Evaluation
1) In what ways does the media product use, develop or challenge forms and conversation of real media products?
In our documentary on the fire service we had to use a flow of continuity, this was due to our product being contemporary and in the present. This means we would have to be on a standard with other present documentaries and continuity had to take place. Firstly we had to keep an eye on lighting meaning that we had a constant well lit surrounding , by doing this we always filmed in the daylight meaning when we edited the clips together we would not have a problem of an alternating daylight and night. The weather was also crucial in keeping continuity as we didn’t want drastic weather changes within our product, luckily there were cloudy weather with sunny spells everyday on the week we filmed.
Our aim throughout the product was to entertain the audience, this resulted in a must use of continuity to keep viewers from disappointment. If we didn’t keep continuity then the documentary would look unprofessional which would result in the audience losing interest and failing to watch the entire product. Throughout the documentary the fire-fighters on film were always in uniform as this would allow the audience to connect to the profession that they are in, if they were dressed casually the audience could become confused as to their roles in the production. Throughout our product we tried to stick to a 180 degree rule in as people may get confused if the camera was to shift between opposite angles , in order the do this we always kept the camera on the same side of the room and then used varying shot techniques such as tilts and panning the camera. We also used representation as a key factor in our documentary, for example the fire service is a male dominated profession. But the number of female fire-fighters is growing; this was represented within our documentary as we had filmed a male led troop with the exception the one female. We aimed to fulfil audience pleasure by exposing the audience to action and daily routines of real life firemen, our documentary would have wide appeal as at the time of production the fire service was being widely publicised in the media due to strikes and pay cuts. Despite negative press we aimed to show the audience a more positive and appealing aspect to fire fighters and how much appreciation they should receive due to the bravery in their profession. Our documentary would follow standard the standard procedure of a normal documentary including action clips, interviews with various team members and the usual voiceovers of a standard procedure documentary. On the other hand our documentary was unique as at the time of the press exposing the nature of the strikes no other fire service documentaries were around. This would give our product a unique edge as no other documentaries were around at the time of ours to compete with the available market share.
2) How effective is the combination of your main product and the ancillary texts?
When making our product we wanted the audience the feel how real the documentary was and for them to make a connection with the fire-fighters within our product. We did this by the allowing the fire-fighters to open up to the cameras and talk about once in a lifetime experiences such as saving people and witnessing death. Being a fire-fighter maybe heroic but the day to day job puts the fire-fighters in jeopardy of danger.
Our documentary will show how crucial the fire service is in our local area and the measures they will take to ensure we live in a safe environment.(http://www.syfire.gov.uk/Safeathome.asp) The aim within our documentary is to project the life of a fire-fighter into to homes of the people they are risking there life for.
To advertise our documentary we had to make a poster, after looking through various examples of posters we decided to keep ours basic. We decided this as basic posters with simple messages had the greatest affect, winning awards and gaining praise from the media. For our poster we would have a basic message on the back of a fire engine as this would hit strike the audience as the message was ‘stop arson around’ it uses mimic swearing as a way to emphasise how much time firemen waste responding to prank calls. For our Radio trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjcRilsjWcc&feature=player_embedded) we used a real emphasis on sound effects this was because it would draw the listener’s attention and interest them, we wanted them to feel like they wanted more resulting in them to watch our documentary, the sounds used were fire engine sirens and fire-fighters talking about death experiences.
3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?
In order to make improvements to our documentary we carried out an audience feedback test where we showed our rough cut ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t4le5jHnK4&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL) to a small audience and asked them to decide which areas can be do better. Beforehand the rough cut had no voice over’s so the audience picked up on this and expressed that they thought voice over’s should be added, when they were added the audience believe our product was more professional. The audience also pointed out where bad cuts and poor editing skills had been used; this was helpful as this was later corrected. To further improvements we sent out questionnaires with our final cut (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fG-xI1dDGs&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL) on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. This enabled us to gain wider audience feedback which could improve our documentary. From this we found that our documentary may only appeal to a local audience but because of the strikes and media attention on the fire service a larger target market would be available as our documentary is present and relevant. We had different responses from our questioned audience which helped the process of our final product. Overall the editing process was difficult due to the amount of filming we did; this caused a poor flow at the end of our production. If we were to make another documentary the planning process would be better as we would know before hand what we wanted to film and where it go , this time around because of the reality and nature of our product it could not be scripted meaning we had to take opportunities to film as they arose. Overall looking at audience feedback our product was easy to understand and easy to relate to, this could result in large viewing figures and people as the documentary connects to the audience. The product will receive more viewers from the local area of Barnsley but with the right exposure and marketing could have a more national appeal.
4) How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
Prior to the production of our documentary we had to look at similar products to ensure ours could be the best possible using the technology available at the time. We also massed a large amount of research online using various websites such as the Barnsley fire service site (http://www.syfire.gov.uk/1421.asp) and Google to enhance a wider range of sources which could allow us to find information to the best of our ability. The internet was the best tool within our research as it enabled us to watch further documentaries on the BBC I player , channel 4 on demand and also channel 5 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3trH-M6bxm8&has_verified=1) watching these documentaries allowed us to further our knowledge on what a good and bad documentary consists of. In the long run this would help us to film our documentary in a professional manner and avoid the slip ups of previous products.
While making our documentary we also used blogger (http://wwwthefireservicetoday.blogspot.com/) to fish our research together and plan, this was simple and effective to use as I could view my other team members contributions without seeing them in person. Also blogger would save everything posted and as it was online it was easy to go back and use as there was no hassle of searching through papers and notes. We tried to use the best available cameras to film our documentary, the 2 we used were the Sony handheld camera and the large HD camera. The smaller one was used to take photographs and was a success as it didn’t tend to pixelate and would take clear bright images. The larger camera was used to film the movie pieces for our documentary we opted to use this as it filmed in HD and was the best quality at the time we were filming. When we filmed our audience feedback we used the smaller Sony camera as it was accessible and easy to take to different locations due to its small size. The larger HD camera was perfect as lighting looked great on it and it was easy to alternate between different shot techniques.
To record our voice over’s and radio trailer a H4 zoom recorder was used as this was up to date with technology and provided a crisp clear sound giving a more professional feel to our documentary.
Editing was done on IMovie and Final Cut Pro as on the Apple Macs this was the best current technology for editing movies
Using final cut pro can be quite hard to use at first as it quite a complex programme, after we got used to it cutting scenes together and adding special effects came quite easy.
