Creating the poster

Myself and Conor thought it would be beneficial if we done our own seperate mock-ups of potential adverts for the documentaries and then we could then compare eachothers, recieve feedback and seek ways to improve eachothers, possibly by using ideas from eachothers ideas and putting them together.
I did not have a great experience of photoshop before beginning this task, however spending some time with my teacher and with some help from Conor I was able to understand the different tools and what they do.

I learnt quickly how to change the colour of fonts, and important elements such as the Channel 4 logo, by using the shortcut Ctrl + U. This helped me significantly to make my adverts. I also learnt about the magic whip tool and layers.

Channel 4 documentary in a newspaper

In this post I will focus specifically on a Channel 4 advert which is published in a newspaper, this is because our advert is intended to feature in a newspaper or magazine.

This is a picture taken straight from a newspaper which shows an advert of a documentary which is focusing on the pregnancy of certain women. This advert has the same lay out as the typical channel 4 advert, for example it has the large image to capture the consumers eye, which also can be slightly controversial (babies on a conveyer belt). It also has met what is expected in terms of the same colour for the Channel 4 logo and the background for the text.



This is a picture of the same advert just from the view of the whole two page spread, therefore you can see the size of the advert in relation to the pages.
As you can see the advert is the size of half a page, which I believe is a good size. I say this because as you can see there is a Ryanair advert on the other page however, I believe this size would not enhance the documentary advert, because the size would not be the same, however the large Ryanair advert may draw consumers to that page, which is a bonus for Channel 4, as their advert is right next to it.

Therefore when myself and Conor are preparing our advert we will take this into account, with regards to the size of the image and what its surroundings are.

Channel 4 documetary adverts

As myself and Conor thought it could be best to assosiate our documentary with Channel 4, we thought it would be wise to analyse their previous documentary and to look at the features of these products. We have shortlisted channel 4 documentaries to assosiate our product with because we feel they have produced a few in the past, which also specifically relate to missing people which is what ours is also about.

One main thing I have noticed about still adverts for channel 4 documentaries is that they are all very similar in their own way.





As you can see with these four still adverts produced by Channel 4, they all have the logo for this channel somewhere in the image. I believe this is so they do not need to use space on the advert to say what channel the documentary will be on, because this logo is seen to me known by many people. Therefore by being a popular logo and also representing the number 4, consumers will know what channel to sign into, which I feel is a good, smart way of telling the viewers what channel to tune into.
With regards to this logo, it also seems to fit in well with the colour scheme of the advert. For example three of the images have a white logo, which fits in well with the fairly bright image in the background. Whereas the one which has a black logo is about crime and bank robberies and is a darker image in the background, therefore the black logo fits the mood and the image better.

With these adverts the logo also links in with the limited writing there is. This is because the dominant colour of the logo is the same colour as the background for the writing. I feel this is a good technique because it makes the advert look neater I feel, which may appeal to the audience's eye, which in turn is their main aim.

Furthermore with regards to the text, Channel 4 have tried to limit themselves to use the least amount of text as possisble, this is because they do not want an advert with a huge amount of writing which could lead consumers to not look at it, as it may look boring in their eyes. Therefore they try to limit the amount of text as much as they can with only including the bare minimum so the consumers can understand what the documentary is about (possibly via the name of the programme) and when it is on.

As you can see in the previous images some of them have the title of the programme, some also have a little pun such as 'who wants to be a millionaire'. They also say the day when it is on and the time, and as you can see three of these documentaries are being shown at 9pm, which Conor and myself will have to take into account when creating our own advert.

However despite these previous features of Channel 4 documentaries, I feel the most important aspect is the image in the background. I believe this because this is the main aspect of the advert which is supposed to catch the eye of the consumers. The images need to relate to the topic of the advert yet they can also be a bit perculiar and possibly seen as controvesial, still with relevance. For example the advert about britains lost children shows a young girl being sucked into the floor which could make her dissapear, which many people may not be comfortable with seeing, however it is likely to get their attention, which is the main point of these adverts.

Therefore to conclude, I believe these adverts are seen to be fairly simple, with a lot of meaning behind them. I believe the main image will be the most important asset for us, however I also believe we need to find the right text to use in our advert and need to follow the features of these adverts to hopefully get our advert to be just as effective.

Other forms of advertisement for documentaries.

As we will be creating an advert which will be published in a newspaper or a magazine I feel it would be beneficial to analyse other types of advertising yet still sticking with the documentary as the genre.

Billboard Advertisement

This is a billboard advertisment for a documentary on channel five about Michael Jackson. I believe this is an effective advertising campaign because already I have identified three things about it, just by looking at it which is what channel 5 would want their consumers to be able to do. I said this billboard was promoting a documentay which I believe is shown by the 'blame it on the boogie' wording. I also can see it is on channel 5 because it says 'see five' in the bottom corner of the billboard in the font which I have seen other channel 5 products being advertised before. Of course I have also identified it is about Michael Jackson solely because of the picture which dominates the billboard. This is the same effect we want to have our advert to have, we want it to attract customers quickly and we want them to know where the documentary will be shown just by giving the advert a quick glance.

