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Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main

product and ancillary texts?

Our most important task was to create a TV documentary, but along with this;

we also created a double page spread for a magazine and a radio trailer. The

purpose of the magazine spread and radio trailer was to advertise our

product (the documentary) to then attract our target audience to go ahead

and actually watch the documentary. We created the opening 5 minutes to

our documentary on Final Cut Express.

Target Audience:

After researching thoroughly into our topic, we were unsure who our target audience

should actually be. Eventually, we realised that parents of teenagers should be the target

audience as they are the group of people who need to be informed about the information

we have in our documentary. Demographics didnt really affect our target

audience too much, because at the end of the day, even though it may be the

majority of boys who play the violent games, gender, religion, disability etc. as

characteristics of the parents do not matter as they have no effect on the games,

or the outcome of their childs behaviour.Age range didnt really matter too

(within reason) as parents could be a whole range of different ages and we

would not specifically be able to aim towards a specific age group. But of course,

we wouldnt exactly aim the documentary at a 6 year old as they clearly would

not have a teenaged child.

Radio Trailer:

We created our radio trailer on a piece of software called Garage band.

The radio trailer we created was completely representative of our documentary as we

ensured it used the same target audience and we address them directly within the

trailer, e.g. it begins with have you ever wondered what effect video games are having

on your children this shows again that parents must be the target audience. In the

radio trailer we used clips from within the actual documentary such as voxpops of students

giving their opinion on how violent video games effect teenagers behaviour; this allows the

radio to relate to the documentary by giving the potential viewers a real insight to the sort

of things they will find out if they were to watch the documentary. We also included some

facts in the radio trailer to make the radio trailer sound more professional which in theory;

should also make the documentary look more appealing to the audience. Another thing we

included was some clips from the narrators voiceover (some of this was the facts); this was

also taken from within the documentary to again, show a link between the radio trailer and

documentary. The listener/viewer should recognise these aspects in both the radio trailer

and documentary they will notice the link and find it more appealing as they can tell we put

a lot of thought into it and the way we structured our media texts. Our radio trailer used aquietened version of the background music we created for the documentary just for the

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atmosphere it gives off and so it isnt just clips back to back but something else behind it to

stop the listener from becoming bored; this sets a good example of the pride we continually

took in the production of our work. Using these aspects ensured our radio trailer looked

professional due to our enthusiastic input, meaning it is more formal and this means it will

surely attract an adult audience. Our radio trailer informed the listener of exactly what they

should expect from the documentary, and enlightens them on what exactly it is that we are

investigating video game violence and how it affects the behaviour of teenagers.

We felt Capital Radio was not suitable for our radio trailer due to the fact that it is too

mainstream and mainly aimed at a younger audience who werent really relevant to our

topic and are unlikely to be interested in it. Capital Radios main listener group is people

aged between 15 and 24 this was not what we were looking for. We felt BBC Radio 5 was a

much more formal radio station, and they would often tackle other problems such as binge

drinking. We felt if Radio 5 broadcasted our radio trailer, it would hit all of the right listeners

who we felt would ideally be our target audience; this means we should get the substantialamount of viewers we were aiming for.

Double Page Spread for a TV Listings magazine:For our magazine spread, we used a piece of software calledAdobe InDesign. We used

a freeze frame from a clip within our documentary that showed how a student called

Tom reacted when losing a game on Call of Duty; he bangs the table; this shows one of

our theories, how aggression can be caused from over-playing violent video games such

as Call of Duty. We believed using this freeze frame allowed our magazine spread link

to the documentary pretty well, just like the radio trailer does. This shows the reader one of

the things they can expect to see within the documentary, e.g. the effects that video game

violence has on the person playing the game. It was important we showed the reader

something that they would be able to see in the documentary, but of course (in the real

documentary) they would get to see the full clip, rather than a still image of it.

We found that Radio Times was the most relevant magazine for us to have our article in as

our magazine was able to match its features easily. We used a simple layout, just

like radio times does and we also used a reasonable plain, but visibly bright

colour scheme which is another important aspect of what Radio Times would

use. We realised that our target audience would not want/need anything more

than simple layout with simple colours so that was what we decided we

needed to go with. Radio Times also have a lot of younger readers, but this is

not who they aim at ass they aim at an older audience. With the fact that they

do also get a substantial amount of younger readers on top of their target

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audience, we just saw this as a bonus that would mean more people would be able to find

out about our documentary meaning there was a chance of an increased number of views

we would get by those who were/are interested by what they saw and now want to find out

more about the topic and solve any queries they may have. Another benefit of using Radio

Times is that on average, they have at least 2 readers to each individual copy of the

magazine, meaning a greater chance of success for us (with the number of viewers in mind).

The fact that we chose Radio Times puts emphasis on the fact that older generations read a

lot more than younger people do, meaning we are guaranteed that a substantially larger

amount of people that are members of our target audience will actually see the article.

When in the final stages of our magazine spread production, we realised that when parents

of teenagers buy the radio times magazines, their teenaged children are likely to pick up the

magazine and have a read of it themselves and then they may also want to watch the

documentary to find out how violent video games could be negatively effecting them and

their behaviour. Younger children may also read it and realise that they shouldnt start toplay the violent games in the first places to escape the risk of the games changing their

behaviour.

Our magazine spread was the weakest of our documentary and ancillary tasks as we began

to rush it and didnt consider all of the conventions we should have, so it may not be as

effective as we wished for it to be. If we had another chance at it, we could have perfected

it. At times we struggled, with all of our media texts, but we did our best to overcome these

problems. As you can see below, we did not allow ourselves enough time to finish our magazine

double page spread, so it does need a lot of

improvements.