Final Poster

After the consolidation of our audience research regarding our puff piece and our poster, we decided that significant improvements were essential for the success of promoting The Big Question.

Regarding the poster, we gathered that our previous set-up could not be immediately visually associated with BBC3 because of the layout and presentation. 

To respond to this problem we looked at more examples of TV adverts to inspire us. 
An element of the images shown below that really stood out to us was the block colour behind the text, making it stand out against the image. This is a common feature of both channel 4 and BBC3, aimed at the same target audience as The Big Question. 

Firstly we looked at the idea of merging two close up shots together in slits, as shown below, however we believe that it would not present the range of people we shown in our documentary. This poster is for a reality TV show, we do not want to give the wrong impression to those looking at our poster. 

The bolder, easier to digest BBC3 poster appealed more to us. Not only is it the media platform that we will be broadcasting on, it is also much more appealing to our target audience, who have said repeatedly that our poster designs are too busy. In response to this we have improved on the presentation of this promotional poster by adding in a hashtag to engage and involve our audience and 'coming soon to BBC3' to ensure that they know when the programme will be airing. 

Looking at other posters I found that the one shown below was particularly compellling because of the way it uses the curious '...' to automatically cause the audience to want to know more, therefore generating an interest in the subject of the poster. 
An idea surrounding this inspiration was that we could have a sentance saying 'I would be...' next to subject of the poster, captivating the audience, leaving them wanting more. To make this more accesable we turned it into a hashtag, to spark an online interest.
However the aesthetics of the hashtag did not match the poster and we were not pleased with the way it looked, so after a serious amount of editing we figured 'would be' was more practicle.

By using smiling and approachable people on our posters we create the impression that our documentary is light-hearted and amusing, which is key to gaining the attention of our target audience. We have created three posters to represent the series of posters that we would create to put on billboards, grabbing peoples attention, as they see more and more different people their intereset in The Big Question grows. 

The Big Question poster 4

This is our final draft poster for 'The Big Question' our documentary series. 

We were heavily influenced not just by our audience but also by our research surrounding posters.

Firstly 'Humans' uses similar font to the font we have chosen, by widening the space between the letters we feel it gives the poster a professional presentation which is important because people will not consume our documentary if it looks tacky. The colouring of the 'Humans' poster also compliments that of the text, and we have replicated this in our poster. 

'New Girl' influenced our use of people in the poster, however if we had full body profiles of all the people then we probably would have created a poster similar to that of 'New Girl'. 

'The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds' is another poster that uses full body profiles, it influenced us in the placement of the people, in this poster the children are scattered around the poster doing different things, we replicated this with the people we filmed however placing them in a tighter space. The clear background and simplicity of this poster was also something that I believe we carried through into our poster, so that information is easy to digest. 

'Uncle' influenced our use of the picture of Camden Bridge in the background, showing the urban setting of our documentary. In 'Uncle' the urban, garage looking, background shows the audience where the programme is set, we wanted to give the audience an insight into where we filmed as well.

'Thirteen' was a BBC 3 drama, with a similar target audience to our documentary, we wanted to replicate the boldness of this poster because evidence suggests that it was very successful in the publicity surrounding the series. 

We placed the BBC 3 i-dent in the top corner of the poster to draw attention to the fact that it was BBC 3, this simple addition to the poster draws in peoples attention because they automatically link other media that they have enjoyed with BBC 3, increasing the probability that they will consume our documentary. 

Using mainly the posters of Thirteen, a BBC3 series presented in my poster research, we refined our poster to make it look perfect for promoting our documentary's pilot episode. 
We decided that we needed to change the background and the font so that it was identical to that of BBC3 to make it look genuine. 
We also searched up what the hashtag looks like for BBC3 (shown below) so that we could create similar ones for our poster to motivate our online audience to generate a buzz surrounding our pilot. 

Representation

Laura Mulvey

1975 (almost was everything was objectification of women - now there are more examples where the male gaze is reversed or equalised or attempts not to objectify at all)

Using the theory of visual pleasure and the male gaze

femininst film scholar

argue that female characters are represented as passive objects of male sexual desire

'The Male Gaze'

Scopophilia is the pleasure that you can get from looking

Cinema offers these pleasures voyeuristically (looking at something without the subject of what youre looking at knowing youre looking)

Laura Mulvey's theory would mean that the audience are being satisfied the male's scopophilic desires

A woman connotes something to be looked at - their purpose is to be looked at in cinema form (everybody is ridiculously attractive.

