Group Evaulation

The three members of our production crew include myself, Livvie and Matthew, after this project came to an end, realised our team work and efforts were well used and overall we worked together well and our individual skills benefited our film well. Matt were more interested and well educated in the editing process, therefore his skills were very beneficial to our project. Livvie was more focused on the acting and design side to the work considering her other two chosen subjects are drama and textiles these skills came in handy when designing our advert and the acting in the documentary. Me on the other hand i felt more incontrol with the camera in my hand, as i feel that my skills and knowledge about camera and which shots would work best would be a great aspect to add to our film. Overall our team work was to a high standard, with no arguments or undicided issues, if one person had a different opinion then we were include theirs in some way everytime. I would most likely work in the same group if i had the operrtunity again, considering i worked with Matt in last year's thriller project i knew that i would be able to get on well with him, and livvie is a good friend of mine who's opinions are very knowldge full, she was a greast aspect to the team.

Evaulation: Question 3 (typed up)

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

In the planning stages of the film, we looked at various articles on the internet which discussed the symbolic nature of apples in British culture. A lot of our research also stemmed from Wikipedia pages on apples and other apple related sites.

Constructing the film involved an entirely new media product to all the team – using Apple iMovie as editing software for the film. This allowed us to create a smooth film with professional tools which would ultimately lead to a classy look, a contrast to the somewhat shoddy work of last year’s efforts. All the while we were updating our online blog, keeping it up-to-date with our progress and any future plans, which again incorporates another media technology, branching into further fields.

In the ancillary tasks, we grabbed some images from the internet – including a strip of film and an apple – as well as taking some images of apples ourselves and then manipulated these in photoshop. To construct the advert and article, we used Microsoft Publisher. Incorporated into the article are also some screenshots from the film itself which demonstrates a clear understanding of photo manipulation, particularly with regard to the advert and the duplication of the apples.

For the evaluation, we decided to create a film in an interview setting in response to the questions which we had to fulfil. By using this medium, it offered us another opportunity to employ another aspect of media technologies. In addition to the filmed interview, we will also upload some accompanying material such as PowerPoints or Prezi’s to our blogs.

Throughout the project, we have used a wide range of materials and products such as Microsoft Office products, Adobe Photoshop, Apple iMovie as well as online platforms such as Blogger.com. These have extended our knowledge and understanding of media products and shed new light on the opportunities which are available as well as showcasing our talents as both a group and individuals.

Evaulation: Question 2 (typed up)

2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

The identity of our documentary and supporting work is highlighted by our signature image of the apple on the bench which features in our film, advert and magazine article. We chose to incorporate this into our work because of the significance of the apple but also in order to set the context, portraying the countryside within the background. In terms of our advert, we replicated this image as a way of reflecting mass production whilst keeping the idea of local produce and every apple is different. We did this by incorporating the effect of Polaroid photographs. We also had to do this whilst considering the restrictions of the Channel 4 style guide, including typography, colours, text boxes, images and tone of voice. The Channel 4 logo was placed half way up on the right, as required by the channel 4 style guide, we also used a soft lemon colour for our logo and text boxes which we lifted from one of the apple images used in our advert. The woven background we have used was inspired by a scrapbook feel and the colours represent natural materials. In making our advert, we also had to consider the language we would use in representing our film. The heading we used reflects the content of the film: “Apples, Baking and Cider Making”, we made it short and rhyming so people would remember it, including the key word: ‘Apple’ which feature is the title of the film.

Evaulation: Question 1 (typed up)

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

In comparison to the example documentary ‘Grizzly man’ where music is used in places to create a more abstract movie feel, we chose to keep our documentary raw by leaving the natural surrounding sounds in place of a music background being placed over the shots. This can be placed in comparison with the documentary ‘A Damn Nice Caff’ which focused on leaving the natural, atmospheric sounds.

Our documentary was a mixture of two modes; observational and poetic, which helped to create a documentary with a narrative, as well as observing the subject. Our overall aim for our documentary was to produce a documentary which had a meaning behind it but also explored a storyline aspect. This is why we included interviews - like in ‘Winnebago Man’ - as well as having story like scenes walking in different locations which we felt were relevant to the country style setting. As the five minute clip we made was made to be placed at the beginning of the documentary, the titles we used reflected most examples we watched, simple, basic design with plain primary colours.

We looked at channel 4 and BBC 2 documentaries for inspiration as we decided we wanted to create a film which would be played on either channel, where sophisticated, educated, historically interested people would watch it. Specifically looking at country file, planet earth and My New Brain all three have similar ideas as ours, we tried to in cooperate what we had learnt from watching these documentaries, such things as, which shots worked best, which sounds, (natural or abstract), which lighting, editing techniques etc. Whilst going through the editing process we revisited the examples looked at and gathered ideas from these to help us edit our piece.

