Evaluation

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

At the very start of this project, my first point of interest was researching the codes and conventions of the style of television programme that I was producing. The main conventions of a television documentary show are highly flexible as documentaries can cover such a broad range of subject topics e.g African animals to Apollo 13. There are however a few that helped me shape the way in which I shot and editing my production. The integral use of a narrator to take care of the exposition and explain the visual imagery was a convention I chose to utilise, as in a five minute excerpt of the documentary, it's hard to get an understanding of the subject's character and history which play an important role in the story.. I also utilised an actuality style of filming which encompassed the editing style and type of footage e.g. real locations and people as apposed to characters and sets in movies. The last element of generalised documentary conventions I utilised were the use of montages. I had one montage in my production where I was talking about my history of cycling at a young age and the progression to where I am today. This was comprised of archived material which was edited into the sequence over my interview's audio. This is a classic documentary style sequence.


My magazine advert is a culmination of many different influences but predominantly examples of the same genre of text such as Dispatches adverts and small adverts in TV listings magazines. This has lead the advert to be heavily reliant upon the codes and conventions of similar texts but with my own creative composition. A general example of this influence is the use of typeface manipulation to emphasise particular words and give them certain emotions according to the connotations of the style they are manipulated in. In my case, I used bold and red to emphasise the 'dream' in my title of 'Chasing the Dream'. This was designed to show lust and motivation as red is a very emotive colour and the bold sets it apart from the rest of the wording. The small synopsis on the page was also inspired by the research I did into this genre of advert in the way it was worded and the effect it was designed to have. Every television show advert that I saw, upon reading the small synopsis, I wanted to watch almost every one of them despite being totally unlike my usual television choices. This was the desired effect and one I hope I gained by using emotive language without describing the plot too much.


My Double page spread design for listings magazines was much the same as it's advert sibling. I had vague ideas of where I wanted to go with the piece, but it was more in terms of how I wanted to write the body of text as apposed to how i was going to set it out. Once settled upon an image however, I began researching listings magazines and drawing inspiration from common factors that I have displayed in my finished piece. An example of this, basic as it, is the dual columns of text on the left hand page. To an amateur, A single, large body of text would be the logical step yet would never look quite right. These dual columns also gave me the opportunity to then follow another common factor between researched articles which was the inclusion of text wrapped images. I chose another action shot from a different picture that a edited in photo shop so as to delete the messy background. This gave me a clear image that was easy to relate to.

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

As a complete media package, throughout the project I have done my best to keep instantly recognisable elements similar e.g. the title of the production "Chasing the Dream" has kept it's typeface and colouring throughout so as to make it easy to find the link between the individual products. I feel like the immediate audience that all three products would individually appeal to are as close as could be. All products feature explosive and dynamic imagery of the subject sport of trials riding and are worded in a way that is more appealing to a viewer looking for an exciting programme following young athletes as apposed to a relaxed programme about flowers. The other main element that links all the three products together successfully is the root choice of subject. It is very common for viewers to be drawn to programmes featuring the same age range as their own e.g. the target audience for skins (featuring teenagers) is...well, teenagers! Having myself as a 17 year old 'athlete' as the main subject of this episode of the programme was designed to attract an audience of similar age range with the style of editing. The music used was sampled from contemporary bands currently in the charts and these all tie in with the style of the two ancillary products that accompany it.

• What have you learned from your audience feedback?

To get a more useful range of feedback I not only interviewed a number of my class mates, but I contacted two friends in the related industries and asked their professional opinions on the work that I had produced.

Professional's Feedback:
Documentary: Matthew Carlin - New Media Design Agency
"Dude...

Print Tasks: Russ Atkinson - Gallery Magazine
"Yes mate...

Class mate's general analysis -
Alex Mitchinson - 18 "great work buddy, love the way the pace is always changing throughout the video and you've got some killer shots in there. My only criticism would be that although I know what's going on as I ride myself, If i didn't ride, I wouldn't understand what was so difficult about what you're doing in the video. I think it needs a bit of explanation."

