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

Throughout the production of all documentary, radio trailer and double page

spread, we aimed to maintain a consistent house style and keep certain

elements of all three products similar so they are recurrent linking all three

forms of media.

Our main product and the ancillary tasks are all aimed at the same target

audience – this is teenagers to young adults, who are possibly considering body

modifications or already have them and want to see the impact it may have on

their lives. More specifically, the target audience would be around 15-21 years of

age, or young adults who are currently in the education system. We wanted to

target this age group, regardless of any other factors such as religion, race,

gender, or disability. We chose this target audience as we feel the young adults

are the most inclined to get tattoo’s, as they are reaching, or have reached the

legal age to have them. From our research, we have concluded that body

modifications are more popular within the working class citizens. As this group of

people a lot of the time have jobs involved with facing the general public, their

body modifications may affect their chances of getting a job as it may cause the

public to see the company in a different, perhaps more negative way if they

employ people with graphic art on their body. This is an idea which is presented

in our documentary. Although this is our target audience, we did not want to

restrict our three products to just young people, and so aimed to appeal to other

people such as the general public, teachers, and parents and so included these

people in our documentary. This avoided reducing the amount of people that our

products appeal to. Once we had chosen a topic, and a target audience for the

documentary, we revolved our two ancillary tasks around this, making sure that

each product was consistent with one another. This way, each product is clearly

connected to one another.

Overall, the magazine completes the objective to support the documentary as it

is both aesthetically pleasing and does it’s main job to advertise the product with

consistency. In terms of our planning, incorperating conventional features of our

chosen magazine and conventions of the topic, we chose to opt for a relatively

simple layout and colour scheme which didn’t contain too much distraction from

the overall message of the documentary and advertisement.

The main article reinforces the connection

between main product and ancillary tasks.

This can be seen through various elements

including: our main image also being the main

image of our documentary, as it is featured as

the title sequence. We also added a black and

white effect over the image which we felt

conveyed how stereotyping can often be

black and white. It portrays the dark side of

stereotyping, where the individual can feel

discriminated against and so isolated. we

planned to set up a house style which

consisted of basic elements that we could

replicate throughout each product. Also our

magazine article feaures real people from

our documentary, so advertises it well and adds an element of continuity. For

example, we used the colour scheme of black, white and red. This is because we

felt the colours were appropriate for our target audience and the topic, as they

would appeal to a younger audience. We also used the same font throughout

similarly to create an alement of consistency.

We included date, time and title in order to ensure

the reader knows exactly when the documentary is

showing. As the title is bold, and clear, the reader

can easily recognize when it is on. This supports the

main product and so increases the views.

Also, we included a pull quote straight from the

documentary which we felt advertised and

summarized the main points well. This

encourages the reader to watch the documentary,

as they receive a snipet from the voiceover which

is interesting and intruiging.

Although, what could have been improved in the article was that the colours

black and red clash together slightly. As the text is the most important feature of

the article, it needs to be

easy to read and clear. This

I feel is something we could

of improved upon, in retrospect, especially taking into account a younger target

audience. We chose to create our article for ‘Radio Times’ magazine which is a

British weekly telelvision and radio programme. The magazine has been claimed

as “the bible for the best television, radio and film coverage: exclusive interviews

with the biggest names in the business, behind-the-scenes insights, exclusive

photo shoots, incisive critics and detailed listings for digital TV and radio

channels”. The magazine obtains a conventional,

traditional layout and so we felt that in order to

incorperate our topic, this was a good choice.

Articles often advetise popular shows such as ‘The

Voice UK’ and ‘Top Gear’ also ‘Come Dine with Me’

which are aimed at a range of audiences, and help

to reinforce the idea that this magazine contains a

Radio Times Magazine

broad range of articles that appeal to a larger range of audiences. We also

aimed to make the radio trailer fit with the magazine article and documentary. I

feel that our article appeals to students, of around 15-21 age groups, however

the magazine as a whole reaches to all audiences, young and old, and this is

what I feel we have achieved through our production of all three tasks.

Secondly, my radio trailer is particularly effective in relating directly to both my

magazine to the documentary, it supports and combines with my other products

to appeal to the target audience.

I feel that my radio trailer

succeeds in both encouraging

people to watch the

documentary. I have displayed

this through the addition of

audio snippets directly taken

from my documentary –

specifically from expert

interviews, voice-over and vox-pops. For example, I took quotes and placed them

at the beginning of the trailer which are interesting and intruiging; for example “I

don’t think I’d have loads myself”, “bit too permanent for my liking”, and “Even at

work I have to wear long sleeves”. These provide small tasters which do not

actually say what the topic of the documentary is about; therefore the listener is

intruiged and wants to find out what the documentary is about. They present the

contrasting opinions of the general public. This allows the radio trailer and

documentary to combine well together.

Another element we made recurrent throughout was

the use of sound. In the documentary, we chose an

upbeat backing track which aided the

entertainement quality of the documentary. We did

the same for our radio trailer for the s ame purpose. It

added another element of house style and therefore

combined the forms of media together to create a

brand identity. We felt that the music worked well the

first time, in the documentary, and this was another

reason why we repeated using the same sound.

The radio trailer has been

produced for Kerrang! Radio,

which we felt was a very

suitable choice. This is

because = Kerrang! Radio

generates 904,000 listeners

per week, which is a huge

audience. The radio channel

is also aimed primarily at the

15-35 age group, with 43.5%

female and 56.5% male – clearly a very balanced audience, reaching both

female and males effectively. Both the age and gender of the target audience of

Kerrang! Radio relate to our three products.

Overall, our radio trailer serves its purpose to interest a wider audience. It can be

argued that our radio trailer is in fact more effective than a magazine, as when

you are listening to the radio you have little choice but to listen to what the trailer

has to say, whereas with an article you can easily read past it or not buy the

magazine. The radio trailer also seems to appeal more to our audience than a

magazine – a younger audience is less inclined to buy a TV and Listings

magazine, and so in this respect, to improve, we could have produced our

magazine for a company who appeal more towards a younger audience. Despite

this, I am very pleased with how the features of both magazine and trailer

combined together well in supporting the documentary.