Final Project: What's Your Addiction

How did you use media technology in the construction, research and planning and evaluation stages?

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

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What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience Feedback

This is the audience feedback after production. There are some positives about our documentary but also negatives. For example, the first person thought some clips were a bit shaky and perhaps we should used the tripod more than we did. Also another point was that the interview with the main character was quite boring. We tried our best to make it more interesting by cutting it up a little and inserting pictures and a few statistics between the interview.

From our audience research, we learnt that it would be more appealing if we focused on an individual rather than a group for each episode. The reason for this was it made the show much more personal and that's what the audience wanted to see.

Audience Research

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts

After careful planning and structuring, our ancillary texts were completed and in my opinion I think they combine perfectly with our main product. Our documentary is about addiction and therefore we thought it would be a brilliant idea to use Jeremy Kyle for promotion of our two page spread in a TV listings magazine because firstly, he was once a gambler himself and suffered addiction before he got help. Secondly, his show is quite similar to ours in the sense that it helps people deal with personal problems and change their lives. We were going for a makeover approach and it was a good idea to use Jeremy Kyle because his show takes the same approach.

The idea of the show was that in each episode, an individual would be focused on because it makes the show much more personal and also our audience research helped us learn what the audience wanted to see.

The Radio Times was our chosen TV listings magazine despite the fact that with new media, TV listings magazines are decreasing in popularity because information can be found on the Internet without having to visit a newspaper agent and purchasing a magazine. The reason we picked Radio Times was because it is probably the best listings magazine and our documentary would be highly regarded if it had a two page spread in it.

Our second ancillary text was a newspaper advert and we thought it would be a better idea for it each advert to focus on the individual episodes. The idea was that, each week the poster advert would correspond the upcoming episode and thus being different from the last one. The first poster has the roulette wheel in the background because the first episode is about gambling. The documentary is going to be on Channel 4 hence the logo, because it has aired so many successful documentaries and makeover shows.

Initially, we were planning on using a different poster but unfortunately could not because the background picture wasn't ours. We then got some equipment (roulette wheel) and took some pictures we could use for the remake of the poster. This is the first poster. 

I think our ancillary products are remarkably effective because they portray the theme of the show and therefore the viewers know what to expect when watching the show.

Russell Brand special guest addition

After shooting most of our documentary, we realised that we could use a student from our school (James Lockie) to impersonate Russell Brand and be the presenter of our show. This is because they have very similar characteristics and also Russell Brand is famously known for dealing with his drug as well as sex addiction. To make his appearance similiar to Brand's, we had to get a wig and some costumes.

Re-make of first ancillary product.

 A week after completing our first ancillary product, we realised that the picture used had to be original and not from Google or any other internet source. Therefore we got a roulette wheel, took another picture and edited it. This is our final poster.

Two Page Spread

This is the final product for our two page magazine spread about our documentary.

Second ancillary product (Two page spread)

For our documentary on addiction, we have to produce a two-page spread for a TV listings magazine (eg. Timeout, RadioTimes). We decided ours is going to be for the RadioTimes because there was an actual two-page spread on a new documentary on a recent copy we bought. We've also taken the same approach and this is to promote our series by answering questions from Jeremy Kyle about our show and what it is about. In the past, he's also had to deal with his gambling addiction as he was in debt and then realised it was time to stop so this is another reason why we decided to use him.




Jeremy Kyle speaks about gambling addiction and getting help.



Audience research feedback

We found out a lot of information from random people about what they would like to see in our documentary. For example, most people preferred the idea of focusing on a group rather than an individual. Another common preference was that the documentary should be both observational and self help because most of the viewers want to witness changes in the people that are addicted. Our idea for the documentary is a make-over approach and therefore definitely deals with self help.

Ancillary Product

This is the first poster for our newspaper advert. Our group attempted to get as close as we could to the Channel 4 format with their logo and the font we used. This is one of the five posters made for the different episodes of our series; Gambling, Self Harming, Sex Addiction, Shoplifting and Gaming. My idea was to keep the layout and design the same for each poster but change the background picture in order of the content of different episodes.