Codes & Conventions of Documentaries =]

All documentaries stick to specific certain codes and conventions and if they stick to these, it is ensured to be a successful documentary.

The codes and conventions are as followed:-

• There is always conflict starting usually in the middle of the documentary.
• Natural sounds are always used during interviews.
• Evidence and facts are used to make the documentary more believable to the viewers and understand the basics of the documentary.
• Reconstructions are used to show audiences different points of view.
• Establishing shots of locations are used to help the audience understand where the documentary is based.
• The interviewee is framed to the left or right of the camera
• Interviewee never looks at the camera.
• Graphics are always simple in an interview as not to detract from the interviewee.
• The eye line of the interviewee is a third of the way down the screen
• Mise-en-scene is thought about throughout the documentary
• Sound effects are used to dramatise the documentary
• Experts that are interviewed throughout the documentary are named
• Vox Pops are used to gather the public view point.
• A wide variety of camera angles are used to provide interest.
• Exposition is clear
• Cutaways are always used to anchor meaning to the documentary.
• Cutaways are always used when necessary.
• No questions are opposed
• Music beds are always used to help the audience feel a certain mood throughout the documentary and also so the documentary does not become too boring.
• Every documentary has a relevant title to the topic that it is based on.
• The opening title sequences are used to introduce the audience into the documentary.
• Questions asked by the interviewer are always simple and based on the topic, they are never personal questions.
• Voice over are always used, especially when a particular issue needs to be addressed.
• Documentaries tend to be a mixed style, so that it has something that everyone will enjoy in it.
• Experts are always named so that the documentary seems that all of their facts and figures are 100% right.

Interview Questions =]

Elderly Person's Questions
1. How has shopping changed during your lifetime?
2. Have you ever been inclined to shop online because of the effects of the recession?
3. Do you online shop for your clothes or do you use the high street?
4. Have you ever used online shopping?
5. What were your reasons for shopping online?
6. How would it affect you if shopping moved online indefinitely?
7. Has the recession affected your shopping activities?
8. Which is more trustworthy: online or high street?
9. How important is shopping in your life?
10. How much do you trust online shopping?

Elderly Person 2
1. How has shopping changed during your lifetime? e.g. Discounts etc.
2. Have you ever used online shopping?
3. Why?
4. How would it affect you if shopping moved online permanently?
5. Has the recession affected your shopping activities?
6. Which is more trustworthy? Online or high street?
7. How important is shopping in your life?
8. Which do you prefer to do shop online or shop on the high street?
9. On average, how much would you say you spend on shopping per month?
10. What is your favourite store to shop at?

Ebay Seller

1. How long have you sold item's online?

2. What kind of item's do you sell?

3. Have you had any problems throughout the years?

4. How much do you earn in an average month?

5. Have you had any complaint's over the years?

6. Do you trust online shopping?

7. Would you prefer to sell online or high street?

8. How did you get into selling item's online?

9. Why do you think online shopping is getting progressively popular?

10. Do you have concerns about the safety of online shopping?

Shop Assistant
1. How has the recession affected your business
2. Do you think your shop has become less busy? If so, why?
3. Do you think the public are more inclined to shop online?
4. Have you ever worried about the security of your job?
5. Do you think online shopping is a good or bad idea? Why?
6. Do you online shop for your clothes?
7. Which do you believe is more trustworthy: Online shopping or the high street?
8. Have you ever encountered complaints about your online services?
9. How well would you rate your online service?
10. Do you believe that high street shopping is a thing of the past?

Secondary Research =]

A form of research we did was voxpops, these provided primary research for us to use at various points throughout our documentary. We used it as visual footage but also as auditory as well which our voice over could use. We came up with 10 questions to ask for our vox pops which were:-

1) Would you prefer to shop online or on the high street?

2) In your opinion, how safe is online shopping?

3) Do you think high street shopping is becoming a thing on the past?

4) Have you ever sold items online?

5) What are the best online shopping websites?

6) What are your favourite retailers?

7) How much money do you spend online approximately in a month?

