John Boocock - Critical Evaluation Question 4

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
New technologies became the backbone we used to create our entire documentary. From the research stage to post production we took every opportunity we could to take advantage of technologies to enhance the quality of the finished product.

The internet was one of the largest technologies that we used during the research phase of development. We created an online blog (a journal recording our progress and certain decisions we made during the creative process). It is also where we placed the information and research ideas that we collected from various websites for easy reference later on in production. Shown below is a screenshot of the online questionnaire taken from our blog. As part of the research, we needed to find out the reaction that the documentary would receive from its target audience and if it appeals to them. We printed this questionnaire out and gave to members of our target audience to fill in. In addition to this, we recorded a sample of the audience with a SonyHD3000 camera and uploaded the footage onto YouTube, the online video collection, which can be found at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWMF8_YZrc.
During the planning stage, we took pictures of the various locations that we thought about filming in, using a Fujifilm camera and uploaded them to the blog. This made ample use of both technologies and on the next page are some of the photos that we took.

During this time we had to work out a filming schedule and had to make sure the weather conditions were as close as possible to each other due to continuity (it would look very forced if the weather were to change from scene to scene. To counter this, we used the BBC Weather forecast which is also an online feature to plan our schedule.
The filming stage gave us a wide range of technologies to use at our disposal. The HD camera was brought into use again to shoot the scenes, as well as a boom microphone to capture the audio as crisply as we possibly could. This higher sound quality added to the professional effect that was present at the end of the film. We also brought radio microphones for the actors to wear when the shot was taken at long range. These allowed us to get past the problem of the boom microphone not being able to get close enough to the actor to capture his voice, but made any conversations get picked up directly by the camera and have the film’s audio quality at a high standard despite not using the boom microphone. For the voiceover parts we used a zoom recorder when not on location. We have a narrator to take the audience through our film at the end so we recorded his voice along with the other scenes to place over the film at post production. We lastly took along a secondary smaller camera to make a behind the scenes footage and show what we had got up to behind the camera whilst filming over the days, which would come into play at a later time. Below is a typical setup from one of our location shots. Pictured is the boom microphone and the HD camera.

Lastly we had the technology used in the post production. For editing, we used a program called Final Cut, and we made extensive use of this to tie all of the shots we had previously made together. It also allows you to cut unnecessary parts of a scene away and allows you to make smooth transitions so accurate that it can be adjusted to a fraction of a second.
The previously used zoom recorder was on hand in case we noticed any additional voiceovers that we could make use of in the final edition of the film. Finally we used the blog to upload the ‘behind the scenes’ footage we had made previously to show everyone the process behind the making of the documentary.

John Boocock - Critical Evaluation Question 3

What we learned from audience feedback.

Audience feedback was present from the very start of our production and we tried to work and improve upon everything that was commented on and critiqued about our project.
In the research stage, we set up a simple questionnaire to ask a sample of the target audience (Young Adults aged between 17-25) to give us feedback on what they thought of our initial idea of creating a documentary about teen fathers and how they would react if they saw it. We uploaded this video to YouTube and a link to it can be found here:



With this information, we shaped our previous ideas considerably. We were originally aiming to give a parody documentary in the style of 'This is Spinal Tap' or 'Come Fly with Me', however after the feedback, we found that it would be a much better idea to tackle this sensitive subject seriously rather in a humorous way. Our audience would not react well to a serious subject being treated as a joke.
We also conducted additional feedback in a conversation with Sue, the representative at the Barnsley College Health and Wellbeing Centre, who told us that while there was a vast amount of information available towards teenage mothers, there was very little that was available to focus on teen fathers. We reorganized our intentions to include teenage fathers into the intended audience. A big part of the documentary is that it must be educational and bring awareness to a particular issue within society that audiences may not have thought of before. This thought was backed up in the interview we had with the audience sample.

From the feedback, we learned that we had to broaden the scope of our audience as our target audience would have been made wider than we had initially thought. We also learned that people tended to want their information delivered by an expert to give it more authority and credibility than if it was delivered by another of our characters. And finally, we learned that a delicate issue that has a gap in the market should be taken seriously. It would be more appealing to an audience if it was taken seriously by the filmmakers and presented in a way that would be both touching and realistic, both as a drama and as an educational piece on the subject.

John Boocock - Critical Evaluation Question 4

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

New technologies became the backbone we used to create our entire documentary. From the research stage to post production we took every opportunity we could to take advantage of technologies to enhance the quality of the finished product.