It still happens e.g. Transformers 1, Megan Fox.

The Look

Mulvey identified three different ways of looking in cinema:

The look of the camera that records the film

The look of the audience that views the film

The look of the characteres within the film

On the other hand:

The theory focuses on heterosexual male spectators

It assumes audiences respond to the text in a uniform way

Ignores the possibility of males providing visual pleasure

Kathleen Rowe argues that being the object of the gaze is a position of power

Bechtdel Test

More thean 2 females

Have a coneversation by themselves

The conversation is about something other than men

Gender and Ideology

Masculinity and feminity are socially constructed.

Ideas about gender are produced and reflected in language.

Feminism is a label that refers to broad range of views containing one shared assumption - gender inequalities in society, historically masculine power (patriachy) excercised at right of women's interests and rights.

Particulary in relation to film, objectification of women's bodies in the media has been a constant theme.

Laura Mulvey argues that the dominant point of view is masculine.

Jib Fowles "in advertising, males gaze and females are gazed at."

Paul Messaris "female models addressed to women....appear to imply a male point of view."

Postmodernism

Baudrillard

Basics;

It is essentially the breakdown of barriers

It could be between:

high art and low art

organic and artificial

male and female

between texts themselves

and between what is real and what is not

jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

He argues our society has become so reliant on representations that we have lost contact with the real.

There is no distinction between reality and representation, only the simulacrum.

Simulacrum - a copy that now has more reality than the object it is a copy of.

something is  more real than the real itself.

Creating the simulacrum

You start with a real object

the object then becomes a representation

the representation then becomes more important and 'real' to us than the original, it is hyperreal.

this fundamentally destroys the original eventually meaning everthing is a copy.

future representations are then copies of a copy and so on.

he has a problem with the idea of representation

representation implies there was something there originally to represent

but in his view, how can one represent something that does not exist? - its the copy that exists/

Stereotypes

O'Sullivan details that a stereotype is a label that involves a process of categorisation and evaluation.

We can call stereotypes shorthand to narratives because such simplistic representations define our understanding of media texts - e.g. we know who is good and who is evil. 

Stereotypes tell the audience everything they need to know very quickly. 

They are purposeful - shorthand - a way of telling a story

First came by Walter Lippmann the word stereotype wasn't meant to be a negative and was simply meant as a shortcut or ordering process. 

In ideological terms, stereotyping is a means by which support is provided by one group's differential against another - we do it for a reason because we want to maintain our identity 

Richard Dyer the types produced by different social groups according to their sense of who belongs and who doesn't, who is 'in' and who is not.

Tessa Perkins says, however, that stereotyping is not a simple process. She identified that some of the many ways that stereotypes are assumed to operate aren't true.

They aren't always negative - french good cooks

They aren't always about minority groups or those less powerful - upper class twists, posh etc.

They are not always false - supported by empirical evidence, proof

They are not always rigid and unchanging, as time passes stereotypes change. It used to be working class people and dumb and lazy, nowadays the stereotype has changed and they are seen as industriuos and hard working. 

Perkins argues that if stereotypes were always so simple then they would not work culturally and over time. 

Have I challenged any stereotypes? 

In challenging this stereotype I am hoping to move this stereotype onwards - changing the stereotypes, making a progressive change (Tessa Perkins)

Dyer details that if we are to be told that we are going to see a film about an alcoholic then we will know that it will be a tale either of sordid decline or of inspiring redemption. 

"representations in media texts are often simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies so that sudience can make sense of them" 

Media Language

How meaning is created.

What you are doing to communicate a specific thing with the audience. 

Ferdinand de Saussure - The signifier and the signified

Roland Barthes - denotation and connotation [Enigma code]

Stuart hall - encoding and decoding (preferred reading) [Reception Theory]

Saussure:

Similar to connotation and denotation, it discusses the idea there are two levels of meaning in a text. 

Firstly there is the signifier - What is there in front of us, what we see/hear.

Secondly there is the signified - The idea that we associate with the signifier in our heads, the concept it represents. 

A sign or symbol does not make sense without the actual object and the meaning it creates, both must be present. 

E.g. If characters in a film are talking about a bank, the audience must determine which bank they mean; a grassy slope or a place to deposit money. 

3 types of signs - 

Signifiers can be broken down into 3 different types.

