Final Product :

Documentary :




Print Advert :



Radio Advert :

Evaluation :

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

In our media product we have used many codes and conventions like the voice over, for our voice over we wanted the person to link in to our documentary by having an elderly women’s voice because it will be comforting and also it links to our documentary because many elderly people eat biscuits.
For mise en scene, we had pictures of jaffa cakes in the background behind the employee from mctivites during his interview to stay relevant to the topic that was being discussed.

This is taken from the interview with the mcvities employee and as you can see we have chosen relevant mise en scene to match the topic of the interview



Having the topic in conversation in view or in the background during an interview is a typical convention of a documentary. When we had a line of different interviews of the same interviewee after one another we used cutaway shots that linked to what they were saying to make it relevant for the documentary.



We also had an interview with a dinner lady and we interviewed her in her work environment and she was also in her uniform with is also following the convention. The picture above is taken from the documentary and this is the interview with the dinner lady, the shot has relevent mise en scene on it and is framed correctly, as the person being interviewd is to the right side of the screen.



The above image, is an example of the correct framing that should be used during a correctly filmed documentary. We used resources like this to ensure that the correct framing was used in our own documentary. This type of framing is typical in the documentary genre. The channel's logo is also located in the same place; centred to the right of screen; the logo is eyecatching, and made to stand out, in order to appropriately inform the audience of scheduling. The title on both adverts is also bigger than the scheduling, implying that if someone is interested by the title, the viewer is more likely to then seek out more information about it, in this case, through scheduling.

Our print advert conforms to the typical conventions of a channel 4 documentary advertisement; a specific colourscheme, with the writing conforming to this in a typical channel 4 house style.

Our documentary features some archive footage relevant to biscuits. Archive footage is used in certain sections of our documentary where it is needed, for instance, a section of our documentary discusses Jamie Olivers documentary "Jamies School Dinners" we use archive footage to get words and thoughs from jamie himself and cut back and forth between out interview with a primary school dinnerlady and Jamie to see each persons take on childrens diets and healthy eating.



In our radio advert we also used the code and convention of using original sound footage from our documentary, we also followed the convention of having a slogan at the end of the advert so it would be more re memorable for the audience. Our print advert was originally created using the template from typical channel 4 print adverts, which meant that it followed the usual codes and conventions of a print advert. Our print advert also showed the title ,date, time and slogan clearly so the audience know exactly when the programme is going to be showed.

Radio Advert :



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

Our documentary featured the same Titles, Voiceover and Slogan throughout which improved the impact of our media because if our documentary featured different titles it would become confusing for the viewers, and the fact that we used the same slogan and logo in our Radio And Print advert which were promotional materials meant that the people interested in watching our documentary would keep seeing the same slogan and would associate the slogan with our documentary. If we featured a different slogan on the print advert to the radio advert, possible viewers could think that we were advertising two different documentaries.

On our print advert we used an image of various biscuits stacked up together, the image clearly illustrates and displays our topic which is biscuits. The image is also a close up shot, which makes the biscuits look more appetising, and the title on the advert crunch is not only the name of our documentary, but could suggest that people looking at the advert want to eat the biscuits, hence the word "crunch". Our documentary also featured the Channel 4 ident, this was so that the viewers would know which channel our Documentary would be featured on.


3. What have you learned from your audience feedback?
From our audience feedback I learnt to make sure that the framing of the Vox pops and the interviews were right and also that the background behind the person linked to the subject they were talking about. I also learnt from the feedback to get a lot more interviews with different people even if they didn’t work well. Also in the interviews I now no that they need more informative that is relevant to the topic but is still interesting so it will keep the audience entertained. Also I found out that you need a clearly image for a print advert because it will grab the public's eye from far away, although the radio advert was well because the media students response said she liked how the original footage was used in the documentary and how the slogan was in a different accent, she liked this because she said she would remember it and it would stay in her head.

Below is some feedback from a pupil at our college after watching our documentary.

"In the documentary Crunch i liked the music at the beginning because it was both entertaining and also it related to the topic of the documentary, i also think that the framing in the vox pops were off by a bit so if they were doing it again i would inform them to change this. I also think that the interviews could of have a lot more information in them.

I loved the radio advert and how they used the original footage from the actual documentary, i also liked how they also say what the nations favourite biscuits are. I also like how the date and time of the documentary were clearly said.

