Final Cut: Documentary

Reflection: Working Together

Together as a team Sara and I worked and communicated well to bring our ideas together. We sometimes found difficulty when trying to explain what we were thinking but all in all we managed to get the point across.

Sara taught me quite a lot especially on how to use the software as I missed the briefing lesson of ProCut . I found myself learning quickly from her teaching and showing me the basics. Most of the time, we spend it trying to see what different things the software did and became rather excited the more we learnt.

Making this production has definitely built on my teamworking and communication skills, not to mention exercising patience. I thouroughly enjoyed it.

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

Use of media

View more presentations from Diana.

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

Above is the annotated video: Codes and conventions of a documentary (enlarge to full screen in order to view all annotations)

BBC3 was the most appropriate channel to air out products because it primarily targets young audiences and is the only BBC channel that does. We chose to developed the form and conventions of a documentary to suit the style of BBC3

"We find the best of new British talent, give them room to play, invent and experiment, and then mix in the most important element - You."

Quoted from BBC3 'All about us'

The documentary works well within their concept because, our presenter brings in the playful and youthful element and also it is experimental as she is a young presenter for a young audience, which is different from other documentaries, which is how we have challenged the codes and conventions of real documentaries. BBC3 shows many documentaries, most of which relate to things that young people go through which was perfect for our documentary.

'Out of the Dark' is the brand name of our documentary although all series carry a theme and this episode focuses on 'Sex, Moods and Teenager', this is similar to BBC3's documentaries where all the documentaries are shown within a season and follow the theme of that season. Currently the theme is "Bringing Up Britain", which is all about real stories from parents and the joys and struggles of being a parent. The season our documentary would have been shown in was "Dangerous Pleasures Season", as it addressed sexual health and issues concerning drugs, although it works well within both the current season and this previous theme. "Dangerous Pleasures Season" theme was running at the time our documentary was due to air and we were aiming to educate young people on sexual health.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Summary: In the video above I mentioned that before we started we conducted an interview and recorded four teenagers within the age range that we were targeting asking about what the though about this concept. This was very helpful as it allowed us to know exactly what our target audience would want featured in the documentary. The information we received from the first audience feedback not only gave us the go a head but it also aided us with ideas on how to reflect the things our audience wanted to see. What was clear throughout all the interviews was that young people still remained in the dark when it came to sexual health awareness, this is why we came up with the sex quiz idea in order to give the correct information in an interactive interesting way.



Briefing: Sara also mentions in detail ideas that came up in the audience feed back that we took and implemented them in our documentary such as stats, where they can get help - we showed Jordan going to a sexual health clinic and also we had Dr Thompson the expert to advice the young people. Without this feedback it would have been much more difficult to create a documentary that would engage our target audience, which is why it was essential that we did it. We not only considered our audience feedback when planning but also during editing.

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

We understand that branding is very important as it helps the audience to recognise the product, for example Mc Donald's golden arches are popular worldwide and not only that so is their advertising colour scheme. This is why we chose to keep a running theme throughout our products. I have mentioned above that we used the sound bite from the main product in our radio advert and also the music is the same. This way the audience will be able to recognise that the advert links to the main product.

Just like Mc Donald's consistent colour scheme, we have done the same by using similar colours on the newspaper advert in our blog as we wanted to keep it professional, attaining a house style. Our colour scheme was inspired by BBC3's use of bright playful colours, as we were broadcasting on this channel we also wanted to follow their house style in a way, by also maintaining a youthful and exciting colour scheme and it is also it works well with our target audience.

The typography of our title's 'Out Of The Dark' text in the newspaper advert is rather quirky and adventurous, which reflects the personality of our presenter although we should have used the same text on our documentary's title as our poster. The rest of the text is professional and we did this to keep it mature for older adults who see the advert, as even though we are targeting a younger audience we do not want to shut away older audiences.

Ancillary Texts

Radio Advert

Following the research I did on BBC3 documentaries, we put ideas together between mine and Sara's research to create a documentary that follows the codes and conventions of a radio advert. We included:

- Music from our documentary, which runs as a theme in out production. This should help our audience recognizer our documentary from the advert.

- Sound bites which are also taken from the documentary.

- The voice over was scripted to sound like one of BBC3's. We got our teacher who had some knowledge and had watched BBC3 to record the voice over introducing and informing the audience of the show. We kept the information short and to the point, telling the audience the date of our broadcast, time and channel.

Newspaper advert

Finally after taking the photos of the silhouettes it helped us to determine the composition of our poster. We used Photoshop to edit the photos, Illustrator as well as Indesign to make the newspaper advert.

The spot light behind the teenager's silhouette connotes that our show is tryin to shed light on subjects that affect teenager, which have relevance to their moods suggested by the different emotions shown by the silhouettes.

'Teen Mum' Interview

(Picture on the left shows Hanna preparing her daughter for the interview [Feminine Mystique role])

This is the main feature of our documentary and we filmed it on Monday the 7th. We were invited to film in the house of our Hanna. She does not conform to the stereotype of a 'teenage mother' as she has gone back to full time education, is doing well for herself and looks after he two children, with occasional help from her mother. Hanna's story is remarkable as she has managed to remain positive for her children and has been a wonderful mother from the age of 15 when she gave birth to her baby girl. Being of a Somalian background, she has had to face criticism and discrimination from the Islam community, on top of the usual bigotry attitude that young mothers receive on a daily bases. This is why we thought it would be important to reflect her story positively as we have noticed that the teenage mothers that appear in the media are not of a Muslim background, which leaves other young mothers in her position feeling alone.

Vox Pops Filming

(Sex Quiz)

(Photo on the left) [left-right] Georgina (Our presenter) Sara (production partner), Jevan (helper: transporting the equipment) Lettie (helper: making sure people sign the consent form) and Myself.

Sara was in charge of filming on the big camera and my job was to help with the directing and I also took alternative shots on the flip cam.

We had a limited set of time to film (due to the fact that our supervisor had to return for a meeting in an hour, leaving us with 45 minites filming time) and we had to ensure that everything ran smoothly as well as being done quickly. The most difficult thing was getting people to take part in out 'Sex Quiz' although in the end we got people to take part.

Overall the filming was successful and the weather was also pleasant.

Production Meeting

We discussed the :

- Schedule planning/ shooting days - Props - Possible delays that may occur and how to overcome.

Due to the cost of the equipment we realise we need to book a member of staff to accompany us and supervise the day when take out the cameras for the vox pops. This is to ensure that we and the equipment are safe. This is the only thing that may cause a delay before the filming date as it has to during school hours that we go out to film.