8) How much money do you spend on the high street approximately in a month?

9) What encourages you to buy an item?

10) How would you feel about shopping moving online and the high street didn’t exist?

We also gathered video footage and statistics to use as archive footage in our documentary. This would provide us with evidence to back up our claims and to demonstrate the popularity of online shopping.

http://www.bizreport.com/2007/12/survey_89_of_consumers_prefer_online_shopping.html

We used this as they did a survey and according to this, 89% of participants prefer online shopping over in-store shopping. It also involved a quote from Barbara Staib, president of Safe Home Products which she said "It's the fact that you can research the products that are available". We could use this information in a voice over.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y203/m01/abu0087/s02

This showed that in January, AuctionBytes conducted a survey of readers of two free email newsletters: AuctionBytes-Update newsletter (online-auction buyers and sellers) and TIAS.com's The Collector's Newsletter (collectors). 1,000 people responded. We learned that 29% of the respondents thought eBay's feedback system was fair or poor; 35% thought it was adequate; 29% felt the system was very good; and 7% rated it excellent.

According to the survey, the largest percentage of sellers (37%) leave feedback right after a payment has been received; 18% of the sellers taking the survey leave feedback when the customer lets them know that they have received the item; and 15% wait to leave feedback until after the buyer has left feedback for them.

• 80% look at the number of negatives and neutrals
• 61% look at the total number of feedback points
• 47% look at whether the seller's past transactions were as a buyer or seller
• 32% look at the kinds of things the seller sold in the past.
• 14% look at the dollar amounts of the seller's previous transactions
• 8% never look at someone's feedback before bidding
  

We could use these statistics to superimpose over an interview or be lead by a voice over.

http://www.bazaarvoice.com/resources/stats

71% claim reviews from family members or friends exert a "great deal" or "fair amount" of influence. (Harris Interactive, June 2010). The average consumer mentions specific brands over 90 times per week in conversations with friends, family, and co-workers. (Keller Fay, WOMMA,2010). Consumer reviews are significantly more trusted- nearly 12 times more- than descriptions that come from manufacturers. 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from online community of friends. (Internet Retailer, September 2009).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay

eBay Inc. is an American internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. Founded in 1995, eBay is one of the notable success stories of the dot-com bubble; it is now a multi-billion dollar business with operations localized in over thirty countries. eBay expanded from its original "set-time" auction format to include "Buy It Now" standard shopping; In July 2010, eBay was sued for $3.8 billion by XPRT Ventures which accused eBay of stealing information shared in confidence by the inventors on XPRT's own patents, and incorporated it into features in its own payment systems, such as PayPal Pay Later and PayPal Buyer Credit. In early 2008, the company had expanded worldwide, counted hundreds of millions of registered users, 15,000+ employees and revenues of almost $7.7 billion. Millions of collectibles, decor, appliances, computers, furnishings, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, or sold daily.

