Focus Group.

Today we did a focus group to see what some of our target audience though of a few clips that we showed them. This would help us to see their reaction and what they would think of the documentary we are producing.

continued...

Research for our documentary - Facebook

As part of our research for out documentary, we had to find out what our target audience are into as this will help our decisions on how we advertise and edit or documentary.

To do this I went on Facebook and asked a series of questions to some of my friends. Such as:

"1. What kind of magazines do you read and why do you like them? (layout, themes)
2. Do you listen to the radio? If so what station and how regularly? 
3. Do you watch documentaries? What types have you seen? Did you like them? Why?"

However, I received no responses *sigh* As most of my friends fit our mainstream criteria for our audience this meant that a response from these people was unable to be attained. This is some ways creates a difficult situation as to what this niche would want to see. We plan to do a focus group so hopefully we can gain more information from this.

As I did not receive any responses on my own account, my Mother kindly allowed me to post the same set of questions to her friends. I got a range of responses and ideas. What I found is that I only got responses from mostly women. They all range from different ages, ethnicity, class and jobs so this in some ways does help us to see how we can advertise and edit or film. As i did not get any responses from men, like or mainstream audience it will be hard to market to them, but hopefully we can resolve this in our focus group.

From my findings I have found:

• 1. Many of the women who commented listen to the radio on the way to work - This means that when marketing our documentary, is a morning slot the best time to advertise it?
• 2. These women mostly reas gossip magazines, fashion or anything educational - Can our documentary be advertised in these magazines?
• 3. These women also watch documentaries regularly and clearly go for a specific niche (mostly real life) - These different documentaries can help us to see how we can edit our own film to match our target audiences interests.

My research has given me a strong idea of what we can do to attract our audience and apply this to our film. From this research I have targeted a very specific audience which is the 25-40 age range which means that they are much higher than what are actual target audience is.This research links to the Uses and Gratifications Theory by Blumler and Katz. I think that is most thinks to the idea of Surveillance - using the media to find out what is going on around us. I believe that the audience who have been targeted would more likely be interested in our documentary as they would want to find out about the different things going on in the world. As some may have children they may also be concerned for the kids welfare. This again also links to Young & Rubicam. This audience may be more of a Reformer or an Explorer seeking enlightenment and discovery. As this is what we are appealing to many of the people who gave feedback fit our 2 types of people we are aiming at.

Researching voiceovers

As a voice is one of key and main things that we need in our documentary i began to research who we could use to present the opening of our film. We must consider who will it be; will it be male or a female, will our choice conform to our target audience? What pitch or tone of voice are we going for; again will this reflect our target audience?

I began researching different documentaries and looking at their voiceovers. One of them was Jewish Mum of the Year: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Whea7ScI8g&safe=active)

Jewish Mum of the Year has a female voiceover which is quite conversational and has a high pitch voice which is very inviting for the audience. From listening to her it makes me as a viewer want to continue watching. Also what she says (script) is written really well and is carefully thought out. This influences our thoughts on the documentary and again  makes us want to watch more.

Another documentary that I looked at was Planet Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ag2q094y8Y&safe=active) David Attenborough is an iconic voice in television especially documentaries mainly being Nature. What makes his voice so iconic is the way that he adapts it to the situations hat the animals are in. His voice is very deep and also inviting but it also allows us to put ourselves in the position that we are actually watching these animals up front in their surroundings. As he is such an iconic figure when it comes to voiceovers and documentaries, he appeals to the target audience of males more than females (same as Jewish Mum of the Year does with women)

In another documentary called Weight loss Ward (https://www.itv.com/itvplayer/weight-loss-ward), which followed various overweight people as they attempted to get help from hospitals. The voiceover in this documentary had a very mocking tone as well as sympathetic. The narrator is a male which I think was suitable for this kind of documentary. I think this tone of voice is more suited to our documentary as it creates the tone and response we would want from our audience.

From this research, I can conclude that our voiceover may have to be male just as our subject is male and the fact that a male voice can carry our message better than a woman.

