The document discusses the production of a documentary on underage binge drinking and the creation of accompanying ancillary texts, including a magazine article and radio trailer. To make the documentary follow real conventions, the group watched documentaries like "Supersize Me" and took shots replicating theirs. They aimed to investigate and inform about underage drinking. The magazine article was made to resemble "More Magazine" to target young people. The radio trailer used upbeat music and documentary clips to engage listeners and advertise without stating the topic. Overall, researching conventions helped make the main documentary and ancillary texts effective at promoting and informing the intended young audience.

1. Q1) In what ways does your media
product use, develop or challenge
forms and conventions of real
media products?

2. • When given the task of creating our documentary, the first thing we
did as a group was discuss possible ideas of what the documentary
will be about. We had to do research on different documentary
genres in order to get an idea of what we wanted to do.
However, in the end we decide to base our documentary on
‘Underage Binge Drinking’, we thought this would be very useful as
our chosen target audience would really benefit from it. In order to
follow conventions of a real media product we watched a
documentary titled ‘Supersize Me’. The documentary highlights the
growing problem of obesity in America. This documentary clearly is
warning and advising the public on the negative aspects of eating
fast food. It also emphasizes the bad eating habits of the
Americans. It shows that it’s not just a problem in America but it’s a
worldwide issue. The documentary was targeted at parents, adults
and fat people; this is an investigatory and an informative
documentary.

3. • As our chosen topic was ‘Underage Binge Drinking’ we wanted to
investigate the cause and affects of ‘Underage Binge Drinking’, and the
impact it has on young people today. Thus, we then concluded that the
structure of our documentary would have an enigmatic code. This is when
a problem is discussed but can’t be solved. However, we also had to look
at Bill Nicholls’ theory of Documentary Modes (2001), they include
poetic, participatory, reflexive, performative, observational and
expositional.
• Seeing as we were investigating the cause and affects of ‘Underage Binge
Drinking’ we were certain that occurred the modes of our documentary
would be investigative, informative and expository. Furthermore, as a
group we had to watch several documentaries that were similar to ours in
order to get and incite and also some idea. The documentaries we
watched included ‘Supersize Me’, ‘999 What’s Your Emergency’ and ‘Teen
Trouble. There were several feature that caught our eyes in each
documentary and we wanted to implement then into our own.
• One feature we used from supersize me was a medium close up of alcohol
bottle outside a well known pub. This was very significant because we had
to make sure that everything was relevant to our documentary.

4. In order for our documentary to
follow the forms and conventions
of a real media product, we had to
be very accurate with our shots.
This meant that we could obtain
ideas from other documentary. On
effective camera shot we used was
from the documentary ‘Supersize
Me’. This medium shot was
carefully thought out we had to
consider the right setting and the
mise-en-scene in which we would
take the image. Similarly to the
‘Supersize Me’ documentary our
mid shot was relevant to our topic
area.

5. Moreover, sound is another important aspects of a
documentary, examples of this would be; voiceovers, a presenter
, Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sounds. Documentaries like ‘Supersize Me’
exhibit all the feature above. The use of a presenter gives the audience
a more personal opinion of the topic, it could also engage the viewers
and make the documentary more appealing. However, ‘Teen trouble’
uses features such as diegetic and non diegetic sounds, a voiceover but
not a presenter. This is expected because if a program were to have a
presenter it would be dependent on the genre of the documentary.
Background music was another important aspect of our
documentary, the whole idea of background music is to set the scene
and make the documentary all the more appealing. Our background
music was exported from garage band. The music we chose for our
documentary was very effective seeing as it worked well with the
genre of our documentary.

6. • Additionally, in order to make our documentary proficient and for it to
follow the codes and conventions of a real product we had to add special
effects. We used feature such as montage of our target audience giving
their opinions on Underage Binge Drinking.
For this particular shot we wanted to
challenge the forms and conventions
of a student documentary, the
reasons for this were that we
wanted to make our product as
proficient and accurate as possible.
We changed the colour to black and
white and each time a person speaks
the original colours comes back on.
This was proven to be effective
because fro our audience feedback
we found that most people enjoyed
this montage.

