Evaluation of Radio Drama, Newspaper Advert and Feature page

Final Poster

This is my finish Feature page

 What ways does your media product use,develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My Radio drama follows the conventions of real media products and challenges them, such as the radio drama the archers. Theyre drama is located in the countryside and I wanted my radio drama to be in a city like london so I did the opposite although I followed the conventions of having 2 second gaps of silence, inbewteen each scene so it is not confusing for the audience which  is what I did in my radio drama. The Archers use a lot of sound effects such as running water, footsteps which I used in my radio drama to make the audience know what is going on, and the recognised sounds makes the scene clearer. When I researched radio dramas a lot of the dramas were sci-fi and fiction such as hitchhikers quide to the galaxy which a lot of people in my class decided to do but I want to do something different, I challenged and wanted to create a realistic radio drama which genre was a comedy drama although I got an idea from the hitchikers guide to the galaxy to use a news reporter like they did. When researching radio dramas they used regional accents like the archers but all the characters had the same accent which I departed radically from this convention and had many accents such as French, German and English which all gave my radio drama comedy value as some of accents were funny. Films also influenced the making of my radio drama such as The Devil Wears Prada as it about fashion which really influenced me also TV Series, Material girl and Ugly Betty all influenced the development of my drama, the characters and the storylines. Many of the radio dramas I researched broadcasted on radio 4 and radio 7 , I was going to challenged this and broadcast on radio one to be different although i followed the forms and conventions and decided to have my radio drama broadcasted on Radio four extra which is still a very popular channel.  although My Newspaper Advert follows the convention of real media products such as the poster, In her shoes even though its advertising a film it still shows the same conventions on a poster. I show a quote on my poster which sums up my drama in a positive way on the poster and theses conventions are done in the same way in her shoes poster.  It shows at the top of the poster a positive quote about the film which I have done in the same ways.  In the poster Devil wears Prada it only shows a picture of a red shiny shoe, the title, two starring actors and the information at the bottom. I used the conventions of a colour scheme which was red, black and white like the devil wears Prada poster but challenged the convention in this poster by actually having images of my characters and the information in a box, which stood out clearly although I show the title rough cut but it is not standing out like the poster confessions of a shopaholic. The poster which stands out boldly although I took the same idea from the poster of confessions of a shopaholic, as on  the model she is wearing  pink and she is positioned in the middle and underneath her is the title which is in the same colours of her clothes linking the  word shopaholic to her.  I did this with the title in red and the characters Vivienne’s coat links to the title. I challenged the forms and conventions of Ad placement poster as i thought of having my poster placed in fashion magazines as my radio drama it a comedy it links to the fashion industry and in these magazines it’s all about fashion so it would tie in nicely with  my target audience and break the conventions. although i decided to follow the forms and conventions and have my poster advertised in the newspaper The Daily mail as my poster has a quote from them so i thought it would fit nicely in the daily mail which quoted my poster in a positive way.

My Magazine feature design shows a big heading which is a quirky headline of “it’s all drama,drama, drama, in rough cut”, I used a quirky headline to draw the reader in to wanting to know more which is like the Ant and Dec interview which is bold and bright and the same colours scheme, the colour scheme is red, black and white and also linked with my poster although I challenged this convention and had my background black  as all the feature pages I looked at all had a white background so I decided to challenge this and make  my poster different . On the opposite page I have text and have an image in the centre of the article like the ELLE feature page to break up the writing and at the start of my Article. I have a big letter to start the article which I used this convention which is shown in the cosmopolitan Kimberley Walsh interview which I used and in my feature page. I followed the same conventions of having the same style of interview like the Kimberley Walsh interview of having the magazine interviewer in one colour and the person being interviewed in another to break up the text and make in understandable. my ad placement of my feature page was going to be a fashion magazine as i was having my drama broadcasted on radio one although i did not challenge this and decided as my radio drama is being broadcasted on Radio 4 extra that i would have my radio drama broadcasted in the Radio Times which would advertise to my target audience positively.

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

I hoped for my Radio Drama and the newspaper advert and feature page to work well  together. I think I did this positively by my radio drama actually showing the forms and conventions of a comedy genre which I also reflect in my Newspaper advert and the Feature page. I had done this in my radio drama personally by the different accents used throughout also the good use of sound effects linked with the drama, in scene three when Vivienne is annoyed she is asking her Personal asssistant to get her vodka which we used sound effects of him sipping a drink, and storming around which just added comedy Value to the drama. The audience feedback also shown how well our radio drama was which we had an overall mark of 9/10 which is extremely good we had comments of “good plot”, “well scripted”,”easy to understand stories” which shows that  the audience understoon the drama well, we also had comments of “good use of humour”, “Funny!” “The multi-accents”which shows that the radio drama shown the genre of comedy well.  I believe  our drama was effective especially within reaching and addressing our target audience .