Lighting

Just something I found on lighting. In some of our footage we had problems with our lighting as we didnt have good natural light. I thought that this would help us when we film some more over the holidays.

The Basics: Three-point Lighting If you’ve ever visited a movie set, you know how complicated lighting can get. But it all starts here with the basic fundamentals of the 3-point lighting set-up. KEY – The key light is your main and strongest source of light. This can be the sun or an electrical light source. FILL – This is your second light source, softer than your key light, which crosses the key light to “fill” the strong shadows created by your main light source. This can be a reflector or an electric light. BACK – The back light is used to separate the subject from background. It makes the scene look more three-dimensional. Sometimes you can use the “setting sun” as your back light or another light source. Using Available Light Using available light is key for the documentary filmmaker on a budget or short on time. Sunlight coming through a window literally becomes your KEY light. See diagram below. Using light from a window, position your subject about 30-degrees, not directly facing the window. A 30-degree angle creates a natural look and helps bring out some details in the facial features and creates a more natural look (shining a light directly on the face “flattens” the features).  http://www.desktop-documentaries.com/documentary-funding.html

Things to do.

There are still a few things left to get for our film so the following is a few plans of what we will do over the next few days:

Location: Library

Time: 9:50-11:10

Crew member: Dakota

Date: Wednesday 12th December 2012

Whats to be done: Observational shots; People typing, checking their phones, watching the amount of tabs they have open etc.

-

Location: Art room

Time: 3:10-

Crew member(s): Victoria and Ali

Date: Thursday 13th December 2012

Whats to be done: The paper cut outs for the camera

-

Location: 004

Time: 9:50-

Crew member(s): Ali and Victoria

Date: Tuesday 18th December 2012

Whats to be done: Focus Group (Planning and recording)

Focus Group questions and Audience profiling

We had to think of different questions which  we could ask to the different ages of our focus group. This would help us to get an idea of what they would want and expect from our film.

16-21 (Primary audience):

1. Would you watch this documentary? If so, why?
2. Do you think you are effected by this subject?
3. Were you interested within the first minute?
4. Have you learnt anything from this?
5. Do you understand what is going on?
6. Do you have anything that may help us to improve?

22-27:

1. How did you find the editing of the documentary?
2. Has your opinion changed, in terms of addiction?
3. Do you think it relates to you, in any way?
4. Can you see a possible change in yourself?
5. Are you still interested in technology?
6. Do you think we could improve our editing?

28-35 (Secondary audience):

1. Can you see this affecting your children? If you have any
2. After watching this, do you think it does indeed affect all of us?
3. Can you notice a possible change in yourself or perhaps in your children?
4. Do you use different types of technology?
5. How well do you cope with new technology?
6. Do you think we could improve anything

Target Audience

First Draft of Voiceover

This is our first basic draft of our film for the first 5 minutes.

Creating a Voiceover

Whilst editing we found that our documentary really lacked the form of a journey. As i have posted before, we watched over our current first edit of our documentary. We found that it didn't really flow without the voice over that we planned to add in later.

It occurred to us that the voice over would definitely help to establish the story and help the viewer to make sense of what is going on. At the moment, there is no sense of journey which is what we need to work on.

Today, we began to draft a few questions that we would ask whilst watching the documentary. This will help us to establish the basic script for the story line.

For our first minute here are a few questions we drafted:
These questions will help us establish the voice over and journey of our film.

What are you watching? / FISH TANK

After watching Fish Tank (which I thought was a great film) we was asked to write about our thoughts and present them to the class. I mostly looked at the regulation of Fish Tank and why the BBFC gave it the classification of 15. I think it deserved the classification 15 and.... well you can read more by looking at the powerpoint below :)

Audience Research

Documentary Fonts

Today, we had a basic overview and thought into what we want our documentary to look like. Victoria searched up a few font styles that we could possibly use for our main title.

I really like the style of this font as it is very clear and bold. However, for what our documentary is about I do not think it works so well and does not really reflect what we are trying to show. Even though the font is in capitals I don't feel it fully displays the seriousness of our documentary and reminds me of its actual name lol

I really like this font as it is simple and quite quirky. Again i do not think it conveys the message of our documentary very well but i do like the fact that because it is not filled in with black,  this could reflect the fact that the audience are going to look into our documentary rather than just watch it and not understand. It will be something that is clear to everyone, which is very much emphasized in this font.

