Our Chosen Topic - Philip Costin

I learnt a lot over the course of this particular task especially with the use of new software such as powtoon. It was also important for us to make sure we all felt the same way about the positives and negatives of having mobile phones being are topic and the target audience that we would likely aim at. Us doing separate posts on the positives and negatives on topics allowed us to compare our ideas and learn from each others opinions, especially as we our own target audience.

Our top 3 topics - Jonathan Wade

This task was vital as it was deciding the basic of the whole documentary, it gave further depth into our favourite choices and an insight into the chosen topic. This information will effect the whole blog as every task will be completed around research into mobile phone (the chosen topic). The documentary will also be based around the chosen topic so it starts the basis of our documentary. For this task I aimed my research into those with a large interest in the chosen topics, the age group was 16-30 so we could get a wide range of views.

10 Possible Topics - Jack Thompson

Topics for Our Documentary

I created this post to display all the possible documentary topics creating this summary allowed us to look at the most plausible and the one that had been done the least so our documentary would stand out from the others. Because not many people have done our chosen topic it will make it more enjoyable for the target audience to watch as it is unlikely they have seen a similar documentary therefore will be less repetitive and more interesting. This post will directly effect the rest of our blog as all later posts will be orientated around our chosen topic.                                                  

Our Topics Mind Map

Diary #2 - Jonathan Wade

I completed and edited this update to show how i have improved throughout the coursework, it gives examples of aspects which i feel i have improved on. This has no effect on our documentary but it gives explanation on what we have completed on our blog.

Media Theories - Jack Thompson

While creating this topic I learnt a lot about slide share and some of the conventions of documentaries so when creating the documentray we can take these theories into account so overall the documentary will be more professional. If the documentary is more professional then the target audience will take it more seriously and connect with them more. This will influence the rest of the blog as it effects other things such as location and camera angles because if one of the two examples don't comply with the conventions it makes the overall documentary look bad and untidy.

Narrative Theorists - Philip Costin

This task was important for us to complete and use as a reference for knowledge and potential guidance later in our documentary making process. The information we gained in class and found ourselves about these theorists is important so we can style our documentary to meet 'traditional' documentary conventions. We had learnt a lot from these theorists both in and outside classroom lessons especially for Todorov's narrative theory of an equilibrium that we see is an important part of the documentary process.

Narrative Structure - Jack Thompson

Narrative Stucture

Open Narrative example


Linear Narrative example


The purpose for the narrative structure post is to show all the various narratives that are reasonable for us to use in our documentary. This helps us produce a vision of how we want our documentary to look and the message it gives to the audience. The message is that mobile phones are unethical and can cause problems in the work place and even death in the case of cars. This post is relevant to the target audience as the choice of narrative will give a different effect on the target audience for example if the documentary was an open narrative then all the questions posed are not directly answered therefore allows the audience to come up with their own conclusion.

Diary #1 - Philip Costin

Types of Documentary - Philip Costin

Example of Fly on the Wall - Big Brother

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Example of Fully Narrated - David Attenborough - Wonderful World

It is vitally important for us that we are constantly aware of the types of documentary so that we can make an informed choice of what we want our type of documentary to be and what we need that to include to be a part of this type. We can learn from this post and examples as to how we want to approach our documentary and the target audience we aim at.

Research:
We will undertake research into many areas surrounding codes of documentaries and how we can apply these to our target audiences. Starting with only a basic understanding all research will help us learn and aid us in understanding the purpose of certain codes as well as how to effectively apply them. Overall this will allow us to learn and create a professional documentary.

Documentary conventions - Jonathan Wade

This task was intended to discover what is essential in a conventional documentary, it gives explanations on what each of these conventions are. With this research we will try and use most of the conventions in our final documentary product, the explanations show what we will be using in our documentary. The blog will take use of this as when researching further there will be examples of documentaries that follow these conventions.

Genre, History & Modes - Jonathan Wade

Nanook Of The North - video clip


Through this task I aimed to get further knowledge into the history and modes of the genre. I also found out key figures in the start up of the conventional documentary. This information will be used ain the blog to complete further tasks on key figures, the modes also relate to later examples. In our documentary we will use some of the modes as a start, the whole documentary is based on John Grierson's findings.

Explain your brief - Jack Thompson

For our A2 coursework we have been assigned groups of 3 to create 3 different aspects of a documentary. These aspects are the opening 5 minutes of a TV documentary (40 marks), a radio trailer (10 marks)and a double page spread (10 marks) from magazine listings all focused on our documentary. We also have to produce two sections of research and planning (20 marks) and the evaluation (20 marks). Within the evaluation there are 4 questions asked.

1. In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions ?
2. How effective is your media product?
3. What have you learned from the audience?
4. How did you use new media technologies?

With all the individual sections combined there are a total of 100 marks available for the coursework. To make it easier for the examiner to mark we frequently add posts to a blog to display our progress in a suitable and professional approach.

Introduction

Phil, Jon and Jack (from left to right)