Lara McEvoy - 319311
Unit 13: Final Major Project
Part 1: Presentation Strategies - 7.1
With distributing my finished documentary there are 4 potential ways that this could be done, all of which are real world ideas and could actually be used. The four ways I am going to explore are social media, Sally Prout School of Dancing, End of Year show and Youtube. Below I am going to explore these in more depth, discussing the advantages, disadvantages, suitability and even the effect this could be on my career path, starting with social media.
Social Media
(13/5/24)
Social media is immensely popular now for people to distribute their work, mainly short form, as it needs to be catching and keep the audience’s attention, but as my documentary is running at 10 minutes means this could be a less ideal option. The target audience for this documentary is those who have an interest in dance and the parents/family of the pupils at the dance school, so distributing it on social media would mean there is a slight chance it is reaches the part of the audience that have an interest in dance may see it. However, the likelihood of it reaching the intended audience on my personal Instagram is slim, while people at the dance school follow me, it wouldn’t reach as wide of an audience as it could. The main downside of using social media to distribute my work is that people aren’t that focused when they are on social media, it is usually just a pass time for them when they are bored or waiting for someone or something, so there is a high chance of a lack of response from this.
Potential ways that I could distribute it on social media:
Trailer - Short form content tends to run at 60 seconds, so for my documentary to be distributed on social media, I could consider creating a trailer for this instead. Creating a trailer for my documentary would mean I could post it onto platforms such as Instagram, X (Twitter) or Facebook, and capture the attention of an audience. The advantage of creating a trailer is that I could create promotional content which can be posted on lots of different platforms, including TikTok as well, broadcasting it to an even wider audience than I have originally intended. The downside of creating a trailer is that I could make a trailer which isn’t engaging and doesn’t leave those who have watched wanting to know more, which would completely go against the point of it.
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Instagram story – On Instagram there is a feature called stories which is where you can upload a portrait photo or video with text over the top, which stays up for 24 hours. For this way of distribution as I am looking for audience feedback, I would create a story with a link to the documentary and a survey for them to complete. Through doing this I would be getting people to watch the documentary and get responses from an audience allowing me to understand what they liked about the documentary and what they didn’t. However doing this there are some downsides, such as the fact that the survey would be being distributed to the unintended audience and that not everyone who see’s the story will watch the video and complete the story. Not having everyone who see’s the story complete it is a given with posting something like that on social media, not everyone is really paying attention to their phones while scrolling, so this will limit the response given.
I mentioned that there is a high chance that this would be distributed to the unintended audience, while this isn’t intentional, it’s not a bad thing to do. Showing the unintended audience the documentary means I can see whether what I have produced appeals to a wider audience than I originally intended. I can see how they respond to it and if they enjoy something outside of their original interests, and even more, I have been able to produce a documentary which captures the interest of those who it wasn’t intended for.
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Both these ways of distributing my work on social media would allow me to show the work to a wider audience than I had originally intended. This is both a positive and a negative. It has a more positive aspect to it as I can see that I have created a piece of media that captures the attention of those its not intended for, allowing me to understand that there was either a wider audience than I originally believed or I have just been able to make a piece of media that can capture the attention of those its not intended for.
Method in use -
For the social media distribution idea, I decided to go for the Instagram story idea. This is because I have done this for previous projects and found it’s an effective way of getting a wider audience to watch the piece and give feedback. For this I created a story through taking images from the documentary, using the background of the credits as my main centre, as this means I can write the text on this, like in the credits. I then paired this with 2 other photos, shown below, and created the story.
This story got over 200 views with a lot of people from the dance school, and past pupils liking the story. From this I was able to get 36 responses, which is more than I have been able to get before from a final video survey. This is really helpful for me to see that people who aren’t in the intended audience have watched and given feedback, which I will analyse, allowing me to understand what they thought of it.