This is the type of style me and my group like the best out of the three we've chosen. I like the fact that its simple but its not a basic font that you can easily find on word even though it does look like one. I find it is to the point and will easily convey the serioisness of our documentary. As we are talking about dopamine and addiction, the fact that the font is bold and in capital letters, really stresses this idea which is what we want to put across to our viewers.

Possible Documentary Titles

Whilst editing the film I had the sudden urge to start coming up with some titles for our film. Here are just a few lol

• My Kid is Addicted.
• The Curious Case of the Addicted Child
• The Kid and the Drugs
• My Kid Loves Drugs
• All Our Kids Are On Drugs
• Our Kids Love Drugs

They are all pretty subliminal making you want to know more about what the film inhales, which I find would be good in attracting different audiences. 

First Initial Outlining of Our Film

Today I drew up a quick first draft on iMovie of what our film will possibly look like. Later, I plan to create a script for a voice over. A voice over is definitely needed to help the story follow so that is very much needed. AT THE MOMENT: it sounds all jumbled and crazy but in due time it will all make sense!

This is a rough basic outline of the film. It roughly lasts 6 minutes but obviously there is still a lot to edit so this will all be cut down.

On the blank scenes I have put labels so that I know what we need to shoot and also to give me and indication of what will go next in the film.

There are still quite a lot of shots we need to take to make a very good film so hopefully we can get this done asap!

Also, the sound is not that great in some of the interview clips *sigh*.. Hopefully I can edit this.

What are you watching? / A CLOCKWORK ORANGE VS FIGHT CLUB

Today we presented our findings of 'A Clockwork Orange' and 'Fight Club' in class. Here is my presentation:

What's next?

Evaluation of Shoot Day 4

Today, we shot our second interviewee and "expert" Mr McAuley who would again be talking about the social effects of dopamine. This time we set the interview in the classroom again to reflect the subject matter and their area of expertise.

Problems:
The classroom that we were in gave us really bad lighting so we found our subject was very dark. We spent ages trying to figure out a good position that would create better lighting but we had no luck. Ali then suggested we use one of the lights to see how that looked. At first it didn't help but after playing around with the postioning and using some of the filters we created the perfect lighting which looked great on camera.

Just like our Ms Lewis interview, we asked Mr McAuley a few questions to get him started on what to talk about which we will later edit out.... But then!

Strike Problem No.2:
Next, our camera memory card was too full and would cut Mr McAuley off in the middle of speech which was very annoying! After deleting footage and pictures several times we still found we had no space on the memory card to shoot.

We did manage to get as much as we wanted which was good but our interviewee did get cut off during the good parts, bummer.

Ali is filming his nephew this weekend so hopefully we get some good footage of that!

Evaluation of Shoot Day 3

Today we did the interview of our "expert" Ms Lewis. As a science teacher we wanted her to give a basic overview of dopamine and what is involved. The interview took place in a lab room as we wanted the surroundings to reflect the subject matter.

We wanted Ms Lewis just to talk about dopamine generally, asking her a few questions to help build what she would be talking about. Later we will edit out these questions so she is talking fluently.

Once again, we didn't have the microphone to record but hopefully the sound is not too bad.

Camerawoman Victoria!

Planing an Unscripted Documentary

Today we read an article by Tony Levelle who talks about how to plan an unscripted documentary. I thought that this helped a lot and showed us how to go about creating our own doucmentaries, as they are essentially also unscripted.

Levelle talks about a well known filmaker Dorothy Fadiman, who has been making successful unscripted documentaries for 30 years. She gives him useful and helpful advice as to how she goes about creating a documentary thinking about what story she plans to capture in her documentary, how she gets started, where she would like to shoot, the situations and events she would like to unfold in the document and how she wants the story to essentially evolve as we watch.

