GENRE AND FORM CONVENTIONS OF A RADIO ADVERT

Conventions of a radio advert • A conventional adverts remains in the timings of around 35 – 40 seconds. The advert will include a number of different sounds such

as voice over, Foley sounds and music bed. We have tried to include as many sounds as we could within our radio advert. The

advert that we have produced comes to an unconventional 29 seconds. However we do feel that our decisions to make the advert shorter than is conventional is justified. We felt that the information

we included gave listeners a good insight into the documentary without giving to much information away which would in turn would make the radio advert ineffective as listeners would also become

bored. We included sounds clips from the interview in the documentary such as a Judith Anne Lawrence quote and a Toby Moores quote which gave short meaningful observations on their

opinions about what the creative industries is to them. •

• The idea of having quotes with a music bed playing in the background could potentially become boring so we have included what we feel is necessary within the radio resulting is a shorter than conventional but effective piece. The quotes

would help entice a specific audience within our demographic. Part of our audience demographic is the experiencers and thinkers, experiencers are people who enjoy to experience new things and thinkers are people who like to learn new things. the quotes would help capture their attention because they would both be interested in

what others have to say and would be enticed by the idea of learning something new and the idea of exploring the individuality of the creative industries.

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• It is often conventional to have some sort of attention grabbing sound at the begging of the radio advert to grab the attention of the listeners. We have followed

this convention by including a collection of workshop sounds at the beginning of the radio advert. It was hard to find a radio advert for a documentary due to the fact that a documentary relies of the selling of its visual characteristics rather than

sound.

• Another characteristic of a radio advert is the use of an exciting voice over which will engage the audience for our radio advert we have chosen a voice which we

feel gives the correct level of excitement for our target audience while still maintaining a a level of sophistication. This has been through the use of a British

accent who pronounces words correctly and clearly and will therefore be understood easier. We feel that the accent will appeal to our audience who will like the sophisticated tone of the voice over and will feel welcomed by it. This is taken

from an old technique used by the BBC who used neutral British accents using received pronunciation as it was seen as a way to maintain the power of

establishment. For example more middle class and upper class such as our own target audience. The calm tone used gives a relaxing feel for the audience. The aim was to give a sense of the style we have chosen in the documentary. For us

this is a relaxing but informative tone.

• Rhetorical questions are a convention of a radio advert as they aim to get the audience engaging with the advert. We have not followed this convention because

we felt that it did not fit with our original ideas nor did it fit in with our style. Rhetorical questions are usually used in adverts that are promoting services.

• Another convention of a radio advert is to have a jingle. We decided against this as we felt that a jingle did not suite the tone that we

where trying to achieve. We felt that a jingle would be inappropriate to use in an advert for a documentary especially considering the sophisticated level of our audience. However we have added a music bed which plays quietly underneath the voice overs. The

music bed is the same track we used for our docuemtary. We have done this as we feel it could almost act as a sound motif for the

documentary. So that when ever people hear the song they would recognize it as the song from our documentary.

• The music helps create the relaxed tone that we want our production to have and results in a more enjoyable radio advert.

The music carries the quotes and voice over with it throughout the radio advert