Sally Prout School of Dancing
(12/5/24)
As I have mentioned throughout the entirety of this project, I have worked along side the dance school I attend, the Sally Prout School of Dancing, so I thought that I could use them as a way to distribute my work. The intended audience for my documentary is mainly those who take interest in dance and those who are family/friends of those, more specifically those at the dance school and their parents. So, to distribute my work, I thought that I could potentially ask Sally to email out the documentary and a survey to the whole dance school. Doing this would allow me to show my work to the intended audience and get feedback that I can analyse to understand if I have met the needs of the intended audience. If this is possible then this would be greatly appreciated as I know it is a big thing to ask of Sally to do, but hopefully she will.
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In terms of my future career, distributing this through Sally Prout means she is able to watch this and could potentially lead to her being a client for me in the future. In a past project, I created an advert for her, and now I have produced a documentary featuring pupils from the dance school it has certainly heightened my chances of this happening in the future. This would be a huge step to take as when I am working in the real world, having a client from the start will certainly help me to build up my portfolio, hopefully leading to more client work.
Method in use -
I spoke to Sally on Friday (10/5/24) about the possibility of distributing it to the whole school via email, where she said she would be happy to as long as all the results came straight back to me, which they will because I’m using google forms for this. On Friday I said I would email her asap with information, but I forgot until Sunday evening, so I sent her over the email shown on the right.
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​Luckily, she got back to be quite quickly asking me for an explanation which she can attach to the email so that the parents can understand what it is they are being sent. It took me until the next day to send over the explanation for the survey, due to me being busy with other work, but from this she then sent out the email the next day to the whole dance school. I really appreciate her doing this for me as it means I can gain feedback from the intended audience, and hopefully get a lot of it.
End of Year Show
(15/5/24)
The end of year show is a chance to distribute my work to the unintended audience again. In this show I would give a short speech about the documentary I have produced and what section of it the audience are about to watch, therefore presenting a section of my final documentary. Along with this, to attain feedback I would create a survey specifically for this show as this would allow for me to understand what feedback is coming from where. The way the audience would take this survey would be to through a QR code in the programme, which they could scan taking them to the survey. On the survey I would also include the documentary as whole, in case they were wanting to watch even more of the documentary because they only watched a 3 minute – 3 minute 30 seconds of it.
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There is another way in which I could attain some feedback at this show, this is through face-to-face conversations. As there is a large audience at the show, I will be able to go around and ask people for their opinions on my documentary, well the segment they have seen from it. This will be amazing to do as getting live feedback means I can get honest opinions and I can question them if there were any areas they thought needed improving or that they would’ve changed. However, I need to keep in mind that not everyone will be willing to give feedback, and that’s completely fine people are allowed to do what they want.
YouTube
The final way of potentially distributing my work is through YouTube. YouTube is a popular platform for people to share their work, specifically students/young people. On YouTube I see a lot of people posting student films, which then gain a lot of attention so I feel that this could be a good way to distribute my film. Doing this means I can distribute my work to those who I don’t know, I am able to show people I don’t know the documentary I have created and even get feedback from those who have watched it. Seeing as I would be positing it on YouTube, I could design a thumbnail or poster to use which would attract people to watching it.
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There are so many ways that posting it on YouTube could help me a lot, as if people interact with the video through commenting or liking it then there’s a chance that the YouTube algorithm may put it onto other peoples suggested to watch, gaining more views and feedback. As there isn’t a specific message from my documentary having more people watch it wouldn’t necessarily be beneficial other than to show me more people watched my documentary and enjoyed it. In terms of my career, gaining more views would show the success of the documentary I have produced.
Most suitable method
For my documentary, I feel the most suitable method for distribution is through Sally Prout. This is because she is able to send an email out which people can access whenever they want to, and it can go to the whole dance school rather than just a small group who may or may not see it on an Instagram page. Along with this, the parents who get the emails can then show their children the documentary and they can give feedback too, as well as hopefully inspire some of the younger pupils at the school due to the documentary showing them where they could be in the future. The feedback from the intended audience will be extremely helpful so that I can analyse whether I have been able to meet the needs of the audience or not.