Evaluation (Question 1)

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

There are so many documentaries out there made by different TV channels made by famous documentary production companies. It is hard to keep audience interest for nearly 30 to 45 minutes in a documentary. While making the documentary, a lot of attention is needed to engage audience. There is a danger of falling in common territory. While bearing all this, we found that the article and news in Art and Entertainment page  covering the topic on "Graffiti" in public newspaper. Before finalising our topic, we had discussed about other topics but every one found this topic interesting and unique. Therefore, we decided to choose a topic for our documentary "Graffiti Art/ Vandalism or Political Free Speech". 

To have a clear understanding about the documentaries, we thoroughly researched and analysed different documentaries created by BBC, Channel 4, ITV etc. Our media product used different forms and convection of media products like cut-aways, voice over, rule of third etc.

As Graffiti is a very controversial subject, we decided to capture opinions of different people from different lives; from graffiti artist to general public and students. Some sees graffiti as vandalism but is it really a vandalism? Some sees it as an Art but is it really an Art? or Is it a Political Free Speech?  We will come up with tens and thousands of different answers.  Whether it is criticism or complement, people are free to label it. So, here in our documentary we had tried to show the point of different people.

In our Pre-production stage, I watched many graffiti documentary both 'against and for'.  The short documentaries, "Street Art" and "The Birth of Israel" helped me to understand more about framing interviewee and capturing location in the documentary . These documentaries consisted of different topic and contents: one is Graffiti Art and another is of history of Israel. The subject of documentaries have a huge contrast. Their difference helped me a lot about how to framing an interview with soundtracks attached on it. The figure1 and figure2, given  below show the importance of capturing interviewee's complete facial detail  and camera should be located in such a way that it must avoid interviewee  looking direct at the camera but rather on left or right side. 

Figure:1

Figure:2

 While putting these framing in mind, we tried to capture the interview in a same way for our documentary. Here , while filming, we used medium Shot a lot. This shot is usually used to show the facial expression of the character. As we are making a documentary, we used this shot to focus on interviewee. 

Figure:3

In the documentary, we added different pictures of graffiti as it will divert our audience's interest for a while. As our documentary is about Graffiti/ Art, so the pictures of graffiti in the documentary is common to be seen in the clip. Even while interviewing graffiti artist (figure:4), we interviewed him in the place where the  graffiti cab be seen. Therefore, connotes him as graffiti artist. For most of our interviews, we used blue colour wall at the background because it helped to isolate the interviewee with it's surrounding.

Figure:4

For some of the basic clips, we put some cut- a- ways of the actual graffiti artist spraying the wall in Waterloo. As we are making a documentary about graffiti, it is quite basic to use this kind of clip.  Audience expect these kind of clip in our documentary. While filming him, we had used long medium shot because we wanted to focus more on the body of graffiti artist, his body posture while making a graffiti and to show what he is making.

Figure:5

In few scenes (figure:5), we have shown a clip along with the bit of information about graffiti in the side because it helps a lot to our audience to understand more about the graffiti and Law. As we had only written in important information about graffiti in the side of the clip it is quite easy for our audience to give more attentions to those words.

As a sound person it was hard for me to find the right music for our documentary. I went through over 10-20 CD's to get the right music for our documentary. While watching these documentary, I have even noticed that the music changes as the scene changes and music becomes dramatic when something is big about to happen or something exciting is about to happen. This has helped me a lot to choose appropriate soundtrack.  As music plays a vital role in documentary I have tried my best to choose right music for it. I selected various music from different albums like Art Bust, think creative, Jazz, Punk and Hip-Hop etc.

Here, in our documentary, we used only one track because  if we use many tracks in one video then it may get degaster and keeping that in mind we had only decided to use this one music. I actually got this music from the CD Album called Jazz Track 1. The reason why I chose this music among others are because it has every bit of thing that I need as a audio. From the music of DJ's kit to the music of drum,his music sound more like mix of  jazz and R N B mix. For our voice over we asked Andy Popperwell as his voice sounds posh, strong an attractive at the same time.

Evaluation (Question 2)

RECORDED ANSWER:


STE-007 (Question 2) by sayhitosusu

WRITTEN ANSWER:


2) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary task?