Barney - 17 "This is the kind of thing I can literally imagine being on Channel 4 Joel, I can imagine flicking through day time television and seeing this premiering, that's how engrossed I got in it and was quite annoyed when it faded to black as another 25mins of it would have been very nice! The advert is great, love the picture, but I can't really read the text all that well, maybe whe it was blown up to A3 (newspaper) size it would be fine? The double page spread is the same, love the look of it straight away but the text is a little cramped over there on the right.

Michael - 19 "Yeah that was pretty good actually, I don't know anything about the sport but the story of you going from a passionate little kid to the possibility of being in the Olympics was impressive man. I didn't really get the pictures on the advert and double page one though as they're just you riding in the street...what has that got to do with you becoming an Olympic star?"

Jonny - 24 "That was dead fun to watch mate, never really heard of trials biking before, but I want to give it a go now...looks well good fun! Can't believe how far you've got at such a young age and I really wanted to see how you got on in the rest of that programme now. If i saw that advert in a paper it would definately catch my eye because pretty much every advert in the papers I read is well over done and there's too much writing and too much going on. yours is simple, clean and effective. I would rip the advert out and put it in my wallet to make sure I saw it when I got home mate."

From these three sets of analysis I have learned a lot about the difference between the style of editing I was aiming for and the finished product in the viewer's eyes. All of the people I had analyse my production were generally in the target audience ranging in ages from 17-30 and all Male. This gave me a good grounding to base their opinions on and mad any suggestions totally relevant to the point of obscurity. Alex's point of view was a particularly interesting general one as he is a fellow passionate trials rider but having not been involved in the production of this project at all, he has the fortune of being able to see the project from both my side and an uneducated viewer's side looking upon a virtually unknown sport. This was something that I wish I would have addressed earlier on so as to maximise the potential target audience market.
I was very pleased with Jonny's response as he truely believed the programme and would like to have seen more which I cannot argue with. His relation to real world, physical actions of saving the advert to ensure recording of it pleased me as it showed he felt included by the advert and enjoyed the experience. Michael's comment about the relevance of the images only really hit me once he had brought it up. Before that I had only viewed the images as related to the subject matter and good examples of riding...but of course, there is no obvious training being carried out anywhere in any of the print tasks. I feel I have addressed this issue however by including a short narration explaining that in Jersey, the lack of training facilities means the street literally is our training ground!

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

Post-Production - Visual Editing

Once all the footage required was completed, I then had to edit it all together using a programme i was comfortable with that would also look as professional as my ability allowed. For this i chose iMovie as it was readily available on the apple macs at school and from previous projects, I already had a good grasp of.

Here is a short video of some of the trickiest parts of editing my production: LINK -

Post Production - Audio Editing

Throughout the 5 minutes of my documentary show excerpt, There is a total of three different songs used. The video below explains a little of how I sampled all three and how i interlinked them to create harmony with the on-screen action: LINK

It should be aknowledged that I have used no more than 30 seconds of any one copyrighted song. I have made extensive changes to the order in which the two main audio pieces are played to ensure the classification of a 'sample' rather than infringing on copyright laws. I believe I have done a good job of disguising these changes with careful and agonisingly precise beat matching and a long time spent scanning through the tracks used trying to find the most appropriate parts available that fit the editing style and clip subect available.

For example. The very end of the project cuts out over 40 seconds of the end of the song and fades into the final 8 bars of music as I particularly liked the atmospheric ending to this track but could not use too much at a time. I worked out the time signature of the music, cut the track in a place starting a beat and continued it through to the end listening very carefully for any 'lumps' in the bedding track.

The second part to the audio production was the recording of voice overs and re-recording of quiet interview parts. Unfortunately, the time of year in which I have filmed my prject does not play nicely into the hands of amateur video equuipment. This meant I often had a large amount of wind and traffic noise in the background of the shot. A few were serious enough to need careful attention in the form of an audio re-record in the recording studio available at my school's media department. This proved to be far more difficult that first thought. The need to lip sync perfectly is a difficult task, especially when talking from a personal opinion as apposed to reading from a set script that could be followed much more easily. The method I found best for tackling this problem was uploading the certain clips to my pendrive and have a preview of the clip available whilst recording but on mute. This let me get much closer to the actual wording including all 'umm's' and 'ahh's'.