By the end of the article there are a few key points to consider:

• You can produce a documentary without a script
• shooting without a script requires thoughtful planning
• unscripted documentaries may require extensive research and prep
• when you shoot an unscripted documentary, the story is built in two stages: 1) while shooting, and 2) in the editing room. It is not built on a word processor.

From reading this article, there are a lot of things I feel I can take away from it to apply to my own documentary. By planning effectively and cautiously it will make our documentary much more effective and allow us to create a story worth watching.

Evaluation of Shoot Day 2

Yesterday we began shooting our establishing shots and 5 random people in Liverpool St. We arrived after 4 o'clock which meant we had limited time before the sun set to get some good shots.

We started by filming our establishing shots getting a few clips of the passing traffic. However, we found that our shooting time kept cutting out only allowing us to film roughly around 4secs of footage. This problem slowed us down dramatically and left us loosing out on time for filming.

Annoyed and confused we searched for answers finding this clip on YouTube:

Still not giving us any answers we asked other people who had camera's what the problem could be, but still no idea. Almost on the brink of giving up the camera FINALLY started allowing us to shoot longer footage which allowed us to get some really cool answers from passers by about dopamine. Surprisingly, lots of people we recorded knew what it was which is what I didn't expect. We also got some really funny answers which will work really well when properly edited.

(a bit of footage of us trying to get some passers by lol)

Once we viewed the footage on the computer we found that the sound wasn't too great which left us in a little bit of a predicament. The answers we had were so good but the sound really does let down the footage a little bit. This could possibly be because we did not have a microphone as well as all the background traffic. Also, we discovered that the establishing shots which we planned to speed up in editing were waaay too short to do this as there was not enough footage, which is another set back for us. Hopefully we can re-shoot this, however with the weather being very dark and dismal it may be hard to get some good footage.

Today we plan to shoots Ms Lewis who we will interview for some insight in dopamine and what it is. I shall post another evaluation of today's filming later!

NEW AND UPDATED: Shooting Schedule

After a HUGE lack of communication and planning, today we failed to film anything :(

Speaking to our teacher and looking back on our shooting schedule, this was not a good first plan and therefore we had to go back and re-schedule our shooting. This new shedule is much more detailed so hopefully we can now meet deadline and times in order to get everything filmed this week DONE AND DUSTED!

Below is our new schedules:

Permission

Shooting Schedule

We have 1 week to shoot all of our shots so we drafted up a shooting schedule of when and where each day we will be shooting.

Looking at Different Documentaries: Inspiration

We still didn't know what our documentary was going to look like so I decided to do some research on various documentaries to see how they look and whether we could incorporate any of their techniques into our own film.


KING OF KONG:


King of Kong is a documantary about two competitors fighting for the top spot of well loved game Donkey Kong. We are first introduced to the "evil" Bill Mitchell, who has been leader and owner of the Donkey Kong high score for 20 years. On the other hand we also have "goodie" Steve Wiebe determined to try to beat Mitchell and his high score. I like the editing in this film as it really highlights the competitive nature of the two characters. This element can't be applied to our documentary but i do like the fact that they use stats and bar charts to show the journey of the competition.

EVERYTHING IS INCREDIBLE:

Ali really liked the beginning of this documentary and how it starts with the amazing establishing shots and voiceover played over a shot of the mans feet. The sped up establishing shots gave us an idea for our film as it would be a good way of showing the passing of time, this we might encorporate in our own film. Also the voiceover was really good as we hear the person being interviewed before we actually see them which i think will also work very well in our documentary.

WIKILEAKS:


I liked the fact that with the wikileaks documentary the news reports talk about what is happening in the documentary which I think would be a good at the start of our film to highlight the issue of addiction.

Organising Interview Times

We got our media teacher to get permission from our two expert teachers for consent as to when we can interview them for our film. We will also get permission ourselfs just to double check days and times when we can film.

Shot List

This is out first drafted shot list. We wanted to establish exactly what we were shooting, where, how long each of the shots would be so we coudl get an idea of what our documentary is going to look like.

Unfortunately we are still unsure of how we are going to end our documentary as our teacher was abit worried about its possible ending. We plan to go back to him and discuss what we could potentially do instead.

