1. Media Evaluation Question 2:
How effective is the
combination of your main
product and ancillary texts?
By Emily Lee

2. Summary
• Overall I thought that the 3 products we produced was amateur, there are
many things that could be improved to make the 3 media products seem
more professional. Out of the 3 media products I thought the radio trailer
was the best one because it wasn’t a visual aspect, it was mostly sound
extracts put together. Our strategy that we agreed at the start completely
failed, as we wanted to do one media product first then another then
another. We started off with the documentary, filming went to schedule
but when we started editing, the progress was slow, and therefore I knew
keeping to the deadline would be a problem, so I wanted to rectify the
problem however wasn’t allowed to. There was 2 weeks before the
deadline, we still hadn’t finished the documentary or even started on the
magazine article or even the radio trailer. Last 2 weeks we were panicking
and rushed finishing all 3 of the products and trying to sort out what
needed to go on to the blog. As a group we were not very organised and
the products that we produced, could have been much better and at a
much high professional standard if we spent more time on them. We
spent so much time on the documentary and the documentary didn’t even
turn out how we expected it to be.

3. Target Audience
• The target audience is the centre of all 3 media products as it
affects the way in which all 3 media products are presented to the
audience. We distinguished the target audience for our
documentary quite early on when we were planning. For our
documentary our target audience is mainly focused on the parents
of the young people in education or trying to find a job, 35 – 55
year olds and its secondary target audience is the young people
themselves who are struggling to make choices based on their
education or seeking for employment so 16 – 22 year olds. It is
aimed at both genders. Our target audience does not target any
particular race, religion or disability in order to watch this
programme. In terms of location we have decided to set it in the
Birmingham as it is currently the highest unemployed in the UK
with Ladywood’s unemployment rate of 11.7% out of 9157, Hodge
Hill’s unemployment rate of 10% out of 4807 and Sparkbrook’s
unemployment rate of 9.3% out of 6917.

4. Documentary
• One of the pros that I thought we did well in was
conveying the mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is vitally
important in conveying the topic of the documentary. I
felt that the establishing shots in our documentary
gave the audience an idea of what our topic was about.

5. Documentary
• In addition, we decided to broadcast our
programme on BBC1 because many people
watch BBC1 compared to BBC 2, 3 or 4.
Documentaries on BBC 1 tend to evolve more
around people than nature, historical or other
documentaries. I think we made a good
decision if we were to broadcast our
documentary on this channel.

6. Magazine
• In our magazine we didn’t really research what type of TV listings
magazine we were going to put our double page article in. I only realised
on the day of the deadline that we hadn’t chosen a TV magazine. So I
decided to go for TV & Satellite Week because in their magazine they
focus on drama and documentaries. Though it was found in 1993, which is
more recent compared to TV Choice, What’s On TV and TV Easy and the
circulation figures are 207,327, which is quite low compared to the other 3
TV listings that I researched, I feel that this magazine suits quite well for
our primary target audience. However, this magazine would not suit our
secondary target audience, 16-22 year olds because it is not as well known
as the other magazines though this magazine layout is very colourful and
appealing.

7. Comparing the 2 magazines
In our magazine we used still pictures that were from our documentary, the top half of the
magazine that I designed was good, but didn’t have enough time to make it seem like the
one on the right hand side, a double page spread magazine article from TV & Satellite
Week. The photo of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben was when I went to London a
year ago and I decided that the picture particularly suited our topic of education,
universities and careers as it represents the busy city life which is associated with people,
businesses and work. In addition, I had to add more into the article as the article didn’t
cover the 3 columns so I had to extend it to fill up the page.

8. Radio Trailer
• In our radio trailer we used extracts from our
documentary to engage the listeners to our
programme. We created similar background music
for our radio trailer and our documentary so the
audience are easily able to recognise that what they
heard on the radio is what they are watching on TV. I
feel that our radio trailer definitely advertise our
documentary with the enthusiastic voice over, the
well chosen extracts and the background music.

9. Radio Trailer
• We didn’t really discuss what radio channel this radio
trailer would be on too but I think we settled for BBC
Radio 4. I’m not sure why but I think it was the wrong
decision. Although BBC Radio 4’s target audience is for
our primary target audience, BBC Radio 4 is normally
associated with well educated and quite upper class
people and since we are focusing on the
unemployment and generally working class people,
BBC Radio 4 may not have been the ideal radio station
to broadcast our radio trailer.

10. Overall
• After analyzing all 3 products, I felt that if we
researched more into the radio trailer and
magazine article and split our time equally, we
would have got more knowledge and
therefore would have been able to complete
all the 3 products on time as we would have
known what to include in our media products
and therefore would have got more marks
without being rushed.