7. • Magazine Article
This was our final magazine
double page spread, which was
produced for ‘More’ magazine.
During the process of producing
the magazine, we looked at
various magazines in order to
gain an in sight of the different
magazine types and there
conventions. However, seeing as
our documentary was targeted
at young people we decided to
keep the magazine simple but
make it effective by using an
useful image.

8. Image
from
‘More’
Magazine’
Captions are used
commonly in
magazine
articles, they are
used to give the
reader more
information on the
image
The Masthead is the
headline of the article, this is
a feature that is always used
in magazine articles.
Pull quotes are
another feature that
are commonly used in
magazine
article, there main
purpose is to attract
the reader. Columns are used in
every article, this is a
feature that as been
preserved

9. Radio Trail
• When producing the radio trail we had to listen to a variety of
professional radio trail , in order to gain a clear idea of the main
conventions of a radio trail. We listened to radio trails from BBC
R4, Radio 1, Capital FM etc. As our radio trail was for a capital
stations, it would be listened to by a wide audience so we had to
make it as effective as possible as well as appeal to its target
audience. When listening to the radio trail we as to fill in sheets as
part of our research.
• However, even though we had a serious topic we had to make the
radio trail more up beat and appealing, we also used music that
suited our target audience.
• The time, date and channel of the documentary was key and we
had to get it right. We added this to the end of our
documentary, by saying ‘Tune in at 9pm this Friday on Channel 4’.
Most of the radio trailers that we listened to were around 30 to
40 seconds long, our trail was 40 seconds, this was long enough
for us to include everything tat needed to be included. We also
used the most effective clips from our documentary, this included
the opinions of both adults and young people on our topic area.
Whilst making the radio trail we wanted the audience to guess the
topic through the interviews and vox pops rather than telling
tem, this is a feature that is used in radio trails.
• Overall, we stuck to the main conventions of each product, and as
a group we were satisfied with our work.

10. Question 2) How effective is the
combination of your main product
and ancillary texts?

11. For our coursework we also had to create a magazine article as
well as a radio trail. The primary purpose of this was to
promote and advertise our documentary.
Target Audience
Our target audience for the documentary was young people, both
male and female. We don’t target a particular race or gender
or religion, we target people a cross the board.

12. Documentary
• Mise-en-scene is an important factor of any documentary, when taking a camera
shot of anything we ad to think of the mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is vital in
conveying the topic of the documentary.

13. • Moreover we decided to broadcast our
documentary on channel 4, this is
because Channel 4’s remit is it to
innovate and appeal to everyone-
different
genders, nationalities, ethnicities
race, ages etc. This is illustrated through
the variety of genres that are
broadcasted.• Channel 4 targets
everyone rather than a specific audience
and its based in the UK.

14. • Magazine
We chose to produce our magazine for ‘More Magazine’ because it publishes a
variety of magazine targeted at young people. Like ‘More Magazine’ we wanted to
use effective magazines tat illustrated our article clearly, we used very similar
feature just like the professional' More Magazine’.

15. Radio Trail
• For our Radio Trail we used clips from
our documentary to make it all the
more effective and appealing for the
target audience. We wanted our
target audience to guess the topic
through the clips used. However, in
order for it to be as effective as a real
radio trail our music had to be
appealing. We used up beat music to
engage the audience.

16. • Additionally, we didn’t
discuss which station we
would broadcast our trail
until a later stage. We chose
Radio 1 because it as a wide
audience, most people who
listen tend to be young
people and our target
audience is young people.
Overall I think we did enough research for all 3 products and in the end they were
effective and fulfilled the primary purpose which was to engage and inform the
target audience