We figured out that whilst these documentary examples would help us to figure out the styles which are effective and work for an observational documentary, we needed to broaden our research base by finding out basic movie techniques for documentaries through websites which gave us the knowledge we needed to include documentary filming techniques into our own work.

Evaluation; An Apple a Day

Above is a video upload of our Evaluation, which was filmed, describing our efforts and the stages that we went through to create the documentary 'An Apple a Day'

For our evaluation last year we chose to just type up our findings and results, this year we decided to integrate the media aspect into it, by creating a video evaluation of our comments and thoughts. Below is the Evaluation Film and a typed up copy of our own sections that we evaluated:

An Apple a Day

Here is our documentary 'An Apple a Day', this is the final cut and final product at its very last stage. Enjoy :)

An Apple a Day... 'Advert'

Whilst confronting the task of creating an Advert for our documentary we took this opportunity to look at adverts created for television documentaries. After looking at ones from such channels as 1,2,3 and 4 we decided to go with the basic but effective advert style by Channel 4.
After deciding the layout style for our advert, we decided to have a Polaroid style picture sequence of apples on one of the pages and then the title and basic details with the channel 4 logo on the other. An example of a channel 4 article advert:-
The bold boxes surrounding the text, makes the words more distinctive to what it would be without them. The use of a statement pub like title on the piece 'High on blow' gives a distinct view on what the aim of the documentary is. However this text is not the title of the piece, the title is placed further down the advert, styled in the same font and colours and layout but smaller. The time of and day of the showing is placed at the bottom of the advert just below the image of the 'storm junkie'. The channel 4 logo, in the same colour scheme, is positioned to the right of the advert.
All of these layout techniques used for Channel 4 adverts were carried out with our own advert. Making the simple structure effective and influence our 'An Apple a Day...' documentary advert.
The process of creating the advert taking take much time but a lot of effort. We started off by planning out the layout and coming up with image ideas which we could place in the advert. Then we chose to take photos of apples in different locations, but keeping it in the theme of our film, this is why we went with the apple image on the bench, as there is a shot in the film which is similar to this. The audience can then relate this to the film and advert, making a connection. We chose to edit the photos taken in photoshop to make the colours sharp and bold. The creation of the advert was easier than first thought as the techniques that were used to make the advert stand our were mainly with the photos in photoshop. Overall the advert turned out well and was easy to create.
Here is our advert:-

Ancillary Task

When creating the Ancillary Task, we wanted our piece to reflect a mimic of the guardians film magazine articles in G2. We also took inspiration from other magazines like the Times Culture and Radio Times. Many Film magazines help to promote up and coming TV Series', documentaries, Blockbuster Films and low budget films. We felt that our Documentary 'An Apple a Day...' would be best suited in either G2 or Times Culture as the documentary is aimed at a sophisticated, historically interested and broad minded person. We started off by figuring out the articles layout and planning which photos, we had taken, we wanted to include in the article. A lot of the photos we chose we ended up editing in photo shop to either brighten them up or give them an interesting pop art effect. After reading many articles that were written about documentaries, a similar interest to ours or a related style of writing; we used this inspiration and technique of writing to compose our own article to promote our documentary.

We started off by writing the basic information that people would want to know first thing before reading the article, information like the date it will be played, channel, time, genre and what it is about. We then focused on talking about the production, the film makers and including witty humour throughout to keep the reader interested. We kept the majority of the writing plain and simple with the colour black but for the heading and sub-heading we changed the colour to make it stand out at a first glance. A film reel is situated at the right hand side of the piece and photos taken by our self and editing have been placed in the reel slides.

We thought this would add a stylish look to the magazine article. The end result turned out better than we all thought, the effort and time taken to produce the piece was worth it for the final copy which stood out and had a great witty descriptive writing piece.

Click Here to see and read our article.

Audience Feedback of An Apple A Day...

After completing our Documentary after hours of hard work and time consuming filming and preparation days, we felt that it wouldn't be fair to just leave the film how it was and how we thought it should be. This is where the Audience feedback comes in. We asked two sets of groups to watch and comment on our documentary, one group being the rest of our Media Class, helping us to give a professional eye on our work, and the other being a set of friends who are interested in and participate in some way into the drama and media world.

After watching and giving us feedback we came back with many comments, both positive and negative. Some positive ones which stood out to me would be that they liked the integration of the shots being spliced together, but still keeping in theme and in the storyline of the documentary. Also the interviews and natural atmospheric sounds which were used instead of music, the interviews were said to give a realistic vibe to the documentary.

Some negative and constructive comments that were given, were used to help change and improve our film, things like; one person felt the title's font should be the same, and to just use different colours to help make the title stand out. Another thing being some people noticed a jumping at the start of one of the scenes, this was quickly edited out and made to look professional again.

Overall i feel that the audience feedback was a good thing to get as it gave a second set of eyes to look at the piece, they were able to distinguish things that we hadn't even thought or noticed to be a problem, this meant making the documentary more professional and to the highest standard we could do.