The internet was one of the largest technologies that we used during the research phase of development. We created an online blog (a journal recording our progress and certain decisions we made during the creative process). It is also where we placed the information and research ideas that we collected from various websites for easy reference later on in production. Shown below is a screenshot of the online questionnaire taken from our blog. As part of the research, we needed to find out the reaction that the documentary would receive from its target audience and if it appeals to them. We printed this questionnaire out and gave to members of our target audience to fill in. In addition to this, we recorded a sample of the audience with a SonyHD3000 camera and uploaded the footage onto YouTube, the online video collection, which can be found at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZWMF8_YZrc.

During the planning stage, we took pictures of the various locations that we thought about filming in, using a Fujifilm camera and uploaded them to the blog. This made ample use of both technologies and on the next page are some of the photos that we took.

#]

During this time we had to work out a filming schedule and had to make sure the weather conditions were as close as possible to each other due to continuity (it would look very forced if the weather were to change from scene to scene. To counter this, we used the BBC Weather forecast which is also an online feature to plan our schedule.
The filming stage gave us a wide range of technologies to use at our disposal. The HD camera was brought into use again to shoot the scenes, as well as a boom microphone to capture the audio as crisply as we possibly could. This higher sound quality added to the professional effect that was present at the end of the film. We also brought radio microphones for the actors to wear when the shot was taken at long range. These allowed us to get past the problem of the boom microphone not being able to get close enough to the actor to capture his voice, but made any conversations get picked up directly by the camera and have the film’s audio quality at a high standard despite not using the boom microphone. For the voiceover parts we used a zoom recorder when not on location. We have a narrator to take the audience through our film at the end so we recorded his voice along with the other scenes to place over the film at post production. We lastly took along a secondary smaller camera to make a behind the scenes footage and show what we had got up to behind the camera whilst filming over the days, which would come into play at a later time. Below is a typical setup from one of our location shots. Pictured is the boom microphone and the HD camera.

Lastly we had the technology used in the post production. For editing, we used a program called Final Cut, and we made extensive use of this to tie all of the shots we had previously made together. It also allows you to cut unnecessary parts of a scene away and allows you to make smooth transitions so accurate that it can be adjusted to a fraction of a second.
The previously used zoom recorder was on hand in case we noticed any additional voiceovers that we could make use of in the final edition of the film. Finally we used the blog to upload the ‘behind the scenes’ footage we had made previously to show everyone the process behind the making of the documentary.

John Boocock - Critical Evaluation Question 3

What we learned from audience feedback.

Audience feedback was present from the very start of our production and we tried to work and improve upon everything that was commented on and critiqued about our project.
In the research stage, we set up a simple questionnaire to ask a sample of the target audience (Young Adults aged between 17-25) to give us feedback on what they thought of our initial idea of creating a documentary about teen fathers and how they would react if they saw it. We uploaded this video to YouTube and a link to it can be found here:



With this information, we shaped our previous ideas considerably. We were originally aiming to give a parody documentary in the style of 'This is Spinal Tap' or 'Come Fly with Me', however after the feedback, we found that it would be a much better idea to tackle this sensitive subject seriously rather in a humorous way. Our audience would not react well to a serious subject being treated as a joke. Below is a picture of the questionnaire that we used in the first audience feedback.

We also conducted additional feedback in a conversation with Sue, the representative at the Barnsley College Health and Wellbeing Centre, who told us that while there was a vast amount of information available towards teenage mothers, there was very little that was available to focus on teen fathers. We reorganized our intentions to include teenage fathers into the intended audience. A big part of the documentary is that it must be educational and bring awareness to a particular issue within society that audiences may not have thought of before. This thought was backed up in the interview we had with the audience sample.

The second feedback we had was after we had almost completed the project. We uploaded a survey online for people to fill in and give their opinions on what they thought worked and what areas they felt it could improve upon. Acting on what we were told, we found that we should include an expert into the film to give it more credibility and inject more factual evidence into the documentary. As stated previously, documentaries can have a story to them, as ours does, but their main purpose is to educate and make the public think about subjects they might not have known about before.
Both of these audience feedback opportunities improved the quality and standard of our finished piece and due to their input gave us the opportunity to give our intended audience a project that better appealed to what they wanted out of a documentary of this caliber.

John Boocock - Critical Evaluation Question 2

The Effectiveness of the Combination of our main product and ancilliary texts.

The additional media products of the radio trailer and the poster for the documentary were moderately successful in my opinion.
The poster was a little easier to complete than the radio trailer. As previously mentioned, our aim was to create a documentary that would be shown on Channel 4, so to accomplish this a few members of our group went to the Channel 4 website and looked into the styles they used there with other documentaries in terms of promotion and features they included into their posters to make them iconic. In addition to this, I looked at several previously created documentaries that the channel had produced that came with a promotional poster. One of the posters that I found was 'A Very British Storm Junkie' for the series of documentaries Cutting Edge.

