A2 Media Studies | Evaluation: Question 2

Q: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Documentary - Inside Britain's Schools

Magazine advert - Inside Britain's Schools

Double page spread - Inside Britain's Schools

The main product and the ancillary texts work out to be an effective combination because they all revolve around the ideology of putting a secondary school under a positive light and giving viewers an insight into what life is like at a secondary school in Britain as of 2016, something which hasn't been shown in popular culture since around 2014 when Channel 4 aired their documentary 'Educating the East End'. The way that the combination of the main product and the ancillary tasks works is that the documentary is the USP (unique selling point) of the product which is promoted through a magazine advert and a double page spread and the ancillary tasks can also work as a way of marketing the documentary in a way to viewers who may be new to the type of documentary and those who have viewed Channel 4's series of education documentaries (e.g. Educating Yorkshire, Educating Cardiff etc.).

Product combination: Media convergence

Furthermore with the links to Channel 4 and the influence from the channel, media convergence is evident within our product combination in order to make it effective from the lack of social media links because of the documentary's genre which makes it professional as it's something that not many people would want to follow up on with social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter etc.) as it's normally consumed by a young demographic. An older demographic is more likely to follow up on the documentary as they're more likely to be interested in the documentary and the lack of social media in our texts also shows that we're trying to attract a more mature audience into the documentary, leading to more preferred and negotiated readings (Stuart Hall 1975) based on their views.

We could have used social media within our texts but with the idea of having a more mature, informed audience and that an older demographic is less likely to use social media, I believe it would be more effective to provide information about the documentary to people through more traditional methods instead of going with the technology that's around today. One factor that stands in the lack of social media in our texts would be that our audience is mainly tribe-wired which suggests that social media may have been a necessity in our product combination. 

The only form of social media we used was YouTube for the main documentary which helps achieve media convergence through likes, shares and electronic word of mouth from people who have consumed the documentary through watching it to gain more attention and the distribution on YouTube also suggests that it could attract views on catch up television such as Sky on Demand and Channel 4's 'On Demand'.

Channel 4's 'On Demand' website

Product combination: Brand identity

In conjunction with media convergence, brand identity also plays a part in our product combination through the use of colour schemes, the fictional channel logo and the setting of the documentary. With the colour scheme there's a very mature and neutral style which only consists of black and white along with use of red in the magazine to point certain things out to the reader; we incorporated this colour scheme into our documentary to portray a true 'educational' and calm theme to the documentary and its print texts in order to attract the mature audience which was mentioned in media convergence and is also welcome to a younger demographic too.

With the fictional channel logo we could have used it more throughout the double page spread though however acts as brand identity as people will instantly recognise what the channel is from the use of the logo in the documentary and the newspaper advert. Not many people are aware of the fictional channel's existence and illustrated below is the fictional '8V' logo which was based on the BBC's logo, also illustrated for comparison. When making this logo I inverted the colours of the BBC logo to possibly change the logo so it doesn't look exactly like the BBC's logo and again to come back to the ideology of the documentary depicting a mature and eductional theme with its colour scheme.

8V logo

BBC logo

In terms of the setting of the documentary, brand identity works with the product to make the combination of the video and print texts effective through the use of the main school building which is also evident in Channel 4's 'Educating Yorkshire' (illustrated below for comparison with our documentary). The depiction of the school building comes out as an icon of the documentary as people are able to instantly recognise that the documentary is about education and strongly gives across the genre as an observational documentary.

Main school building shown in 'Educating Yorkshire'

Main school building shown in 'Inside Britain's Schools'

Initially me and Tom wanted to film in the sports field but due to construction going on for a new school we couldn't, this was posted in the recce locations post however below is the shot me and Tom wanted to do or proposed for the introduction of the documentary. We switched over to the shot above to show more of the school and the school sign makes it more welcoming, also allows people to recognise the school which is more organisation identity than brand identity.

Sports field, shows some of the school building when the camera is turned around though however shows the amount of space that is given in order to film the shot

With all of these areas in mind with brand identity, another feature of our product combination which helped with identifying a brand was the use of space in both ancillary tasks which makes it easier for the reader to find out what the ancillary tasks are marketing towards, not over wording them and it's also professional for the documentary and the reader.

Comparing the product combination to a Channel 4 documentary

Below is how Channel 4 have gone around with promoting Educating the East End with a trailer and a promotional print. This will show the effectiveness of a documentary and a print text combined together to get people to view the documentary, which was the aim of the magazine advert and the double page spread for the documentary me and Tom made.

Promotional print text for Educating the East End's trailer

In comparison to 'Inside Britain's Schools', the use of a print text promoting a video text works effectively as viewers will get an insight into what they're about to watch with the print text before the trailer is aired to them and something that will instantly be recognisable is the theme of the documentary and what it's trying to portray. Linking back to Inside Britain's Schools, I'd say that the effectiveness of the documentary and the ancillary tasks combined is consistently effective.

I believe that there are specific features of our ancillary tasks and the documentary which are similar across all three texts and those features would include shots of the school and a discussion about something related to education as well as elements evident in brand identity with a simplistic colour scheme, fictional channel logo, use of white space, lack of social media and provoking word of mouth both verbally and electronically with the documentary on YouTube and the print texts. Also something that I gathered from our documentary, was evidence of juxtaposition throughout when the teacher is talking in an interview and it switches to a completely different topic but still portraying the education theme when the teacher is teaching students and then telling one of them to leave the class after disrupting the teacher and the lesson.

It's effective throughout but not as effective as the way Channel 4 promotes their documentaries using this method as there were opportunities for developing even more conventions for the double page spread and the documentary itself. The documentary and magazine advert in particular meet the conventions of what real life media products are like and I think the double page spread also does this as well but not as much as the other two. Viewers are able to get a quicker glimpse into what the documentary is about and what it's going to be like for the viewer whereas with the double page spread it's something that would take a lot more time for someone to learn about the documentary though however does provide a lot of information about the plans of fictional channel '8V' and their intentions on filming the documentary.

Summarising this, I believe that the combination is very/consistently effective with some improvement that could have been done, something which I've mentioned in the third question of the evaluation regarding audience feedback to the magazine advert and double page spread. The documentary could have had a lot more potential as well with conventions which I've looked at in question one of the evaluation.