Iconic signs - look like what they mean (e.g. a picture of a cowboy is a cowboy) generally literal

Indexical signs - show a connection (e.g. smoke is fire, sweating is heat or exertion) 

Symbolic signs - where the sign is completely disconnects (visually) from the meaning (e.g. a heart is love, white dove is peace) generally metaphorical

Barthes:

denotation and connotation

It looks at how an audience will interpret meaning from a text.

The interpretation is influenced by society and audience member's own experience of the world.

Denotation - an object placed within a media text.

Connotations - the meaning the audience draws from their own cultural, social and historical knowledge. 

The main difference to signifier and signified is that a connotation may not always be intentional.

Stuart Hall:

A text will always have a preferred reading that a producer intends.

This is done by encoding meaning into the text. 

These meanings are then decoded by the audience so they can interpret it.

Often refers more to values and messages than literal signs and connotations. 

The audience can decode the meaning in three ways.

Fully accepting the producers intentions with a preferred reading 

Agreeing with some but not all of the intended meaning and therefore taking a negotiate meaning

They may understand the intended message but reject it in favour of their own which is an oppositional reading. 

KEY WORDS:

polsemy - one sign can have multiple different meanings

juxtaposition - constrasts

anchoridge of media language - fixing a meaning to something

Puff Piece

The three images shown below are examples that we have found whilst conducting research for our puff piece. Our audience research told us that our target audience consume magazines produced by Time Out and NME, to work with this data we have used the codes and conventions of these double page spreads and have developed them to fit with our puff piece. 

A feature that appears in all three of these examples is the drop quote that is more prominent amongst the text. Research has shown us that this quote is usually from the speech of the person being interviewed. This is used to grip the reader so that they don't brush past the page, a key point can urge them to read the article and find our more. We decided that this was an important part of our puff piece to grab our target audiences attention. 

Another feature of these puff pieces is the use of the layout and how the main bulk of space is taken up by a picture. This is done to engage the audience, giving them something more to look at, as writing is not very engaging. We have done this in our puff piece, as the interview is with the director, we have the director (me) standing to the right of the double page spread, smiling, to encourage readers to stop. The colours we have used, unlike the three examples are much brighter and engaging, we believe that by using stronger colours the audience will form a deeper connection with the article. 

Using columns is another feature of the layout that all newspapers and magazines use, this is to spread out the text, when it is in paragraphs crossing the entire width of the page, readers are less likely to stop and approach the text becuase it looks daunting and time consuming. 

This puff piece is a massive improvement from our drafts because of the way we have used research to shape our puff piece into something more creative, engaging and proffesional. 

Research Puff Piece

Reviews

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/01/09/halcyon-hotel-worth-checking-episode-two-review/

This article begins by talking about the TV series' genre, conventions, however doing so in a critical way, commenting that it is something you'll have seen before. After his introduction the writer develops into revealing further details such as name dropping the actors as well as their characters and the roles they have in the series. Contradictory to his initial reflection on the series, the journalist goes on to commend the scriptwriter, and leave the reader wanting to find out more. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/01/07/taboo-review-tom-hardys-swaggering-brute-costume-drama/

Ben Lawrence, the journalist of this review uses comedy and relaxed language to interact with the reader on a more personal and relatable level. 'Taboo' is introduced using a question which draws the reader in and makes them think about the drama. By describing the programmes characters and using Tom Hardy's well known name Lawrence educates his readers as to the series' and helps them understand it. He also name drops Steven Knight, and other work he has directed, such as the renowned Peaky Blinders. To conclude the review Lawrence finishes much the same way as he started, humour. 

What I've learnt from this research:

I have learnt that my writing in an informal way I can form an intimate relationship with the reader and therefore make them more likely to watch the program that is being reviewed. 

Puff Piece draft

Puff Piece Research Two

Wednesday, 9 November 2016

This research is more documentary specific

With help from the website linked below, we were able to gather more research. 

http://www.desktop-documentaries.com/documentary-reviews.html

Chris Bridger, the journalist, takes a positive attutude towards 'Undefeated' talking about how it made him feel, what its about all within the first paragraphy, we plan on replicating this introductory paragraph as it engages the reader and gives them someone to trust that it is a good documentary, the complimentary outlook on the documentary is key to the success of our pilot episode because the target audience will read it and then feel motivated to watch our documentary when it comes out. 

People in the 'Undefeated' are also mentioned in a way that makes the reader like them, and so grow interested in what happens to them throughout the documentary, we plan on using something similar to this. In our Q and A I will mention some of the people in the pilot episode and the answers they gave us, leaving the audience wanting to know more. 

