2. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real media products?
• One documentary I looked at was ‘Supersize me’ A US documentary created by Morgan
Spurlock which looked into the effects of fast food on the American people. One main convention
we adopted from ‘Supersize me’ into our documentary was the interviews with professionals in
the field of interest. For example in ‘Supersize me’ to track the effects of the food of his body,
Spurlock got help from Gastroenterologist Lisa Ganjhu.
• This was helpful as it provided a professionals opinion which grabbed the audiences attention as
she is a professional and therefore must know what she is talking about. It also makes the
documentary look more professional as a professionals opinion means that the documentary is
serious about the point that it is making. We also used a professional’s opinion in our
documentary, asking a psychology teacher about her opinion on the effects of video games on
young children.
• We also followed the codes and conventions of actually filming the interviews by using the correct
filming angle of having the interviewee looking across the camera into the empty space, with their
head being in either the top left or right of the screen.
3. • ‘Supersize me’ also made use of various facts and
statistics as a way of quickly firing information at the
audience in a way designed to shock and be memorable.
We adopted this in our documentary as a way of
showing the audience some shocking facts about video
games in the UK. Although the facts and statistics were
interesting I don’t believe we presented them in an
interesting way, and this is where we could have
improved. Instead of having them showing up in front of
a still image we should’ve made the background more
lively or presented them in a way more interesting such
as in the supersize documentary.
4. • Another code that we followed is the voiceover. In
supersize me there is a almost constant voiceover from
Spurlock. This is appropriate as it is him who is eating all
the food and therefore the audience feels more
connected to the documentary as it feels as though
Spurlock is talking to them specifically. In our
documentary we used a voiceover to help tell the
audience what we were investigating and what was
going on. We could’ve improved on this by having the
same person on screen presenting the documentary and
talking to the audience so that they felt more connected.
5. • Another convention we used was ‘real’ footage of events. Supersize
me used a lot of real footage as the camera followed Spurlock
around as he went from different McDonalds. We tried to
incorporate real footage using the different interviews and also
footage from the columbine high school massacre. I think we used a
fair amount of real footage although I believe we could’ve done
more. For example we could’ve filled any still images with real
footage relating to that specific part of the documentary.
• Another convention we used was the use of non-diegetic sound. In
supersize me a various amount of music tracks were used, most
notably was the song at the very start of the documentary ‘Fat
bottomed girl’ by Queen. This is effective as the documentary is
about food and obesity and the song reflects this. In our
documentary we were allowed to use Garage Band to produce our
music and I believe our music was suited to our documentary as it
was fast and catchy.
6. How effective is the combination of your main product and
ancillary texts?
• I feel as though our documentary combined with our double page
spread and radio trail targets the same audience well as they are all
very clear on what our focus was, which was to see if video games
effect behaviour in teenagers. Our documentary achieved this as it
shocks the audience at the start with the scenes from the columbine
high school massacre which relates to our topic as it is thought that
video game violence caused their actions. We also ask people what
they thought about the topic, which engaged the audience with the
documentary as their peers gave their opinions.
• Our double page spread combined well with the documentary as it
starts by using the name of our documentary and pun ‘video shame’
to draw attention to it and make it clear what the documentary will
involve. The use of images of video game Call of Duty, front cover of
video game Doom and a photo of someone playing the game. The
text then goes on to explain in detail what the documentary will
explore and asks rhetorical questions to try to capture the readers
attention. (Next slide)
7.
8. • The radio trail also combines well with the documentary
and the double page spread as we took the background
music from our documentary and used it in the trail to
connect the two so they can be related to each other and
be remembered. I truly believe that both the radio trail
and the double page spread combine with the
documentary in a way that creates a good brand identity
because of the clear way that each section has been put
together. Also combined with the fact that the effect of
video games has not been covered in a documentary
before, we were able to touch on a topic that many
weren’t aware could affect their children and so we could
then be recognised as the first brand to identify this
issue.
9. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
• The audience feedback from our documentary showed that although many
of them enjoyed the documentary, they also felt as though it lacked quality.
Many picked up on the fact that there were too many still image shots which
made the documentary seem slow and sometimes boring. However when
the still image shots weren’t on the screen, the audience responded well
and enjoyed it. From this feedback it is clear that to improve the
documentary we need to get rid of the still images and replace them with
something more interesting and enjoyable for the audience to keep their
attention.
• The audience feedback of our double page spread was widely mixed with
some marking it at a 4 and a 5 and some marking it at a 7 and an 8. It is
hard to pinpoint exactly what the audience would feel would make a better
double page spread as all of them are different. It could possibly be
improved by having more pictures and a bit less text to make it more eye
catching at first glance.
• The audience feedback from our radio trail was that it was widely enjoyed by
the audience. They felt as though it was interesting and easy to listen too.
From this it is clear that our radio trail doesn’t need improving.
10. How did you use media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
• Research and Planning: As a group , we planned what we would
base our documentary on. To do this we used a storyboard for
planning the main shots of the documentary. To reasearch if there
would be enough to talk about for video game violence we used
various internet websites such as google, bbc news and various
newspaper websites.
11. • We also researched what channel and what time we would put our
documentary on TV. To do this we researched both the Channel 4
and BBC three websites and from their websites we could see what
times would be appropriate for the documentary.
12. • When we had found out information that would affect how our
documentary is portrayed we uploaded our notes onto Blogger.com.
Which allowed us to show what work we had done into the research
of our documentary.
13. • Filming: The part of the making of our documentary that required us
to learn the most was the filming. We learnt how to use the Cannon
Hg 20 Camera, Tripod and microphone to give us the most
professional looking documentary as possible as we were using a
fair few voxpops.
14. • The editing of our documentary was also challenging as we had to
learn to use the Apple iMac to design our documentary on final cut
express. On which we were able to add our different clips together
combined with our still shots and real footage to make the
documentary fit together really well.
15. • For my magazine I used InDesign to create my double page spread.
It was also possible to edit images in Photoshop that we took from
our camera and then export this onto our double page spread.