I  believe we had advertised the radio drama well in my newspaper and feature page as these were to advertise the Radio drama so I think they have all worked well alongside eachother. As I used images in my newspaper Advert which shown the characters in the drama it shown what the genre was especially the male version of Vivienne which the male character Vivienne is wearing a handbag creating comedy to the poster. I uploaded to FaceBook  my two posters of Female and male Version of Vivienne which I asked people to comment on to  find out which one was the best. My audeince feedback was that they liked the male version one as it is more comedy compared to the Female Version as its more serious looking although in the Female Version poster vivienne wears a coat of red to signify danger and as she is positioned behind lauren it shows the relationship good vs evil (binary oppositions-Levi Strauss). The functions of the newspaper advert was to advertise the Drama without giving away the whole drama. I only shown the title,channel,time and date in my drama as I used a quote from the daily mail talking about the dishy fashion drama. It clearly shows that the genre of this is comedy but also that it is linked to fashion. The newspaper and Faeature page work well together as I used the same colour scheme and I also in my feature page had an interview with Vivienne in the feature the pictures all link together. The functions used in the Feature page are to engage the reader with the characters in the drama, to advertise the drama and to spill a few bits of the drama. My Ad placement for my feature page is a few weeks after the drama being aired so the reader knew about the drama. My Feature page was shown in the Radio times which advertises all  radio dramas which would also be effective with my target audience. As they would enjoy radio dramas As my drama is linked to fashion  i thought of being in a fashion magazine to draw my exact target audience although I thought it would be best to stick to radio, so I had my feauture in the radio times. I strongly believe that even though my products are doing different functions of advertising they  have worked well alongside eachother advertising the radio drama which is easily understood to the target audience.

  (look at labels:contruction  and construction and planning to see more)

What have you learned from your Audience Feedback?

When we had our audience feedback we were dreading the review as our radio drama is targeted at a female audience so we thought our drama would get very bad reviews considering it wouldn’t be a male’s taste.
 The results come back that in fact our Radio Drama got the best and most results with the majority marking the overall drama 9/10! And in fact was the most liked compared to everyone else’s drama which was extremely good considering the focus group being very biased.
Many of the reviews thought that it was very funny which I was mostly proud of as I thought that many people would not like the humour or find it funny than our own group. There were comments to improve our drama and that was in scene one, there’s a few lines quieter than they should be and the breaks in-between the scenes are too long. So we are going to shorten them down also there was a suggestion that as Vivienne is being played by a males voice, as a part of panto style and that Vivienne can be a males name, and in the fashion world there are many male designers with very different names. Vivienne then would play a male character and a twist to the story that Laurens boyfriend Chris is seeing Vivienne which makes him gay, so we have also shown topics of sexuality in to our drama which also adds more drama.  Other people disagreed as the male voice representing Vivienne as a female character added to the comedy value being ‘panto’ style; Vivienne’s dialogue got the most laughs and positive response from our audience.

 I learnt and developed further from this feedback as I decided to have Vivienne as a male and also the Audience feedback I had on face book thought that it was more comedy which made me feel like I did the right decision which I performed in my Newspaper Advert and Feature page of having Vivienne as a male in my images. I believe that the peer review is a good thing as it helped our group learn from this and improve our drama on the things that were lacking in our Radio Drama.

look at labels construction and planning

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning, and evaluation stages?

I used my blog to organize and to show my research of radio dramas by uploading images and showing a analysis of different radio dramas. I also presented my ideas by scanning brainstorms of my ideas of different codes and conventions of genres, posters and features. I also presented the planning of my work by scanning my rough scripts, character ideas for my drama and rough designs of newspaper advert and feature page. I also used soundclips of my drama to present my work and so the viewer could have an insight to my radio drama. I also talked through the process of editing which I did in video format so I could show the computer and the different tools to edit and cut scenes. I also discussed audience feedback and how I learnt and improved my work from audience feedback.

I used the internet to find out research such as the BBC Website to listen to different dramas to get ideas for my own radio drama. I also looked at myths and stories for ideas in the making of my radio drama but I wanted to use comedy and a fashion storyline so I looked at different films such as Devil wears prada, in her shoes, confessions of a shopaholic and different TV series such as Ugly Betty and Material Girl to get inspiration and ideas. I also looked on google researching for examples of posters and feature to progress my work .  To get more research data and audience feedback I used the social networking site Facebook to get feedback on my poster work to see what I could improve and find out what they liked about it the comments I recieved was they thought my poster was comedy which was good as my radio dramas genre is comedy.

For my poster I  used the programme photo shop. I already knew  how to use it from previous tasks in media although on a few things like creating transparent box which I done by creating a box which was black and I created a new layer and on the layer I decreased the opacity which made it transparent. Which I found out by I looking on the internet for photoshop tutorials. I asked freinds to be my models so I photographed them to be my characters of vivienne and Lauren for my poster, which enbaled me to show their realtionship on my poster of good vs evil. I edited my photographs using the programme photoshop I used the  quick selection tool to highlight around  images to cut around their bodies .if I didn’t cut completely around it, I used the Alt button to deselect an area, once I got the image perfect I refined the image by changing the radius and smoothing image. The colour scheme I used was Red, Black and white which I made my own colour swatch of the Red using the swatches tool on the right hand side in Photoshop and clicked on new colour swatch. For My feature pages I used the programme in design. . I already knew  how to use it from using it last year for coursework. Using the tracking tool which makes the text closer and either increase or decreases, the amount of space between each letter which I made the letters close together. The colour scheme I used was Red, Black and white just like my poster. Which I made my own colour swatch of the Red using the swatches tool on the right hand side and clicked on new colour swatch. There was no specific skills only to know what icons do to you poster and how they can change them. Photo shop and In Design are quite easy programmes when you get familiar with them.

When I edited my radio Drama I really struggled at first, I think that it is skills that take a while to learn as well as getting used to the programme soundtrack pro which we had To cut out clips, using the razor tool over the clip where I wanted cutting and the tool cuts it and using the arrow tool and pressing the delete button gets rid of the part you did not want, in scenes I faded scene to end scenes which is not easy. I believe I that I have used my blog effectively showing my research and planning well showing the products of my Radio Drama, Newspaper Advert and feature page.

look at  labels of production