I found that the print advert from far away wasnt clearly shown but it made me want to go up close to it to see what it was about, once i was up close to the print advert it was clearly thought out, i also think the time and date were clearly shown and that the slogan was in a place on the image were it was seen"
Because of the sound fault on the camera you couldn't hear the talking response so I quoted and wrote the response down.
The response was by Jessica Rose Media Student.

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

Before we filmed out documentary, we did some research on our topic which was biscuits and we alose tried to gain as much information on the topic as we could. We also looked at the major history of biscuits and looked at all the main facts about biscuits to see if we could raise any interesting discussions that would interest viewers. We also looked at previous biscuit documentaries that have been done to forumulate possible interview questions we could use.

We used high quality cameras to film our documentary footage and for interviews and shots that required the camera to be still we used a tripod in order to keep the framing the same throughout the footage, if we filmed the footage without the tripod and just filmed handheld the footage would be unclear and the sound would be affected because it is not possible to keep the camera still like a tripod can.

Once our footage was filmed we needed to cut it down to 5 minutes and edit it to make sure that all of the best footage was featured in our 5 minutes of final footage, we filmed over half an hour of footage and it needed to be cut down and edited to 5 minutes in order to do this we used the Adobe Premiere program, when using Premiere we can import cutaway shots to our documentary, and import relevant graphics such as pictures of a jaffa cake if that is being discussed in the documentary at that moment of time. Adobe premiere also allowed as to adjust sound levels, if any of the people during the interview speak quieter in some sections of their interview we can adjust it so that no difference can be notcied in the final edit. Adobe Premiere is fairly easy to use and makes it easy to edit different sections of footage simultaneously, but some parts of Premiere are advanced, i think that with regular use Prermiere can be mastered easily and it can be used to edit footage with good success.

We used digital cameras to take pictures of us filming and editing and we also used digital cameras to capture the images that we used on our print advert, the images we took with the digital camera were uploaded onto our desktop computer and then arranged our text and the images together to create out print advert using Adobe Photoshop.

Diary :

This is a picture of me in the Radio Suite in college, recording and editing the Radio Advert.


Before we started creating our radio advert, we watched through or documentary to pick out some Voxpops, or pieces of sound or speech that we could use for the advert. We remembered to take note of the codes and conventions when picking sound from the documentary and remember that the radio advert will only be short, so we need to use sound that will attract the listener to actually watch the documentary. Finally, we chose a song that was relevant to our documentary and we also tried to ensure that the song was catchy, so it would stay in the listeners head.

Logging & Edit Decision List :

Filiming Pictures :

Here are some pictures that where taken when we where filming the vox pop's, this is where we are setting the camera up ready to film.




This is a picture while we were filming one of the vox pop's.








These two pictures are when we began editing and we were making some decisions on what we should do and some editing decisions.

Research :

The original biscuit was a flat cake that was put back in the oven after being removed from it's tin, hence the French name "bis" (twice) "cuit" (cooked). This very hard, dry biscuit was the staple food for sailors and soldiers for centuries.Feathery, light biscuits originated in Southern plantation kitchens but, now are popular throughout the United States. Rolled biscuits were a staple at most meals, but beaten biscuits became another Southern favourite. Beaten biscuits are made light by beating air into the dough with a mallet or a rolling pin, Beaten biscuits are typically thinner and crispier than baking powder biscuits.

Biscuit Facts :

• The average biscuit, (49g) contains 168 calories, which is equivalent to 8% of your recommended daily intake.
• Dunking your biscuit into a milky drink gives you up to 11 times more flavour release than from eating the dry biscuit alone.
• More than nine out of ten people voted for the elaborately designed custard cream, as their favourite biscuit.
  
• A survey showed 29 per cent of adults say they have been splashed or scalded by hot drinks while dunking biscuits.
  
• In 1991, a VAT tribunal in the UK ruled that a Jaffa cake is not a biscuit, saving Jaffa 17.5 per cent tax.
• The first digestive biscuit was created by Alexander Grant, a young McVitie's worker, over 100 years ago. The first chocolate digestive was made in 1925.

For our secondary research im going to look on the internet, magazines, the tv and newspapers to find out some facts that i cannot find out myself as we can include things like this in the documentary.


A biscuit is a baked edible product. The term is used to apply to two distinctly different products in North America and the Commonwealth Nations.

In the United States it relates to a small soft leavened bread, somewhat similar to a scone.
In Commonwealth English, it commonly is used to refer to a small and hard, often sweetened, flour-based product, most akin in American English to a cookie, or sometimes in the case of cheese biscuits, a cracker.