http://www.nma.co.uk/features/online-shopping-survey-2009/40977.article

A survey was done of 1,957 people and it showed that while few people plan to use the internet less during the recession, less than a quarter intend to use it more. Most respondents say their internet use will be unaffected by the downturn. While 12% of people will be looking for a better deal on their internet access, 3% will choose a slower line to save money. Conversely, 5% of 18-24-year-olds will pay more for better internet access, showing the importance of online to this age group. Clearly in a recession sites offering cheaper products or ways to find them will benefit, hence respondents’ plans to use price-comparison sites much more in 2009. Auction sites and low-cost supermarkets will also benefit. Unsurprisingly, luxury goods will see the largest falls in. The younger age groups and men are more likely to switch their shopping from the high street to online in the recession, being heavy users of the web already. Established online categories like CDs and DVDs, video and computer games, electronics and books are seen as having lower prices than on the high street. Online is catching up with high street stores for clothing, but clearly online grocers have some way to go to lure people from physical stores. There’s little change when respondents were asked to consider the best channel for value for money (combining price and quality) rather than just which is cheapest. Close to half of consumers plan to shop more on auction sites, such as Ebay, in the coming year, rising to over half in the younger age groups. Presumably they hope the auction process will garner them some bargains. Using the internet to compare prices and then going to the high street to get the best deal is a widely accepted practice across all age groups, especially 25-34-year-olds, a quarter of whom always check prices online first. Online beats the high street on five out of seven common considerations for shoppers. The immediacy of high street shopping is clearly a huge benefit, but it’s also seen as having far better customer service, something retailers must work hard to combat. While shopping online generally comes with a delivery charge, using the high street had similar costs of transport and parking. On balance, online is still seen as cheaper by two-thirds of consumers. Notably more men than women see online as cheaper than the high street. Delivery costs are seen as an important aspect when choosing where to shop online, with more than two-thirds of consumers looking around for the lowest cost. A third will spend more in order to qualify for free delivery, while a quarter only use sites that offer free delivery. Significantly, twice as many men as women disregard delivery costs altogether. While fraud is a worry for respondents, most notably women and the over-55s, it doesn’t deter them from shopping online. While the number of respondents to the survey who never shop online was statistically too low to draw accurate conclusions, fear of fraud was the biggest deterrent. Other popular reasons related to the personal aspects of high street shopping.

Other archive material we have chosen to use:-

Confessions of a shopaholic trailer: -

Weird Al Yankovic - eBay Parody song:-

eBay Commercial: -

Sex and the City trailer: -

Other cutaway shots:-

Storyboard of Opening Titles =]

We needed to construct a storyboard, as we needed a basic outline to see how our opening titles would look like and we inform us on what needed to be filmed. We also needed to draw up the framed shots of our interviewees to ensure that when interviewing, we could frame the interviews correctly.

Production Schedule =]

Name of programme: The Empty High Street
Directors: Betty Jones, Danielle Burns & Kirsteii Brown
Producers: Betty Jones, Danielle Burns & Kirsteii Brown
Client: OCR

Date production started: 27th September
Formal proposal started: 4th October .Completed: 11th October
Storyboard started: 8th October .Completed:
Shooting started: 11th October .Completed: 1st November
Post Production started: .Completed:
Rough Cut submitted: 15th November
Final show tape completed: 22nd November
Sent to Client: 17th December

Location Equipment Required:
Camera, Tripod, Microphone & Headphones

Transport required:
Own provided transport or local buses.

Formal Proposal For Documentary =]

Topic
After much discussion, we decided to name the documentary “The Death of the High Street” so that the topic of our documentary becomes more apparent to the audience and also to highlight that the high street could be becoming a thing of the past. We thought it would be best to get two different view points for our documentary: people who prefer the high street and people who prefer to shop from the comfort of their own homes to remain unbiased throughout the documentary. Such companies such as eBay and Amazon provide a different outlook on online shopping and it’s also important to receive the different sides of the argument. We felt that modern day society is beginning to become more comfortable with online shopping and because of this it is ditching the old tradition of the high street for an easier way to shop.

Types of documentary
Due to the quantity of subject content that is available for the documentary, we have decided that our documentary will be mixed as we can include a voice over, archive footage and interviews to vary what the audience sees. We will mainly use cuts however we may consider using fades and dissolves when there is a transition from an interview to the next. We are also incorporating vox pops to portray a general outlook and opinions from the public.

Style of Documentary
Our documentary will be informal and lighthearted to try and take a humorous side to the argument we are presenting whilst also making the exposition clear. The informal nature will be evident through the use of relaxed interviews however a formal voice over will be used so that the audience can connote the seriousness of the documentary. We hope that this approach will mean that our target audience will feel more comfortable whilst watching yet also understand the point of our programme. We shall try and take a MTV like aspect whilst using quick editing to capture the audience’s attention.

Channel and Scheduling
We decided that Channel 4 would be the best programme to air our documentary as it is modern and this appears to be our target audience’s favourite channel which we found out through the use of our questionnaires. Our target audience is from 16-25 as they are more aware of the transition from the high street to online which shows that they tend to shop more online then other audiences. We decided that it will be broadcast at 7:00pm as; once again we learnt from our questionnaires, that this was the most common time that they watch the TV therefore this might help to make our documentary become successful as more viewers will be watching it.

