Evaluation

For this main task we had to be working in groups of no more than four candidates. In my working group there were myself, Sunil Mehmi and Vikramjeet Swali.
For the main task we were ask to produce the first two pages of a new local newspaper and two ancillary tasks which is a poster for the newspaper and a radio advertisement for the newspaper. All the materials that we were to use would have to be produced by our selves and use someone else’s copyright free sources.


In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

I think that my media product uses similar forms and conventions of real media products as my newspaper shows the same text layout as other local newspapers such as Express & Star. This layout would consist of the text being in columns and aligned to the left to use most of the space that is available. Another similar example of a newspaper convention is the logo and banner at the top of the pages. These are examples of how my newspaper is similar to other local newspapers that currently exist in the industry.

My newspaper also uses different forms and conventions of real media products as it uses much brighter colours than existing local newspapers. I had chosen to use brighter colours for the newspaper as we are targeting a much younger target audience and brighter colours, which stand out more, are more attractive to the younger generation. The advertisements that are along the left side are also targeted to a younger audience because the advertisements are a subject that a younger audience are interested in. Another difference of forms and conventions to existing local newspapers is the logo as it does not include the name in it and it is more seen as a symbol, but it can still be recognised as the logo for my newspaper. The colour scheme I used is mainly orange and black which is the same colour scheme as the Wolverhampton football team and it also attracts a younger audience. The two colour scheme convention is used by other local newspapers such as the Metro having blue and white and Express & Star, which use red and black.


How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

In addition to the newspaper, we also created a poster to promote the newspaper. This uses different forms and conventions to existing newspapers, as I have not seen posters to other local newspapers. The poster also uses brighter colours like my newspaper, which helps me attract the target audience, but at the same time promoting the newspaper. The poster itself includes the front cover of the newspaper, which shows the audience what the newspaper looks like. The poster also gives the audience a good amount of information about the newspaper such as what the newspaper includes and how much it costs. However all this information is given in short and snappy phrases. We have also slanted the text and the newspaper on the poster, which helps it stand out more than other basic posters and also looks more attractive to the younger audience. Posters for existing newspapers are usually basic and don’t include slanted text and images.
We also created a radio advertisement, which would help promote the newspaper. The radio advertisement helps promote the newspapers as it describes what the newspaper is, what it will include and how much it will cost. It does all of this in the shortest amount of time, as if it had been too long it would have become boring. This radio advertisement is intended to be played on many radio stations such as WCR FM, Five Live, The Wolf.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For the newspaper I learned that it was too focused on one headline and this was rectified by adding other smaller articles. For the newspaper poster I learned that it had too much information on it and this could be rectified by using shorter phrases. For the radio advertisement I learned that it was kept simple and short which works as a radio advertisement.


How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

The media technologies I used to create the newspaper and poster was Adobe Fireworks. I started of by setting the canvas size for both the newspaper and poster. I also used the import tool within the software to import text and images. Another feature of the software I used was the shape tool to create the shapes for the poster, which sits behind the text.
The media technologies I used to create the radio advertisement was GarageBand. I started of by recording the speech as I thought this would be the most time consuming process of the task. I recorded the speech a few times to get the clearest sound possible. I also added jingle, which would play throughout the length of the radio advertisement. I used a special feature of the program to quieten down the jingle while the speech is playing.
The media technologies I used to manage my research, planning and construction was Blogger. I first created a blog, which I then linked to the A2 Media blog so my teachers could follow the blog. I then uploaded how my performance is going, research, planning and construction on to my blog.

Radio Advertisement for Newspaper

I was not able to upload the Radio Advertisement for the Newspaper on here due to restrictions, but it has been burnt on to a DVD with the other media productions.

Final poster for newspaper

This is how my final poster for newspaper looks

Final Newspaper

This is how my final newspaper looks.

Planning for radio advertisement

This is the script of the radio advertisement which will be used to advertise my newspaper.

The script:

• Jingle
• "Grab your daily copy of wolverhampton watch now, costing only 25p, cheaper than all or our competitors and covers local and national news. WOLVERHAMPTON WATCH CUS NEWS MATTERS!"
• Jingle

Template of my newspaper

The template above shows how my newspaper will be layed out and what colours, font style and font size I will be using.

Thursday 18/03/2010: Audience Research

Below is the questionnaire I created to carry out my audience research.