New Updated: Storyboard

This is our new updated storyboard of what  we want our documentary to look like. This is so we can get an idea of what the documentary will possibly look like.

FIRST DRAFT: Storyboard

This is a very messy first draft of our initial ideas. We wanted to just put down our thoughts of how we wanted the documentary to look. Later I will post a better storyboard to show EXACTLY how our film will look.

What are you watching? / 'THE HUMAN MANNEQUIN'

Today I watched an interesting documentary about a young girl named Lousie who has FOP, disease that is slowly making her body stay in one position. This was a very interesting documentary which gives insight into something that someone is suffering with; essentially informing the public about it. This similarly reflects our documentary as we are researching a "drug" that we are all addicted too. Again, informing the public.(http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-human-mannequin/4od)

Our Shooting Schedule

Today my group and I planned our shooting schedule for our film. We had to figure out when, where, who, we would be shooting for our film.

WHO
* Biology teacher - Ms Louis
Ms Louis will need to filmed as we will need an 'expect' opinion on what dopamine is. As a biology and psychology teacher we will film her talking to us about the effects of dopamine and how it works.

* Psychology teacher - McCalley
Mr McCalley is another expert opinion and will also give us insight in to the effect of dopamine and how it works.

* Ali's nephew - Kyreece
Ali's nephew is the reason we begun the journey to discover more about the effects of dopamine. We will film him being his usual self obsessing over his favorite TV programme. From this we will observe how he goes about trying to watch his favorite show by all means neccessary

* 5 random people
One of our ideas is to show a series of people answering our question "Do you know what dopamine is?" We thought that this would be an interesting touch to our documentary to see different people's reactions as to what they think dopamine is.

* 3 people we plan to observe.
Another idea we had was to observe people who are effected by dopamine on the computer, to show that everyone and anyone can be addicted to it not just Kyreece.

WHERE
* School library
Key place for interviewing teachers

* Ali's house
Here we will be observing Kyreece

* Westfield/West end
Where we will be getting the reactions of passers by

Ethical Issues Regarding Documentaries.

STRONGLY AGREE

1) Documentaries shape the truth

2) Documentaries represent someone's version of the truth

3) Raw archive footage is more truthful than staged scenes

4) Documentaries are more truthful than fiction

5) Documentaries capture the truth

STRONGLY DISAGREE

Today we considered the different ethical issues concerning documentaries. How will it effect ours when it comes to making our documentaries?

KEY WORD:

Versimilitude - means the truth. When something is trying to represent or capture the truth.

Different methods to create documentaries.

Errol Morris

...was born in 1948 in New York. He is a well known documentary making who mostly uses natural lighting when creating his documentaries. This is interesting as it shows his desire to create a natural piece of film, preventing anything artificial. Again, this links to what we are exploring "Do we capture or shape the truth?" He is also known to ask a broad question to his subject and leave the camera rolling. From this he has seen how someone can pour their heart out on camera not even taking into account that it is there (natural vs performance)

Ali G method

Ali G is a well known character that everybody knows for his documentaries which seem to be taking the mick out of who he is interviewing. Before interviewing, Sacha Baron Cohen would dress up as Ali G and set up where the interview would take place. From first impressions the person being interviewed would assume he is just someone on set not knowing he would actually be taking the interview. Ali G would quickly ask a few warm up questions whilst setting up making them rethink their prejudice of believing someone else (because of how he is dressed) would be taking the interview.

The Office

Is a fictional sitcom series created by Ricky Gervais first broadcasted in 2001. Although it is fictional and scripted the sitcom does take the form of a documentary. It creates a quite amateur style of documentary or a in other words a: 'mockumentary' with zooming in to create the narrative. The characters are also aware of the camera's presence. 

SO!

Who are the key characters in our documentary?

• Kyreece (Ali's nephew)
• 5 civilians
• Ms Louis; a psychology and science teacher 
• Dopamine 'addicts' Khalum, Andrew, Aidan....
• Mr McCalley; a psychology teacher

What strategies would we use to ensure our subjects do no 'perform' for the camera?

