Tuesday, 29 March 2011

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.

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

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.