The voice overs were much more simple as there was no visual to match the wording with. I carefully played through the near completed video and bookmarked points that I thought would be improved with a Channel 4 documentary style narration over the top of them. Half way through the initial explosive sequence of riding, an uneducated (in the demands of trials riding) viewer would begin to grow tired of all this 'jumping around on walls'. The introduction of a narrator at this point however adds a new element to the production and keeps a wider range of audience interested for longer.
The easiest option for these voice overs would have been to type up the basic script then ask a class mate to read them out and play this over the top but I wanted my production to resemble the kind of show that could be played during the day on one of Channel 4's many channels. To address this, I employed the help of my mother and her best Channel 4 accent along with a sound recorder and a well furnished room with good acoustics.

There are a few elements that i am sure could have been improved slightly, such as the tone of the narration throughout is slightly lacking in treble. This would have been an easy fix prior to inserting into the iMovie timeline, but not that they are an integral part of the production, this could be very costly if any mistakes are made.

Production - Olympic Montage

Here is a LINK to a short, 1 mins 30 secs video explaining the way in which I went about producing the olympic montage in my documentary show.
















The montage in it's entirety was compiled from over 20 different videos that I found on the internet in Windows Movie Maker. This programme alone proved one of the biggest challenges of the project as WMM is extremely fussy with accepted file types and extremely limited with altercation options. Nevertheless I downloaded a video converter and converted each clip into .wmv format that was acceptable within the programme and began editing them together.












All the clips are from the 2008 Beijing Olympics as in my opinion, it was the most spectacular Olympic event to date. It is also the most recent so certain clips where athletes can be recognised will evoke more present knowledge and understanding of the subject matter.












The editing style is slightly different to what I have done throughout the duration of the rest of the project, i wanted to build energy and excitement in this montage so I kept the clip lengths very short (roughly 0.5-1.5 seconds max) This kept the pace of the scene up and (I hope) gave the viewer an insight to the kind of thought the subject (me) has about the Olympics as an event and as a life choice.

Production - Title Sequence

Unfortunately the video for the title sequence had a mare...see for yourself: LINK
If time constraints allow, this can be replaced on Monday morning (15th Dec)

The making of this title sequence was relatively straight forward. I didn't want anything particularly AfterEffects laiden as I just wanted a plain black background for the first scene to work well and I wanted a clean, simple looking typeface that would set the word DREAM apart from the 'Chasing the' with a subtle fade in and out.

I am pleased with what was produced yet there were some difficulties transferring the video between computers so there was a fair reduction in the quality of the text. This is something that unfortunately cannot be ammended as I used iMovie '09 to create the sequence due to the older version I have created the rest of the project on, not having the capability to have a line of text with two different coloured words within it.

Production - Ident

Here is a LINK to a short video explaining the production of the Channel 4 style Ident.

I heard the name 'ident' mentioned when researching the codes and conventions of Channel 4 projects. I then researched it and found it to replace my previous definition of 'those funny bits at the beginning of Channel 4 programmes where random things make up a number four'.

I found a good quality Ident who's footage was most appropriate to the subject and setting of my documentary and set about editing it to make it specific to my show and to not infringe on any copyright laws. I asked a friend with an unusual voice to read out a set script that I wrote down earlier and recorded it on the recording equipment available in my school's media department.

The next hurdle was having a bedding track without the previous presenter's commentary. This required a lot of precision in looping the first 5.20 secs of the clip's audio over the duration of the ident. Carefully matching the beats and using subtle fades between each loop gave the impression of a seemless bedding track on which I could then place John's replacement commentary which produced the ident shown in the video above.

Production - Single Page Advert

Here is a LINK to a short video I made showing the step by step production of the advert in Photoshop.

