Final cut/ Final radio ad/ Final poster ad

Question 2: Part 2

Audience research into there profiles, along with Blumer and Katz's User and gratifications theory:




Blumer and Katz- Users and Gratifications theory (Prezi):


Here is an example of one of the focus groups we had for our newspaper ad, that best helps with the decision of which one we chose:

Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Due to the documentary not being able to just stand alone and sell itself, we had to organise a campaign to help advertise the documentary properly.
Each piece of the ancillary texts was made to fit the profile of our documentary; it was given a specific title with specific colours and layouts, all to help with the production of the doc. We have targeted our audiences in 2 forms: one being in the form of a radio advert, the other being in the form of a newspaper ad. People that listen to the radio a lot will pick up on the ad and hopefully tune in when it is released, people that read the newspaper will see our poster and hopefully respond to it in the way we wanted. However, you could say that we got people that don't normally pick up a newspaper or don't listen to the radio, to do this by making the ads look and sound enticing.

Both ancillary texts have similar qualities about them, the biggest one being that we use the poster in the radio ad whilst the advert is playing, so if people are catching it on Youtube oh viewing it on a radio website they can see the shocking image and they hear the word addiction and heroine.

The radio ad really captures some of the best bits of sound and voice that we have in the documentary, the music too, having the Nintendo music playing at some point and that game noise at the beginning; really brings in the audience. In a radio ad if an audience was to hear something they have heard before, like a brand or a song, their immediate reaction would be to turn it up and listen. Having some elements of the documentary in the radio helps the audience to hear what type of things we are going to discuss and the lovely clear voice over also really helped to illustrate that.

The radio advert really helped with the campaign of our documentary, it allowed a lot of our audience to get really attached to the documentary and made them want to watch it. Read through the analysis of our poster ad below to find out how we catered for our audience and how it have helped with the production of our documentary:

Each part of what we have produced has worked really well with each other; each media text can relate to the documentary. For example the poster advert above: the title has been selected because it asks the question that people will ask themselves, during the documentary. It reminds you that just because it is not a physical drug you can take, doesn't mean that something, as natural, as dopamine can't be addictive. 

To look at some more stuff on our audience and how we managed to work up a target audience using their profiles and a theory- read part 2 of this question...

Question 3: What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

To get some audience feedback I asked for a detailed explanation on what this viewer thought of the radio ad and the documentary. The viewer managed to comment on a wide variety of things, from the way the doc was filmed to the sound sync in the radio ad. Underneath is a short animation of part of this conversation, about the radio ad and documentary:  

Dopamine by Victoria18 on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

To find out a few other details from our audience, I sent a few people on Facebook the main and ancillary task, to find out what they thought about it:



Here are a few more responses from Twitter that someone in my group has shared with a few people, each are some great feedback.

Question 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

The grid above works from left to right, starting with the news reports. See Prezi for further analysis

Question 4

Final production of our radio ad

Final Cut- My Kid is Addicted

Radio Ad draft 1

Focus Group 1

The first focus group was on our poster ad, we mainly got good feedback and some understandable criticisms on the less likeable examples. We didn't tell our focus group who the posters belonged too because we thought that people might then judge them differently if they knew whose was who. The objective was to find out which one was they thought was the best, to work out which one would best fit our target audience.

Focus Group 2

For our second focus focuses more on the different elements and really depicts what they like about the ads and what could be changed to help target our audience. They understood where we were coming from and they could make the link between the message and the fact that is was so dark. They seemed to be extremely good at giving us tips and how they thought our colours and overall compositions brought the message forward. These focus groups have really helped us to chose the one we are going to put in the newspaper and which one we wanted the public to recognise our documentary to be about.  

First edit evaluation

The first edit of our documentary went really well, we could see that it was coming together and we could finally see a narrative. So after receiving feedback from our class mates and teachers, we came up with things to change on our documentary:
VOICEOVER- THIRD PERSON- (VOLUME HOW IT FITS IN TO THE DOC)
FADE OUTS- FADING INTO BLACK- SOME FADES LAST FOR TOO LONG
SHARPER CUTS- CUT AT THE BEGINNING FOR SMOOTHER CONTEXT
ENDING- END ON HOW ALI RELATES TO THE SUBJECT OF ADDICTION AND TECH. END ON HIS JOURNEY TO FIND OUT
CHANGE OF DOC MODE: OBSERVATORY- PARTICIPATORY
We then showed this edit to our teacher, who gave us a few criticisms that we could use in order to change a few things when we edit some more. He thought that the fades outs made the doc. look a little boring, because they went on for longer than expected. However, when it came down to editing it we found that it was difficult not to have such long pauses because without them, they doc. became too rushed and didnt flow as smoothly.
After dicussing the cuts and fades of our documentary, our teacher also made it clear that the sound wasnt very good at times, for example the short interviews we shot at Liverpool Street, had a lot of background noise, that we quite distracting. This is a problem that we already knew about, but we did find it rather difficult to block out the background noise and not disturb what the people we saying. After this, we dicussed the idea of changing the mode of our doc; from observatory to participatory, which then changed the voiceover script, from third person to first, in order for it to make sense to our audience.

