Ancillary Task 2 - Inspiration

The inspiration for this task came from various different magazine articles from business magazines, gaming magazines and gossip magazines. We thought the idea of a double page interview feature would go really well with our main production because Alex's character in the documentary is quite self-involved, and therefore an interview would be the perfect platform for viewers to 'get to know him better'.

We wanted to make this colourful because if it was featured in an actual magazine, it would be easy to read and eye-catching, which is also why we chose the bubbly font.

We took the idea of the quotes from a magazine called 'Closer', a gossip magazine, in which we saw an article about Kim Kardashian and her new baby. 'I'm overjoyed' it had said down one side of the article, which was a direct quote from the interview. We thought this would be eye-catching and engaging, while also wanting the viewer to want to read on.

Evaluation Question 4

HOW DID YOU USE MEDIA TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND RESEARCH, PLANNING AND EVALUATION STAGES?



Research and construction
To find the genre of our doumentary we wanted to go for we spent a lot of time looking at a range of different documentarie. I personally focused mainly on Katy Perry's "Part of Me," whilst Charlotte was looking at the popular Louis Theroux series. We both used Netflix to look at these particular documentaries. I found that it was extremely effective for us to both look at different documentaries as it enabled us to find different conventions from 2 documentaries of a different genre. I feel like this is reflected in our production as we have been able to include so many different conventions.

Production/Post Production
When filming, we used the cameras that were provided to us by the school (Nikon D3100 HD Camcorder,) this worked really well for our production because it gave it more of a proffesional and realistic look as it created High Definition, quality footage. We used a standard issue tripod to give us still, proffessional looking footage, giving them a smooth and steady look. However, in one scene we decided that a handheld shot would give us the kind of shot that we desired.

Planning

To start planning, we orginally developed a mindmap. Although we were always fairly sure on what our documentary was going to be about, we always thought that using Alex Curtis would benefit our work as he's such an interesting character as he is, so simply exaggerating his personality traits was a great way to create a realistic, comical character. After we had finalised our idea we designed a Production Schedule, which we referred back to during the period in which we were producing our documentary. This helped us to stay on track and ensure that we were getting everything done.

Evaluation
For my evaluation I typed it up using blogger. I felt like this was the best idea because I am used to using it and have developed skills for using it over the past 2 years in which I have studied media studies.

Evaluation Question 3

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE FEEDBACK?





Target audience
Our documentary was originally aimed at teenagers/adults, between the ages of about 16-28. We felt this was necessary because we wanted our product to be quite light-hearted and comical, therefore it may not have been enjoyed/understood as well by those of an older demographic. We did not aim our documentary at a specific gender, as we felt like it could be enjoyed by both males and females, because of this we decided to have a "unisex" target audience. When planning for our documentary we looked at the common interests that our target audience share, we tried to include some of these in our production to make it more enjoyable for our target audience.

Feedback
We got very little negative feedback from our class, it was mostly positive. It was nice to see so many people enjoying and laughing at our own work. The first feedback we recieved was that the story line we were going for was not clear, and our documentary was therefore misunderstood when first watched. However we made sure to make quick changes to this and our product was then more enjoyable and humerous for the audience. Furthermore, we decided that there were certain parts of our documentary that we were not happy with ourselves, although we did not recieve negative feedback on them from others, this made us decide to refilm them, in order to be more confident and happy with the work we had produced.

Evaluation Question 2

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

MAGAZINE DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD MADE USING MICROSOFT PUBLISHER

After debating between using Adobe PhotoShop and Microfsoft Publisher to design our magazine double page spread ancillary task, we finally decided that Publisher was the best option. I feel this is because it gave the double page spread more of a proffessional feel and made it look more like the actual products that we had used to inspire us for our ancillary task. We decided to include an interview with our main character, Alex, from our documentary in this media piece. The combination of the actual documentary and this piece made everything feel more realistic. Looking at examples of other double page spreads online helped us to design our own, although we didn't feel like we needed inspiration for the actual text. We found that all double page spreads tend to have a large bold title that dominates the rest of the text on the page, as well as large pictures that are usually the immediate focal point when looking at the page. We followed these conventions and felt like overall it helped to contribute to the proffessional look of our double page spread. Furthermore, including an interview with Alex helped to give background information on the documentary and also give the audience a chance to get to know Alex further, whether it was before or after watching the documentary.
 

MAGAZINE ADVERT FOR OUR DOCUMENTARYFinding inspiration for our magazine advert was relatively easy as we just had to look in magazines from present times to see the ways in which other films and documentaries had represented their production. This enabled us to pick up on the common conventions and intertwine them into our own work, giving it a more realistic and proffessional look.
 

Evaluation Question 1

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

USE

Shots from Louis Theroux's
documentaries inspired us to use similar
shots in our own work.

We followed a lot of the conventions that we found in our period of research. Looking at Mockumentarys really helped to inspire us and was where a lot of our ideas actually came from. Furthermore, we also found it helpful to look at Louis Theroux's series of documentaries as they helped us to see a pattern of conventions within this type of production. From watching examples of other documentaries we were able to get an idea of what kind of shots to use.

We were also given an idea of what kind of story lines to follow and  were inspired to use interviews from Alex's family and friends to give the audience more information about the main character of our media product.

Furthermore, I also looked at Katy Perry: Part Of Me. This is a documentary which I was able to watch using Netflix. I feel like I benefitted from watching this as it is of a similar genre to what we were going for; following a famous celebrity figure through her everyday life and showing "Behind the scenes" clips that help us to understand more about her lifestyle and personal life. This is what inspired us to use an interview with one of Alex's fans as we found it was extremely effective in the Katy Perry documentary we were inspired by.

Interviews with fans inspired us to include similar
interviews within our own work.

An interview with Katy Perry herself
we found to be effective.

 

DEVELOP

Looking at films such as Borat inspired
us to go for a "Mockumentary" Genre.

After looking at a range of documentaries we concluded that the best type for the character we had chosen was to be a Mockumentary. We then went on to look at other Mockumentarys such as Borat - although this is an example of a much more extreme mockumentary it helped us to discover certain conventions which we then went on to use in our own work. For example, the use of a fictional character with exaggerated personality traits; where Alex's "Diva" personality came from. Furthermore, this helped us to think of the idea of using an obsessive fan, played by myself, in order to mock extreme fans of celebrities.

CHALLENGEOur product challenges some of the conventions we found to be the "norm," when looking at other documentaries. For example, our documentary has more of a comical side to it than other documentaries that are following the lives of a celebrity. However, our documentary does also follow a large amount of other conventions, that we found to be successful as it makes it appear more proffessional and realistic looking.

We decided to use characters with
exaggerated personality traits, such as
a "Superfan."





 

Ancillary Task 2: Magazine Advert

Ancillary Task: Double Page Spread