We hope you enjoyed our documentary, here is our evaluation:
One of our main strengths when completing the documentary is the
information we gathered. In the early stages of our planning we ‘mindmapped’
topics that we wanted to put in to our documentary, for example the history of
pop music. We then each took one or more topics and went off individually to
research and gather information on this topic. We believe that this was done to
a high standard and each of us put in the effort to collect the research that
we needed. We believe that we were then able to put this in to our documentary
and produce a very informative piece of work, which not only helped us learn
about the genre of pop but would also help others watching to learn about it.
One of the main things we learnt when researching for our documentary was the
history of pop. We used 4 big changes for pop music that we believe has helped
shape it today. The first was improved microphones in the 1940s, which allowed
artists improved sound quality both in performance, and in music videos. The
second was in the 1950s, where rock and roll saw the push of actually creating
the pop genre for the female voices, which were popular however not husky
enough to fit in to the rock and roll genre. 1952 saw the introduction of pop
charts, which gave the audience some more involvement with their favourite
artist’s music and was a quick and easy way to find newly released songs. The
last was 1981 which saw the first music channel aired on TV; this was MTV which
opened with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star – The Buggles. Another one of the main
things we learnt about by doing this documentary was the codes and conventions.
By watching different music videos we identified the repeating factors and then
paired them to a music video. The first music video we used was ‘Beyoncè –
Single Ladies’ which shows the tight, revealing outfits that are regularly worn
in female pop music videos. The second music video we used was ‘Rihanna – Rude
Boy’ which shows the bright, colourful feel and look that female pop music videos
usually have. The final music video we used was ‘Kesha – Tik Tok’ which showed
the content of the songs, which are usually teenage issues such as drinking, sex
and parties.
Another one of our main strengths was the editing added to the
filmed clips. We believe that we were able to really show off our media skills
through making this documentary. We were able to plan out the editing whilst
planning the content because we knew what we would be able to achieve through
editing. The subheadings, transitions, voice-overs and greenscreening were all
part of our original plan and we believe that this helps to pull the
documentary together and ‘show us off’ as media students. We also were able to
get rid of a few problems in the editing stage, which helped to perfect the
documentary. One of the mistakes was that when speaking to the audience, we
mentioned that Video Killed The Radio Star was by Radiohead, however when we
came to download the music video we realised that it was actually by The
Buggles. To correct this we faded the sound out so that you could not hear this
incorrect name and saw the correct name in the subheading that we added to the
right hand side of the screen throughout the playing of the music video.
Another problem that we were able to erase was the amount of time we left for
the music videos to show. Our original idea was to have the videos played on
the green screen throughout the whole of the talking and therefore when
filming, the host paused for gaps to show the music videos. When it came to
editing the documentary however, we realised that these gaps actually were not
long enough to show the music video. To fix this we used a ‘cutaway’ tool which
allows one clip to cutaway from another clip, this resulted in the music videos
being played silently no the greenscreen whilst the host was speaking and then
the music video is played with music in a separate clip straight after, which
we believe actually looks better and more professional.
One weakness of our documentary is the sound. We filmed both
inside and outside which meant that background noise and other factors managed
to distort the sound in some of the clips. For example we held 3 quick interviews
in front of a brick wall, however this brick wall was actually the wall leading
to doors of a building, which had a shelter over. This meant that the sound of
the voices echo and sound distorted and different to the other clips where we
were stood outside in the open or inside. Although this does not affect the
documentary and its contents a great deal, it is still something that should be
worked on for the next piece of work we do.
To improve this we are going to ensure that we work on our sound
editing. We feel like the editing stage is the best stage to correct any sound faults,
as it is much easier and quicker to be able to manage it this way instead of
having to bring in equipment such as multi-setting microphones. We are going to
do this through research such as watching tutorials on YouTube, reading essays,
following instructions and exploring the sound effects of the editing software
that we use.
Another weakness of our documentary is the topic of the audience.
We focused mainly on the history and codes for the genre pop and although we
did a few interviews with the public ages 14-18, we still do not feel that we
know our audience enough. We had previously written an ‘audience profile’ and
now feel like this should have been added in to our documentary to give
ourselves and the people who watch the documentary an idea of who it is that
watches and listens to pop music and therefore who the music is aimed at.
We actually decided to take action on this straight away and after
our documentary was finished we arranged and filmed a focus group. The focus
group was made up of 3 teenage females, as age and gender were the only things
we knew about our audience. In the interview we showed them 3 clips, 2 current
artists whose music videos are quite different and an older pop music video. We
then asked them questions such as what they think about the videos, what they
prefer, what they think are the important aspects and more. We also crated an
online survey about pop music to find out more about our audience. In the
survey we asked things such as their hobbies, what they do as a living, their favourite
books and films and also asked them about current female pop artists. Our next
steps are to evaluate the focus group and draw together what we found out and
also to assess the results of the online survey.
Overall we believe that the content and planning of our
documentary helped it to be informative, effective and show our potential as
media students. To improve we will be taking action by learning more about
sound editing and analysing information gathered about our audience!
See you soon!
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