Primary Research Needed
For primary research, we decided that our interviews shall be done in a natural environment. We hope to interview somebody from a retail shop and this could occur in their own shop whilst clothes are present in the background to give the audience a sense of context. If this fails, a natural background will suffice as it also relates to the fact that online shopping occurs at home. We have also distributed questionnaires to try and discover more about our target audience, this included questions on favourite colours, preferred time of viewing and favourite channel to research for scheduling. We also had subject related questions so that we could devise a few statistics and opinions from a broader audience. For example, pink was the favourite colour and therefore we shall use this in our graphics and the favourite type of music was Pop therefore we have decided to use Lady Gaga and other related artists in our documentary.

Secondary Research Needed
For our secondary research, we researched numerous different clips of archive footage online and have found different adverts that we can incorporate into our documentary to demonstrate the nature of eBay, Amazon etc. We are also trying to find different shots of retail shops that we can use for our cutaways to show relevant matter that coincides with what the interviewees are saying. We also plan on including images from books, newspaper clippings and TV footage.

Narrative Structure
The beginning of the documentary will explore the transition from the high street to online and how the younger generation has become more associated with shopping from home. The convenience of online shopping has taken over the traditional high street retailers. We will explore how online shopping has a lot more discounts than the high street and how voucher websites have become increasingly more popular. It shall discuss the recession and how it has pushed people to shop online due to amount of discounts available. We will try to include voxpops to generate an overall opinion on how things have changed over recent years.

The conflict of the documentary will discuss about how websites such as eBay and Amazon can be fraudulent and can scam people out of their money. Hopefully, we can interview someone who will have experienced this first hand and describe their experiences with online shopping. Then we shall later discuss the recession and how it has affected people through losing money online and the reasons why people have opted to shop online in the past.

The end will conclude on points about how it has changed and whether this change is actually progress. We shall also try to sum up our line of argument effectively whilst pointing out both the strengths and weaknesses for both types of shopping. We hope to end our documentary on an unbiased note as this will leave it open ended so that the audience have to make their own opinion on the matter of which shopping they personally enjoy better and hopefully feel more informed on online shopping.

Outline of Content
The content will range from formal interviews to informal voxpops with random members of the public to explore the different reasons behind the use of online shopping. Discussing a big company such as eBay means that we will have to try and research them as much as possible and to interview as many people affected by this company. We will try and talk about its potential unreliability and how a person is effectively buying off a stranger.

We will also speak to common retailers such as Bank, Republic and River Island who all profit greatly from a successful online website. There is also room to explore websites such as ASOS and Boohoo which are only internet based and don’t own a retail shop. The recession is one of the many reasons behind this transition and we hope to discuss about this more however at various points in the documentary to refrain from becoming dull as we have to keep our target audience in mind and the majority aren’t overly excited about the prospect of the recession. Therefore it shall only be mentioned lightly with few professional opinions on it; however we shall try to describe it concisely to keep the audience informed.

We will try to base our documentary around a case study from a person who has had problems with an online purchase or an unfair high street transaction. This will help to balance the exposition so that the audience can remain a fair view of the narrative. We will use as much archive footage as we can such as adverts, clippings etc. to reinforce our line of argument that the high street is no longer popular as it used to be. We hope that the narrative will be rhetorical and will allow the viewer to make their own opinion. Lastly, and the most important, we shall focus on the average member of the public’s opinion and try to create a generalized outlook on the subject.

Research Requirements
Obviously a camera is an essential piece of equipment needed for a documentary as this is needed to catch the action and practically create the documentary itself. We decided not to use a boom as this can sometimes pick up too much background noise whilst a microphone can pick up the interviewees direct words, this will help to prevent detracting from the subject content. We also need a tripod to keep the camera still whilst filming pans and establishing shots, interviews etc. We may consider using blue screen to incorporate different images behind our interviewees.