We are doing this questionnaire for part of our media studies portfolio to gain our audience research on newspapers. Questions that will be answered will have anonymous participants and will not be used personally. Personal information will be kept safe.

Please circle the correct answer where applicable

What sex are you?
Male
Female

What age are you?
Under 21 years olds
22-30 year olds
30-40 years olds
40-50 year olds
50-60 year olds
60+ year olds

What ethnicity are you?
White British
Pakistani
Afro – Caribbean
Dual Heritage
Indian
Other

Do you read newspapers?
Yes
no

How often do buy/read newspapers?
Once a day
Once a week
Once a month
Never

What newspapers do you read?
Express & Star
The Sun
Guardian
Telegraph
Daily Mail
Metro
Mirror
Other

What kind of size do you like the newspapers to be?
Broadsheet size
750 x 600 mm
Berliner
470 x 315 mm
Tabloid size
430 x 280 mm


What kind of content do you like on the front page?
Local News
Sport
Celebs
TV & Entertainment
Life & Style
Advice
Travel
Other

Do you use newspaper websites?
Yes
No


Below is the results of the Audience Research.

Here are the results to the questionnaire for the Audience Research. I surveyed 20 people.

What sex are you?
Male 8
Female 12

What age are you?
Under 21 years olds 2
22-30 year olds 4
30-40 years olds 5
40-50 year olds 6
50-60 year olds 3
60+ year olds 1

What ethnicity are you?
White British 11
Pakistani 0
Afro – Caribbean 2
Dual Heritage 0
Indian 3
Other 4


Do you read newspapers?
Yes 17
No 3

How often do buy/read newspapers?
Once a day 5
Once a week 8
Once a month 4
Never 3

What newspapers do you read the most?
Express & Star 9
The Sun 2
Guardian 0
Telegraph 0
Daily Mail 0
Metro 6
Mirror 3
Other 0

What kind of size do you like the newspapers to be?
Broadsheet size
(750 x 600 mm( 3
Berliner
(470 x 315 mm) 2
Tabloid size
(430 x 280 mm) 15

What kind of content do you like on the front page?
Local News 18
Sport 0
Celebs 2
TV & Entertainment 0
Life & Style 0
Advice 0
Travel 0
Other 0

Do you use newspaper websites?
Yes 7
No 13

Thursday 18/03/2010: Research on Express & Star newspaper

The Express & Star was founded in Wolverhampton in the 1880s by the Scottish American millionaire ‘Andrew Carnegie’ and a group of radical liberty party members including Thomas Graham. Carnegie’s aim was to campaign, through a string of regional daily newspapers, for the creation of a British Republic. His dream was to sack the monarchy, scrap the House of Lords and destroy every vestige of privilege in the land. By 1902 Carnegie had abandoned his mission and the newspaper has been owned by the Graham Family ever since. In the 1980s it paved the way for the computer revolution in the British newspaper industry and has remained in the forefront of publishing technology. The Express & Star has steadily overtaken its rivals to become the biggest-selling regional evening newspaper in Britain.

There is also an Express & Star sister paper called Shropshire Star which is based Shropshire and mid Wales, printing six editions per day, six days per week. Starting in 1964, when the Shropshire newspaper was the first evening newspaper in Europe, to be printed by offset. The readers have a particularly close affiliation with the newspaper. Within the circulation area, the Shropshire Star has an average issue readership of 223,000 adults, which represents 54% of the total adult population. Midlands News Association, which owns the express and star, also operates three commercial radio stations such as: Telford FM, Severn FM and The Wyre FM.

John Frederick Feeney originally published the ‘Birmingham Post’ newspaper under the name ‘Daily Post’ in Birmingham in 1857. This was the biggest selling broadsheet newspaper in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. In 1946 the paper stopped using advertisements on its front page and then replaced them with front-page news. The newspaper also changed to tabloid size in 2008. The post and Mail building, Birmingham opened in 1965 to accommodate the Post and Evening Mail newspapers, but The Post and is sister titles relocated to the restored Fort Dunlop building, three miles out of the city centre. After changing hands many times, the newspaper is now part of the Trinity mirror group. In February 2008 the newspaper re-launched its website as birminghampost.net. Then the paper moved to weekly publication in November 2009.

Thursday 11/03/2010

As a group we have been having some problems as team members are not completing task. Our original plan was to divide the work between ourselves, but now I have thought of doing all the research, planning and evaluation tasks individually and not relying on other people to do the work.

