Evaluation (Question 4)

During the filming process of my documentary I have learned quite a bit about cameras and the techniques to capturing great clips of riding. The camera I was using is a ‘Cannon 600D’ which films at 720p quality at 30 frames per second, learning to simply film with the camera was child’s play as cannon cameras are notoriously easy to film with. However to get more interesting and flowing shots I had to experiment with a lot of different angles and lenses to get each segment of riding exactly how I wanted it too look. There were only two lenses I used and they were a 50-200 mm zoom lenses and a wide angle ‘Fisheye’, both were used quite equally throughout the documentary as this keeps the shot types slightly different and makes the whole film more interesting. The other camera I used was the ‘GoPro’ sports camera to capture all of the point of view shots of the rider, this camera was the most useful as it allows you to really get into the riders perspective as he hurtles down the trails.  However with both of these cameras there was a steep learning curve involved, the positioning and set up of each shot is crucial to how the overall documentary looks. This is why filming took so long as each shot had to be planned and rehearsed so that the riding and the camera work was perfect for the final shot.

The software used was nothing really new to me as I have done graphic design for 2 years so making the two subsidiary tasks was quite a quick process as I already had all of the skills needed in ‘Adobe Illustrator.’ I used illustrator mainly to arrange all of the images and add the text to the double page spread and advert, I personally found ‘illustrator’ a lot easier to use than ‘Indesign’ because I have had a lot more experience using it with my design course. However I did have to learn how to edit all of my footage on ‘Premiere,’ this took a while to get used too as editing all of the clips together was quite a long process especially while trying to learn how to use the software. The hardest part to try and get right was the sound in the background of the interview as it was far too quite, for this I had to try and find out how to raise on bit of the sound while keeping another one at the same level. The music was a bit difficult to try and get right as well as I needed it too fade in and out of the interview clips not just stop and start.

There were three main internet sites that helped my project along a lot, they where: ‘Youtube’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘Pinkbike.’ Facebook was a great help in organizing the rides with my friends and for getting hold of some of the equipment I needed to film, I mainly just used the chat function on the website to arrange where and when to meet my rider and occasionally plan some of the shots and locations for the next week. ‘Youtube’ was only really helpful when trying to learn how to use some of the more obscure functions in ‘Premiere’  to help me get the sound right, there are guides that can show you how to do anything on most of the ‘Adobe’ programs on ‘Youtube’ I found this very useful as I was a complete amateur at editing when I began the project. The biking forum ‘Pinkbike’ was quite a lot of help when coming up with the ideas for what type of shots to use when filming specific styles of riding such as downhill compared to park. There is a whole section of the website dedicated to the different filming techniques that you can use to film riding in a forum style lobby where anyone on the website can contribute, this is useful if the people on it are being serious as you can get other riders opinions about the best ways to film.

Questionnaire results

http://www.slideshare.net/Alexlee1503/media-coursework-evaluation-33260355

If you would like to follow the link above to my questionnaire answers and my own interpretations of the results. 

Questionnaire

Question 1

What age range are you in ?

>14

15-17

18-21

21-30

<30

Question 2

What gender are you ?

Male

Female

Question 3

What would you rate the documentary out of 10

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Question 4

What is the strongest element of my project?

Riding

Sound

Interview

Advert

DPS

Question 5

What is the weakest element of the project?

Riding

Sound

Interview

Advert

DPS

Question 6

What would you change about the project ?

Cinematography

Interview

Music

Narrative

Question 7

How informative did you think the documentary was about the sport ?

 Very

Average

Not good

Useless I learnt nothing

Question 8

Would you recommend this video to others ?

Of course it was brilliant

Maybe to some of them

Probably not

Never

Question 9

If there were more documentaries on TV like this one would you watch them ?

Of course

Yes

Maybe

No

Question 10

Where would you expect to find this video ?

Youtube

Social networks

Pinkbike

TV

Evaluation (Question 3)

My target audience for the documentary ‘Six Months In’ was quite large as I wanted the video to appeal to anybody who wanted to learn more about mountain biking. This is why I kept the interview questions quite general rather than specific for the young male rider, I do think only having one rider does slightly limit the viewpoint of the documentary and could narrow down the audience to older or female riders as they will find it more difficult to relate. However this should not be an overruling factor of the video as it doesn’t generalize the sport or the athlete. I attempted to target a large audience by just making the video more about the riding than the person doing the riding, unfortunately  I needed to put in the interview which might put some people off watching the full documentary.

I feel the strongest element of my documentary was the cinematography, it took months of filming and editing to get all of the riding to look as clean and planned as it did in the final video. This is something I hope the audience questionnaires will pick up on when they watch the documentary.  The filming of the riding was meant to look fast paced to help make the video exciting and make the sport itself look fun to take part in, I feel this worked well as the clips are all cut quickly and look quite professional.  The main weakness of the whole documentary was probably Zac himself in the interview clips as he was quite rigid and boring to watch talk, however the clips are still composed well and look great alongside the riding.

