The document discusses the functions and conventions of documentaries, including informing audiences, using archived footage as evidence, and using voiceovers and music to narrate and set mood. It also discusses various narrative theories that can apply to documentaries, such as Propp's character roles, Todorov's three-step structure of equilibrium, disequilibrium and new equilibrium, and the quest narrative theory. The document provides examples of how these theories are demonstrated in documentaries. It also discusses the use of mise-en-scene, characters, camera work, editing, forms and music in documentaries.
3. Narrative theories Propp theory Propp theory states that characters in programmes and even films, fit a certain role. These include the hero, villain, the helper and more. For a documentary this does fit into place but can be thought about when creating a documentary. For example the villain in a film, role is to disrupt the lives of the people and then they hero needs to come in to solve the problem. Todorov theory Todorov theory states the notion about a story having a beginning middle and an end. In a documentary they usually have some sort of order that lead the audience into reaching the goal into the end. Tondorov’s concept of narrative theory is through three steps. The Equilibrium, Disequilibrium and New Equilibrium. In the Equilibrium is when the characters are living in a healthy setting, without any problems. Then in the Disequilibrium the characters are disturbed by the outsiders/event that try and ruin the characters lives. And then lastly in the New Equilibrium they resolve the problems and the healthy setting returns. The Quest Narrative theory The quest narrative theory states most stories or any time line of events is taken through the eyes of a quest. (having a aim they want to achieve before the end). In novel terms this is the most classic way, an example of which being ‘The lord of the rings’. In a documentary the voice over needs to come to a conclusion. For example (quote)
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6. Representation Internet- We represented the internet by showing shots of facebook. This all led to give a stereotypical representation. The audience would have recognise the features of the internet that we showed. People- People such as the mum is represented as stereotypical. For example she is ironing during the interview connoting she is a typical mum doing housework. The main character on the other hand is represented as just sitting on facebook everyday and not listening to music, going out or doing any school work signifying he is abnormal in some way.
7. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Information Some information about the documentary can be seen in the ancillary products. An example of this is the scheduling date and time, they are in the same format (24 hour clock), this will cut down the amount of confusion within the audience. Images An image seen in both the product and the ancillary that we controlled is the facebook logo. This secondary image connotes to the audience through action coding that the documentary is about facebook. Also the TLN logo is in these 2 texts signifies that it is produced by the same company.
8. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Colours For our one of our ancillary text (advert) we used a dark colour on the outside and a lighter colour on the inside to make the interior stand out. This was important as through action coding the audience need to be told what the documentary is about, and the background is only about what time it is on etc. This is similar with our documentary as the title sequence also has a black background. Font/text The title name complies with all 3 products. An advantage of this is that the audience will recognise our products wherever they are advertised and will be willing to watch it. The colour of the title name is yellow on both the Advert an the documentary, this consistency is good as it lets the audience to further unite the 2 products.
9. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? Campaign continuity and coherence Documentary (main product) This is the core product of our project, It works with both of our ancillary texts due to the flexibility of it. For example there are shots within the films where it is clearly a documentary based around facebook, so this conforms to the needs of the poster and TV listing, which need images that connote the characters addiction with facebook. TV listing magazine (ancillary text) This was an external companies piece of work, however we did supply them with images and texts on our documentary via our media pack. Newspaper advert (ancillary text) This text was produced by our own production company to boost our advertising campaign in the literate form. The consistency of this and the main documentary is weak as we did not control the factors involved. Apart from things supplied in the media pack. This product was produced by TLN so we controlled the factors in this. Consistency between these 2 include things like the title name and characters. This connection is good as the newspaper audience will know when to watch the documentary This relationship is good as an reader of the newspaper may browse the TV guide, reinforcing our advertising campaign. The media pack is something that we produce to give to external companies. Things included in this media pack are the synopsis, images and clips (audio, visual).
10. How will we do our audience feedback? Focus group (recorded) This is when a group of about 6 people talk freely about our product. They will be recorded so we can go over what they say afterwards, to make sure we don’t miss anything, this is good as we are not relying on our memory and can see their facial expressions. This type of method is good as participants can expand on points both positive and negatively. However a limitation of this method, is that the participants bounce of each other (go with the crowd). Also being recorded could cause distress/pressured and not give truthful answers to the questions. The video is along with our documentary on the disk provided to you Questionnaires We shall ask our target audience which covers a wide range from 16+, and people who know about facebook. We will use this questionnaire to get quantitative and qualitative data, for example we used open and closed questions. This method is also easy to compare and analyse as they can be replicated effortlessly thus the sample can be larger making this method more reliable. A limitation of doing only this method however is that this reaches only our target audience and that is not representative. Also social desirability could be a problem with this as they know us (don’t want to say its bad in front of us). Focus group picture
11. New technology feedback We will upload our documentary onto facebook to get feedback. A limitation of this site is that we only have a selection of about 150 friends that can view it (and everyone will not view/comment the video). Also it is not fair as only friends can see thus will give positive feedback. www.TLNinmedia.blogspot.com We will upload our documentary onto youtube with many tags for many to see it. This site has the great advantage of letting everyone on the site access our video (over 120 million). So this will let everyone from different backgrounds/cultures to comment. Although a limitation of this site may be that the comments may be from people spamming or advertising. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v =1dn83cBJf6U We used twitter to make people aware of our documentary on youtube. How will we do our audience feedback?
12. Results quantitative - TV listing It is clear to see from this question that they like our TV listing as they would go out of their way to purchase the TV listing. This graph shows that the font, colour and size we chose was appropriate as the audience can read and identify TV programmes easily. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
13. Results qualitative – TV listing Good Bad ‘It is easy to read’ ‘Colour and pictures are clear’ ‘I like the structure’ ‘Gives me an insight to what each programme is about’ ‘The picture of the litter looks professional’ ‘Could do with more pictures’ ‘Don't like PICK OF THE DAY font’ ‘Could include a star rating for all programmes’ ‘Title font could be seen as too big’ ‘Date could be on both pages’ What have you learned from your audience feedback?
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15. What have you learned from your audience feedback? Feedback
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17. This is where the unedited clips are stored. This area is where we can edit our video. We used this for; the effect of the eye shaking, the titles throughout our film, the transitions we used. This is where we can view the film. This is the audio timeline, we used this line for the narration. This is the second audio timeline, we used this for the soundtrack This is the Video timeline. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
18. We used Photoshop briefly to make our advert and TV lsiting. This was important as these 2 products are key to our project. This is a review for the Photoshop version we used. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? We used a variety of tools in this programme such as paint bucket to construct our products. We had multiple colours from this tool. We also used the shape tool for lines and boxes on our TV listing, we was able to edit these once it was complete. The text tool was also important as for our TV listing it was majority text.
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20. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? From imovie format To a youtube account. We found a video from youtube that helped us how to convert the files into the right formats. But basically we exported it into a AVI file.
21. How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages? Equipment We used this digital camcorder to capture our footage for our documentary. It also had the feature night cam which we used for one shot in particular. It had a touch screen playback device which allowed us to easily see what we had recorded. We used DV cassettes to record our footage on. This was an easy option as they are a cheaper option to DVD’s and you can record over them as many times you want. They were also small enough to be transported around in our groups bag. Tripods were important to our film as they kept the camera steady for a clearer shot. Wer simply attached the bottom of the camera to the tripod via a screw and the camera stayed still. We also used pans for when a character moved, and tilts for vertical movement.