Looking at this poster, three things stand out to me that we tried to incorporate into the poster that we created. The first would be Channel 4's very iconic logo placed somewhere within the content of the poster. This would identify immediately with any reader of the poster as to where this product will be showing before they read anything else on the page just be looking at the logo. It is a great piece of advertising by conveying a symbol the general public are familiar with and using minimal amounts of text to convey the message.
The second thing is that it uses an image that invokes questions in the audience's mind when they see it. It must be a simple question, one that makes them curious such as 'What is that man doing?' in the case of 'Storm Junkie' or 'What is that man reacting to' in the case of our own poster.
The third and final observation would be the use of the descriptive font. However on this point, Whilst the group was looking on the style and layouts on the Channel 4 website, we found that the font they used for their advertisements belonged to C4 itself, so using it would be a breach of copyright, as we didn't have the expressed permission of C4 to use the font that they owned. Therefore a member of our group found a similar substitute to give our poster the air of credibility without breaching copyright laws.

The Radio trailer was a little trickier. When doing research into what a radio trailer for a documentary was composed of, we couldn't find any radio trailers for recent Channel 4 documentaries to compare techniques with. However, I instead looked at techniques for how a movie made in the style of a documentary was advertised over the radio instead, and took techniques from that. The docu/film was Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' and the trailer was aired on BBC Radio 1. The trailer incorporated soundbites from the film to make up most of the dialogue in the radio trailer, although it did include a narration between the dialogue to give the audience information about the trailer they were listening to. The most important points included in the trailer was at the end. It told people the title of the product, the time that it would be available for viewing and where it would be available at. We incorporated these factors into our own trailer and overall I believe that it was successful at getting the message across to listeners.

John Boocock - Critical Evaluation Question 1

Conforming and Challenging Conventions.

Looking back, I believe that our media project both conformed and challenged in different areas of conventions normally found within documentaries of its kind. We looked at two distinctive sub-genres throughout the research phase of our project. These were associated with the content of the piece (Teen Pregnancy) and also which channel hosted the documentary (Channel 4) as both of these would affect which audience we were speaking to and make us think of the best possible ways that this audience could be engaged with our five minute documentary.
The technical aspects that we used to create the documentary are very common in the sub genre's that we picked. They are filled with establishing shots of setting and scene, reactionary shots of characters reacting with their environment and sticking to a typical 180 degree line when filming a conversation between an interviewer and interviewee. This keeps the film looking professional and able to be accepted more as a professional piece and less associated with being an amateur production when conforming to these creative staples of the genre.
To give our five minute documentary more credibility, we looked into similar documentaries shown on both Channel 4 and on the BBC site to see the differences between the two. The two examples that I chose was the Channel 4 produced short: 'Christmas with Dad'; a look into the life of a working class man at Christmas time with the entire setting being a gritty depiction of "Broken Britain" and the effects of it on one family.

The second was a longer BBC produced documentary: "My Big Decision"; taking two teenage girls who are separated by culture, lifestyle and location but are brought together by the one thing they have in common: their desire to have a baby. The documentary takes the two girls along with their families through several interviews, meetings and searches into what it would be like to look after a child before the girls reach their final conclusion at the end of the programme; do they continue their urgent desire to a child to call their own, or do they give it up as a childish fantasy?

From 'Christmas', I learned about the crucial nature of establishing a scene with several shots to engage the audience in the world they are about to enter. Though Christmas was definitely a mood piece meant to show a glimpse into a life that would be very different from the one its target audience would be used to, it has no set story and makes no use of staged scenes to heighten drama or recreate a scene that the camera crew were not allowed to show. I also learnt that a very quick introductory caption of a character before they are developed helps the audience determine who they are before being shown a scene. It helps them to gain familiarity with the cast before they are shown. We used this in our own documentary, having a caption appearing next to new characters to show who they are before any dialogue and personality is shown.
From 'Decision', I learned how to introduce characters and their relationships to one another not be stating how they act with a voice-over narration, but by showing the characters react to one another and help that aspect to draw out what kind of people they really are to the audience. It feels more naturalistic and convincing to an audience to see a relationship develop rather than being told about it. Showing, not telling, is the crucial element here.

Our piece challenged the medium first and foremost with the premise. On television and in the media today, it is teenage mothers that are given most of the screen time by documentary crews with the fathers being mentioned in passing or simply have left the picture altogether by the time they arrive. We challenged this notion by making the teen father, not the mother, the protagonist and main focus of the documentary and tried to make him the overall focus of the story that went on through the piece. It tackled the various decisions that teen fathers have to take and, much like in 'Decision' follows the character trying to find the answer to a tough decision: accept his role as a father and stay with the mother to support his child together as a family, or move on and try to develop his own life instead?

Thomas Oldroyd - Critical Evaluation