evaluation question 2 by tasnim choudhury

2. How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?By Tasnim Choudhury

For our A2 coursework we had to

create a documentary, which was

the main product, and two

ancillary tasks that supported

and promoted the documentary.

Throughout the whole production

we had to do a lot of research

and planning in order to create a

successful production.

Our products were aimed at a specific target audience, regardless of their ethnicity, race, religion and gender. The age range we were focusing on were Students from 16 to 21 year olds. We thought that targeting our audience to students was appropriate and beneficial towards our documentary. Not only did we get information from students for our research and planning but we had also used Students in our documentary and as extracts in the Radio Trail which were effective as it helped to grab the audiences attention.

How Effective Is The Combination Of Your Main Product And Ancillary Texts?

To reach our target audience in our documentary, we handed out a set of questionnaires to students to get their opinions and views about social networking and why they use it. We also gathered focus groups together involving students, to find out what type of documentaries students watched and what they expect to see in a documentary. We did this so our documentary could meet their expectations and requirements and work effectively in the over all product.

Our documentary itself had also included Students within

the documentary. This instantly establishes our target

audience to the viewers, as they could relate to the

people in our documentary.

We had also used some of our Vox Pops, in our Radio Trail

to tell the listeners who our target audience is by using

Students, as well as intriguing them in with interesting

information said by them.


Our documentary focuses on how social

networking affects students. To do this

we displayed reliable facts and

statistics in the documentary so that

our audience could obtain something

from our documentary.

Some of the factual

information was also

displayed in the Radio

Trail and even the double

page spread so we could

get them interested in

our documentary when

advertising the main product.


We wanted to show our audience throughout our documentary how social networking is affecting certain businesses, people and most significantly Students.

We also wanted our audience to be aware about the good and

bad effects of social networking so they could maybe take some of them into account. To do so

we portrayed some positive and negative effects of social networking by using the

opinions expressed from the Vox Pops and facts applied in the

Radio Trail as well as the Documentary.


Subsequently to ensure that our documentary was a success a class had watched our documentary. The results of our audience feedback were quite positive feedback, they thought that it was a good documentary over all and most of the students rated our documentary 9 out of 10, which evidently depicts a successful documentary.


I personally thought the documentary successfully reached our set goal, which was to entertain and teach something to our watchers, as well as effectively reaching to our target audience, which were students.

To promote and advertise the Documentary, we created a Radio Trail and a Double Page Spread using some of the extracts, sound and images from the Main Task, to ensure that we can reach to our audience as well as show a Brand Identity by linking the products together.


RADIO TRAIL

Our ancillary tasks had effectively targeted the same audience as the documentary. For example in our Radio Trail, we used the main extracts from our documentary clips into the Trail. These included some of the students opinions and the detailed answers from our expert interviews. We had also used facts that most students could relate to when using social networks, which were facts about Facebook and Twitter. We used Extracts from the documentary as a teaser trailer, to show what will come up in the documentary as well as making our listeners curious and interested about it.


We chose to air our Radio Trail to the BBC Radio One listeners. The reason for this was because it had roughly 11.0 million listeners every week. This meant that we could promote our documentary to an extensive amount of users.

Radio One’s target audience is also similar to ours, theirs being 15 to 29 year olds. Although Radio One had a slightly bigger target audience, we thought this could be beneficial towards promoting our documentary to a wider range of audience and reaching to more adults as well as students by advertising the product on Radio One.

Our Radio Trail was quite successful, evidently shown and gathered in our audience feedback, a majority of the class thought that it was clear and met the set codes and conventions.

I also think the Radio Trail worked effectively; it enabled us to excellently target our audience as all as promoting our documentary to thousands of listeners including adults.

One of the other reasons I think it had worked effectively was because the Radio Trail had not only promoted our documentary successfully but had also advertised the product greatly, as the product itself combined the themed music, interesting extracts and facts from the documentary.

It even included the date and time which increased the likelihood of getting more viewers all within 40 seconds.


DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD

The double page spread had also reached our target audience. We chose Radio

Times to feature our Article. The reason we chose Radio Times is because it is a TV

and Radio listings magazine. We had used shots from the documentary and

converted them into Stills and JPEGS which was then applied into the

documentary. This was done to give a bit of insight to the readers reading the

double page spread so that they could read the article and then watch the

documentary.


Because of this factor it gave us an advantage from people who read the TV

listing magazine, will without a doubt come across our double page spread which at

the same time advertises the documentary.

Also in order to grab the readers attention and intrigue them in to reading our article we used the main codes and conventions of a Radio Times Article, such as big

images and bold headings in order to catch the reader’s eye.

Not only is Radio Times a TV listing magazine but it is also

one of the top British magazines. The magazine also has a

broad audience, which means it would be the best place

to advertise our documentary due to the mass amount of people who would view our article.

When we asked what people liked about our double page spread, a lot of the

audience feedback said that they really liked how we used a large main image,

which brought their attention. They also liked the over all layout of the spread and

thought it met the conventions of a realistic article. The Large image worked effectively on the double page spread, which was taken

from the documentary to link and combine the two products together.


In my opinion, I thought the Article promoted

and advertised our documentary sufficiently

in terms of reaching a broader audience as

well as to people who would watch the

documentary. This had worked effectively as

we had used images and displayed facts

from the documentary into the double page

spread, it had also worked effectively as the

article itself is a big TV and Radio listing

magazine. I think the double page spread was good

enough to get the readers attention, however

it did not meet all codes and conventions to a

Radio Times Article. On the other hand I don’t

think it would really take any negative impact

on reaching our audience and advertising the

product as it still grabs the readers attention

and instantly promotes the documentary.


Overall I think that the ancillary tasks endorsed our documentary by showing the link between the products and the main task, by using extracts, images, music and facts and applying them into the ancillary tasks.

I think that they had served their purpose in reaching the same audience as well as advertising it to an even larger audience so that the over all production would be quite successful.

In addition to this I also think the ancillary tasks had also helped to develop the Brand Identity by keeping everything coherent and in line with the rest of the production.


evaluation question 2 by tasnim choudhury

Social Media

main product

ancillary texts

good documentary

successful documentary

documentary clips

radio trail

main extracts

main codes