1. A2 MEDIA STUDIES:COURSEWORK
EVALUATION
MEGAN HEMMING

2. QUESTION ONE:
IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALENGE FORMS AND
CONVENTIONS OF REAL LIFE MEDIA PRODUCTS?
DOCUMENTARY
Our coursework task was to create the opening 5 minutes of
a TV documentary. During our research and planning we
looked at all the conventions of a real documentary. Our
documentary was one part of a series called ‘SO YOU THINK
YOU’RE OLD ENOUGH? Investigating Sex’. We looked at
documentaries similar to our own such as ‘THE SEX
EDUCATION SHOW’. In order to create a realistic feel about
our documentary we included the following methods:
CHANNEL 4 IDENT: This included a
voiceover that we recorded ourselves.
MONTAGE: We
created a fast paced
montage of images that
we had photographed
ourselves.

3. INTRODUCTION: We filmed a short
introduction for the documentary which
introduced the show. This was then followed
by another short montage.

4. INTERVIEWS: We interviewed specialist
sexual healthcare professionals to get there
opinion.
CAPTIONS: We included
captions to show the name and
profession of the people we
interviewed.

5. INTERVIEWS: We
interviewed some student from
Solihull Sixth Form as they are
our main target audience.

6. INTERVIEWS: We
interviewed a parent as well as
parents were our secondary
target audience.

7. QUESTION ONE:
IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALENGE FORMS
AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL LIFE MEDIA PRODUCTS?
TV LISTINGS

8. In order to create our TV Listings page we researched the
common conventions that were often used. We then created
our own using these conventions.
HEADING:
We create a large
eye catching
heading to go in the
top let corner of our
TV Listings, where it
is often placed on
real TV Listing pages.
CAPTION: We create a caption to draw the readers
attention into reading about the documentary.

9. INFORMATION: As
seen on real TV Listings pages
the program title, channel, date
and time are often shown in the
start of the article.
DROPPED CAP: We
used several dropped caps in our
article as this was one of the main
conventions we noticed when
reviewing other listings. They often
signal a change in the articles
topic.

10. PAGE NUMBERS: It is vital that the
article has a page number on one of the pages. This
is because in a real magazine there would be a
contents page where the number would be shown.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: To
make our TV Listings look realistic we also
included peoples names to show who wrote the
article, who took the photograph and who the
photograph is of.
MAGAZINE NAME: We included
the name of a popular TV Listings magazine in
the bottom right corner of the article, this
makes the article seem more realistic.

11. QUESTION ONE:
IN WHAT WAYS DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT USE, DEVELOP OR CHALENGE
FORMS AND CONVENTIONS OF REAL LIFE MEDIA PRODUCTS?
RADIO TRAILER
We used Garage Band to create our radio trailer.

12. We used a soundtrack from garage band
for our backing track.
We also used recordings that we made especially for
the radio trailer as well as sound bites from our
documentary.

13. QUESTION TWO:
HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR
MAIN PRODUCT ANDS ANCILLARY TASKS?
As we had 3 tasks, the main documentary and
the two ancillary task which were the Radio
Trailer and the TV Listings, they all had to link
together to show that they were all part of
each other. In order to do this we used
multiple techniques to ensure that we
advertsed the documentary, radio trailer and
TV Listings as a brand product.

14. Print screen from the
documentary
Image from TV Listings
Page.
By using the an image of the
Documentary presenter on the
TV Listings Page, we have
created a link.

15. Print Screen
from the
Documentary.
TV Listings Page title.
A link has been made with
the title of the
Documentary and the title
of the TV Listings page.
Similar phrasing of words
helped us do this.

16. Print screen of clips from the
documentary.
By using sound bites from the
documentary in the Radio
Trailer, we have created a link as
it is allowing the listeners to hear
some of what is included within
the documentary that it is
advertising.
Print screen from radio trailer,
showing sound bites of the above
clips from our documentary.

17. WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR
AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?
We received feedback from our class for our
Documentary, Radio Trailer and TV Listings.
For the documentary, the class watched it all
together then filled out individual feedback
sheets.
For the Radio Trailer and TV Listings a sheet
was filled in where we asked at least 5 people
to give one strength and one area for
improvement and a mark out of 10.

18. DOCUMENTARY
The class watched the documentary together then filled out individual feedback
sheets.
Our feedback for this was not great, but we didn’t expect it to be as we know as a
group we could have done a lot better. The main issues were the sound levels and
editing, as a group we did struggle with these when creating the documentary.

19. RADIO TRAILER
We received average feedback for our radio
trailer, receiving mainly scores of 6/7 out of 10.
The main area which was suggested to have
improvements was the volume levels throughout
the trailer.

20. TV LISTINGS
We received very positive feedback from our TV Listings
Page. Suggestions such as text alignment and image lighting
were made for improvements, but overall we received a very
positive response.

21. QUESTION 4:
HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN
THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING
AND EVALUATION STAGES?
Throughout the production process of this
project we used various technologies to help.
These were final cut express, M:Audios,
cameras, Garageband, photoshop, indesign,
tripods and microphones. We also used comic
life and our blogs during this process.

22. FINAL CUT EXPRESS
We used this software to create our
documentary. These are our
documentary ‘Bins’. They
were used to keep all of
our footage organized
within final cut express.
This is our timeline that we used to order
our documentary.

23. GARAGE BAND
We used garage band to create the
radio trailer.
We used
recordings that
wew had made
orselves,
soundbites and
music.

24. IN DESIGN to create the TV Listings. This was primarily my task and as this
This software was used
software was used in another media product I was very confident in using it. I feel that
my skills were developed and I did find it very easy to use.

25. PHOTOSHOP
This software was used to
edit the image for the TV
Listings page. Like InDesign,
I had used this before so
was very confident in using
it again. I found it easy to
manipulate my image to get
it how I wanted it. I feel that
I could have done more
editing on the face though
just to get a cleaner finish.

26. COMIC LIFE
In order to begin
creating our
documentary we
created a
storyboard in
comic life to plan
our documentary.

27. BLOGGER
To keep track of our
actions we used
blogger.com to record
what we did and to
show our research.
PRINT SCREENS FROM OUR
BLOG

28. OTHER TECHNOLOGIES
As well as all the computer software we used technologies
such as microphones, M:Audios, Cameras and Tripods in order
to create our documentary, Radio Trailer and TV Listings page.
VIDEO CAMERA AND TRIPOD: I think M:AUDIOS AND MICROPHONES: I
that we could have tried to be more think that we used this quite well as
creative with the camera and we we had already used them in
should have used it with the tripod
previous projects therefore were
more often to get more of a steady
camera shot. We should have also familiar with the way they worked.
used our filming time more One mistake we did make was not
constructively and organised the listening to the recording before
properly instead of just going straight finishing and uploading the files to
out with only a vague idea of the the computer, because of this we
footage we wanted. had to re-record a few things.