Right, here we go with the first of my two secondary tasks, a single page newspaper advert for my new Documentary show 'Chasing the Dream'. As you can see if you refer to the planning stages of my production, I had images in mind when designing layouts. In particular there are four images that are my absolute favourites, and this one is the most dynamic and fits the frame best leaving scope for text addition in many places.

My first step was to place the image into photoshop as there was little text needed, but much more manipulation of the advert's features and this is Photoshop's strong point. To make the image more contrasting and to make it far more eye catching when flicking through the dull black and white world of a newspaper, I decided to leave the foreground and myself riding in black and white so as to tie in with the basic codes and conventions of most adverts.

I then used the History brush tool to recolour in the sky. The history brush tool works by undoing what ever effect or manipulation you have placed on the image last and in this case, a total desaturation meant that the history brush was colouring back in my sky giving a fantasic, rich blue colour.

Once carefully gone round the foreground image with the history brush I had the image above. A few small tweaks of quality and saturation in the form of altering the number of pixels per mm and boosting the blues had me very happy with this background image.

So now it was time for text. The whole way through my project I had used the theme of accenting the word dream so as to make it the promenant feature in both my documentary excerpt and attached literature that making it to the Olympics really would be dream come true for me. To associate this page with main show, I used the same typeface and colourings and I feel it gives a nice sense of belonging to the overall page once able to relate it to my main project.

Now a brief, punchy synopsis of the programme was required. "Following young British athletes on their road to London 2012. Featuring Joel Wroe-Johnson, a British trials Champion on his quest for Olympic Gold" I was very please with thisbody of text as it gets accross the main theme of the show without giving too much away. This is the perfect combination as the aim is to give the reader enough information to base their opinion of whether or not it is the sort of show they may be interested in, without giving away the whole storyline producing a "Want to see" effect within the reader. The main point of the above image is showing that when written simply in a text box and left 'flat' the text looks very out of place as the image behind has perspective.

The answer to this problem was to rasterize the image giving me the ability to manipulate it as if it were an image. Through this i used the 'Warp' tool followed by the 'perspective' tool, all located in the drop down menu titled 'image'. Once constrained to the parallels of the building behind it, the text looked much more realistic and fitted well with the whole page.

I liked the effects of the above so much, that I decided to use the same theme with the scheduling information. The image above shows the text written in the same typeface as the other parts of the advert but in a much larger size so as to utilise the whole of the wall available. Again, without and manipulation, the text looks very static and out of place in it's current position.

Once rasterized I could again begin the process of warping and placing new perspectives upon the text. The main dificulty I found was gettin the bottom of the "9PM on E4" to line up with the bottom of the wall whilst maintaining a straight top line with "Wednesday 11th" to the top of the wall. This took a lot of switching between effects and making small, incrimental changes.
























So after the steps listed above, I had produced this. It complied with all the codes and conventions I stated previously and visually, was very striking. I just wasn't quite happy with it thought. Something about the text in the lower half of the page just didn't look quite professional enough. So I went in search of inspiration and found a new layout for the scheduling information that I tweaked slightly and then applied to my advert.


















So I started again with this blank, white wall. I kept the synopsis body of text but deleted the scheduling information and began to rebuild this in a more professional looking way, utilising the options that came with the typeface.


















Repeating the title in the scheduling information was something that I had not previously thought of doing until I studied a range of adverts in the same category as this one and realised that every single one of them used the title again and used some sort of definition such as italics or bolding. The wording of the actual time and date of the programme is a layout comprised from a combination of three different magazines, but that all fit together very easily as they follow largely the same constraints.


















Adding the already rasterized synopsis in below this new block of information seemed to fit very well and with them both in a slight perspective, tied into the image perfectly. It was at this point that I realised what had made the previous layout lack a certain element of professionalism. It was the extreme amound of perspective changing and warping carried out on the text that made it look slightly surreal and therefore did not serve it's purpose of blending into the image.


