Ancillary task plays a vital role to promote our documentary. It is all about how to attract our audience and how to make them watch the documentary. So taking them in mind, I have tried my best to amend these ancillary task. 99.9%products are sold out in the market because of the advertisement so which means successful newspaper advertisement and Radio trailer will be able generate more audience. So, in order to make my newspaper effective, I went through Google and searched different types of newspaper advertisement; from NHS newspaper advert to Road Safety advert. Thus, it helped me a lot to gain an idea while making my newspaper advertisement. I have even learnt that it would be best to convey the topic of your documentary through images.


At first, I had no clue and lacked starting point to produce a newspaper advertisement. I had even tried to edit some pictures of graffiti from the filming of our documentary in Waterloo. Later, I decided to draw my advert because our topic is kind of related to arts. As well as people will be diverted if they do see advert in the form of sketch which is unusual. Our main target was to attract more audience, as Graffiti has always been more controversial subject.

Figure:1

Figure:2

While talking about my newspaper advertisement, I sketched my own newspaper advert and edited it. Figure:1 is my first draft here. While editing, I made my logo look more smaller, put the name of the newspaper by myself. The title of our documentary also looks smaller in here. While making my second draft (Figure:2), I was more concerned about it's presentation. I enlarged the font of title to draw the audience's attention. I even made my logo looks bigger so that the audience can see it where they can watch the documentary and at last I even copied the name of newspaper and did some editing and made it fit in the bracket. I have used different color in my picture of "The House of Parliament" to keep viewers engaged. I copied the headline of The Sun and the guardian from Google and edit it using Photoshop. Here in the picture while editing I added more extra lights so that people could notice it and the reason behind applying brighter color in the picture is to attract audience's eyes.


As we can see the name of both two news people which target audience is completely different from one another. Where "The Sun" newspaper have a target audience of working class to lower middle class where as "The guardian" newspaper have a target audience of middle to higher class. So, likewise my advert is also targeted to the people of all classes. I have even added the time and documentary’s release date at the side of the poster so, the audience can see when and where they can see the documentary and at what time.


Radio trailer 1-2 (susu Radio Trailer) by sayhitosusu
The radio trailer is of 0:41 seconds long. I had tried to make it shorter and effective because audience may feel bored if they heard too long trailer. Being part of media, it is very important to attract our audience with short and sweet yet effective quote. The voice in the radio trailer plays a vital role. So in order to make it sound more professional, we needed someone's voice to do voice over. Therefore, I requested our teacher Andy to do our voice over for our radio trailer. The reason for choosing his voice is because his voice has that pitch and power which can divert mind and engage the audience. He is very aware of high and low tone his voice that can be used in the documentary. In the middle of my Radio trailer, I added the small clip of interview given by an Art teacher. I have chosen to include this interview among others is because of her sentence, "I drew on a toilet wall: when you at school that is what most people do and than there is artist to take influence from that". It was interesting and so true. I hope my audience will also be more interested in watching this documentary after hearing her point of view about Graffiti.


As our documentary is about graffiti, the sounds used are mix of hip-hop and jazz.

Evaluation (Question 3)

3) What have you learned from your audience feedback?





Audience feedback is important because it helps us to improve and make our documentary better. After completing our documentary, we captured a video with three of our target audience from age between 18 - 30 and did survey on our documentary with our other target audiences to give us some feedback on our documentary. Among them one of our target audience whom we asked the questions was our film teacher, Steve. As being a film teacher and a target audience we expected him to give us honest answers.


The first question asked was:


a) Did you enjoy the Documentary?
Our target audience gave us a positive answer to this question. They said that they enjoyed it and even found it quite interesting as there are different elements they had expected to see in our documentary.They even thought that it was informative. Some of them like the way we put the pictures in the middle of the video to represent Art/ Graffiti. These positive response allowed us to become successful in targeting our audience.


b) Was the documentary interesting factual and what you expected?
When we asked this question to our target audience, everyone seemed to like this documentary. It turned out that we lived up to their expectation. However, at the same time they even thought that there were few things that they had not expected. The positive response from one of our audience was that he found it interesting and informative which helped him to enrich the knowledge as he had never seen the documentary on Graffiti before. he found it interesting, useful and very informative. As some of our target audience didn't know most of the stuffs about graffiti. For e.g. availability of the different places where they can make graffiti such as Southbanks (London). They were very pleased to know lots of things about graffiti. Most of the positive response in this question again made us successful in targeting our target audience in a right way.


