Final Products

Documentary

Poster

Radio Advert

Question 4

Question 3

Question 2

Question 1

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

In the research stage of producing our documentary, We researched generic codes and conventions of documentary. In production and post production we conformed/subverted certain convention to produce a original and professional media text.

Documentary

Editing:
We used establishing shots and time lapses to link scenes together. Time lapse is a great way to capture the passage of time and is a generic narrative convention used in documentaries to illustrate a journey. Our media text is only 5 minutes of a documentary so we tried to position the audience to believe there is a lot more of the journey to come in the full documentary with the use of these techniques. Documentaries such as BBC Horizin almost always have establishing shot and sometimes use time lapses for a great authentic sense of progression. We intended to inmate that authenticity in our media work.

The use of inter-cutting  parallel edits were used to refer to what the interviewee is talking about. It is a common convention in documentaries that helps the audience understand the concept of the narrative. We believed that because our work has scientific jargon, it can potentially lose the viewers focus and make it harder for the audience to comprehend. so the use of the inter cuts allow easy understanding for the audience.
No matter the mode of the documentary, all documentary makers undergo selective editing in post production. This is a debatable concept with people arguing documentaries are unethically subjective due to it edits. We tried to represent the truth to its full potential but found ourselves conforming to this convention by chopping and screwing footage to our target audiences needs. The representation of the truth is somewhat skewered for entertainment purposes.    

If someone is being interviewed in a documentary, there will almost always be graphics that introduce the character to the audience. The graphics tend to be basic in BBC documentaries. Even documentaries that involve video games addiction (Game Overdose & Videogame Addiction Documentary) have simple graphics but our is creatively designed because I think it works well with our narrative.

Sound:

We used numerous sound bridges to help link scenes too. Sound bridges are one of the most common transitions in the continuity editing style, one that stresses the connection between both scenes since the mood might still be the same. But we used sound bridges quite creatively by using it to play with the audiences' expectations. we do this by having playful optimistic music at the start, then a melodramatic dark sound bridge in the scene on the left. We did this to enforce the equilibria stage of the documentary; a common narrative structure in all forms of media texts. 

Nintendo - Super Mario Coin

We experimented with different sound effects we could use to establish to the viewer, that technology is the key theme of our documentary. We came up with placing the Super Mario coin sound effect in sync with the name graphics that appear at the start of every interview. Generic documentaries tend to divert away from sound effect but we found it significantly useful in our documentary; therefore subverting sound effects conventions.

Throughout the documentary, I am a character as to a retrospective narrator, that almost all types of documentaries have (as shown in "Codes and conventions of a documentary" slide). We chose to use me for the voice over to help target our demographic reformer audience with my soothing voice. In advertising, there is a strong tendency to employ male voices more often than female voices in the belief that male voices sound more convincing. A study by Emma Rodero, Olatz Larrea and Marina Vázquez (Male and Female Voices in Commercials: Analysis of Effectiveness, Adequacy for the Product, Attention and Recall) found that male voices are more effective in targeting audiences than female voices.


Camera-work:
The use of conventional hand held cams when filming the vox pops was heavily subverted. We used a tripod for almost all shots in the documentary including the vox pops due to the fear of misinterpretation  professionalism. Handheld cams are normally used to represent reality in documentaries but we compensated with that by filming vox pops (witnesses). The audiences is suppose safely believe what they see by the use of the vox pops. Our documentary uses fiskes' (1988) intertextuality concepts to help integrate the idea in the audiences mind and help them understand it better.

Mode:
We conformed to Bill Nichols' (2001)  participatory mode of documentary in many ways. Me as a documentary makers was involved in the documentary itself, interacting with the subject. We ask a series of questions throughout and I share my experience to the audience. Participatory modes are usually heavily reliant on honesty and witnesses (vox pops).

Ancillary tasks

 My Kid Is Addicted

Our radio ad is within the 30 - 40 seconds duration a radio ad has. It also contains content from our documentary so the audience can get a feel of what to expect when they watch the documentary. The radio has a very enigmatic/bubbly soundtrack from the composer Paul Mottram. The soundtrack is to make the audience feel that there is a journey on the way with the gradual volume increase. the warm strings with shimmering harp, piano & glock is very similar to documentary radio ads on BBC iplayer. Again we have consistency with the Mario coin noise to remind the audience about technology and games.

Final Documentary

Final Radio Ad