The combination of the documentary, magazine spread, and radio ad is generally effective due to consistent branding. All three pieces focus on the topic of homework and its benefits for students. They target both students and education professionals. Imagery and settings used establish the education theme across all products. Quotes from experts interviewed for the documentary are also used in the other pieces to maintain an unbiased perspective. However, voxpops from students in the documentary are not represented in the magazine spread, weakening that connection. Some refinement could improve consistency between all three products.

1. How effective is the combination
of your main product and
ancillary texts?
A2 Media – Ryan Eustace

2. INTRODUCTION
For my A2 Media Studies coursework, I had to create the 5 minute opening to a documentary for
a topic of my choice. The topic which me and my group decided on was homework and whether
too much of this is actually beneficial for students or whether it’s unnecessary and doesn’t
actually affect exam results like teachers say. To accompany this, we also had to create two
ancillary products which further marketed our documentary to our audience – our audience could
be split into two parts of a primary audience focusing on students aged around 16-23 and what
would be viewed as our secondary audience would be parents/guardians and anyone else
involved within the education profession. The first of these was a magazine double page spread
which would appear in a TV listings magazine such as What’s On TV/Radio Times. The second
of these ancillary products was a radio advertisement which could either be 30 seconds long or a
minute long on a station of our choice. The combination of these three products gives them a
sense of branding so that when you think of the documentary, the two advertisements also come
into your head. We achieved this through consistency of design which maintained the audience’s
attention throughout.

3. TARGET AUDIENCE
I think that our target audience is an extremely consistent link throughout all of our media products as they have been identified well and
because we as a group were members of our own primary audience of teenagers/young adults who are part of further education in colleges and
sixth forms, we were able to identify what it is that would attract us to watch a documentary and what an advertisement within a t.v listings
magazine and also a radio advertisement on commercial radio would have to include. We however also did make sure that our products adhered
to something which our secondary audience of parents and also professionals involved within the education profession would also like. For
example, within our documentary, we included things such as facts and statistics which were more targeted towards our secondary audience as
they would like these as they are vital in order to facilitate decisions whereas in terms of our primary audience, they would probably show a
strong sense of bias against the fact that homework could be beneficial for them and would reject these facts and statistics and to them, they
would be redundant. However, for our primary audience within our documentary, we did include voxpops of students who would have been a
similar age and shown similar attitudes that they could possibly share. This is following the uses and gratifications model as there is a relatable
character in which the audience can compare themselves to and therefore, can feel related to the person who we are interviewing. This could
also be the case with the secondary audience as we interviewed two experts within college who shared their opinion on the topic and they had
seemingly different opinions on the effects of homework given their different jobs as Paul Ashdown, the principal, was more focused on the
academic side of homework and Julie Maitland talked a lot about the stress that students can face and how this could affect their health
negatively. Our double page spread was arguably more suited to our primary audience and this was shown by the fact that the fonts were more
modern in style compared to old traditional styles of font and also the page was very colourful and played on our school setting a lot which may
not have attracted the attention of our secondary audience as much as they would arguably be more attracted by the more traditional type of
double page spread which has more standardised fonts and less colours. Our radio advertisement was more suited to our secondary audience
although this isn’t how we created it to be, this was probably due to our choice of radio station being Heart FM which in hindsight, does not
have the strongest of followings from a younger audience, however, we did manage to attract the attention of both our audiences through the
use of key things such as sound effects.

4. SETTING
I think that our setting was clearly consistent throughout and this really helped the combination of all of our products.
For example, it was clear that our theme was education and this was stuck to throughout all of our products, we made
sure that this was the main area of focus from our audience. In our radio documentary, we make it clear that the
purpose of our documentary is to inform our audience and for them to make their own decision on whether they think
homework is beneficial for students or not, I believe that we have clearly shown that this is something which is going to
be based in an educational facility and that this will be t the forefront of our documentary. The voxpops that we have
used are taken in our college cafeteria and you can hear background noise in them of people talking. I believe here, the
atmos that we have captured is significant as by doing this, there are effective links to our other two products as we are
trying to replicate real life and I think it is important especially in this case, that the action which is unfolding does not
appear to be staged in any way at all. In terms of our DPS, the main indicator that this is going to be something which
does revolve around a topic to do with education is through the use of our imagery, we have used images of the sixth
form and also of a whiteboard and chalk, and our social media links are also handwritten, little graphics that have been
inserted like this are for a reason and the main reason we decided to do this is that we immediately wanted the audience
to establish a clear connection between all of our products and by using iconography so to speak, there is a connection
by our audience almost instantly and you can see how these three products link pretty much right away in terms of the
setting. Our documentary further re-establishes this and our choice of locations immediately show you the link between
all three of our products as we open the documentary with an establishing shot of the college which immediately links to
our double page spread as we show almost the exact same image of the sixth form from another angle..

5. EXPERTS
I think our experts linked extremely well throughout our products as some of the quotes that they said could be used
within our DPS and also within our radio advertisement to show that our opinion as producers of the text was going to
be unbiased even though this is a topic which we would feel extremely strong about given our position as students of
the college. Especially in the case of Paul Ashdown, the principal of the sixth form, we were able to get a very detailed
opinion about what the facts prove about the effects of homework on students and also his own personal opinion
which has been backed up with many years within the teaching profession. We were then able to use these quotes from
Paul Ashdown within our radio advertisement which broke up pieces of information about whether homework is
actually beneficial to the students and also used this within our double page spread. Immediately, we would have enticed
the audience as they would want to know the context in which the quotation was given and would also like to find out
what else Paul has to say as this is only a snippet of the interview which we had with him. I think the consistency here
makes the combination of our products successful as we have successfully been able to represent the expert opinion
throughout all of our products and this has been pivotal in attracting the attention of our audience as the topic which
we have is considerably controversial with some stressing the importance of homework and how this will affect your
future grade if you don’t do it to a satisfactory standard, and those who are simply stressed out by the amounts of
homework that they have to balance with their social life and also a job.

