Evaluation

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

I have followed the codes and conventions of real and professional media products throughout the stages of construction of the documentary. I have not tried to change or develop the conventions in any way.

These still images were taken from a channel 4 documentary "The Twins Who Share a Brain" and they show how professionals use cutaways. The top image is a cutaway showing the babies during an operation then it goes onto the mother talking about them and then goes to a still image of the children when they are older whilst the mother is still talking.

We have used this technique in our documentary as in the designer's interview he talks about dressing the celebrities and designing his own clothes this is why we have used the cutaways of his own creations.

Narrative Structure; The voice over helps the narrative to flow as the documentary has a linear narrative meaning that it will be shown in chronological order. The order was sorted out during the planning stage as we created a running order. This follows the codes and conventions of expository documentaries.

This is another still image taken from the documentary mentioned earlier. This shows a woman talking about the children's condition as she is a doctor. We can tell that she is a doctor because of the mise en scene. We can see her office and brain scans on the computer gives the audience clues.

Compared to this still taken from our documentary. The audience would also get clues to who she is by her mise en scene as we adopted a similar approach. The denim jeans hanging up and the New Look badges tell the audience about her and the documentary.

This is the opening titles from the professional documentary. The title "Body Shock" is the main title as this is a series but this episode is called "The Twins Who Share a Brain". The audience can tell which is which because of the different fonts and colour.

Our documentary follows the conventions of the professional channel 4 documentary as ours is supposed to be a series as well. Therefore, we have chose to have two different types of writing to signify the difference in the title. The colour of the title is blue as it suited the topic of the documentary and also because it is a neutral colour which would attract both male and female.

The captions used in the professional documentary are the same font and colour as the title on the opening sequence to make it consistent throughout.

We used the same technique throughout ours to keep is consistent as well. However, we used a colour block behind it so the writing was clear and easy to see.

The graphics that were the facts were displayed against a black background. As it was telling the audience more detailed information we chose the colour of white for the writing as it seems more believable and follows the codes and conventions. It is also in the same font as the rest of the writing throughout the documentary therefore, it again follows the codes and conventions.

For both of the ancillary texts we studied and researched professional channel 4 radio trailers and newspaper adverts as this is the channel as we would be scheduling our documentary.

For the other ancillary text of the newspaper advert I have followed the codes and conventions by having one main image to attract the audience’s attention which is the denim in the outline. Also I have kept to the codes and conventions by using the channel 4 logo in the middle on the right, putting the title, date and time in the bottom left hand corner and making the slogan bigger on the left but higher.