The lightness of this documentary is similar to the mood generated by 'The Big Question'. Immediately the reader is introduced to the subject of the documentary, grabbing the readers attention from the very start, making sure they don't move onto a different review. This review is considerably short, something that we could have done, but instead by going into more depth in our puff piece we have more information for the target audience to think about, including an interview with the director, which creates a buzz around the pilot episode. 

Audience Research Results for posters

These results show that our target audience prefer simple posters, keeping this in mind we will present all the essential information in a clear way. 

As these results show a similar amount of votes for each choice, we will include both of these elements in our poster to maximise their satisfaction. 

With these results we will use appropriate colours for an upbeat documentary, probably pink or yellow.

These results show that most of our target audience view advertisements online, which is perfect as that is where we plan to place our poster. 

Potential Target Audience

Identifying my potential target audience is an essential part of planning towards our documentary series, it is important to think about who you are making your end product for, because they will be consuming it.

We have estimated our target audience to be within the ages 15-29, adolescents and young adults. This is because the content is mainly of people in this age range and so the topics explored will be of interest to those watching it.

This has also effected us when choosing our ancillary tasks; we have picked the promotional poster and a puff piece because we feel that these are what are most likely to pop up in their day to day lives. We also conducted audience research to find out what they look for in a promotional poster and have used that feedback to develop our poster. 

Our potential target audience has also influenced us to release our series online, so that it is easy and fast to access, ideal for those leading busy and stressful lives, it is a quick escape from day to day life, and a way to find out others opinions on issues of importance, or irrelevance. The documentary also communicates straight to the subjects on screen giving people who may feel isolated a way to connect with other briefly if they are having a busy day and cannot find time to connect with friends. 

For example;

Sally is a 21 year old student in her final year of uni, she is very busy with work trying to get all of her assignments in but she needs a break from the studying so she clicks onto iplayer to watch a 5 minute doc that takes her mind away from her hard work and entertains her. 

Connor is a 28 year old who works in a very busy office five days a week, and also has a job on the weekends so he can pay his bills, he rarely has time to go out with friends because he nearly always has work to do, to take a break he opens up iplayer to watch a quick documentary that his friends will be watching too, that way they can all chat about it on their group chat on their way to work.

Ellie is a GCSE student who is very busy with revision but needs to take a brief brake so she looks up the documentary series and views an episode, then she can continue with her revision with a clear head and a perfect sized break. 

Documentary Poster Research

Theory of semiotics

At first I found the theory of semiotics very complex, but after conducting research and viewing this explanatory video on youtube I understand the concept. 

Semiotics are the things that we just understand, the video gives an example that explains if we see someone on screen shake their head, we know that they mean no. This is simply an example of the audience reading/interpreting a certain code that everyone speaks. 

The concept of semiotics goes further than just actions though, it can be used from anything such as colour to the way a piece of media is edited. For example, if a scene was dark, blue, low key lighting, we would interpret it as scary or sad. 

Semiotics will help me when I am making my documentary because I will understand why I am making a certain edit, or using a specific type of music, and what effect it will have on my audience. 

Production Diary

July - Bea and I came up with the idea for our short film, two sisters who had run away from home living on the streets. Our short film would simply be an event in their lives, we kept it simple. We wanted the eldest of the sisters (Sophie) to go to the local shop and buy something with the coppers they had got from begging. In the shop she would come across a mother and her son buying loads of food and paying with large notes, the audience would see her reaction to this and hopefully they would sympathise with her. Over the top of these shots the youngest of the two sisters (Lilly) would act as a narrator, describing how much she loves her sister and all she has done for her, but with-holding their true circumstances until they join up at the end, with (Sophie) bringing her some food.

We wanted the audience to feel shocked and saddened by what the sisters had gone through but to feel enlightened by the love they had for each other.

We planned to film in the summer holidays...

But due to lack of organisation we failed to do so.

September - After the summer holiday our thoughts had wondered and we were no longer so set on our original plot.

Instead we came up with the idea of 'Don't Get Me Started' a documentary in which we would approach strangers in Camden, London and ask them to follow on form this. Before we filmed our intuition led us to create a back up plan - just in case our original idea did not work out. 

This was the question 'If you could be anything in the world what would you be and why?'

We thought that this would be a strong back up plan because its a positive question, people may not be as willing to rant about their negative opinions for fear that someone will oppose them or that they may offend someone. By having a more open question that allows people to answer either in a calculated way or a silly way more people should be willing to take part. 

