1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and
conventions of real media products?
My factual insert i think relates perfectly with my documentary as the image is when the dogs are realised
from the cages. Although i did not take this image myself there is a reason. I wasn't allowed on the track or
inside to film, and the footage i did have i just don't think it was strong enough. I did try to get footage of
YouTube to use as my achieve footage then to use it as the factual insert picture too, but again no website
allowed the footages to be downloaded because YouTube banned it, or it was not supported. Also when i
print screened the footage then blew it up for the picture it was blurry so i lost quality. So in the end i used
Google pictures which wasn't ideal however the picture is fine. The pun and subtitle and title fits in with
what i wanted to get across. I followed the channel 4 style guide to a T in the fact i used the colours behind
the writing from the colour palette from the picture, The channel 4 logo is where it always is with the factual
inserts and also the right size was very important as they are very specific about it. My text follows the
conventions, and i think it sets the right tone.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
My documentary was made in thought it would be played on the channel 4 site, so i followed the
conventions that were set out by the Channel 4 style guide and there codes and conducts. I used
some technical features which channel 4 use in their documentaries such as over the shoulder
shot, swopping the camera to me the interviewer and the person who was being questioned. I
also used the tool of zooming in on important things. Through editing i also used other
conventions that they follow like the use of transitions, cut scenes and voice over.
My documentary was an expository documentary which i thought i carried out the conducts they
use quite well although my voice over or ‘voice of God’ was female which might not of followed
the usual conducts.
2. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
I presented my documentary to a group of people in my target audience and i received quite a
mix review. Positive feedback i received were ‘ i did well to get the shots i did, and it was clear i
had planned my scenes out’. I was grateful for this because i did struggle to get access into the
‘dog track’ as it was not allowed so i had to settle for standing outside. I also had to arrange
different times with the person who worked with the dogs. Other positive feedback were ‘my
editing transitions were done nicely’. Again i was pleased with this feedback. Negative feedback
were, in the interview the lighting was too dark. Looking back this is massive error and it could
of easily been sorted however i didn't spot it when i was filming so it was too late. I would need
to reconsider my interview if i was to do it again as there was no natural light due to the time
and the room light just wasn't strong enough. Other negative feedback was the quality wasn't
the best in the interview. Again this was my fault as i had the camera on the wrong setting and
again was too late to change so i had to make the best from a bad situation.
Overall i was pleased with the feedback as the negative feedback i already knew myself. It was
trial and error and silly misjudgement which could of easily been sorted but due to time,
weather and peoples timetables there just wasn't enough time for me to fix them.
3. How did you use new media technologies in the construction and
research, planning and evaluation stages?
To make my documentary i used Imovie on a Apple Mac to put together, and edit my documentary. I used
this software because it is completely exclusive for Apple and it has the ability and technical ability to do
everything to a standard of which a professional documentary would be done to. I used Microsoft and
PowerPoint to do all my work and research writing on. This is the best way to present text and is very simple
to use. From this i could then upload the work onto Scibd and slide share where then i could upload it to
Blogger. This is what i used to present all my work, where i made what could come across like a diary extract
where i made comments along the process of making my documentary.
I also used sites like photo bucket, Prezi and sound cloud. I had to upload images to photo bucket if i didn't
want to upload them straight onto blogger to have a different finish,. Prezi i used so people who wanted to
access my work can zoom in on things and have a bit of clearer yet different way to have a look at my work
in more detail. To film the documentary i used a hand camera made by Sony. It was a very good quality
camera and we had the tripod to set up and use it to film it had easy to use zoom features and it featured
light adjustments where we could change the adjustment of the lighting in an area to make it more suitable
for what we needed. I also used YouTube to obviously upload my documentary but also i tried to download
some achieve footage from there which i emailed the owner of the video and he said it was ok to use
however YouTube had blocked access to pretty much every video i thought was suitable for my footage. The
reason i wanted it was because i couldn't access going to the dog track myself and filming them race as it is
not allowed. In the end i decided to leave it, and get photos of ‘Google’ and also a website for protecting
greyhounds to use as my footage and also the factual insert picture as it was most suited.
To be honest i didn't have any troubles with using the camera or uploading anything onto the sites like
Slideshare etc however i found the site blogger a nightmare. As we was using the software in school, for
some reason blogger didn't let me access my account, so i was constantly behind the rest trying to upload
work, it deleted things and I just didn't have a good experience with it. However its done the job, my work is
up there but i would of preferred to have used something else.