The radio show The Brigadiers uses conventions of real media to tell the story of World War I from the perspective of a soldier. Specific sound effects are used to convey the chaotic environment of war. The show challenges conventions by portraying the front lines of war, which requires more effort. Ancillary texts like a poster and website were created to promote the show and inform audiences about its genre, theme, and historical period in a simple but impactful style. Audience feedback revealed the show was professionally produced and many thought it could air on real radio.

1. Evaluation A2 media Studies The Brigadiers

2. Our product uses the conventions of real media products as the introduction of the show is very official and clear like real broadcasts. Before the show starts we have a very clear and official voice announce the broadcasting channel and the show that it about to start. A convention of narrative radio is that there is a narrator that progress the story and gives a central performance for the audience to identify with. In our radio show The Brigadiers the central character is Pvt Davies through him the audience will gain a perspective to follow him as the story of the war is told through his eyes. Most radio plays use SFX to convey the environment such as ambience or weather, but since our environment is so chaotic as its a warzone, we have to develop this aspect of radio shows and take it further. Using more specific sound effects such as explosion, gun fire, aeroplane engine noise and parachute noises. Some of these could be created live while recorded, others were taken from internet sites, some sounds such as a parachute opening were so obscure that we had to improvise with a car seat belt. We challenge radio convention because there has rarely been a show that was based on the front line of a world war, as they require more time and effort to maintain within the parameters of the period.

3. The ancillary texts were designed to promote and inform the audience about our radio show. These texts were a advertising poster and a web site both designed to promote and inform about the show The poster compliments the show while also it conveying the genre, theme and the period of the show through a very simple but bold composition. We used our own primary sources and secondary sources together to make the composition, we decided on a colour pallet that covered all the elements in the poster a dark and murky tint, that gave the poster a solemn and dramatic atmosphere. The website is design to look as though it fits the period as the layout and design of the website is influenced by the period in which the show is set. The website set also reveals information about the show such as how it was made, information about its creators and the sources that inspired it.

4. We learnt that the strong points of our radio show were the vocal acting , the sense of realism created through the effective use of SFX and scripting. The audience feedback also revealed that the radio show was professionally created with many members of the audience saying that they would expect to here this show on a real radio broadcast. Overall the audience feedback was very positive

5. The internet was used during the research stage as it gave a wide access to a range of sources such as youtube and various sites found through the search engines. With this our production was accurate and had plenty of inspiration The primary construction of the radio show was recorded using the Q-base programme, using this we could import the soundtrack and SFX. The programme features meant that in post production the editing and tweaking stages where productive. Ancillary texts consisted of a advertising poster this was rendered using the Adobe Photoshop programme using this we could incorporate out own original images with secondary images and merge them together in a realistic and dramatic effect. The other Ancillary text was the website, it was designed on Adobe Photoshop and programmed with Adobe Dreamweaver.