Our documentary is all about the negative effects in which alcohol has on binge drinkers and also how it can effect those who are around the consumer.
This documentary explores the way in which alcahol had become glamourised and lifts the lid on shocking facts.
Binge Britain is an exposity and investigative documentary as it explores issues surrounding society today and aims to educate its viewers. Our documentary uses different conventions such as narration, voice over, archive footage and reconstruction.
In what ways does your media product use, develop and challenge forms and conventions of real media product.
I wanted to make sure i had used forms and conventions of real media products so to do this, i watched different documentaries to see what conventions and forms they were using. I identified didfferent shots and techniques so that when it came to making my documentary i could use the knowledge i had gained from viewing other documentaries simular to mine.
Sun sex and suspicious parents was a documentary i watched regularly not only was it highly entertaining but also gave me an understanding of different techiniques i could use myself.
These documentaries all shared simularitites with mine for example the use of interviews, we made sure our documentary had valid interviews that were factual and educational that our viewers could learn from. Voice overs were used, just like our documentary, we had one moment when teen binger Ryan Taylor talks over a reconstruction of the night he ended up in hospital this way audience got to see what happened whilst Ryan was telling the story.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
I was asked to produce a double page spread for a tv listings magazine and a poster promoting my documentary, whilst doing this i took into consideration, target audience, type of documentary, and what channel it was going to be aired on.
I was asked to produce a double page spread for a tv listings magazine and a poster promoting my documentary, whilst doing this i took into consideration, target audience, type of documentary, and what channel it was going to be aired on.
As my target audience was teenagers to young adults i needed something on the front cover that would stand out something that would cath their eye, and as our documentary was all about alcahol abuse, i decided to use a picture of a teenage girl holding a bottle of vodka and smoking a cigarette. A lot of teenagers are abusing alcahol in todays society and the number of teenagers and young adults smoking has increased highly, i thought this was a good way of grabbing their attention. As Binge Britain is all about the negative effects of alcahol i did not want to glamourise the girl on my poster so i made her unnatractive by putting makeup down her face, and making it look like she was upset.
I considered the colours for my ancillery task and decided on the poster being very dark as the topic being discussed is negative and we visit some dark places in the documentary. I thought it worked well as being an alcahol abuser your like soon become dull and dark.
I think my acillery tasks were effective to my documentary as the poster and double page spread was a clue as to what happens in the documentary but dosent give to much away.
To make my ancillery task i used powerpoint but i edited my photos on picassa, which is a programme used to change lighting and effects on images. I made the title the main focus on the page as i feel then it is the first thing people will look at, which gives them more chance of remembering the documentary, but i used a big image to match with the title, Binge Britain- A girl Binge drinking on the front.
The title of the documentary reads ‘BINGE BRITIAN: BRIGHTON’. The capital letters connotes brashness and rebellion, which is something my target audience should be able to relate to.
What have i learnt from audience feedback?
Since finishing our documentary we uploaded it to facebook and put it on youtube so we could see how effective it would be and what our target audience would think.
We had some positive feedback from friends on facebook and others we do not know on youtube, such
-Shows how bad our society has got with drinking but shows there are people trying to prevent it.
-Well made documentary
-Ryan made a huge mistake from what we saw in the reconstruction i hope he learnt his lesson.
-pretty cool doc.
Not all feedback was positive.
-Boring and too much talking.
-could have used more reconstructions as was interesting apart from that i didnt enjoy it.
-needed more effects
I think if i were to make another documentary i would maybe not use a lot of voiceover as some of the audience found this to drag and some even said it was boring. People also commented on the amount of dialogue however it would have been hard for us to take any out as the documentary was to inform and educate its users.
I think for the first documentary we have made a lot of it went down well, and although we could improve in some areas other aspects were of a good standard and seemed to be enjoyed by viewers.
How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?
I wanted my documentary to be of a high quality and to be as exciting and attention grabbing as it possibly could.
I used wikepedia alot to search up doucmentary modes and conventions, to help me use this in my documentary. I searched a number of different websites to look up binge drinking and different statistics and facts on alcahol abuse in Britain.
I used different programmes on my computer to create my ancillery task, such as powerpoint, paint and picassa, this allowed me to edit crop and resize my pictures. I have used all these programmes before so i did not need to look up instructions or learn how to use it.
I uploaded different images and documents from my computer and scanned in work we had done in class. This allowed me to use all this work on my blog.
I was asked to be used as the picture for the ancillery task so me and another member of my group took the camera and found a tunnel that looked in a state that was perfect for shooting pictures, and making it look like a night out gone wrong full of binge drinking and chain smoking.
