Technologies Used

During the construction and research of our documentary the main pieces of technology which we used were the internet and many pieces of software such as:

* Adobe InDesign CS3 - We used this to create our double page spread.
* Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 – We used this for the editing of our documentary and also for the director’s commentary.
* Adobe Photoshop CS3 – We used this to make the magazine article, newspaper advertisement and various graphics used throughout the documentary itself. This was also used to help enhance and develope the background and pictures on the Double page spread.
* Audacity – This was used to record the director’s commentary and other narrative parts of the documentary.

For the research we used the internet and websites such as YouTube to look at various other documentaries so we could analyse them on our blogs. We also used other websites to be able to research media theory and find extra information on other productions similar to ours.

Audience feedback

We showed this to a controlled group consisting of gamers and non-gamers, and generally speaking, the feedback was positive. The relatively unbiased outlook was admired, but most non-gamers did see a slight hue towards sympathy for gamers. Also, it has to be said that, despite the explanations of some of the key technical terms within the film (such as the brief description of the term ‘LAN Party’), the language was slightly difficult for some to understand. This was not a major concern however; as usually the dialogue was backed up by footage straight after allowing the audience to a better understand.

The comments which were made by the control group, as sstated earlier, were mainly positive. One, non-gamer, member of the control group commented on the documentary, “It made me realise the appeal of not just PC gaming but gaming in general and also the social, rather than anti-social aspect of gaming”. This shows that the documentary, although not creating any ground-breaking conclusions, has had an impact on some non-gamers which was its objective to open peoples’ eyes to the world of PC gaming.

(SEE ABOVE POSTS ON ANCILLARY MATERIAL FIRST) How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary products?

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

Our main product and the ancillary texts, such as the newspaper article, ‘Radio Times’-esc and double page spread are very well suited to each other- and as a result, produce an effective means of advertising our documentary.

The two texts that we produced have been themed in such a way that they best match the style of our documentary: done in a quite ‘computer-gaming’ feel and relating to a lot of the terms used in the actual film itself. The newspaper article is done in a similar way- putting across the style of the documentary in its use of language. Both of these help advertise our documentary to not only our specific audience (PC Gamers) but also everyone else who may have some sort of involvement with computers.

Double Page Spread - Final

This is our final double page spread. The colours used were what we believed to be specific to desktop backgrounds and application windows. To make it relate to our video even more, we added pictures from our Documentary and used the title background as the desktop background. We added the time in which the documentary would be shown and the logo of the channel it would be shown on. Overall this added to the feel of a double page spread and made it look more realistic.

We used Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop to create our final Double page spread. By using more advanced programs we were able to make the overall piece look more professional and realistic.

Double Page Spread - Planning

We then made rough plans on how we wanted the page to look.





As you can see we decided that as our documentary has a computer based theme, so would our double page spread. If it is designed in this way then we believed it would appeal more to our specific audience.

RESEARCH - Double Page Spread

We were also asked to design a Double page spread for our documentary. To begin with we looked at a few examples of what double page spreads actully look like.





Both of these have different styles. We chose to do ours in the same style as picture one, as we wanted to talk about our documentary and give readers a slight preview into what they would be watching.

Newspaper Advertisement - Final

We did the Newspaper Advertisement in the style of a review, but instead telling people what it involves and what they can expect to see. We made sure to keep it brief and to the point.