I have got feedback from my media teacher and i have realized there is more work to do than i originally thought. I will be working in my own time and over the weekend to get the research, planning and production tasks complete, so I can start on the evaluation tasks this time next week.

Thursday 04 March 2010

There have been a few lessons now where my team members have not been attending and the tasks that have been shared out between us are not being completed.

The research and planning have been carried out for the newspaper and poster and the poster is nearly complete and the basic design of the newspaper has been transfered to Microsoft Publisher.

We still need to carry out the research and planning for the radio advertisement. We have also been experiencing technical difficulties with software we have been using for the research and planning.

A2 Portfolio in Media

3-12-09

My teams original plan was to do brief 3 which would include doing two advertisements, but my team thought it would not be interesting enough so we then decided to do brief 8 which would include creating the first two pages of a local newspaper and two ancillary tasks which are a poster for the newspaper and a radio advertisement for the newspaper.

The main idea we have got for the two pages of the newspaper is a report of the 2012 theory. This would include discussing all the theories of the 2012 event and the film which is based on the upcoming 2012 events.

AS Media Film

Media Evaluation: MorphMinda

For this main task we had to be in working groups of no more than four candidates. In my working group there were myself, Stefan Ram, Manveer Athwal and Ngoni Vhondo.

We were asked to produce the titles and opening sequence of a new fiction film, which would last a maximum of two minutes. All the video and audio materials that we would want to use in our product would have to be produced by us and we could only use music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The storyline of the opening sequence of our movie does use forms and conventions of real life media because the film we produced was based on a character (me) that had an incident which lead the character to become a person who can morph into a rabbit but the film is also funny. This film would be categorised in the comedy, Sci-fi and fantasy genre. A more realistic film out on the market which could be classed within the same genre as MorphMinda would be The Hulk.

How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our film the two characters represent two people where one character causes a grudge which lead onto a incident and they would come across to be between 12-16 years of age and the actors represent this by them wearing school clothes and being in a school environment. Furthermore this represents the certain social group by showing an act of what you would call bullying where in on of the scenes a character is hit by a snow ball and it is resulting to bullying.

What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?
I think that our media product could be released as a big product as it has the potential for being very close the same genre and storyline of film called ‘The Hulk’. I think that this opening sequence could also be used as educational purpose as well because it shows some act of bullying that is caused because of the snow ball fights. Furthermore this film could also be shown to media students as an example for their work.

Who should be the audience for your media product?
Again I would think that this film has the potential to becoming a Hollywood Hit, but I think it would mainly be targeted for educational purpose as it is not perfect. Schools could use it for a number of reasons such as bullying and for using the film as an example for future media students.

How did you attract/address your audiences?
We attracted our audience by putting few ideas forward for our opening sequence which would be the most popular and then went onto the best storyboards to make the film as good as possible for our target audience. We had a couple of comedy scenes so the target audience would enjoy the film but we also had to make it realistic and sensible so it could be used for educational use.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
By constructing this media product I have learned how to use Imovie and Garageband software on the Apple Mac computers whereas I did not know how to use these software’s while I was doing my Preliminary task. I have also learned how and why it is best to use a tripod as much as you can with a camera because it keeps the shots more steady. I think that I will be able to do more editing later on in my career using the same software.

Media: Ghosts Evaluation

In this media project we had to produce a short film which would be called ghosts which showed the conversation of two characters. One of these characters would be the ghost. We used four different camera shots which were long shot, close-up shot, 180-degree angle from the right and left. This would make the film look more interesting rather than having just one camera shot.
In our short film there are two characters which would be expected to be friends as the way they are performing. The characters in this film would thought to be young as young children only think about ghosts. The setting of this film would be in a school as the characters are dressed up smart and they are in a office type environment.
I think that our film would be released as a promotional or educational purpose because school students can learn from this short clip. I wouldn’t think that our film would be released as a big product because its duration is less than a minute. So I don’t think that this type of product would appeal to older people, I think is main interest will be young students.
I have learned many skills by creating this short film because I have learned how to use a camera and a tripod and I also know what different camera shots there are and how to use them appropriately. I have also learned how to use different software’s such as Imovie.

Media Studies 8-09-08

In this lesson we chose who will be in our group.
As a group we talked about what preliminary task we would do.
We had a look at the equipement we would be using for the task and we had a go at using.
We thougth of doing a short comedy film for the task.
we also learned hot to set up a tripod for the camera.