooting Script Natalie

Barnsley town centre

SHOT 1 Establishing shot of Barnsley

SHOT 2 Long shot of town centre

SHOT 3 High angle shot of Barnsley town centre

Studio

SHOT 4 Medium close up of BNP supporter

Barnsley college corridor

SHOT 5 Medium shot of student

Studio

SHOT 6 Medium close up of BNP supporter

Barnsley college corridor

SHOT 7 Medium shot of student

Studio

SHOT 8 Close up of BNP supporter

Barnsley college corridor

SHOT 9 Medium shot of student

Town Hall- Barnsley Town Centre

SHOT 10 Medium close up of George Arthur

Barnsley college corridor

SHOT 11 Medium shot of student

Studio

SHOT 12 Medium close up of BNP supporter

College computer suite

SHOT 13 Medium shot of George Arthur

SHOT 14 Insert shot of Anti-facism leaflet

SHOT 15 Medium shot of George Arthur

Town Centre

SHOT 16 High angle shot of BNP stall in Town

Barnsley College corridor

SHOT 17 Medium shot of student

College computer suite

SHOT 18 Medium shot of George Arthur

SHOT 19 Insert shot of Love Music Hate Racism poster

SHOT 20 Medium shot of George Arthur

Barnsley College corridor

SHOT 21 Medium shot of student

College computer suite

SHOT 22 Medium shot of George arthur

SHOT 23 Insert shot of newspapers 4x

SHOT 24 Medium shot of George Arthur

SHOT 25 Still shot of Question Time panel

SHOT 26 Medium shot of George Arthur

Barnsley college corridor

SHOT 27 Medium shot of student

END

Natalie's documentary poster

I wanted to keep my poster simple leaving the imagery to create the most impact on the viewer, i managed this by using as little text as possible. I used for my main image a picture of Barnsley's town hall a prominant feature within Barnsley, to create a shock value i photoshopped the BNP flag onto the top of the building. As this building is the town hall it represents the community of Barnsley as a whole, by placing the flag on top gives the impression that all of Barnsley support the BNP, this gives an insight into what the documentary will be about. For the title i have used the well recognised BNP logo which includes the union jack flag. Underneath this i have placed the title 'Barnsley's New Party' i have used red and blue colours to represent the BNP, changing the colour for each first letter to show the acrostic feature. The only other thing i have included in this poster is the well known channel four logo to show what channel this will be shown on and the time, keeping this black so as not to distract the viewer from the main image.

Our documentary poster Natalie and Shona and Shauni

Radio advert script

(Background music as used in the title sequence of the documentary)

Voice over:

"Your Area, Your views, Your politics"

BNP member voice extracted from film:

" Its is my opinion that it should stay that way and keep Britain British"

Voice over:

BNP, Barnsley's New Party?, Channel 4, 9pm, You decide?

Natalie Analysis of the Documentary poster Fuel

This poster advertises the documentary 'Fuel' which unveils the deception of Americas supposed dependence on oil and eplores an alternative solution, Biodiesel. It follows josh Tickell and his journey in promoting a sustainable planet giving an indepth insight into Biodiesel.

The title is written in green, a colour which gives connotations of nature and the environment, reflcting what the documentary will be about. The words themselves are in capital, bold print making the title stand out and become the first thing to be seen on the poster. It is short and monosyllabic giving the word impact and making it easy to remember.

There are two taglines on this poster the first situated at the top reads 'The world is addicted to oil. It's time for an intervention.' This also relates to the environmentalist aspect of the documentary and puts across the message that a change is taking place. The writing is in black font with the final word 'Intervention' in green. This particular word is made to stand out from the rest as the ' Itervetnion' is what the documentary is primarily about. A further tagline is written underneath the title saying 'change our fuel...change the world.' This is very informative in very few words summing up the plotline of the documentary. The writing and images in this poster are made more eye catching as they are set against a white background. The juxtapostion of white agianst colours allows the audience to concentrate on whats important without getting distracted by any background imagery or colour.

The main image in this poster is very shocking, it shows the earth covered in black oil. This succeds in grabbing attention and illustrates how the earth is being destroyed by oil, contrasting something beautiful with the image of something ugly and dark. An image of green grass and yellow flowers is shown at the bottom of the poster again portraying nature with the use of colours suggesting the beauty of the earths environment and how it should be preserved.

Various awards which the documentary has been honoured with are situated towards the bottom, these entice the audience to want to watch the film as it has obviously been highly reccommended by industry officials. One award stands out boldy placed in the middle of the other, this being the winner of the audience award. The documentary's website is also included in the poster allowing the audience to discover more information about the documentary therefore gaining it more publicity. Finally the people and companies involved in the making are credited in the poster,giving an opportunity to advertise any credible companyor person, such as bluewater entertainment,which ultimately gives the documentary credibility by association.