6. VOXPOPS
I think that in terms of our documentary and radio advertisement, the links that could be made where voxpops are
concerned are quite strong as you are getting the opinions of those who are still in education and are the focus of
our documentary and this works quite well as we are able to insert these into our radio advertisement and you are
able to identify a link between these two products in the sense that the voxpops are one of the longest parts of our
documentary as we feel that the opinions that hey expressed were the most crucial and most relevant to deciding on
whether homework is beneficial or not. However, we didn’t really make use of them within our double page spread
and this is something in hindsight, we probably could have implemented so that the audience can see a clear link
throughout our products consistently. We thought that because of our primary audience being teenagers and young
adults, they would prefer to see that experienced teachers are included within our documentary and thus we decided
to include a picture of one our experts instead of our students as we didn’t think that this was as important to
include as we thought that because of al of the settings which have been previously discussed which have been put
into the double page spread such as the photo of the college location, that the audience would presume that there
will be students within the product. Within our text we do go on to mention the fact that students are a key part of
our documentary but I do not believe that this is something which all of our audience would have picked up on as we
do not stress this enough and if I could go back to change this to make it obvious to the audience that we are
including the thoughts and opinions of students as well as our exerts, this is something which I would do.

7. STATISTICS/FACTS
Similarly to the aforementioned issue with our voxpops, I’d say the same thing has happened within our products in
terms of the incorporation of facts and statistics into our work. They make up a huge part of our documentary along
with our use of archival footage which is a part of our facts and stats, also, they have been implemented within our
double-page spread to add some context to the ‘debate’ as it is a controversial topic and by giving our audience some
facts and stats which have been evidenced by leading universities, it is a good starting point to entice them into
reading further in to our article. Whereas in our radio advertisement, due to the duration, we didn’t really have any
facts or statistics and mainly relied upon the opinions of our voxpops and an expert to sell our documentary to our
audience. In hindsight, this is something which we could have improved. We could have definitely extended the
duration of the advertisement to allow more time for percentage facts and figures which have been carried out by top
universities such as Oxford which is mentioned within our documentary. We could have forsaken the voxpop
opinions which make the radio advertisement seem less formal and put these figures in to give our audience a better
knowledge of our topic so that they would feel inclined to watch the rest of our documentary so that then they will
be able to make their own informed decision on whether homework is beneficial or not.

8. CHANNEL/MAGAZINE/STATION
One of the main faults with the combination of our products was that we didn’t have a clear link in terms of how these
products would be published and broadcasted to our audience. From an early stage when we did research in to what
channel would broadcast a documentary like this, we looked in to some pre-existing style models and the most relevant
ones were fly-on-the-wall documentaries such as Educating Essex/Yorkshire which appear on Channel 4. We looked
around on other channels such as the BBC for anything which would remotely link to our documentary at all and found
only comedy shows which are set in schools such as Bad Education and Waterloo Road which were kind of related to our
documentary but this wasn’t really anything that the BBC would broadcast. Therefore, when it came to choosing a
publisher for our double page spread, the BBC link with Radio Times was irrelevant and wouldn’t have made much sense
so we decided to go against this for another t.v listings magazine ‘What’s on TV?’ – in hindsight, even though we didn’t
decide to go for the BBC for our TV channel, we could have decided to choose this magazine as this would have gave us a
viable link for our radio advertisement to be aired on something such as BBC Radio One which has a very large
demographic in terms of age, gender and education level which is why we decided on another similar station Heart FM and
we looked into the demographics of this station and found out this was more suitable than something which is aimed
primarily at a young audience such as Capital FM as this isn’t something which they would put on air. Looking back at how
our choices went, we definitely could have made all of these publishers of our products link more and this would have
made more sense and then we would be able to have our primary audience as a clear focus of all of these products.

9. COLOUR SCHEME
This point mainly focuses on the close comparison of our double page spread and our actual
documentary. We found that within most examples of double-page spreads that are targeted at a
younger audience, stereotypically, brighter colours are used to attract the attention of the audience as
this is more effective in establishing a connection with the reader and then maintaining it also.
Whereas, in our documentary, we didn’t really follow a specific colour scheme and kept on switching
from different locations which exposed the viewer to an array of colours. If this was a more serious
topic then potentially we could have actually included a mono colour scheme of black and white
within our documentary but I think shifting the locations as much as we did may have confused the
viewer as they were constantly being bombarded by different shades of colour, light etc. To improve
this, we could have used professional lighting fixtures which would have not only improved the
overall aesthetic of our work, but would have also limited the number of different colours that the
viewer was exposed to.

10. OVERALL
Overall, I do believe that the combination of our products is extremely successful as they are
directly relevant to each other and you can clearly see the links that have been implemented within
each of them to link back to the original topic. Some of these links have been more successful than
others in terms of actually attracting the attention of the audience and also being successful so that
the audience could tell that there was a direct link between all of our products. Some audience
feedback that we received as part of Question 3 revealed to us that 100% of our audience could
see the links between our products, so in terms of this, I believe we have created products which
do combine individual aspects together to create a large piece with an easy to see brand identity
being at the forefront of this. The societal ideology that surrounds our topic is that it is beneficial
to you and that is why homework is assigned to students so often to help them with their work and
to assist them in their future no matter what that is, i.e. direct employment, university,
apprenticeships etc and I believe that by creating these products with such strong consistent links
through them we have been able to present the information and facts in an unbiased way which lets
the audience themselves decide what their final opinion on the matter is.