Poster Analysis

First of all our message that we want to send out to our target audience is that; the world is addicted and this poster complies to this, such as; layout, colours, form, image, font and language etc. 

The colour of this post definitely provokes the idea that there is something sinister about it, a question that needs answering, for people who feel like they need to know. Within the uses and gratification theories surveillance is what our ad will make use of, the news will use this type of colours and images to make people feel like they need to know this, in order to feel like they are aware of the problem. 

The image, the hands of a child holding pills, it reveals to the audience that addiction is something the world needs to focus on, even if the pills are meant to represent something other than drugs. The child suggests innocence, so by having him holding the pills makes him less innocent? Which then leads the audience to believe that our kids must have a problem? It makes the audience feel like they have to watch it.  

Although the pills illustrate how serious addiction is, some of them do seem a bit too big, however, PlayStation and Apple are two of the biggest used brands out there, so it does help to emphasise those. Our target audience: reformers and explorers will benefit from understanding what the pills represent and how they tie in with addiction. Having the different symbols on the pills perhaps shows them that this what people are addicted to now, not just illegal drugs. 

The font brings out our theme, what we begin to explore during the actual documentary, the gaming font reflects what could be seen on screen GAME OVER! 

Having the logo at the bottom of the ad or even having it on the ad, helps the audience to know where this is coming from, identifies the seriousness perhaps. 

This ad creates a new emotional attachment between the audience and the child, makes them feel responsible? Parents especially. Although not being able to see the child's face, suggests it may not be everyone or every child, then makes them feel like they live better lives (diversion- user and gratification) this ad will put it in perspective for those few. 

Final Ad

Our winning ad.....................

The changes on ad

After many different focus groups on what we could change and retain from the poster ads, we decided that we could see whether a few of these changes would make our ad look more appealing to our audience. We changed the font of the title, to see whether it made any difference to what our ad was trying to portray. Our group thought that our original font was better than the new on, so we decided to keep it.

Another change was to put the line from another draft we had in that font, this was because it allowed the audience to actually know what the documentary is about; 'Are We All Addicted'.... Changing the title made more sense to what we are trying to get across, the change in font is not necessary.

Examples of Radio Ad

Here are few examples that I picked out from YouTube to illustrate the kind of sound and quality we are looking for.

This one is an advert on a radio station about a new documentary, using just a voice and a little music and sound effects.



This advert is clearly about Snickers, and for the people who have seen the actual advert on TV, many of them will understand what the radio ad is about just by the voice.

Radio Conventions

Our documentary needs more advertisement to improve our chances for more views; we are undertaking some radio conventions research to broaden our knowledge on the subject.

Average duration: 30 seconds to 3 minutes

Use of SFX: most use reverb, delay and compression to improve sound quality and overall effect they are trying to give

Use of extracts from the documentary: there is normally a lot of dialogue in the radio adverts to keep the  listeners focused. The people that are talking would usually make sure that whatever is being advertised is done in detail and clear, because unlike seeing an ad the listeners can't picture it.

How music is used to target specific audience: Obviously on the radio there is a lot of music being played, sometimes constantly. To appeal to a specific audience they would have to put the ad on a radio station that is being listen to by their target audience. Radio stations would use POP for example, to entice a younger audience for a documentary about something that they know they would be interested in.

How language is used to target specific audience: On radio stations that language is practically conversational and informal, to interact with their audience rather than talk to them.

How VoiceOver is used: If a radio station is advertising the trailer to a movie, then a voiceover is usually used to illustrate what the music and special effects are about.

The making of our Ad

Our ads

These are the images that my group and I have created using Photoshop, with the image we took before hand. We used different fonts, colours and layout; to make sure that we appeal to all of our audiences, so we undertook a number of focus groups to get their responses so that we can improve them. 

Focus Group Research