We filmed in October.
We began by setting up our tripod and camera facing a brick wall that we wanted people to stand in front of and give their answers. However after realising that people were reluctant to take part we opted for plan B. Our planning and experience came in handy as if we had not planned for something like this to happen, we would have been completely lost. 
Instead we perseveered and found that our plan B was actually much more feesable to carry out than our plan A. Instead of making our filming subject to one place, we became mobile, and did not use the tripod as much which allowed us to approach people quickly and without hassle, as Camden is a very busy place on a Saturday.  

11:00am: Meet in Camden and begin filming establishing shots.

12:00pm: Finish filming establishing shots, begin to look for a place to set up our camera and tripod.

12:15pm: Found a place to set up, begin looking for people to ask our question to.

3pm: Finish interviewing people. Begin filming more establishing shots.

3:30pm: Finish filming final establishing shots. Begin putting equipment away.

3:40pm: End of filming.

The footage we brought back was very rich in content, at first. 
Cutting the material together was very difficult as we came to the conclusion that we did not have enough establishing shots for what we wanted to achieve, to fix this situation we went out to Camden again to catch more establishing shots on:
This session was a lot shorter than the last one as we knew exactly what we wanted to film and were much more familiar with the area, we had captured all the material we needed within an hour.

Back in the editing room, we found it very hard to piece together the shots because we had never done anything in the genre of a documentary before. However by referring to our research we managed to use other short documentaries and look at their structure, hoping to create a similar end result for our doc. 

It has taken us several months to sucessfully finish editing our episode of the documentary series because there was so much to improve on. 
I have learnt from this journey that documentaries are incredibly hard to piece together because we had no storyboard to use for structure and no script. Instead we learnt the shots inside out so that we could place them in the perfect order. 
Our audience research helped us massively with this process as well, asking them what we should improve on (developed in the posts on the draft versions of 'The Big Question').

Institutional Research

I am perfoming Institutional Research so that I can identify which platforms are ideal for the broadcasting of my documentary 'The Big Question'.

BBC 3

In 2015, the BBC pledged to become an 'open platform' for creativity. 

This gaurantee asures us, as film makers, that the BBC is a perfect place for us to work with to present our documentary series. The ariticle includes the BBC's director general, Tony Hall who states that the company is an "open BBC for the internet age." Our plan is to release 'The Big Question' solely on an online platform so it is easy to access for millions of viewers. The BBC already has an online channel, BBC 3, which has already been used by independant film makers such as Ben Brown. This is evidence for how relevant BBC 3 is at the moment, allowing for a large viewing audience. The BBC plans to open itself up to the culture presented all accross Britain, I believe our documentary series is just the tip of this iceberg. 

The opening up of iPlayer will allow other broadcasters to show their content, which shows a widening of the company and the eagerness to accept all media from anybody. It also states that there will be a focus on online content, which displays a potentially perfect place for us to work with in terms of distributing our series. BBC 3 will make future production much broader in terms of content and also a much easier platform to submit media onto for a large viewing audience. It will open up the independent media industry. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-34168310

Channel 4

In their statement of promises, Channel 4 uses the phrase 'foster' in terms of how it interats with budding film makers which is key for us as it assures us that Channel 4 has made a gaurantee that they will support us. Channel 4 also states taht they will work with the digital age, using differenet forms of media to boradcast their content, this will inevitably include online, which is already happening (4OD). They also say "We will use our reputation for risk and non-conformism to engage a younger generation in the values of public service broadcasting." This is directed at the same target audience as us, the young and amibitous. They also strive to be the first choice when independant film makers are looking for a platform to work with and broadcast their content with, which is very convenient for us, as this is exactly who we are. 

http://www.channel4.com/about_c4/promises_2001/promises_intro2.html

Youtube

YouTube, an incredibly currenet online platform, was launched in 2005. It is the largest place for anybody to upload a video independently for a worldwide audience to view. I view this as one of the most ideal places for us to use as a platform for our documentary series, we can use social media oursleves to advertise our series, and do this completely independently, whereas with the other companies we would work alongside them to acomplish the end goal, we could do this of our own accord, which in some ways gives us our own freedom.

https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/


Researching into the different media platforms that I could potentially broadcast my documentary series on is essential to the planning of 'The Big Question' because I need to know where I am preparing my product for and the branding and style that I should prepare to incorporate with my products.