The addition of some slightly angled lines top and bottom of the scheduling info set it apart from the synopsis below a little more and in my opinion, added the professional touch that I was looking for earlier in the production.
























So here it is, My finished advert. It was by no means the first draft, but I am actually very happy with the end result as when I first look at it, I can imagine it fitting into a magazine or newspaper very well, which was my main ambition and the set task.

Production - Double Page Spread

Here is a LINK to a short video I made showing the step by step production of the task.













This is one of my favourite images I have of myself riding. The framing of the image also lends it's self perfectly to the use of a double page spread article in a listings magazine due to the main 'action' of the image being all on the left of the image. Being a 1280X1024 image, it is also very high quality, and a good resolution to use with a few small tweaks to the saturation in Photoshop.

Now into InDesign:












I first input the correct dimensions of an A3 page being 420mm by 297mm.
Being a programme specifically designed for magazine style pages, InDesign automatically gave me the basic guidelines and centre line which was very helpful when positioning text and images.













With the image in place, I could now really get a feel for how the layout of the page was to shape up. Although I had previously hoped, I was revieved to see that the rider (me) was perfectly framed in the left hand page and did not spill over into the right hand side giving a clean cut, defined look to the page already.













The next move was to insert another image of myself that I particularly liked. Unfortunately though, the backbround of that image was far too busy to use as a background image and there was very little sky present. I therefore used photoshop to draw round myself, cutting away the background and leaving just myself in a mid-air 'tuck'. I recently learned how to text wrap successfully on the InDesign so I wanted to utilise this new found knowledge and make use of this great image together.













I had constructed a body of text using inspiration from my three similar media texts that I researched in Word. This body was roughly 800 words long and I was a little afraid of it not fitting onto the page but I simply decreased the size to 10 and utilised the two columns as much as possible. I constructed the write up in an interview style as if written by the editors of a magazine as apposed to the producer or director of the show it's self. This felt promising and followed the codes and conventions previously stated and replicated by the magazines I studies.













So now, nearly everything is complete. The background image is perfect, the text wrapped image in the top right is of good quality and there are no nasty awkward words present in the text wrapping. The 'Boy Got Dreams' title I am very please with as I wanted to set this apart slightly from the other two productions. The main reason for this being that this is the only text that would have been created by the magazine's editors and not the director or producer in charge of the documentart it's self. Coming from a third party would mean slightly different editing styles and favourite typrefaces so I am happy with the finished look. This was very simple to produce as it was simpy written in a text box and a global 'Bevel & Emboss' placed upon it along with a small 'Drop Shadown' to give the text some three dimensional depth.


















All that was left now was the scheduling information. I wanted to relate this back to my research of similar media texts by using a slightly different colour scheme and typeface for this important information enclosing it in some sort of box or definition from the main body of text. I furthered this definition by placing it on the non-text side of the double page spread making it the only text on that A4 page, minus the title it's self. The box that contains the scheduling information was very simple to make as I used the pen tool to draw an angular shape (practically a rectangle) and then drew a line directly over the top of this in a solid white colour to add contrast. The colour I chose for the background of this box was then decreased in opacity to set the text apart from the background and voila...a finished double page spread suitable for a listings magazine.

Production - Capturing

To capture all the footage needed for the multiple elements of my project I took around 4 days of filming between interviews, different riding locations and times of day, there was a comprehensive list of essential shots created to help me stay on track during filming and get it done as efficiently as possible.

Some of the troubles I encountered were totally unpredictable such as getting a flat tyre during filming on a sunday morning. Filming for that day had to be abandoned as nowhere was open to purchase a new inner tube. Others however, such as the weather and time of day gave great creative opportunity to mix shots and ever changing scenery.

I believe I chose the best locations available to me on the Island as I have practiced the sport for over 5 years and therefore know the most dramatic landscapes and the style of cinematography that I wanted to carry out.

What was more difficult however, was changing this sports style filming to a more documentary based sequence during interviews as I wanted the project to look as professional as possible. This lead me to researching a great deal of documentary shows and the way in which they are filmed to then base my own filming upon. I believe this helped greatly in the overall presentaion of the project.