c) Did the documentary flow and stay on topic?
Our target audience even thought that our documentary did flow and stayed on the topic. They thought that our documentary was balanced because of the content itself and the interviewee's various opinion about graffiti. One of our audience thought there wasn't as many interviewee as he had expected. It is the minus point of our documentary. He advised on adding more of the interviewee from different backgrounds and occupations like police officers would increase the quality of our documentary. This feedback helped me to review documentary as a whole and encourage to build more quality if I happen to make documentary.


d) Was there anything you did not like or found boring about the documentary?
Most of our audience liked our document visually. However, some of our audience taste in music did differ. This feedback made me more concerned to choose a kind of music that will fit to everyone audience's taste. Audience labelled our documentary interesting. So, this made me realize that our audiences do enjoyed our documentary and were quite happy with it.


e) Has the documentary effected you either in good or bad way?
Most of our audience said that it affected them in a good way as they found about both law and facts of graffiti which they were unaware of (If someone get caught doing graffiti then his punishment will be jail sentences and of £5000 fine). Being able to share these information with our audiences was productive and informative at the same time.


From one interview where an Art student accidentally hit on the clip-tie mic and because of which the sound is kind of disturbed in the middle bit from this I have learned that I should be more careful from next time and should make more concern to our interviewee about not to touch clip tie mic while talking. Looking at all these positive and negative responses I have learned that our audience gave us the true criticism whether it's in a good or bad way and these criticism made me more concern to focus more on my mistakes from next time and think about each and every detail on it from audio choosing to video making.

Evaluation (Question 4)

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

 Media technologies are very important in the construction, research, planning and in evaluation stage. 

While making this documentary, I used different media technologies and websites like blogger, Scribd, soundcloud, Final cut Pro, itune, soundtrack Pro.

As being a part of As media student before, it was quite easy for me to use a software like soundcloud, scribd,  Final Cut Pro and a website like blogger.



Figure:1

This year my role in the group was of a sound person. Therefore,  Final Cut Pro has been used only to edit my radio trailer. As I have already used Final Cut Pro last year for my media film project, it was quite easy to use this programme. To make the sound high and low, I used a "Pen" from "Tool Palette" and made a mark on audio that allowed me to move the audio level up and down.While editing,  I noticed a red line on the "Playhead". In order to remove a red line, I pressed Apple R. I even made the level of my audio equal and kept on checking the Audio meters so that the sound would not get any lower or higher than needed.

Figure:2

After editing my radio trailer in Final Cut Pro, I changed the radio trailer into quick time movie format and exported it into the Soundtrack Pro. Then changed it's format into both mp3 and AIFF format. I had never used this programme "Soundtrak Pro" before. It was totally new for me but with my teacher's guidance, I learned to use it. It was quite similar to Final Cut Pro but in a audio way. As this medium helped us to make our radio trailer sounds better, it was worth to use.

Figure:3

After changing the format of my radio trailer from quick time movie to mp3 and AIFF. I uploaded it in Soundcloud ( http://soundcloud.com/) . As I had already used this website few times before, music was uploaded without any difficulty. Being a sound Person, I used a soundcloud.com a lot. I needed to post more soundtracks in it. This website made my life easier as it is easy and quick to upload tracks in it.

Figure:4

After uploading the radio trailer in soundcloud, I shared a track by clicking on share button. After clicking on a share button, I copied the 'embed code' of the track and pasted it on my blogger's post. Then, I posted it in my blog. I used blogger not only for publishing sound track but for the whole media's project. Being an old blog user, was   it was easy for me to change the wallpaper of my blog and choose the picture on my own. I overcame few changes in the format through my classmates and teacher's guidance.












Figure:5


I scribbled my plan after some brainstorming and elaborated it afterwards. It made  research easier and saved time to find the right sound for documentary. As I am not that familiar with Scribd it was quite hard for me to use it. While making a brainstorm for sound I couldn't find the speech bracket so, later I asked my friend to help me out who is quite familiar with this website, and she help me out. Later  I found out that this website is quite useful and I am happy that I learned to use it because I may need it in future.

Figure:6

I used Google for my research process. Reading newspaper advertisements and watching documentaries were my other source of research. Also, Google was of great help while doing research. Everything can be found in Google and saves time. However, we have to give our attention to few misinformation that we come across.

Figure:7


I used "Youtube" to upload our documentary and audience feedback.
As we all are familiar with "Youtube", it was easy for me to use this website. Youtube is more popular among any socio-economic people to any age group. In order to make it visible to all and to reach our target audiences from all over the world, we posted our documentary in Youtube. As people from different country can watch the video from Youtube, it is the right place to upload videos.