Scheduling =]

After much research into the scheduling of programmes, this has helped me decided where I plan on scheduling my documentary when it has been completed. There are a few different categories that our programme could fall into: - Morning programmes are often infotainment as they are scheduled for those who are getting ready for work however it also includes many childrens programmes. Despite social differences in the modern era, daytime television is still primarily targeted at “housewives” and often consist mainly of cooking programmes or reality/talk shows such as House in the sun. Evening television is also for housewives again, this is why this time mainly consists of soaps as they appeal mainly to them. Late night television is aimed at students as they are the majority that stay up at night, they also mainly consist of films. In addition, I have also found out in my research that channels such as Channel 4 screen a lot more repeats than channels such as ITV as it costs less money to repeat and import American channels than to actually own their own studios. Channel loyalty stopped in the 90's this is why BBC had to self promote its channel. In the 70/80's there was a battle between ITV/Channel 4, this is why they delibrately start programmes early. The three things that needs to be considered before scheduling a programme is Inheritance: If they want to inherit an audience, they usually schedule it straight after a soap so that the audience could continue watching. Pre echo: This is when they schedule a documentary before a popular programme & Hammocking is when they put it between two popular programmes.

BBC1 is a channel intended for “everyone” however this is debatable; it is seen as a channel for everyone as the general public has to pay a TV license towards the BBC as this is how they get their money not through advertisements therefore it should screen programmes that will appeal to the greater audience however it is often associated with Southern, middle class people and the majority of the programmes are seen as for the “well educated”.

BBC2 was opened for educational purposes and this still runs to this day. They are renowned for screening programmes intended to educate and help develop morals in the audience. Documentaries were often screened on this channel in the beginning of the popularity of the television.

ITV1 is often regarded as the working class channel, this is why a large variety of programmes are shown to appeal to different people e.g. Jeremy Kyle.

Channel 4 is viewed as being for students, it contains 20% of imported programmes such as Friends & Fraiser and this is often because it is a lot cheaper to channel them, this compensates for a lack of filming equipment and facilities, they used to be under the TV license but since 1991 they don't.

Channel 5 was released in a wave of excitement as it was intended to be a big contender with ITV1. However, it turned out to be unsuccessful as it tried to appeal to everyone, which a channel obviously can’t do, this is why the majority of people believe that this is where it went wrong as it is difficult to keep a sustained audience with such a big variety of programmes.

Running Order =]

Documentary: The Empty High Street
Channel: Channel Four

Brainstorm Of Content For Documentary =]

Graphics - The graphics that we plan on using will be blue and white yet look simple and kept to a minimum. We plan on only using graphics when necessary e.g. to introduce interviewees and the our title graphics will be white yet quite elaborated and detailed feminine font will be used to appeal to the female audience.

Colours - We decided that our main colours will pastel blue, white and possibly pink. However we plan to keep the colours to a minimum so it shouldn’t distract the audience from the subject content that is being given to them.

Editing – We are going to use establishing shots before an interview to let the audience know where the interview is being taken place. Simple cuts should be used between following shots of the interviews and definitely no dissolves or fades will be used as this will look amateur. Plenty of cutaways will be used to keep the audience attention and we will use cutaways that are relevant to the subject such as websites, clothes, catwalks and the high street. We shall use cutaways such as ones of the high street and we also were going to research newspaper headlines to include within the documentary. We shall integrate voxpops in to the documentary to create humour and bring light heartedness to the documentary.

Archive Footage – We shall use footage of designers and adverts of online shops including eBay, Amazon, ASOS etc. We shall edit them together in a sequence to demonstrate a wide variety of options. We shall also use footage of people talking about online fraud and reliability etc. Also we could include a reconstruction of people going online to buy products and also going in store to buy them.

Music & Sound – We shall keep the diegetic sound from the interviews to prevent obscuring the subject content. We shall have a music bed throughout the documentary which will include recent popular songs to keep the target audience interested however the music will change into dramatic music when serious topics are being discussed to let the audience know that it is serious. A voiceover will be used to lead the narrative, by someone we know with a formal voice, this will help present the slant of the documentary.