TV trailor advertisement

This is a trailor for a documentary which was going to be shown on TV. This is much different to an advert as our advert will be a still image whereas the documentary will have much more elements to it. For example, this trailer will have sound to it to enhance its effectiveness as it can show clips from the documentary to entice the audience to listen or to watch. There are also moving images instead of a single image which is also more enticing to watch. However a TV trailor is also a lot more expensive to make than an advert in magazine/newspaper.
This trailer consits of parts of interviews which we have in our documentary (Margaret Evans) and also footage which the documentary will show when viewed and aired on TV. It also has eiree music which I assume will be present in the documentary also, which we have also added in our documentary.

From analysing these two different types of advertising for documentary I have broadened my view of the different types of advertising in which documentaries could take up. I have seen that billboards have the same sort of affect and are set out similarly to adverts in a newspaper whereas the scope of target audience is different. Whereas the trailer made it clear that sound and moving images could be more effective than a still advert. However we do not have the option of this, and we will be creating an advert to appear in a newspaper or magazine.

Ancillary Task 1 - Advert for a Magazine/Newspaper

For our first ancillary task, myself and Conor have decided to create an advert which will be placed in a newspaper or magazine. I do not necessarily believe this would be the most effective way to promote our documentary for a few reasons. Firstly I feel that by having an advert in a newspaper or magazine we are restricting ourself to getting our product into the minds of the consumers. Our target audience is mainly teenagers and parents. This is because they can both relate to the missing of Matthew. However I believe less and less teenagers are reading newspapers and magazines these days as there are other distractions such as the latest gadgets and a huge increase in television channels. Therefore a possible better form of advertising could be either a TV advert or a digital biillboard, which I feel is more likely to stick in the head of the audience. This is because there are added elements such as sound for TV adverts, and also moving images in both which tend to be remembered more and viewed more than a still image.

However despite the other options we have to place our advert in a newspaper or magazine.




I took these two pictures from listing magazines which shows not necessarily an advert for a documentary yet they are promoting the programmes in the way that they are the 'pick of the day'. However i have shown these because they still represent what our documentary advert should look like. I believe these represent what our documentary should be like with relevance to its structure and what the 'advert' contains.
For example both of these examples show a main image which is intended to get people to look at the image and to grab their attention to the advert. In these two examples there is also no text, which we will not be following as we feel we will need to have the name of the documentary on there. However we will have one dominant photo we believe.

Further Feedback

Mother
She believed the documentary had a strong purpose, she explained that she felt the emotion from the mother really summed up the documentary as she felt she could relate to her. She also said she believed it seemed very realistic and she enjoyed the fact we included many different types of shots. Therefore overall she believed if she saw this documentary on the TV she would not immediately think it was not a professional product.

Grandfather
My grandfather believed it looks as if we had spent a lot of time on our documentary which I was happy to hear as I feel we put a lot of time and effort into our production. He was confused at first as he was not sure how the opening CCTV shots were supposed to look; however once I explained to him what the documentary was about he believed it made more sense to him. My grandfather then went on to say he found himself quite intrigued into the further storyline and believed he felt the topic of the documentary would attract him to watch it. He also drew special attention to our reconstruction which he felt was a great addition.

Sister
My sister thought the documentary was well structured with a good variation of shots, however she also said she was slightly confused with the establishing shots around Hertford, she said she was not too sure what relevance they had to the documentary. This is the first time someone has pointed this out to us, therefore I feel I should ask a few more people specifically about these establishing shots to find our their reaction. However overall she believed it was very good.

Uncle
My uncle started off by saying he is interested in documentaries therefore he felt he could give a good analysis of ours. He believed the opening shots of the CCTV footage were filmed well and he especially liked the time code we included. He also believed the reconstruction gave the whole production a nice touch, and he was impressed with the shots inside of the car. He felt these didn’t seem scripted and too perfect which gave it a very realistic film and what he would expect to see on the TV. However yet again someone had picked up on the microphone sounds which he felt ‘spoilt’ the production.

Feedback

Myself and Conor thought it would be best if we asked someone outside of our media class, who does not study media to give us feedback about our production. We asked Emily because she has not studied media therefore we thought it would be beneficial to get an outside opionion of our production.

Overall she believed our production was very good, and believed it seemed like a professional product and realistic too. The first point she made was with regards to our CCTV shots which she recognised straight away due to the distorted view and the time code at the top of the frame.
Emily also believed the music worked well with the different scenes and she also mentioned, the best thing about the music was the genre and the mood it created. She explained it was music you would expect to hear in a similar style of documentary which we were pleased to hear.
She also mentioned in her feedback the reconstruction. She believed it was placed in at a good time in the documentary and she felt it was a good addition to the production, along with the different shots in and around the car.
Emily's final positive point gave relevance to the establishing shots around Hertford and the scenes of Margaret Evans inside her home. She explained to us that the tension inside of the house worked very well and gave the documentary a very realistic feel to it. Whereas with the establishing shots she believed we framed our shots well and got a good variety of shots to enhance our production.

Although she managed to point out many advantages she believed there was one point which she felt 'spoilt' her experience and viewing of our production. She explained to us that she could hear the sound of the microphone moving in one of the scenes which myself and Conor had been aware of and are trying to fix it. Therefore we know that we need to rectify this problem to enhance our production even further.

However overall Emily said she thought our production was very good with special relevance to the 'huge' variety of shots ad the balance between narrating, acting and reconstruction worked very well. She also 'loved' the music as she felt this gave it a new dimension and brought the whole production together.