Question Two

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary

texts?

Poster

Channel Four examples

Title with channel four house style. Same font and size, black writing on white background. Tells you what series the episode is in and when it is.

Channel Four logo is in the middle, to the side.

Effect of blurring people and blur around the girl as she is being swallowed into ground.

We have made the poster portrait as it imitates another Channel 4 poster “High on Blow”. We thought having the poster vertical was more effective as the contents of the image which we were using, looked more prominent and effective when portrait rather than landscape.

Purpose• The purpose of our poster and our radio trailer is to inform the demographic of our documentary that the

documentary has been made and when it is being aired. It is also used to advertise our documentary to other audiences. When creating our documentary we tried to imitate examples of other channel four documentaries and decided that the best type of topic was the lifestyle seasons as the typical channel four audience were normally interested in these topics that arise. This meant that the audience were more open to learning about different topics. This meant if the audience were not interested in body building in particular, they would still watch the documentary as it was part of the same season as other episodes that they have seen.

• When creating our documentary, we decided to imitate previous examples of channel four poster documentaries such as "Britain's forgotten children“ and “High on blow” by making sure that we had a consistent channel four style like they did. For example, the channel four logo was located in the middle and to the side of the poster. The same house style font of channel four was used and it was put at the bottom of the poster. The poster “Britain’s forgotten children” that we decided to imitate also had an effect used of vibrations and so we also used this on our poster to make it look more effective. We also then challenged this posters conventions as it was landscape and we decided to imitate the look of another channel four poster, “High on blow” and make the poster portrait instead.

• We also listened to examples of radio trailers that channel four had created. What we learned from these

trailers was that there was always quiet background music throughout the trailer and some of the words of the song used would have relevance to the topic of the trailer. We also learned that the trailers used snippets of actual footage within their programme on their radio trailers so that the audience could get a taste of what it would be like. At the end of the trailers the music would always fade out before the narrator would say what the programme is, when it’s on and what channel it is on. Due to all the features that I have mentioned, we decided to add these techniques to our radio trailer but with our footage and information.

Form relation to Target Audience• The form of a poster being used to advertise the documentary would usually be found in a

magazine or on a billboard etc. If the advertisement is found in a magazine then it is more than likely that it has been chosen to be put in this magazine and therefore the target audience reading the magazine will be the same demographic that the documentary is aimed towards. The advertisement may also be located in a newspaper talking about upcoming TV programmes, this will target our audience as men aging from 20-40 read the newspaper regularly and will look toward the sports pages, the advertisement will more than likely be located near the sport section of the newspaper.

• The form of a radio trailer will be used to advertise the documentary in between radio shows. However, only certain radio channels who’s target audience are similar to ours will be used in order to advertise the programme. This is because the documentary will not impress everybody as not all of the public have interests in body building, gym or even sport. If the radio channel listeners hear the advertisement they are more than likely to focus on what is being said as they have an interest in the chosen subject. For example they will focus on what the advertisement is about before then wanting to hear when the programme is on and how and where they can watch it. This is why the dialogue in the radio trailer is important as it explains what the documentary is and what it is about before telling you when it is being aired and what channel it is on.

How have you used and developed features of the main product in your ancillary texts?

Why have you utilised these features in this way? For our ancillary tasks, we have included many elements of our actual documentary to build them up. For example, for our poster, we took an image on the same day as our filming day, which we chose would be the main background for our poster. This allowed us to get an image from a real gym environment, which shows our audience that the information that we are providing is reliable and truthful. Additionally, for our radio trailer we used small snippets of our documentary as background sounds, for example, the sound of grunting and the sound of weights being lifted which featured in the real documentary, have now been added to the radio trailer. As there is no visual aspect of the radio trailer, the sounds create a nice atmosphere, as at the start of the radio trailer, you do not know what or who is creating the sounds, the trailer is then introduced and you learn what the sounds are, but this short period of time, where the listener is unaware to what the sound is, creates a good sense of tension and anticipation for the listener to make the whole production more exciting, which ultimately makes the audience more likely to watch the documentary. Further more, we also added a couple quotes from our documentary, to be the main verbal text in the radio trailer, this was an effective method, as this gave the audience a small insight to the content of the documentary, and hopefully makes then want to watch the documentary, as they want to learn more about bodybuilding, rather then the small amount of information that we have provided in the radio trailer.

What factors influenced your decision making when preparing and producing the ancillary

tasks?There was many factors which influenced the process on preparing our ancillary tasks. The first thing that we did before anything else, was research into previous Channel 4 posters and radio trailers. We found an analysed a number of different posters which Channel 4 had produced, and used similar elements to what they had done, and inserted into our poster. For example, “Britain’s Forgotten Children” was a poster which we analysed. From this we saw that the opacity of the image had been changed. This was a very effective technique as it makes the image stands out more, and gives it a very professional look. Using this information, we altered the opacity of our poster, to create the same effect. Having the poster portrait instead of landscape was another element which we were inspired by a previous Channel 4 documentary “High on Blow”. This helped us feel comfortable when using this, as we can see a professional business as used it before, therefore proving that it is an effective method.