Figure:8

I used voice recorder to record my Question no. 2.

At first , I tried to get familiar with recorder. After couple of minutes, it's function began to make sense as it was similar to the function of voice recorder of our mobile phones. It was simple. First, we needed to press "ON" button and press the "RED" rec. We wait until the  numbers is displayed over the screen. Then, we can start talking. To stop recording, we just need to press the "Red"  rec sign again. By using the USB wire, we can transfer recorded material in the computer.

Figure:9

We even used a software like Photoshop to edit our newspaper advertisement. Photoshop made us easy to attach one picture with another and crop out the unnecessary part of picture. At the beginning, I had problem using this medium as there were many things to take account of.  However, I became more familiar with the medium as the time passed. Now, all I need is to focus while using it.

Getting used to all this technologies and software made me aware of it's importance. The more we use it, there will be more chances to excel it.

Radio Trailer

Radio trailer 1-2 (Sustika Limbu) by sayhitosusu

Radio Trailer (Draft)

Graffiti is still seen as vandalism in our society on the other hand if we look at history it has often carried significant symbol of its own or has emerging graffiti artists brought any changes to the meaning of graffiti.

HCTV explores the subject "Graffiti Art/ Vandalism or Political Free Speech" on 15th of March 2011 at 7 PM.

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISEMENT (DRAFT)

Documentary analysis (Sustika and Anju)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8701959.stm

Sound 
Non-diegetic sound of the classical North Korean music is played at the background and this connotes that the people in North Korea are more traditional, along with this non diegetic music we can hear a diegetic sound of a troops training and a voice over (non diegetic music). In most of the scene sound person has used both diegetic and non-diegetic sound (voice over) together. I have even noticed that When we hear voice over at the back of the scene the sound of the diegetic music becomes lower then the non diegetic music. 


Editing
Here in this documentary the editor has used lots of cuts from one scene to another.
Eye line match is also used in this documentary which helps the audience to understand the relationship between two characters or to show the audience what the character is looking at.

Cinematography

The documentary starts with the medium low angle of statue to show the statue superior and cuts to the medium long shot of other statue. The scene cuts back to the medium close up shot of the monk to show the facial details of the character and cuts back to the medium long shot of the image of the president to connote the importance of the character. The scene cuts to the extreme shot of the students assembling in the line to march in front of the important figures of North Korea to show the importance of culture to the audience. The scene cuts to the extreme long shot of women wearing army dresses to show the women dominating society. The scene cuts to 3 shot of the children dancing and singing to show that even the new generation is trying hard to preserve their culture. The long shot and tracking movement of the characters bowing in the occasion to show the perseverance of the culture. The close up shot of the officer is used to show the facial expression of the character and the rule of third is also used to show the interview .

Mise-en-scene 

The costume Black suit is used to convey the audience that the Korea is of 21st century. The yellow national dress is used to show the audience that the people in korea still preserves their culture. The uniform of the officer connotes the war. It shows that the war between North and South could start any time and the north koreans are ready for it.

The prop red flag is used which connotes patriotic whereas red connotes danger, death, blood. The prop flower is used to connote new life. The prop statue is used to show the historical figure of North Korea.

The entire documentary is shot in North Korea.

Documentary Analysis 1

I am analyzing  5 minutes BBC documentary called "The Birth of Israel (2008)". Here, Jeremy Bowen presents a look back at the creation of the state of Israel, examining the events leading up to the Israeli war of Independence in 1949. (via youtube)

At the beginning of the scene, we can see a long shot of the sun setting and usually directors use this kind of shot to show the location. As the documentary is about a Israel we can hear a non diegetic sound of Israeli music at the background. Soon after the long shot scene blends to another medium long shot when the mosque is shown.

 In this picture, the editor has isolated the scene of mosque and it's surrounding. This can be seen by the difference of the color:color of  top of mosque as yellowish golden whereas rest are black and white. Now, medium close up of a city with close up shot  follows with a sign of crucifix. The editor uses the previous pattern to portray i.e  the color of crucifix yellowish golden. Altogether, the director shows the relationship between two different religion followed by the people of Israel and Palestine. The  non diegetic sound (voice over) from the background stating, "60 years ago Israel fought and won a war for it's independent for Palestine this was catastrophe", pause for a second "Two side have been fighting ever since" conveys us the message of deep differences between two countries.

