How effective is the combination of your

main product and ancillary texts?

Our target audience was to both male and female, as after much research we found it does affect both genders. The main age we targeted for our documentary was around 13-18 year olds as we found that teenagers were the highest affected age group to do with cyber bullying. Although through research we found that all ages had cyber bullying issues, we decided to stick to one particular age group that was highly affected because we didn’t want our documentary to be too broad and really wanted to grip the target audience that we had chosen so made sure we could keep it relatable to them. By choosing the age group that we did it also helped us choose how to approach the 3 different forms of media and what would be interesting and enticing as we also fall into the age category. We did not aim our documentary at any particular social class as we felt that the topic applied to all types of social class and everyone needs to be aware not just particular classes.

How we combined our 3 textsThe first way we combined our three texts were by using the name we decided to call our documentary (Banter or Bullying?) in all forms of media we were producing.

During the radio trailer, the last line is ‘Banter or Bullying? On BBC3, Sunday’ and the magazine article headline is ‘BANTER OR BULLYING?’ standing out in capitals. This allows the audience to easily link the three texts together, for example, if they were to have read about it in the TV magazine and then hear it on the radio trailer it would be more likely to stick in their head and they would also know a bit about the documentary before they came to the decision to watch it.

Radio TrailerWhen producing our radio trailer, we first made a few drafts on what we could include in it. At first, we did not consider including anything from the documentary itself but after listening to other radio trailers we realised it was a good way to link the two texts together. So we decided to add short clips from the vox-pops and formal interviews into the radio trailer, which made the link between the two.

A way in which we didn’t link the two texts together was how we used a different voiceover in the radio trailer to the documentary, as we used a ‘victim’ of cyber bullying to talk at the start of the radio trailer. This could have made the audience think that you would be seeing the ‘victim’ during the documentary which you do not. Although this voiceover does not link with what the documentary actually contains, we still thought it was a good idea to make the audience really listen, as if they are hearing a victims point of view they are more likely the be gripped into wanting to watch the documentary to find out the outcome of what happens to victims of cyber bullying (we left the voiceover on a bit of a cliff-hanger where you are unsure of what happened to the victim).

We decided to show our radio trailer on Radio 1 as it is a popular radio channel and during times such as Radio 1xtra etc. a lot of our target

audience are likely to be listening, making them aware of our documentary. The radio channel is target at all ages giving a wider variety

of ages the knowledge of the documentary to make it their choice to watch it or not, which also enables the documentary to be heard about by word

of mouth.

Radio Trailer (continued)

Another way in which we linked the two texts together was by using the same music in both the documentary and the radio trailer.

There was a constant main track in the background of the documentary that was slow and steady and we used this track in the background throughout the whole of our radio trailer.

We used this track because in our radio trailer because it is the starting track in our documentary and it means that the audience would be more likely to recognise the documentary as it is starting because of the same music that they had heard on the radio trailer.

Magazine ArticleWhen making our magazine article, we linked the article to the documentary by using an image of one of the interviews that took place in the documentary, on the right hand side of the article. We also included pictures of social networking sites that our target audience are likely to use so that they can easily relate to the article enticing them to find out more in the documentary.

Although there are some links between the documentary and magazine article, we could have included a lot more images taken from the documentary to secure the link between the two.

The article itself does give an insight to the documentary however, by explaining that we visited Solihull Sixth Form and it also explains how people are not as aware of cyber bullying as they should be, which is the main issue in our documentary.

ConclusionIn conclusion, I think we made a good, strong link between the media products we produced. By looking at all three texts I think you can see clear links between the three and by looking at one, you would be enticed to look into the others.

Although I felt we were able to link them together, I still feel that we could have made even stronger links, such as during the magazine article we could have included more images from the documentary and when filming the radio trailer we could have used the same voiceover that we used in the documentary.