Narrative – The narrative shall discuss the decrease in shopping sales on the high street and the combined increase on online shopping. It shall also discuss how online shopping has evolved into a culture for our “lazy generation”. The “blockage” can be eBay and it shall present it’s unreliability & it’s tendency to scam people through their sales. This should be balanced with a slant on the high street and the extortionate prices that people are forced to pay which raises questions such as should we risk our shopping to save a few quid? This should link in with the recession and how it has affected the sales however it shouldn’t focus too much on the recession as this may become dull and pessimistic. The resolution would present how online shopping is efficient and how it benefits the high street.

Mise-en-Scene – All interviews should take place in their natural/working environment. We shall stick to the rule of thirds and try to make the interviewee elaborate on every point they make to gather as much detail as possible without appearing forceful. We shall also incorporate images of logos of the shops we mention.

Camerawork – We shall use close ups of the interviewees to ensure their significance. We shall also use pans in the high street to demonstrate the emptiness that it brings. Shallow and deep focus will be used to lend variety to the documentary and to show the endless online websites. The camera will be mainly static. Low angle shots of buildings and shops will be used to show power and authority of the company and possibly high angles of shops on the high street to make them appear weak under the strain of online

Target Audience Research =]

Questionnaire - Online Shopping

Please circle where appropriate

1. Are you male or female?

Male Female

2. Do you have a job?

Full-Time Part-Time None

3. Would you rather shop online or on the high street?

Online High Street No preference

4. Do you spend more money on the high street or online?

Online High Street No preference

5. Have you always had success with your purchases online?

Yes No

If not, please explain below.

6. Do you think it is fair that online shopping has more discounts available?

7. Which do you trust more: High Street or Online?

High Street Online No preference

8. What are the “pro's” to you as an individual of shopping online?

9. What are the “cons” to you as an individual of shopping online?

10. Are you an eBay user?

Yes No

11. If yes, have you ever become stressed/anxious over an item you are bidding on? Why?

12. Have you ever regretted buying from an online retailer? If so, why?

13. How did you become involved with online shopping? If you rarely shop online, why have refrained from using online shopping before?

14. On average, how many hours of online shopping do you complete in two weeks (minimum one purchase)?
1-2 3-4 4-5 5-6 6+

15. Have you ever shopped online somewhere but not in store? If so, why?

16. Do you think online shopping has added to or helped the recession? Explain if possible.

17. What is your favourite colour?

18. What is your favourite genre of music?

19. What is your favourite TV channel?

20. When do you tend to watch TV the most?

The Results :-

Q1. Are you male or female?

These results show that the majority of our target audience are female therefore we will make our documentary appeal more to women.

Q2. Do you have a job?

Our results show that the majority of our target audience are full time or part time, therefore we planned to schedule our documentary in the evening for when people would be home to watch it.

Q3. Would you rather shop online or the high street?

This illustrates that our target audience prefer to shop online to the high street, this will be useful to our documentary as it shows how our "lazy generation" would rather go onto the internet than rather buy things in person.

Q4. Do you spend more money on the high street or online?

Our results show that more people spend more online rather on the high street, this could be because of the actual transaction wasn't in person therefore people could "lose track of their money".

Q5. Have you always had success with your purchases?

It showed that only a small amount of people had a problem with online purchases, when asked why, they answered with a variety of explanations such as incorrect size, the product didn't arrive and the product wasn't what was expected.

Q6. Do you think it is fair that online shopping has more discounts available?

The results explain that over half of the people we questioned think that it's fair that online shopping have discounts, this could probably be because the people who think it is fair are the people that actually online shop whereas the people that think it's unfair are the people who only shop on the high street.

Q7. Which do you trust more: High Street or Online?

This question helped us figure out whether the target audience thought that the online was trustworthy, this shows that even though the majority use online shopping, they would prefer the high street.

Q8. What are the Pros of shopping online?

This shows that the main reason that people shop online is because it's quicker than actually going out to buy them. Other pro's were that online shopping is easier with more variety than shops on the high street and a small percentage said that they find that they save more money when shopping online.