Evaluation (Question 2)

My first and second subsidiary tasks combine well to join both as good adverts for my documentary. I felt both tasks having the same style and feel would group them together and advertise the documentary as a pair rather than two separate things. Unfortunately  the documentary itself was very hard to try and join with the other two tasks, this was mainly because the documentary didn’t have any sort of tittle sequence to apply the typefaces and colour scheme too. The fonts I used on the video had to be different to the ones used on the other tasks as they didn’t show up on the moving background I wanted to use.  I don’t think the documentary linking with the subsidiary tasks was that much of a necessity for the projects success as a whole, this was simply because the advert and the double page spread where to advertise for the documentary so they needed to be an obvious pair unlike the documentary which should have been able to work on its own as a final piece of media.

The subsidiary tasks are full of similarities, such as the use of the same typefaces and colour schemes. Using the same typeface for the tittles on both tasks keeps the same general look and style of design to both tasks and links them clearly to the documentary. The colour scheme also adds to this as it makes sure that the tittles and images keep the same feel to them throughout both advertising tools. The general layouts are the same for both tasks as well, I tried to be just as bold and striking with the layout of the advert and the double page spread, this wasn’t especially to make the two link but too make sure that the main information stood out on the pages. This was especially easy on the advert as the general conventions of an advert are to make it stand out and be eye catching, however most magazine spreads don’t place as much emphasis on making the tittles a large part of the page.

There are quite a few main differences between my tasks and then again especially with the documentary.  The differences between the advert and the double page spread are mostly with the way the two pages have to be set out as they are different genres of media product. The advert for example has to be simple with a bold background image that shows a little bit of the subject of the documentary, this is why the tittles are very bold and there isn’t that much other information on the page at all. The double page spread on the other hand is more about the information and therefore needed to be a bit more structured and calm so that the entire article was easy to read and understand. As for the documentary compared to the subsidiary tasks there are a lot of differences as they are completely different forms and styles.

The main shared elements of all three tasks are the imagery used in all of them. As I was filming all of the clips to create the documentary I was also taking some photographs purposefully to use on the advert and the double page spread, this was very useful when it came to creating the subsidiary tasks as I already had all of the images I needed to really make my advert and double page spread stand out.

Evaluation (Question 1)

My  main product uses quite a lot of the forms and conventions of real media documentaries, I made it following the research id done into real short documentaries to make sure that my own documentary would easily fit in with the real ones. The first form I stuck to was the narrative of the documentary by piecing together the interview clips with lots of shots of riding. This style of documentary is very popular on websites such as  ‘pinkbike’ as it allows the film makers to condense a lot of the narrative into a short space of time while also showing off the riders skills. I also tried to keep a very fun and flowy style to the filmed clips and the editing of the documentary, this was done to try and mirror the style and delivery of real sporting documentaries. As for mise-en-scene I didn’t want to make the rider look too professional like most other documentaries, I wanted to keep the video very relaxed and fun to make the audience see that anyone could take part and enjoy this sport. This is where some other documentaries of the same genre fall short as they make the riders seem extremely professional almost to a level where people may start to think they couldn’t do what the riders in videos do, this is the opposite message to my own documentary as I wanted everyone to see and be inspired to ride more than they do now.  Another convention I stuck quite rigidly too was the cinematography aspects of filming the riding. I tried to use similar shots too real life sports filming to make sure that my video clips looked just as stylish and fast paced as real documentaries.

My T.V. advert was fairly basic, however I did base it on the adverts I have seen and on the ones I researched at the start of the projects. After analyzing these I tried to keep the basic layout of the page the same with a large, bold tittle to sell the program and catch the audiences eye to make sure they  tune in too watch the documentary. The other part of the tittle is a bit lower down on the page to show it’s a separate it from the riders name, this is also why they’re in a different font to one another to make sure they weren’t too similar or blended into one. I used the same font from the ‘Six Months In’ for the time, date and channel at the bottom of the page. This was just done to create some link between the tittles, and also separate the main tittle and the secondary name of the documentary. The only real way I challenged the normal conventions of a T.V advert was with the image as a background, I did this to make the background of the advert stand out from most other adverts id looked at. However when the image was in colour it was very hard to get the colours right for the tittles and information, changing it too black and white was a good solution to this problem as it made the tittle colours stand out even more than before.

The magazine double page spread sticks rigidly too the normal conventions of magazines layout and forms. However the imagery and style of the page is slightly different to most magazines, I made the page look slightly more exciting with the use of a bold background picture and the smaller images of riding. The background image works amazingly in black and white as it allows the images on top to really stand out from the rest of the page, the image itself is also part of what makes it work with the rider on one side of the pages with the article around him to make sure he stands out.  The typefaces I used was the same fun and more scriptive font for the tittle and the same colour scheme as well, this is the same for the sub tittle as well however I did stager the individual words on the page to create some more interesting shapes rather than just a straight line of text. I tried to make the smaller images look as if they were ontop of the magazine rather than just part of the page, this doesn’t follow the conventions of most double page spreads as most would have neatly arranged the images to go along side the text.  This was not the style I wanted to go with so I decided to make the images look more 3D to make my DPS more fun and energetic than most of the same style magazines.