Evaluation for our documentary

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

Picture 1 is a print screen of our documentary beginning, the part with our
documentary title. This title fits with our documentary because it is about
education. The newspaper cut outs make it seem more effective.

Picture 2 is a print screen from the student protest, due to the rising tuition fees
the government have so gladly decided to make, so that our country can be put
back into order again. It is a long shot, so that more detail can easily fit in.

Picture 3 is a print screen of an interview cut with Starbuck Coleman, about

what he feels the tuition fees increase has created. His name is in a blue
rectangular foreground, and is in white writing. These two colours stand out
from each other, and from the background, so that you can see it clearly.
Picture 4 is a print screen of more newspaper cut outs with a voiceover saying,
“Students are facing an average debt of £15’000 a year”, and this is what would
become even worse as the tuition fees rise.

Picture 5 is a print screen of an interview cut from Andrew Rosindell. As you can
see, it is split up into two things. One is the interview of Andrew Rosindell, and
the other is a part of what he says, put into text format. This is usually found in
some documentaries. If not, then found on the news, usually with the phone call
conversation.

Picture 6 is a print screen of students working in an apprenticeship. This

apprenticeship is engineering, and this is one of the many jobs found in
apprenticeships. The voiceover in the documentary, tells you that there are over
190 apprentices, and our documentary shows a few of these.

Picture 7 is a print screen of a cutaway. This cutaway is of parliament, and there

is also an insert of 2 MPs that you see throughout these few cutaways. This is not
usually seen in documentaries, so we made an exception and decided to use the
insert in that way.

Picture 8 is another cutaway, with a voiceover talking about debt . This is a

cartoon picture, which clearly gives you an understanding of student debt. Most
people would react to this picture with laughter, and therefore would watch
more of the documentary.

Picture 9 is a print screen of another interview with students who were at the
protest, and how they thought the protest was like. You hear them saying that
this protest with the passionate protesters getting violent, was a long time
coming, ever since the government decided to increase the tuition fees.

You may have noticed that the logo HCTV is in all of these print screens, as this is
the production of our documentary. HCTV means Havering College Television,
and Havering College is where our documentary was made.
2). How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary
texts?

The effectiveness of my main product and ancillary texts is that they all fit with
our documentary Education Treadmill. The documentary we have done is about
education in Universities and Apprentices, and the differences between them.

With my newspaper advert, there are two piles of books, which give you the
understanding that it is to do with education. The logo HCTV is also on this
poster, so that you know that it is to do with the same thing. As well as this, the
poster has things that the documentary hasn’t, like for instance, the date and
time that it will be aired. Well, that’s what adverts are needed for, to give the
details not given in the documentary. This is also included in my radio trailer so
that people, who listen to radio, would still get an advert for our documentary.

This combination of texts would give a wide variety of audience feedback and
also give them something to think about, before they decide to watch the entire
documentary. We have also been told to make a voiceover commentary for our
documentary, which must be at least two and half minutes or at most two and
half minutes.

The voiceover commentary would be very effective, as it would tell you about
what our documentary is expected to show you. Being only two and half
minutes, there must be a lot of stuff involved, as a lot of things need to be
explained. Alex’s group in media A2, has done a voiceover commentary for his
music video, and that is very effective, telling you what the video is about and
what it includes.

3). What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As our media product is on youtube, we would have had audience feedback on
the finished result. And as our finished result is about University, Apprentices
and has the student protest, we may have a fair amount of replies, or of course I
could be wrong. When I checked the video, it only said 25 views and 1 like. This
is bad for our documentary, because I don’t think our audience is able to reply to
our video, unless they don’t know what they are looking for.

Taking our questionnaire from our pre-production, we had used the results that
we gained, to help us make our documentary as good as we could. As well as
this, now that the documentary is complete, there is another questionnaire that
is going around. It’s a questionnaire I done, for audience feedback on the
completed product.

The above questionnaire is a print screen of a completed questionnaire,

answered in light with our completed documentary. This questionnaire was
completed by one of our audience, his name is Charlie, and he has given us clear,
critical answers to each question.
  1). Which idea out of the above, did you like or prefer the best?
 The idea to use various cutaways in order to keep the audiences
attentions very clever.

 2). Why did you like or prefer this idea?

 I choose that choice because it gives it a professional look.

 3). In what ways do you think it reflects the typical generic conventions of
other types of Documentary, or other Documentaries within this genre?
 It shows the information needed and doesn’t leave anything out, which is
something that you would need in an educational documentary..

 4). What improvements would you suggest to us, for us to reflect on?
 I believe it would have been much more true if it were a young student
voiceover and not an establishment voice of a certain class and age that
says BBC Radio 4.

The above text marked with bullets, are the answers to the four questions in the
questionnaire. These answers came as a reply back to me as an e-mail using
messenger, and they are also critical for our documentary. Question 4 clearly
tells you if there could be any improvements to suggest, so that we can reflect on
this. His reply to the question is, “I believe it would have been much more true if
it were a young student voiceover and not an establishment voice of a certain
class and age.” This is a strong criticism, and we could’ve included a younger
student in with our documentary. We can improve on this next time we do a
documentary like this.
Another questionnaire I’ve been given back, with answers, is from a female
student, and she admits to spotting no faults in the documentary in with
question 4. The below text has the answers to this questionnaire reply.

 1). Which idea out of the above, did you like or prefer the best?
 Cutaways that fit with the voice over.

 2). Why did you like or prefer the idea?

 I think it made the whole documentary flow very naturally.

 3). In what ways do you think it reflects the typical generic conventions of
other types of Documentary, or other Documentaries within the same
genre?
 It has the same look and feel as other documentaries, the same general
conventions.

 4). What improvements would you suggest to us, for us to reflect on?
 I actually found no faults whilst watching this video and think you did a
very good job. Well done.

This we can also reflect on, and it seems that we don’t need to make any
improvements in her eyes. But also, I think the list I made, isn’t really that good.
It feels as though I didn’t make enough choices, but all the ideas in the list are
what I could find in the documentary.

So this question is now concluding with this. There have been clear explanations
to what we have learned from our audience feedback, by the use of e-mailing
questionnaires, and giving people printouts of the same thing. We have had
answers to the printouts, and there has been a clear explanation to what we
learned from this.

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

One type of media software I have used is messenger. This isn’t new software I
have used, because I began using this to send messages last year, so I knew how
to use it. When I used messenger, I sent a questionnaire around to people I knew
about the documentary, so that I could get some feedback for the evaluation. I
had managed to get some feedback, and the feedback is written in the 3 rd
question.

As well as this, in order to begin this evaluation, final cut pro was needed. Final
cut pro is where the editing took place, and it’s a great piece of software to use
for the beginning of editing. For the evaluation, the finished edit had to be placed
onto an empty disc, which Thibaut kindly did for me. The edit from final cut pro
was converted onto the disc, for the evaluation to commence.
The above picture isn’t a complete picture of final cut pro, but it’s the closest to
final cut pro without all the editing of tapes etc. For most of our research, we
used different Internet sources to complete the work we were given. That way,
we could then place the work onto blogger.

For blogger, we had to place all the work onto it, and make it neat as well. The
use of Scribd was very important, because we needed to keep our work in a neat
format, and Scribd was the best thing for it.