I found this information on wikapedia and we could use something like this at the beginning of our documentary when introcing the topic:
This term was then adapted into English in the 14th century during the Middle Ages, in the Middle English word bisquite, to represent a hard twice-baked product.

However, the Dutch language from around 1703 had adopted the word koekje, a language diminutive of cake, to have a similar meaning for a similar hard, baked product. This may be related to the Russian or Ukrainian translation, where biscuit has come to mean sponge cake.

The difference between the secondary Dutch word and that of the Latin origin is that, whereas the koekje as a cake rose during baking, the biscuit, which had no rising agent, in general did not (see gingerbread/ginger biscuit), except for the expansion of heated air during the baking process.

When peoples from Europe began to emigrate to the United States, the two words and their "same but different" meanings began to clash. After the American War of Independence against the British, the word cookie became the word of choice to mean a hard, twice-baked product.

Further confusion has been added by the adoption of the word biscuit for a small leaven bread popular in Southern American cooking.

Today, according to American English dictionary Merriam-Webster:

A cookie is a "small flat or slightly raised cake."
A biscuit is "any of various hard or crisp dry baked product" similar to the American English terms cracker or cookie.
A biscuit can also mean "a small quick bread made from dough that has been rolled out and cut or dropped from a spoon."
Today, throughout most of the world, the term biscuit still means a hard, crisp, brittle bread, except in the United States, where it now denotes a softer bread product baked only once. In modern Italian usage, the term biscotto is used to refer to any type of hard twice-baked biscuit.


I found all this information here off wikapedia and would be interesting to use some of the facts here in the documentary about the term of the biscuit i think wikepedia is good when researching the topic as it covers a lot of the aspects of the topic and provides some interesting facts that could be used in the documentary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit
http://www.foxs-biscuits.co.uk/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1561477/Custard-cream-voted-Britains-favourite-biscuit.html

i typed into google the nations favourite biscuit to try and get a better idea of what is popular as we asked questions in one area and gave out the questionaire in one area so we could get a better idea from the internet. I found this article saying that custard cream where voted britains favourite biscuits we can consider this when making our documentary as we can use this fact and use cut away shots of these biscuits to make it appealing we could also ask questions about this type of biscuit in our interview.

'More than nine out of 10 people plumped for the elaborately designed, sandwich style snack - taking 93 per cent of the overall vote.
Next in line when it comes to the nation's biscuit tastes is the bourbon with just over two per cent of the popular vote.
Further down the biscuit barrel is the cookie and ginger biscuit, garnering the support of just 1.5 per cent and 1.19 per cent respondents.
The digestive received less than one per cent of the vote. More than 7,000 took part in the online poll organised by wheat and gluten free product makers Trufree.
A spokesperson for the firm, said: "We were really surprised at how popular the custard cream is. Despite there being so much to choose from on the market it seems people still plump for a no-nonsense nibble."

here is some staticics that i taken from the article that we could use in our documentary.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7432092.stm
Here is another article about businesses that believe the type of biscuit they serve to potential clients could clinch the deal or make it crumble.
This is another acticle with facts and staticics that we could use in our documentary
the article tells us that the business is most likely to give out chocolate digestives
followed by shortbread and Hob Nobs.
Here are some staticics that we could use in our documentary that where found in the article:
30% of people frowned upon normal digestives been in a work envirment.

more than half of respondents looked down on dunking biscuits in tea or coffee during a meeting.
This article also tells us that custard cream is the nations favourite biscuit.

Another thing i did for my seconday research was go on a forum where people are dicussing there favourite biscuit's here are some of the things that people where saying which could also be use in the documentary:

I must admit, the humble old jaffa cakes are hard to beat, like pringles, once you start, you can't stop....Lol, I could munch my way through a whole box if I go unchecked....Lol


After tony saying this somebody has responded to him with this Well Tony, you could have gone and opened up the whole "is a Jaffa Cake a biscuit or cake" can of worms here.

Which again looks at the conflict we are asking in our documentary whether a jaffa cake is a cake or a biscuit so i found that other people are asking the question so we know that including this in the documentary will be make it more interesting.


In our questionaire we ask do you have a biscuit with your tea or coffee and this forum above is asking what is the best biscuit to dunk in coffee and tea and with 33%of the vote
Molasses cookies are the best to have with your tea.

Some websites i used to gather research information :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit
http://www.channel4.com/4food/recipes/baking/biscuits
http://www.foxs-biscuits.co.uk/
http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/biscuits/index.php3
http://southernfood.about.com/od/biscuitrecipes/Biscuit_Recipes.htm

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