Q9. What are the cons of shopping online?

From these results, it shows that there are more cons to online shopping than actual pros. The main reasons behind this is the threat of fraud and the fact that they have to pay delivery charges for their items when they wouldn't have to in the high street.

Q10. Are you an eBay user?

We asked this question as one of the key points of our documentary is about eBay and we wanted to figure out how much of our audience would actually relate to the subject matter.

Q11. If yes, have you ever became stressed/anxious over an item you're bidding on? Why?

This shows that 20 people have became stressed over an item. The reasons for this result was due to - Being outbidded by someone else, they really wanted to the item and they were nervous because they may become sued if they did something wrong.

Q12. Have you ever regretted buying anything from an online retailer? If so, why?

The reasons why people have regretted purchasing an item was because the product didn't turn out what they expected it be, they rarely used it, incorrect description or the item was the wrong size.

Q13. How did you become involved with online shopping?

This shows that mainly people became involved in online shopping due to browsing the internet, this was helpful to our documentary as it showed that people found online shopping by themselves and not influenced by any other factor.

Q14. On average, how many hours of online shopping do you complete in two weeks (minimum one purchase)?

It showed that our target audience spent approximately 3 - 4 hours browsing online, this shows that online browsing is a main usage for accessing the internet.

Q15. Have you ever shopped online somewhere but not in store? If so, why?

The reasons behind them shopping online rather instore was because: - the store was too far away, they simply didn't enjoy high street shopping or they found out that the layout of the store was confusing.

Q16. Do you think online shopping has added to or helped the recession?

They believe that online shopping has added to the trouble of our recession, this could be because the numerous amounts of discounts on offer making people spend more than in person however others believe that it has actually helped, this could be because lack of money spent on transport.

Q17. What is your favourite colour?

We asked this question mainly to found out more information on our audience, also the colours could of been chosen as to figure out which graphics we should use, as the favourite colours were pink and blue, we thought that these colours may be too bright and distract the audience so we chose these colours but pastel so it appeals to the audience yet it doesn't take too much focus away.

Q18. What is your favourite genre of music?

We asked them this question so that we could incorporate some of their favourite genres into our documentary, as the majority of the audience has chosen pop, we have decided to place this type of music into our documentary to keep the audiences attention.

Q19. What is your favourite TV Channel?

This shows that the audiences favourite channel consist of none of the terrestial channels however one of the main channels which said to be their favourite was E4 and as E4 is run by Channel four, we decided to schedule our documentary on channel four to gain a higher success rate.

Q20. When do you tend to watch TV the most?

This shows that the most common answer for the question was they watched TV between the hours of 19:00 - 21:00, this is why we decided to slot our documentary at 7pm.

Initial Plans =]

When we were placed in our groups, we had to come up with a subject for the documentary to be based around. We all initially had our own ideas however they were overruled due to lack of interviewers or subject matter, we ended up eventually choosing online shopping – death of the high street as this, in recent years it has become extremely popular, we chose a variety of topics to discuss in this documentary such as the reliability of online shopping and the pro’s and con’s of this new internet phase. We decided to aim it at 16 + even though this seems like a vague target audience, online shopping has become popular with everyone as there are a variety of websites to suit everyone’s needs e.g. Ebay, Amazon etc. We discussed who we would interview and we agreed on numerous amounts of vox pops and interviews with managers from high street names. When discussing scheduling after we recently researched it, we agreed that we would like our documentary to be on Channel 4 as although this is stereotypically a young person’s channel, we would get a larger audience from this. We also decided that the best time to schedule this would be at 9pm as this is when the majority of over 16+ would be watching TV, we also hoped that if we placed it after a popular programme, we could inherit some viewers from the previous show. Finally we had to come up with our name for our programme, we wanted one that would be informative of what the show was about yet didn’t seem dull for the viewers to think this wouldn’t entertain them so we agreed on “Death of the high street”. We chose this wording as we think it explains the documentary and also it would stand out from different documentaries.