Planning - Shooting Plan

Intro Sequence: Roughly 30-40secs, will require a kitted up trials rider and bike to perform a montage of tricks along with preparation style movements e.g. flexing hand on grips.

Introduction to Rider: Roughly 20-30 secs, Static filming with picturesque backdrop e.g. sea front sitting on sea wall.

Montage & Narration: Roughly 1 minute, The interview will then continue to be audible, running through the rider's interests and favourite parts of the sport etc. but with a visual montage of practicing the sport over the top. Should feel relaxed with long clip lengths and neat, imaginitve tricks such as using railings and kerbs...nothing too dramatic.

Progression: Roughly 2 mins,The audio and visual tracks will turn to a montage of pictures and possibly old film of the rider as a child showing a passion at an early age for the sport establishing a deep love for the diciplines of improving. This will then lead to where the rider wants to end up...his goal. In this case, the olympics. A montage of olympic champions and repeated use of shots of large crowds and the olympic logo will visually aid the narration of the rider expressing his desire to become olympic champion at the up and coming 2012 London olympics.

Planning - Equipment & Sets

Shooting Equipment:
For the main shooting process, I will be using a Sony XXX Handycam recording to miniDV tape.
There are a number of shots that I will need a tripod for and to fulfil this task i will be using my XXX brand tripod.

Riding Equipment:
Featured in the video will be the trials bikes pictured below, owned by the respective riders. They each wear their own personal safety equipment consisting primarily of a helmet, gloves, shin pads, suitable ankle supporting footwear and comfortable, lightweight clothing.

Sets:
There are a number of scenes that I plan on using that require specific loactions around Jersey. For example, the picture below is of the set where I plan to shoot my intro sequence.

Planning - Storyboards

Initially, I started drafting the five minute sequence out as if it were to be a sports show focusing on my particular sport of trials. I meticulously accounted for every minute of the sequence and was very happy to start filming when I briefly looked back at the specification and realised I had taken the project in a totally wrong direction. I then started frantically researching documentary shows that were less relative in terms of subject matter, but crucial in terms lay out and presentation style.

This development in the structure of my project was a major turning point. After taking lots of inspiration from a great deal of different documentary shows ranging from model aeroplanes on websites to wildlife on the BBC, I began a new set of storyboards;

Planning - Legal Requirements

The two songs I had chosen to incorporate into my project were unfortunately not copyright free and so I had to contact the artists to gain permission to use their tracks. The emails I sent out to them and their replies are shown below:

The Temper Trap - Love Lost:
To Whomever it may concern,

My name is Joel Wroe-Johnson and I am a 17 year old A Level Student from Jersey in the United Kingdom. My favourite of the three subjects I am currently studying is Media and I am currently undertaking the final project of my A Level for which I have chosen to produce a five minute Documentary show on a sport I am very passionate about.

My reason for contacting you, is that I am a great fan of The Temper Trap and particularly like the two tracks; 'Love lost' and 'Soldier On'. I was wondering if it would be possible to have permission to use 'Love lost' in part of the project as it is a very powerful song that I can imagine the artistic nature of my sport editing very well together with. I am not asking for anything that requires The Temper Trap to be represented in an obscene, violent or graphic nature and I would be happy to send you a draft version to see if the nature of the project meets your approval. There will be only one copy made of the final project and this will be sent to the examiner solely with no intention to be distributed or sold in any way.

I hope that I have given you all the information required, If however you do require more to properly grant me permission to use the track, please don't hesitate to get in touch.


Kind Regards,

Joel Wroe Johnson


The Maccabes - X-ray:
To Whomever it may concern,

My name is Joel Wroe-Johnson and I am a 17 year old A Level Student from Jersey in the United Kingdom. My favourite of the three subjects I am currently studying is Media and I am currently undertaking the final project of my A Level for which I have chosen to produce a five minute Documentary show on a sport I am very passionate about.

