Evaluation

Media evaluation power point

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Finished Supporting piece

This is my finished supporting piece. It is in the style of a double page magazine article including an interview with a 'producer'. I have also included some achieve footage to break up the writing.

Evaluation

I have completed my evaluation in the form of a powerpoint. I have done two slides for each evaluation question and included photographs in order to make it more interesting. I have also included a slide about the research I did as well as the research we did together as a group. A link to my prezi is also inclueded in my powerpoint in order to show the broad range of technology i have used throughout this year.

FINAL DOCUMENTARY

PREZI

This is my unfinished prezi. I have done this as part of my evaluation as well as my powerpoint. I decided to use prezi as I have never used it before and it is a fun and interesting way of making an interactive presentation. Personally I feel it makes a good change to a normal powerpoint and it is also very fun to make and experiment with!

Group supporting piece

We have decided as a group to do a joint supporting piece. We have produced a radio advert using garage band. We used a siren as background noise coming closer and closer.

Voice overs

We did voice overs on top of all of our statistics. As there are four of us in the group we each had a go at doing a voice over to see whose voice was more suited. We used a programme called garage band so we were able to play around with the recordings with the speed and the voice. In the end we didnt change anything as it is a serious subject which worked better as a normal voice.

Statistics

This is a clip from our documentary of the stats that we included.

Audience feedback

This is out audience feedback, we got together people from the age group that our documentary is aimed at and asked them to watch and comment on our work.

Supporting pieces

I have finished one of my supporting pieces which is a double spread magazine article assessing the documentary and how well it has projected the problem of teenage drivers. I have tried to make it unbias including the pros and cons of the product. I have also included an 'interview' with one of the producers of the documentary and their view on it, featuring the parts of the documentary which they would do again if they were to restart the project. I have also included a photograph/still shot of one of the shots in the documentary.

Editing

We have finished all of our filming so our main concentration is now on editing our production to make sure that our documentary is under the time limit of 5mins and flows nicely. So far we have found it quite difficult to make our production run smoothly, as our documentary includes alot of differnt tones it is hard to run one after another without something to break them up. For example, we have a depressing 'youtube blog' style interview which cannot be followed by archieve footage of a fast car. We are still trying to improve the fluidity of our documentary as best we can.

Our last Interview

We decided as a group that it would be benifitial to do an interview of a teacher in a more traditional interview style. This was a structure interview consiting of 5 questions. We thought it would be a valid point of view as teachers are around teenagers all day and in cases such as college and sixthforms they witness first hand teenagers learning to drive.

in the style of a youtube blog

Yesterday I did an interview to use in our project in the style of a youtube video blog. We thought this would be a good idea as it shows a totally different form of interview; it makes us able to project personal grief as well as portray views from a teenagers perspective, as some teenagers wouldn't be as honest if being interviewed by an adult.

We filmed this using a Mac notebook built in camera which we hadn't used before, it was a totally new way of filming and it made us able to get a very raw camera angle, focused only on the interviewee. We have discussed as a group that this would be an effective and different way of blogging for our own blogs as well as in our documentary.

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Interview

Today we plan to interview a driving instructor, we plan to use a structure interview to find out his opinions on teenage driving. We are going to ask him what concerns him most about teens driving and what he thinks is the biggest factor of their crashes. By doing this it enables us to have an interview from a professional who is constantly dealing with teenagers driving.

Texting while driving

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8203091.stm

This is a short film made by Gwent Police in wales to encourage people not to text and drive. The film is based on a real life story in which a car crash caused by lack of concentration due to texting is fatal to 5 people including a baby. This film has shocked the UK, some debating that it is too grafic. The main question surrounding this film is, do we really need to scare people out of texting while driving?

We are going to use from 0.00 to 0.36 of this film to end our documentry. We think this will be a good ending as it really shows the dangers of careless teenage driving.

Traffic

Today we are going to film down from a bridge onto traffic below. We are doing this in order to have a shot that we can use as a background for statistics rather than have them on a blank background. We have decided that this would be a good shot to use as althought the magority of the cars we will be filming won't nessissarily be driven by teenagers it still gives a good representation and highlights the speeds of which people are willing to go regardless of the consequences.

Once we completed this filming we bled the colour out of the shots and changed the contrast so it made a better background for our statistics. we broke the shots into five sets of 7seconds as this was just long enough for people to be able to read the stats but not too long that it got boring. we also plan to do a voice over reading out the statistics to make sure the people watching the documentary take in the horrific number of teenage car accidents.

Examples of Archieve footage

These are just a few examples of the archieve footage i have found of teenagers cars after they have crashed them.We are using archieve footage in our documentary in order to incoporate evidence that teenage driving accidents are on the increase. As you can see by these photos the crashes are not minor ones, infact the majority of the people who were in these specific cars died at the scene or were seriously injured.

supporting work.

Rather than go to meet Jon snow as originally arranged I decided to interview him over email in order to use it in order to produce a 'newspaper' style artical about the documentry. My idea is to write an artical about the soon-to-come documentry and use his opinions in order to establish why the documentry has been made. When I spoke to him he was very passionate about being involved as he is one of the people who goes through the thousands of news stories sent to channel 4 news and decides which ones to speak about on air. He stated that although the stories that he presents are the national news stories of the moment he does get an increasing amount of reports about teenagers in car accidents and therfore believes it is a very important subject that needs to be addressed.

I have also emailed Jeremy Clarkson to hopefully include in my supporting artical as well. I thought that Clarkson (the popular topgear presenter) would be a great interview as im sure there are a lot of teenagers out there mimicing his fast driving and getting themselves into difficulties. I wonder whether or not Clarkson feels slight responsibility for the rising amount of car accidents in the Uk involving young adults or not.

Typical Conventions

http://www.slideshare.net/confirm/MjQwODIzMTc7M2hnb3I=/307575-2179dc104b739b5a2c2d84a0c59343636c9698da-slideshow

This is a slideshow of the typical documentary conventions from the website: slideshare.net
There are so many conventions all as important as each other, my group are going to include as many as these as possible in order to make our documentary as professional as possible.

General information on teenage accidents

''Of the 580,000 cars stolen between April 1991 and march 1992, the Government estimates that in 65 per cent of cases the thieves were teenagers, mainly boys.'' (The independent)

''The main causes for car accidents are reckless and negligent driving and alcohol. Teenagers, according to the statistics, cause most car accidents Inexperience coupled with irresponsible behavior and a lack of respect for the safety precautions are the main causes for such a high number of teenage car accidents.'' (ezine articals)

''Young driver deaths stood at 113 in 2000 but by 2004 had increased to 151. Those aged 17-19 holding licences in the same period fell from 41% to 26%.Curfews, the role of drugs and driving and bans on new motorists carrying passengers are other possible options for discussion, said the organisation's head of road safety Andrew Howard. In recent years, the government has begun to respond to statistics showing new drivers are more likely to have accidents, employing measures like the Pass Plus course. It showed deaths of 16-19-year-olds per 100,000 driving licences had risen from 9.76 in 1998-2000 to 19.23 in 2004.'' (BBC NEWS UK)

First Interview

This is an interview that my group and I produced. It includes such things as using speach over music which is something that we havn't done before but by using it in the right way has improved the atmosphere and made the interview seem more professional. We also expanded on filming techniques using a wide variety of shots, making sure the interview is as good as we could make it. expands on previous editing and filming techniques.


This is the final product: a short interview...

Personal Reasons

Although it was my whole group that came up with the subject of teenage traffic accidents I  myself have a personal reason to want to produce a documentry to inform people of the problem we face of teenagers driving. On 25th may 2008 one of my best friends ages 17 died in a car accident while was on his way back from a party, he was going too fast and came to a sharp corner and lost control; because of this I have witnessed first hand the emotional trauma that such accidents cause to friends and family. I have also learnt that such accidents teach you what is important in life and due to this when I was learning to drive I took great care in making sure I was doing everything right to become a safe driver, and still now two years on I dont take any risks while driving. Having been through it myself I hope that our documentry teaches teenagers not to take stupid risks while driving because its not just you it effects its so many others.

research

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=69FF3E8BA4E5055A&search_query=kurt+and+courtney+documentary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2cnK72w53Y

For research in order to gain a vague idea of the type of documentary we wanted to produce we watched already existing documentaries from producers such as Nick Broomfield, Louis Theroux and Michael Moore.
Nick Broomfield's way of delivering important messages and information through his documentary's are subtle and unobtrusive, he rarely uses voice overs, allowing the audience to make their own assumptions and dig a little deeper to discover for themselves. He has a hands on and economical approach to filming, often using only the bare minimum in terms of crew and equipment, and a handheld camera style which creates a strong feeling of reality.
Broomfield engages the audience into feeling empathy with characters featured in his documentaries, by capturing them in situations where they appear strongly emotional and vulnerable, some scenes could almost be looked at as 'uncensored', This technique can be seen in 'Aileen', which really gives it a shock factor .
Louis Theroux's documentaries are quirky and unorthodox, many of his films have an unusual subject matter and this is one of the qualities that makes him such a successful film maker. 'When Louis Met...' is one of his most popular series documentaries, Louis meets and lives with different characters and families with extraordinary lives. Although these are documentaries, Louis' outspoken character and biased opinions which are voiced so strongly throughout each program become something of a novelty. This controversy is a clever technique of reverse psychology, creating media hype encourages viewers to have their own opinions.
Michael Moore is a strongly controversial character, who tackles taboo and important subjects head on. These include his attack on George Bush, the American Healthcare system, and the issue of gun possession in the U.S. Moores documentaries are usually very lengthy, but appeal to a wide target audience as he cleverly balances strong hard hitting facts with comical scenes and an artistic approach. This technique allows the documentaries to be entertaining as well as informative.

lighting

These are exaples of lighting shots we tried out in order to find the perfect lighting for our interviews. We tried to create a depressing, secretive, taboo atmosphere in order to show the impact that the stories being told about teenage traffic accidents have caused. such lighting effects are popular in shows such as crimewatch on bbc, however they use it more to hide the identity of the person being interviewed be it victim or criminal. The technique is very simple to do however the effect is dramatic and makes it easy for us to portray difficult subjects easily.

storyboard examples

Filming Cars.. october - december 09

Before Christmas we started practising and trying out new techniques of filming and discovered the best ways to do things such a film moving cars.

We went out during a lesson in November to try out different techniques, we did things such as shaking the camera as we filmed to produce a hand held effect as well as using a tripod to create a steady shot. In our documentary we want to include some shots of moving traffic perhaps of a motor way from a car or looking down from a bridge, we would like to get this shot so that we could write over it with statistics in our finished documentary. So far we filmed out of Josh's car window in order to demonstrate which of these positions would gain the best shot of traffic, soon we will be filming from a bridge in order to compare. We also want to be able to portray speeding in the best possible way by using a mixture of shots, this made us start to experiment with midshots, distance shots and close ups of the car to enable us to make sure we were using the best possible angles.

 

Thanks to our storyboard we are now aware of the basics of our documentary meaning we are now able to continue experimenting ways in which to film. Filming a moving car is something we focused a lot on to make sure we make the most effective shot we tried filming inside and outside of the car. We have decided to back up our own filming with relevant archive footage, making sure it is current so we can really link it into our project. We will continue this research, looking for better archive footage in order to create the right tone and atmosphere for our documentary.  It is strangely difficult to find archive footage as a lot of the footage on the internet is not real or exaggerated, however we will continue our search as it is a very important component.

Interviews

As everyone knows Interviews are a main part of documentary and therefore we plan to include two or three main interviews. My group and I rung up Jon Snow the popular channel 4 news presenter and asked if he would be interested in being interviews by my group about the topic of teenage driving accidents; he said he would be delighted as story's are always coming through the news about teen driving tragedy's as well as the fact he has two daughters and has been through the worry of them learning to drive. I thought That Jon snow would be a good interviewee for two reasons, firstly as he has a lot to do with youths due to his work with the 'new horizon' charity. Secondly as he does a lot of work behind the scenes of channel four news, including going through hundreds of news stories that get sent to him everyday about a number of different topics so i was sure he would have a good and valid opinion.

http://www.nhyouthcentre.org.uk/

Another source that we looked at to be an interviewee was 'drive alive' an organisation produced in order to educate young teens in the danger of reckless driving and what damage it can cause to them and others around them. This organisation travels around on tour to make sure that teenagers all over the country get a chance to see their presentation, It includes many talks from people who have been directly effected by traffic accidents including family of victims of car crashes. It had a huge impact on our year when we went to watch their presentation last year and therefore we thought that it would be a good place to start when doing interviews. Unfortunately we haven't been able to get through to them on account of them being on tour but we hope for them to reply to our email soon.

:http://www.safedrive.org.uk/news.html