HOW EFFECTIVE IS THE COMBINATION OF YOUR MAIN PRODUCT AND ANCILLARY TEXTS?Philip Costin

• The synergy and feel between our products had to be similar. Seeing how our documentary was the main product we decided on a tone and style that our other products could then help promote and reflect. This means I will mainly highlight the ancillary texts in comparison to the documentary. The tone of our documentary was an informative and serious one that would help shock viewers, therefore when creating our ancillary texts we needed to match this. A way to do this was to keep key elements throughout the products.

• The purpose of the ancillary products was to primarily promote and sell our documentary to the audience. This means that it was important to attract people to our media texts and make them want to invest in our brand.

RADIO TRAILER

Sound was a key element of similarity to our documentary when creating our radio trailer. We made sure to do this through the use of snippets from the actual documentary such as facts being read, meaning it couldn’t be closer to the same feel as the documentary. On top of this, the use of the same backing music was vital so that our tune would be remembered by a listener and get the same feeling when watching the documentary.

The music however was less upbeat and maybe not as attractive to our relative audience as I would’ve wanted, but necessary at the sacrifice of keeping the tone of our products being that mobile phones are potentially unethical and dangerous.

TV LISTING

The use of pictures and grab quotes from experts was where the synergy between the TV listing and documentary lay. The grab quote used was also a similar part of the quote from our expert Julie Maitland in the radio trailer, which also demonstrates a clear synergy between the two ancillary texts that combine to promote the documentary.

We also used stills from the documentary such as Julie Maitland where her grab quote was used, and also pictures of the shots where mobile phones were more prominent in the shot, especially in shots that explained themselves so that the readers could better understand the points being made. An example of these shots is the main image of the two shot of students in class, one on their phone and the other doing work.

The title of TV Listing was posed as a question which also follows themes of our documentary and radio trailer where we wanted the audience to ask questions and want them answered – hooking them to the brand.

CONCLUSIONS• Reflecting on our products, I think there is a definite clear identity across our

3 products but, maybe not quite the attractiveness across them to better attract the audience. I feel that the ancillary texts do give a clear image of brand and does set the tone of the documentary well through the use of music and grab quotes but does not promote the documentary as exciting enough to engage a wider audience.

• I like to think the combination was effective, this is due not only to my ideas but the positive feedback from our audience from our questionnaire:

Do you think our products work

well together?

yes no

• However I think that to be more effective at promoting our

documentary we could’ve focus more an the appeal of our ancillary texts and less so on the continuity between products.

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