My reason for contacting you, is that I am a great fan of The Maccabees and particularly like the track; 'X-Ray'. I was wondering if it would be possible to have permission to use 'X-Ray' in part of the project as it is a very powerful song that I can imagine the artistic nature of my sport editing very well together with. I am not asking for anything that requires The Maccabees to be represented in an obscene, violent or graphic nature and I would be happy to send you a draft version to see if the nature of the project meets your approval. There will be only one copy made of the final project and this will be sent to the examiner solely with no intention to be distributed or sold in any way.

I hope that I have given you all the information required, If however you do require more to properly grant me permission to use the track, please don't hesitate to get in touch.


Kind Regards,

Joel Wroe Johnson

So far, I have not recieved a reply from either The Management of The Temper Trap or JPR Management (The Maccabees).

IDEAS FOR DOCUMENTARY

• make short, drum sound orientated interlude to play between sections of the show e.g black background, logo spins in and a slam of text appears on it with a garage band-esque drum beat behind.
• focus pull between front wheel and natural scenery or landscape
• Intro sequence to have a feel of excitement and preparation e.g. pedal being spun with toe then stopped and ridden off on/front brake lever being pumped/gloves being slipped on/helmet being done up/out of focus bike setting off (focus on scenery ahead and have bike to side of screen)/intricate riding along rails/beams etc/ helmeted head turning to camera and nodding/
  
• Create logo - simplistic with eurostile-esque text on simple shapes e.g. ride guide's logo
• Use a blackout with numbers counting down in break in the music to add pace to scene
• Use a Screen with lots of different trials related and emotive words flashing over it.
• Do a possible rider profile? use ben and have sequence of him riding with fast music and one shot of him trying to do a serious face but failing and bursting out laughing - must look natural!
• Leave camera on the floor as rider rides past with foreground in focus but rider out.
  

Research - Target Audience

This is a questionnaire that I have compiled to gain the maximum amount of information possible from each individual that I ask. The first few questions gain a general understanding of what age range and sex they are to give me a target audience to focus my sports based documentary show on. The next group of questions establish their television interests and how much time a week they devote to watching television. This gives me a more in depth knowledge to how many of my target audience spend a lot of time watching other programs, and how many are out most of the time but make the time especially to watch certain shows, displaying loyalty. The final questions gives me some general uses and gratifications information along with some ideas for what my target audience would prefer as a presenter.

The most interesting of these questions, i found, were a combination of the basic demographic establishing questions twinned with the more descriptive questions that required a written response Rather than simply ticking a box. I have displayed the results for a couple of these below:

"Are there any particularly successful documentary qualities you can think of?"

"I love David Attenborough's voice, it's so intriguing yet so soothing and relaxing at the same time. I always want a narrator to draw me into the on screen action and explain it to me descriptively so that I can just sit back and take it all in." - Angie, 32

"I would have to say Top Gear's presenter layout as the interraction between the trio is almost as entertaining as the exotic array of cars themselves!" - John, 17

"The portrayal of a previously hidden reality in the BBC documentary 'Sounds like teen spirit' was a real eye opener for me, so I guess the informative aspect of the program what I was looking for." - Mike, 24

"I like an authoritative narrator as long as it is an illuminating subject. I particularly like the documentaries that teach me about a whole subject without realising it such as Morgan Freeman in the March of the Penguins." - Lawrence, 17

Do you find yourself watching one particular TV channel/show, or do you watch a range of different channels/shows?

"There is no single channel that can satisfy all my documentary needs. There are however two documentary styles that I watch a lot; anything mountain bike related and anything rallying related. There are a few channels that can offer me both of these and I often switch between them picking my favourites." - Terry, 55

"I love anything skiing/snow related so i tend to watch a lot of the discovery channel and extreme sports channels in the winter to get my fix if I can't be there myself!" - Andrew, 18

"My favourites list on my sky plus box comprises solely of the Discovery Channels. They have diversified so much lately and have near enough every show i like to watch in their listings. Fantastic!" - Leila, 49

Here are a few diagrams to give you an idea of the demographic of the 20 people I approached: