Feedback on documentary

It was really great to get some feedback from others on our documentary to hear their views and to get their opinions on what they thought worked well and not so well.

The majority of the feedback we received was really positive. I believe the way in which we targeted such a wide audience helped a lot as a wide range of ages all very much enjoyed it.

The negatives we took from it were mainly- A few shaky shots, Sound of voice and music was sometimes uneven and some of our archive footage was cut off early. Although some of the feedback was negative, the majority was a very positive response and it was really great to hear both sides from an honest opinion. Looking back at our documentary now, I can definitely see a lot more of what our audience feedback gave us and it is great to know for future projects.

Sharing our documentary on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOn5r1vtrg8

Above is a link to our documentary on YouTube, we thought it would be interesting to see if we got any feedback from the public world wide. 

Evaluation

Individual magazine article

Magazine Article- Individual ancillary task

I thoroughly enjoyed creating our own individual magazine article. I felt it was an interesting and independent task which allowed us to be imaginative. Considering we had to choose a topic in which would relate to our subject of state and private schools I decided to do the quality of school lunches at each school. I interviewed two students from both a private and state school. One of the students who was at Heathside previously attended a private school so it was interesting to ask the questions where we were able to see comparisons.
During the intereview I took notes and made sure I correctly wrote down everything in which they said to make sure my interview was as detailed as it needed to be.
The conversation was flowing which was really nice as it allowed me to pick up on a few extra points along the way.
I did some thorough research in to my individual ancillary task to make sure it was the best it could possibly be. I searched lots on You Tube and found that one of the most viewed clips are the ones on Jamie Oliver''s school dinners. This was really inspiring and pushed me to choose the idea.

Advertising the documentary

On my individual ancillary task I made a point of advertising our documentary and rating it out of five stars. I felt this was important as people reading the article would then see the good rating and feel an attraction to watch it. We decided to do the same with our poster as it was important to let the viewers know other people's views and opinions. Giving the documentary five stars and making comments on our poster was a good way to let people know what the documentary was about and what other people thought about it.

Audience feedback on Target Audience

Getting other peoples points of view on what they thought our target audience should be was really interesting and extremely helpful. Lydia and Dani both agreed with us that our target audience could be either parents/teachers or students. Hearing this from a different perspective was good as it was a whole new fresh insight in to the documentary.  

Word cloud based on double magazine spread

For our individual ancillary task we are doing a magazine article, I thought it would be a good idea to create a word cloud in order to get some ideas on what to base my magazine article on. Doing a word cloud really helped as it picked up on some of the key words I needed to focus on in order to create a successful magazine article. I have decided to base my magazine article around school lunches and if there is any difference in them at a state and private school. I felt this topic worked well as its very much relates to our documentary in terms of looking at some of the differences. 

Research into similar products and potential target audience

When browsing You Tube, we came across a debate about Public school vs Private school which we thought related to our documentary really well. We hear the views of parents and we also hear from Obama himself and his views. I felt this debate would be appealing to all ages as it is something in which concerns both adults and children.

Ancillary Tasks

We have now decided that for our ancillary tasks we are going to create a magazine article as our individual tasks and a poster as a group task. I was happy with this decision as I believed doing a individual magazine article would allow us to be as creative as we wanted. It was allow us to come up with a really good story, one in which we could share with others. When thinking about my magazine article, it was important to think about what sort of people we were aiming at.

Creating a poster as a group was going to be something we could also put our creativity into. Sharing ideas within the group and laying them down to create something new and exciting that would succeed in getting an audience for our documentary.

As the magazine article was something in which we could have different ideas for, this is why we felt we would all be much more successful in doing this task individually.

Relevance of interview questions

Throughout our documentary we asked a majority of questions to a selection of people. The relevance of these questions was to potray to the people watching our documentary the key differences between a state schools and private schools.

Some key questions we included were:

-Do you feel there is a main difference between a state school and a private school? - Asking this question lays down a grounding for our documenary. It was interesting to see the differences between opinions.

-Do you feel the teaching standard is to the same level? - In our footage from Reeds school we actually include footage of a classroom where we see a very high standard of teaching. The footage we include shows the teacher and the pupils actually engaging with eachother.

-Do you feel the uniform has any effect on the way you work? - It was interesting to see the views of the students and the way they felt about their school uniform.

-What does a normal day consist of? It was interesting to see the differences between a state school and a private school and what their days consisted of, the number of lessons, times etc.

Throughout our documentary I am the person who asks the majority of questions so it was really good as I felt a really connection to the people when asking the questions as I have also experienced both a state school and a private school.

The relevance of the interview questions also link to our target audience as a wide variety of questions are asked and answered therefore links nicely into relating to our target audience.

Editing process

The clip above is our editing process, using movie maker to achieve the best possible results for our editing. So far the process is going really well. We used two cameras a lot of the time during filming for our documentary so putting the footage together has been successful as we've managed to capture everything we planned to. We've included some good backing music for our documentary. It fits really nicely in to the setting and atmosphere of our documentary. We've played around a lot with the settings on movie maker, trying new things out to see what the outcome is like. We are nearing the end of editing our footage, it has all come together really nicely. The idea that we've included a bit of everything in our documentaries, from interviews to relevant archive footage has been very successful. 

Our use of voiceover worked really well to make our documentary as successful as possible. Voiceovers were done by myself, I felt it allowed the audience to be kept up to date with everything that was going on throughout our documentary. 

Update on process so far

Mise en scene

The costume for our documentary was very important. I star in the documentary however I only ever introduce the venue we are at or I am interviewing and am not seen therefore we didn't feel my attire was extremely important. However the people who star in our documentary that we have interviewed, are all wearing the correct attire. The private school students are all wearing suits, the 5th year pupils from a state school are wearing uniform and the sixth form pupils from a state school are wearing their own clothing which outlines one of the differences we cover about uniform. It all works really nicely throughout our documentary, I believe it was important to consider the importance of uniform.

Engaging our target audience

We believed our documentary could appeal to all ages. It is a subject in which would interest both children and adults. We include interviews with pupils as well as teachers so we get opinions and views of all ages. For our individual task we are creating a poster where we can advertise our documentary so this will attract a lot of attention if we go about it in the right way.

Also this idea that because our documentary is appealing to all ages, there is no restriction on who can watch it, therefore there is no worry for parents for instance about letting their child watch it. If anything it is educational.

I believe many people would be curious to see how our documentary portrays both a state and a private school so therefore this would be a big attraction for developing a larger audience.