Subjects who shouldn't perform

- 5 random people

strategy: put them on the spot and ask them 'warm up' questions to allow them to get comfortable.

- Nephew 

strategy: bribe him with food/rewards

Ethical issues

Combined Treatment.

In a time where technology rules all, can we say that is not our obsession with technology but something psychological? Have you ever sometimes considered yourself to be an “addict” of some kind?

This film will be a full length documentary about the role of TV on young children. TV is something which is part of our everyday lives and as research suggests too much of it is bad for our children. However, our behaviour towards TV and internet is actually because of the largest drug that is released from our brain. We follow 5 year old Kyreece; and his behaviour towards his favourite TV show “Jake and the Netherland Pirates” From observing Kyreece this show is clearly the only thing he cares about in the whole entire world. This is 5 years of his life sat; glued to the TV screen. The documentary clearly stresses that his addiction to this show is a domestic problem and that any attempt to conceal him from it proves fatal.

The film then takes viewers on a journey, to see why Kyreece acts in this particular way. Some will say ‘Kids will be kids’ but maybe there is possibly a particular reason as to why he acts this way? To be addicted means to be addicted to a particular substance or a specified thing or activity. Can we suggest that Kyreece is perhaps “addicted” to this TV show?

 ­­­­______­­­­__ will show the viewer’s our search to find out why Kyreece is so addicted to TV. We are told information from experts such a psychologist and biologists who tell us that there is actually a psychological reason behind Kyreece’s unacceptable behaviour. We see them in their natural environment of a lab and a classroom to show that they are professionals. This is where Dopamine comes in, an internal drug released in the brain by our body helping fuel our desires. An animation breaks down what the expert has says and helps the viewer to understand the effects of the drug. We see a clear effect the drug has on humans discovering that there is a strong possibility that dopamine plays a part not only in his addiction to TV but ourselves.

So clearly not only is Kyreece addicted to TV but we are too! We then discover how not just Kyreece, but teenagers and adults are also affected by it. At this point we see what creates our desire to view more and more of something with observations of people on the internet and doing various other things. We are then left to question: “Are we really addicted?”

It’s crucial to inform the world of their unknown addiction to drugs. What’s your level of addiction?

Rough Planning/Ideas

Our Documentary Treatment.

Today we learnt about they key points to create a great treatment for our documentary. A treatment for a documentary is 'the opportunity for us a the creator to convince a third party that your documentary is worth making.' A treatment includes a description of the film itself and how we (the creator) will keep the project focused.

1. Have a punchy first sentence to draw the reader in; make them want to watch your film.
2. Begin with an overview paragraph which must include a title, the length of the film and a brief review of the story.
3. The next paragraphs should highlight how we expect our story to unfold (here we can include our point of view, the story and how we essentially plan to tell it, the characters in it etc...)
4. End the treatment with a funny or catchy sentence, like the opening to allow the reader to remember your film and have the desire to want to watch it.

Our Script Treatment:

In the lesson my group and I drafted up a treatment each and here they are:

*Mine:

 

After looking through all of them we picked out which parts we thought were the best from each one to create essentially a SUPER TREATMENT of our documentary.

Our Idea.

Me and my team mates Ali and Victoria are going to create a documentary which addresses the effects of Dopamine. The initial questions will be "Why is my nephew Kyreece addicted to "Jake and The Netherland Pirates" His uncle (who is actually Ali haha) is very concerned as to why he wants to watch this show all the time, wanting to find out more as to why he is so "addicted to it" The documentary follows this idea that Kyreece is maybe not just addicted to Tv but there is a psychological issue arising. We then discover it is actually a drug released in the brain by the body which highly affects us as humans.

Our documentary is more likely going to be an observational and expository documentary.

MyStreet.

We was given the pleasure of meeting Umut an independant film maker to help guide and talk us through our documentaries. This is his second time coming to talk to us which was really helpful. He asked us to take a look at a website called http://mystreetfilms.com/ which had a selection of short documentaries on different subjects. one that particularly stood out to me was 'Our Nation's Sons' which follows a group of boys trying to change their areas perception of boys.

