3.) What have you learned from audience feedback?

When we had finished the rough cut of our production, we asked typical viewers to watch are film and suggest some improvements. This was a very helpful process for our film because we were able to make changes so that it was right for our target audience. However during the process of receiving our audience feedback we had a problem with the tape which we were recording on, it resolve this we gave it a different approach by using social networking skills. I did this by sending out the five questions we used for the original audience feedback film via email to family and friends. We received some very detailed feedback by family members, which helped to improve our project.
If I were to do something like this again then I would have used a filming approach to receive feedback from viewers because we received more accurate information, even though the tape got damaged we were still able to benefit from it as we had played it back on the camera after we had finished filming. During filming and editing, we ensured the meaning of our production was apparent to the audience because of the content we involved. We were aiming our film at a working class audience so therefore we needed to include working class people. Throughout the documentary it consists of action sequences to show what the fire fighters job involves, this was an important feature, which had to be continued through of the production.
The responds to the film differed from different people, this was valuable to our production because we were able to make changes that were adequate to the comments we received. People wanted to access information given to them consistently, when we took view’s from the audience feedback in the rough cut they said that, ‘I don't think it flowed very well when moving between sections (times: 4:30 - 4:34) the person doesn't stop talking before moves onto next section and Nigel starts talking again.’ (quote from audience feedback) This will affect the overall marks of our project because during editing we found this difficult to keep consistent.
During planning we intended the structure to flow from one section to another however, we had recorded at lot of action while we were filming which was not in our original plan. We did not realise that we would able to feature so much action in our film, due to what they would allow us to film while we were there.
Overall, I think that the film it cultural band, from the feedback which we received it showed that it was accessible to a Barnsley audience. Due to what they said about our film, ‘I really liked the action shots especially showing them how they would cut people out of the car, I think the showing the training they receive is really interesting and enlighten!’ (quote from audience feedback)

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

Before filming our documentary, we did research into the work and roles of fire fighters to help us get an overview of what our documentary would include. This was done using the fire service website to find out about their working roles which enabled us to develop our ideas further so that we would have an interesting documentary to keep viewers interested. We used internet resources to process our work so teaching staff for further support can access it. This was our only resource so I feel this could be prevention in case anything got lost.
The fire service website has been a useful resource for our group as it gave us details on how to get in touch with the fire service to film our documentary. The website is regularly updated so changes to the service could be accessed easily.
The internet has allowed us to develop further research into the creativity of our work, one of the tasks involved was to analyse a documentary, which was similar to our project by accessing YouTube and the Channel 4 website. We have been able to use this as a style model to get a basis of what type of shots we needed to include in our documentary. By using a blog, we have been able to include all of the contributions to what we have made for our documentary. Such as treatments, scripts etc which has been formatted with an appropriate layout to suit our documentary. Using a coloured background and including images onto our blog page has allowed us to be creative, as we have made it suitable to address the positive impact we wanted to create. Issues which were on the news about the fire service at the time were negative towards the fire service; one of our aims for creating the documentary about the fire service was to change the negative press.
Cameras helped with the creativity of our work and having access to the use of two cameras we were able to take location shots with the small Sony camera and file with the HDV tape camera. The small Sony camera we used on location as it was easy to use and carry, we decided to use a camera recording device as the photographs were clearer. We also used these cameras for filming our audience feed back, this was a useful exercise to use as it gave us feedback from a variety of people on how to improve the project, (images of location shots and shots from the documentary).
Through using the Sony HDV camera it has made out shots look more effective due to the camera being able to establish more of the setting. We experienced problems with the camera due to settings being difficult to understand, this was solved within a few minutes of looking at the setting list on the menu in the camera. Through using a Sony HDV camera it has made the shooting process easier as the camera shots were clear, also due to us being able to use the handle on the camera this made us able to pan with the camera and change camera angles.

Due some inconvience with the blog it would not upload my last two questions of my evaluation so I have re- uploaded these last two as orginals with no illutration as it would not let me do so.