Evaluation Q3: How effective is the combination of your main product

and ancillary texts?

Initial Documentary PostersThe posters that are pictured here to the left were the initial TV posters that were created for our documentary. It features a few of the interviewees along with the basic information required for the audience to know when to tune into the programme. They were based off of other BBC Three documentary film posters but not one specifically.

There were a few problems with this documentary poster. One of these problems is that there were only males featured on the film poster which can be seen to be an unfair representation of who is actually in the documentary. The ‘first part’ of the documentary being filmed within our school makes the fact that they are all wearing suits self-explanatory to us as the creators; on the other hand for the audience viewing the poster it would not make sense and may be off-putting for them as a result of this.

Another problem is the fact that there is no real indication on what the documentary can actually be about. The title does not link to the images of the interviewees and so does not indicate what it could be about. There is a tagline at the top of the second poster which says what the documentary is about to try and counteract this problem but it is not all particularly appealing to look at, nor does it stand out to the reader and could be overlooked at a quick glance.

A positive that can be taken form the initial documentary posters is the fact that the colour pink was used for the text. The significance of this is that BBC Three thrives and is associated with pink which, for the audience, may automatically give them an idea of where the documentary is going to be shown. To support this, the distinctive logo for BBC Three is in the top right hand corner.

The picture below shows the final documentary poster with the picture above being the main BBC Three Media texts that were used as inspiration for our own; the resemblance is evident. This poster is much more suited to our documentary. The focus of the documentary is the representation of women in music videos and so this is already relating to both the title and the content of the documentary. The rawness and the explicit content to it automatically makes it a standing point to why it is effective. Further to this, the design of the poster is not one which is common.

The fact that we chose to have our documentary broadcasted on BBC Three allowed us to immediately use this documentary design. The three thick, rectangular stripes could instantly be an indication to the audience on where the documentary was going to be, also supported with the official BBC Three logo in the top right hand corner.

From our last documentary poster we knew to keep the same colours to signify BBC Three.

We used famous artists on the poster such as Jennifer Lopez, Pitbull and Robin Thicke because these are the type of people that we wanted to look at in our documentary. All of them being part of the music industry mean that they are all suited for the poster. Further to this the tagline also supports this by explaining that the documentary is to do with ‘hip hop and R’n’B’.

What media texts did you look at to research your ancillary texts?

Radio AdvertWhen it came to the radio advert we had a bit more difficulty with it. We were unsure on how exactly to conduct it. Upon listening to previous A2 documentary radio trailers on YouTube, we found that some of them used facts in order to create their trailers. Others used quotes from people within their documentary in order to already give people’s takes on particular subject matters. We did not use any official radio trailers as it was difficult to find one online in which we could draw reference or take inspiration off of.

We decided to go for a more direct approach, only using our voices in order to get across the information. We would take turns to speak it did not sound the same all the way across the 30 seconds of the radio trailer. This was supported by the backing track of ‘In Da Club’ by 50 Cent. This is suitable because it fits into the topic of the documentary being a hiphop song.