1. What question was the Director trying to answer with the film?
I believe the director wasn't exactly trying to answer a question but change an answer. People heavily stereotype each other which is what this documentary  is addressing.

2. How did they tell their story visually?
Each boy told their story indiviually by expressing their thoughts on sterotypes of themselves in their area. Each boy was spoken to on their own with the camera on them. In certain parts of the film some sections are made faster to show progression.

3. How did sound and music contribute to the narrative?
Music starts the narrative and is played throughout. It is very sympathetic making us the viewer empathise with the people in the film. The voiceover is continued over different scenes to highlight what they are doing; again showing the progress. As the film goes on we see that the boys are making progress so the music changes to something upbeat; highlighting this change.

4. What does this documentary inspire you to do, and not do, with your documentary?
This documentary inspires me to want to use voiceover as the main focus of our documentary to show development. As we want to make our documentary relatively educational, talking through what is happening in the film will help the viewer to understand better. Also, there are interviews from different people giving different opinions therefore we see the different thoughts amongst the boys.

Media Regulation

The media is regulated because it has a powerful effect on the way we think. I decided to do some research on media regulation and its effect on us as the consumer 

1.   Who regulates the media?
 One type of media is television. British television is regulated by a company called Ofcom (the office of communications). They are an independent company who are not owned by the British government.  It regulates consumer’s complaints and competitions on TV.Print media is self-regulated meaning it has no statutory body or company that take care of the things said by journalists.http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100901083001AAdRSPQ 

2.   Why does the media needs regulating?
 The media needs regulating for the protection of public order as well as the promotion of access, freedom to communicate, diversity and universal provision. http://www.le.ac.uk/oerresources/media/ms7501/mod2unit11/page_03.htm 

3.   Should media texts be subject to censorship?
 The media is subject to censorship so that certain content that may infuriate consumers or influence others is not possible. As children and young adults are ‘greatly affected’ by what they see, censorship is needed to prevent any influence. In television content is withheld to stop from showing scenes of ‘explicit or obscene nature’ This is done by blurring or cutting out the part that is offensive. This is for the benefit of children and young adults.  On the internet and in magazines certain countries ban magazines of pornographic content for their ‘vulgarity’ As the internet is viewable by all it is hard to censor what is shown but some sites such a porn are in a ‘red alert area’ for the government.http://www.buzzle.com/articles/media-censorship-why-is-censorship-good.html  

4.   What are the key issues relating to media influence (Uses and Gratification Theory, Desensitisation, Cultural Regulation), and how might they have affected you?
  Is the public protected or hindered by media regulation? 

The key issues related to media influence is the effect it has on children. Gerbert a professor at the University of Penn

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/mean-world-syndrome/

5.    What is the moral responsibility of a media institution? 
This is for a media institution to show their media product in a good light. As the media is an on demand industry, companies strive to make money and keep their consumers happy. The life we live however, in some ways prevents us from doing this.

I feel that the moral responsibility of media institution is to make sure they provide a service to consumers that is suitable to all ages.  By independent companies such as Ofcom, they are able to address issues found by the consumer to help improve the service they give to viewers. If they didn't do this I think that it could add to the influence children and young adults see on TV. In some cases this could lead to more crime and possibly murder.

The different modes of documentaries.

There are several modes which documentaries are mainly based on.

An intro to documentaries: Louis Theroux

Louis Theroux for the second time has gone to visit the Phelps family who were dubbed "America's most hated family" part of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

After many members of the church rapidly began to defect, Theroux ventured back to America to find out why this was happening. It seems that in the years Louis was away, the churches belief's became weirder and spiraling out of control.

The Church (WBC) have become more and more offensive, protesting outside the funerals of soldiers and "rejoicing" in news of someone with cancer. Throughout the documentary, Theroux spends time with Phelps family in order to understand their radical views.

In one scene, Theroux is asked to watch the younger female members dance parody to Lady Gaga's Telephone. Theroux describes that this is what the church does to get their message out changing the lyrics of the songs most popular at the time.