After the scene, the effects on the video changes to holga-ish effect and even the music at the background changes to fast drum music following with the change of the background scene at fast pace. This time the editor provide us with pictures of bomb explosion, damaged buildings, army troops, guns, citizens and war. Here the editor has used black and white holga-ish effect for a few second scene because this documentary is about a Israeli war of Independence,1949. From this black and white effects he wants his audiences to know that these scene are from the past; of the war that Israel fought.  Long shot black and white picture of dead tree follows on the screen by the title of the documentary "The Birth of Israel". After the black and white long shot of the dead tree, the efftect changes to color. The scene cuts to blue sky and from there camera tilts down focusing on a long shot of a building. Here, the director has used a long shot of the building to show the location and the whole structure of the building. We can hear a diegetic sound of sea at the background. Now, the scene cuts to the close up shot of caged parrot. The camera person uses a depth of field to focus more on the caged bird rather than the surrounding. The camera focus pull and focuses on the man walking near the road. At the background, we can hear the voice over. Soon after this scene, we can see the clips of the  war that took place in Gaza. Here, in the scene, we can even see a medium long shot of the building. A smoke coming out of the building and blood on the floor which connotes  war. Soon after this scene, we can see a group of people in rally that connotes dissatisfaction of citizen  . We can even see a close up shot of blood which connotes death, fight and danger. We can even see a medium shot of the people taking at the stretcher  connotes the suffering of the citizens. The tracking shot of the trails of the blood to the dead body portrays the effect of the war and creates sympathy. The screen fades out to black and cuts to the scene of waving Israel flag which connotes  leadership. Now, the scene cuts to long, medium and close up shots of rocket fires and at the background we can still hear the non diegetic sound (Voice over). Within this scene, another scene blends in black. Again, the editor uses black and white to show his target audience that all the scences occured in the past. At the background, we can hear the non diegetic sound (voice over).  After few seconds, the non diegetic sound changes into diegetic sound (dialogue) where we can see a medium close up of the interviewee (Shimon Peres).

Again, a flag of Israel at the back which connotes interviewee must be from Israel. Again, the scene cuts to the black and white scene. This time, the voice over again changes into non diegetic sound. At the background, we can still see  a life of Palestinian farmer from so many backs ago. Soon after this black and white scene cuts to the interviewee (Hazem Nusseibeh) and the non diegetic voice over changes into diegetic sound (dialogue).

Documentary Proposal (Group)

Documentary proposal

“ Is graffiti an expression of art or just another form of vandalism”?

 In this topic, we plan to explore the very controversial idea of graffiti, and whether it seen as an artist portraying a message through the expression of art or just seen as vandalism of the streets in London today.

We will look at both, for positive arguments of graffiti and the negative argument as well. And look at both perspectives of the too sides.

A source shows that it’s a common view that graffiti is frowned upon in society. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/club/your_reports/newsid_1637000/1637333.stm)

“Graffiti is disgusting and gets people into bad habits, wherever people find a blank space they scribble all over it.”

Although there are many schemes and project that have been set up to remove graffiti. People still show hostility towards it.

Project’s like ‘orange rock corps’ have been set up to remove graffiti, and because it nation wide it covers a wide regional area and these projects have been strongly backed by the government.

In order to finding conclusion to the debate that is graffiti, we will be interviewing people that support graffiti and people that don’t mind it, as well as people who are strongly against graffiti. We also believe that there no better way to see how the artist themselves feel about it so will we also interviewing them and finding there perspectives on what they do. We also intend to interview some public figures to show what they feel about the graffiti. Additionally, we will speak to other general members of the public that hold their own and find out whether they feel the media influences these ideas.

We plan to have cut-always of piece of art that have been produced as well as people doing graffiti. As well as these we plan to show the length that people go through just to “get up” (graffiti) photo’s of black books (Were people design there pieces of work before they put paint to wall)

For a list of speakers I would like to interview 2 graffiti artist’s (one that’s big, and a up and coming one). I would also like to interview people that work on the projects at orange rock corps. As well interviewing companies that remove graffiti them selves and some people that are the general public.

For this our group roles are:

Philip – editor

Lauren - director                       

Sustika – sound

Anju – Camerawoman

Group Role

I have taken the role of "Sound Person" in the group of A2 media coursework. Where as Anju has taken a role of Camera Person, Philip has taken a role of Editor and Lauren has taken a role of Director.
This year we are making a short documentary about a topic "Graffiti Art/ Vandalism or Political Free Speech".