Ancillary Texts

What media texts did you look at to research your ancillary text?

My group took inspiration from the print advertisements that came out for "The Boat that Rocked".

The film had several different print adverts that varied across the board which added more information and shots from the film the closer it was to the airing date, we decided to take this approach as well.I chose to create the teaser advert for our documentary, which would be the first advert to be seen, and was designed to pique the audience's curiousity, and to create interest in our documentary. The ‘Boat that Rocked’ adverts are simple and bold; a solitary figure striking a pose on a bright colourful background, which draws your eye towards the actor.(see presentation) These adverts include little information and only sport the title of the film, a tagline, and a website. These posters are designed to keep the audience wanting to find out more, and making the audience actively access a website dedicated to you movie only increases their interest by increasing their involvement.

I personally researched a print advertisement for 'Lost', a series made for TV. It too has a simple design that draws your eyes inward and makes the audience's curiosity grow. Unlike 'The Boat that Rocked' the 'Lost' advertisement includes a background, but the stark contrast between the sky and the trees simplifys a potentally complex background, and the bold white text of the title draws your eyes to the centre.This too includes little information as it has only the title, a tagline and the name of the channel it runs on, again making the audience actively become involved if they wish to find out more. I included this in my text having only the title and the symbol of the channel it aires on. The title and posing figure in the middle (like 'The Boat that Rocks') draws the eyes to the centre and catches the audiences attention (like 'Lost') I also used simple colours and a fairly simple background as not to distract from the central figure (like both researched texts) 

How will your ancillary text appeal to the target audience?

My ancillary text appeals to the target audience mainly because it's eye catching. It's bright and bold and stands out from the pages of a newspaper. The simplicity and bright colours as well as the pixilised style it is drawn in appeals to many teenagers (part of our target audience) and the central figure of the skateboarder of course appeals to others who enjoy the sport be it as a spectator or competetor (another part of our target audience.) The title of 'Hateboarding' will also interest adults and teenagers alike as the pun suggests conflict and a differing of opinion, which are subjects many relish watching on television, and thus this helps not only to appeal to our target audience but also those who may not have previously thought a documentary on skateboarding is something they would be interested in.

Where will the text appear?

The Ancillary text will appear in two places mainly. One is in 'The Metro' a free newspaper that is usually given out near train stations so people can read it during their commute. I would place the advert in there as the text is most likely to have a large amount of views and the chances of the audience for our documentary increasing is likely. It also means that members of our intended target audience, who perhaps might not be able to afford the expensive skateboarding magazines. The other place I would print the advertisement would be a plain TV guide, possibly 'What's on TV?' as it is a staight to television documentary, the majority of our potential audience would read the television guide. Also TV guides aren't limited to age and a huge number of people, young and old, read them and so the market for our documentary may increase.

Why are these formats appropriate?

Making a Print advertisement rather than a television trailer is much more appropriate to our audience. Our documentary is based on Skateboarding which is a main stream sport, and as such many of our audience will be outside and on the move the majority of the time (hence printing it in 'The Metro' a newspaper which frequently swaps hands throughout the day.) Having a trailer would be messy and expensive and there would be no way to guarentee that our target audience would be watching the television during the fleeting minutes the advertisement is run for. If the advert is printed on paper it doesn't matter how many people read it, it will remain there for the next person to read, and wouldn't be so easily missed.

Shona  ☺

Technology

This is the microphone which we used to record our voiceover and the various audio clips we needed for our the construction of our radio advert. The microphone made it easy and simple for our group to record the voice over rather than using the microphone on the computer; which would have meant recording in the noisy media room with shaky quality and an audible background hiss. I've learnt how to use this piece of equipment as well as the optimum conditions for recording, such as the distance you have to be from the microphone, how loud and clear you have to speak, and the location in which you record. A small room is best as to reduce reverb, with no background noise to detract from the main voice. 


Using this microphone we recorded our commentary for our evaluation. Because each member of our group has to vocally contribute to the commentary, using the microphone meant that we could each go and record our individual segments at the same time, editing the order of the voices when we uploaded the audio onto the computer. If we had used the microphone on the computer it would've meant that we would all have to speak one after the other to avoid background noise, and would have made the process much more difficult to complete.  Utilizing this piece of technology really made our commentary straightforward and uncomplicated to record and upload.

Shona

Production Team

Photoshop - use of technology 




Here is the logo for our production team called "High Peak Studios"
The futuristic font has connotations of modern aspirations often connected with modern youth and the silhouetted figures high fiving create the 'High' part of the logo and the shape of their arms creates the 'Peak'. High fiving is, again, something often thought of in relation to the modern youth; which is what our production team is made of.
Shona

Teaser Advert Analysis

Photoshop - use of technology Shona

Teaser Advert for our Documentary

This advert only has the Channel and Title of the documentary so it piques the reader's interest and if they want to find out more they can check the Channel 4 website. Adverts with more information would come out closer to the air date.

