Tom Hartwell
Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary tasks?
Throughout the production of the main task there were various elements that we had to consider so that we could create our documentary but also combine this with a radio trail and a TV listings magazine article in order to try and achieve an overall successful outcome. Firstly, the main product and the ancillary tasks are all aimed at the same target audience. The main targeted audience being students of around 16-19 years of age or young adults that are currently going through the education system in particular leaving college soon, regardless of gender, race, ability/disability or religion. This seemed an appropriate target audience given that this age group is experiencing this drastic change either at the moment or within the near future and may be unsure as to what decision to make, whether to go to university or not. Due to the high sums of money that the universities are now charging for annual tuition fees, it will impact working class people the most as they still have aspirations and intentions to go to university and succeed but their incomes may be stretched. This will also impact middle class families as they may have more money but it still costs a substantial sum of money to go to university and this may cause them to think twice and look at possible alternatives, which is something that is presented within our documentary. Although we do have a focus group, the three products will appeal to other people, for example students parents, teachers and the general public interested in the topic. We had to take this into consideration and make sure that we didnt create the three products in a way that they would only appeal to students. This avoided reducing the amount of people that our products appeal to. Once we had chosen a topic and therefore a target audience for the documentary we just created the two ancillary tasks around this. This is one way in which the three products are clearly connected and the ancillary tasks combine well together in supporting the main product.
Tom Hartwell
The TV listings magazine article reinforces the connection between the main product and ancillary tasks in various different ways. Firstly the main image is the same projection that features within the actual documentary but with a silhouette in the frame also, this creates the idea that the students can find themselves in an isolated position and relates back to the documentary effectively. Also some of the images feature people, students in particular, who are in the documentary, this helps to add an element of continuity and highlights how the main objective of the article is to advertise and support the documentary:
Another was in which the magazine article relates to the documentary is through the use of the pull quote directly from the voice-over within the documentary.
This helps to clarify the intentions of the documentary and highlights what we aim to achieve through the film. This encourages the reader to watch the documentary, especially if they are interested in the topic, as this states that a clear conclusion will be met. The date, time and title box helps to inform the reader on when the documentary is on and what channel they can find it on. This supports the main product further and increases the likelihood that people will watch it.
Tom Hartwell
I feel that the magazine completed the objective to support the documentary but we did experience quite a lot of difficulty particularly stylistic. In order to incorporate conventional features of our chosen magazine and correspond to the connotations of the topic, we opted for a relatively simple layout and colour scheme which doesnt contain vibrant, bright colours. We feel that it relates to the topic and the documentary well but in doing this it is not as aesthetically stimulating as it could have been, especially taking into account the younger target audience. We needed to make the magazine article fit with the radio trail and the documentary as well as the chosen magazine that we decided on. The magazine that we decided to create our article for was TV and Satellite Week Britains finest multi-channel TV guide. This magazine has quite a professional, conventional and traditional layout in most of its articles so we felt that we wanted to include elements of the conventions used but also put our own twist on things to make it stand out more and attract readers. Articles like Lord of laughter aimed at BBC1, Kingdom come aimed at channel 4 and Cabinet reshuffle aimed at GOLD help reinforce the idea that this magazine contains a broad range of articles that appeal to large audiences.
Tom Hartwell
TV and Satellite Week is published by IPC Media with a circulation of around 207,327 which is a suitable number that enables our product to reach a wide range of people. I feel that our article appeals to students of around the 16-19 age groups, the magazine as a whole also reaches out to this age group with its articles being advertised on social networking sites like Twitter, where the magazine has over eight thousand followers. But Im not sure whether lots of teenagers would be as attracted to an article like this compared to others given the fairly dark colour scheme and conventional fonts. Although it is extremely current, relevant and affects these people, this ancillary task may not contribute to the documentary as well as the radio trail as certain radio stations attract large amounts of younger people and they can be more interesting and stimulating for the audience. The radio trail is particularly effective in relating directly to the documentary, supporting it and combining with it in order to make a product that will appeal to the target audience. I feel that this ancillary task succeeds in advertising the documentary and encouraging people to watch it. One way in which it does this is through the use of audio snippets from the documentary interviews, vox pops and the voice-over. For example within one of two vox pops its become an issue now and I understand the governments reasons why they are increasing university fees within the professional interview. These provide little tasters to the audience of what the documentary is going to be like and by presenting contrasting and controversial opinions the likelihood that the audience will want to carry on and watch the documentary is increased. This allows the radio trail and the documentary to combine well together. The background music used is also the same as the music used within the documentary. This adds an element of continuity and reflects how this ancillary task has combined with the documentary to create a particular style. We also felt that the music worked well within the documentary, this was another reason to use what we had previously created on Garageband again. The radio trail is for BBC Radio One, we felt that this was a suitable radio station to use as it is aimed primarily at the 15-29 age group and has a listener
Tom Hartwell
population of 52,352,000 people with each listener having a 6.9 hours average listening time. Overall I feel that the features integrated into the radio trail have worked well in supporting and combining with the documentary, I think that it serves its purpose slightly better that the TV listings magazine article just because it is more interesting and stimulating for the younger audience but overall I am pleased with how both the main product and ancillary tasks have combined.