Shona

use of technology - photoshop

Potential Advert Placement

Because our target audience are young people, teenagers to mid 20s, I thought that advertising it in the Metro newspaper would get us good publicity. Because it is mainly aimed at young adults and above, teenagers would also read it, as they are becoming more mature and independent. Even though our documentary is focused on skateboarding and the skateboarding community, advertising in the metro would let us expand our target audience and expose people positively to skateboarding, people who may have only heard the negative stereotypes before. Also the metro is a free newspaper which would allow us to get the message out to as many people as possible, including those who enjoy skateboarding who may not buy an expensive skateboarding magazine, but would still be interested in our documentary.

Shona

Print Advert Analysis: Lost

use of technology - photoshop

Shona

Completed Animation

I completed the animation which opens our documentary. Short and consise, it leads easily into the title screen and helps to introduce our topic; showing a skateboarder as he performs a trick. The style is simple, cartoonish like 'Persepolis' and using the bold colours and stark back lines and shadows i found so appealing from 'Waltz with Bashir' All in all I am very happy with my final result and I think it works well as the opening sequence of our documentary and helps to start it in an interesting and unique manner.


Shona (Below a screen grab from the opening animation)

Use of technology through animation

Revisions

Originally our documentary was going to show different sides of the 'skateboarding argument' those for and against, but as we've gotten closer to the completion of our project, we've found that this isn't feasible. Not only were we unable to get in contact with all our interviewees who were against skateboarding, but they didn't fit in with the tone of our piece, and broke the flow of our film. So we decided, instead, to make our documentary focused on the more positive side of skateboarding, using all our interviewees who enjoyed and practiced skateboarding to reveal the creativity of the activity. Even though this makes our documentary biased I think, personally, that it won't effect our piece, and that forcibly trying to make our film unbiased could not only be fruitless but could also damage our project in the long run.

Shona ☺

Styles of Animation

As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm interested in animation, and before I started my animation project  I researched different styles of animation, mainly styles used in documentaries, or education films. I first looked at 'Persepolis' an Autobiographical piece which was originally a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. The film was done entirely in black and white and had very fluid animation making the piece flow neatly from one scene into another, also the drawing style was simplistic and cartoony but very effective. While I admired the style I didn't think it suited the subject matter of our documentary, however I decided to incorporate the cartoon-like style of the drawing into my animation as it worked well with the image skateboarding creates.

 I then looked at 'Waltz with Bashir', an Israeli feature length animated documentary about the 1982 Lebanon war. The colours were dark and brooding corresponding with the subject matter, and the animation was very direct, with no wasted movement. I found the animation style itself very appealing and decided to attempt to use a similar style for my opening animation. I've also taken the bold block colours and shadows which suit the rebellious side of skateboarding very well.

Shona ☺

Introduction

As I'm interested in animation, I'm planning to make an animated introduction for our media documentary. I've looked at various different types of animation and styles, and i've decided to make a short action sequence for our film. Reiss has made a logo for our documentary, which I'll incorporate into the animated sequence to polish off the ending. I'll be using Flash CS4 because I've seen several tutorials on it's use and I feel comfortable around  the programme. Unfortunately school only has CS3 which despite being quite a recent release is very different in programming to CS4 and I find it hard to navigate. Hopefully, allowing for time, I should have the animated sequence finished by next monday.

Shona ☺

Time Managment

Due to the unforseen problems we have encountered with the editing programme 'Final Express' we have been lost a lot of valuable time. In order to counter this our group has spit up in to pairs, that we can work on seperate tasks at the same time. The pairs vary from week to week and sometimes all four of us go our seperate ways in order to use our time in the most effective way possible. We make sure that at least two to three people are focussing on editing, and the others are working on side projects such as research, the blog, or finding appropriate copyright free music for our documentary.

On Thursday 12th of October, Sorcha was ill, so Me, Luke and Reiss worked alternatively on the editting, getting input from the other two, while they did the blog and made a section of music on 'Garage Band' for us to use in our documentary, because the music we found didn't suit our film.

Shona ☺

To Do List

Things we still need to do:

1) Complete all filming: 

We are almost finished but we still have a few cutaways and locations to film. This task was allocated to Luke, who has access to what we need to film.

2) Upload all footage:

Although we have got most of our footage filmed we haven't been able to upload most of it yet, but hopefully come monday, we'll have the tape ready in class so that we can upload it.

3) Edit all footage: 

Due to all the issues we've had with the editing programme the editing isn't going as fast as we would like, though now, with most of the issues resolved, we are making good progress.

4) Continue with blog:

We're still documenting our filming process and we will continue with it until the filming task has been completed.

We're happy with the progress we're making and we should have most or all of these tasks completed during the coming weeks.

Shona☺

Interviews

On Monday 2nd of november, I contacted one of our interviewees who said they'd be happy to be interviewed on that day. Jen Campbell arrived at 7.00 and I set up the camera while talking to her about the questions I was going to ask. I set her up so she looked comfortable then started filming while warming her up. The first take I filmed I experimented with zooms and moving the camera but I didn't like the overall effect it gave so I retook the footage with a static camera and I personally think the second take came out much better than the first. (Below: Jen Campbell)

 

I asked her:

Why did she skateboard,

Who did she Skateboard with,

Had she had any injuries while skateboarding,

Had she experienced any violence because she skateboarded,

had any of her friends, 

and,

Had she seen any negative press about skateboarders. 

I enjoyed the experience and I think we got a valuable interview from the filming.

Shona ☺

Filming

We tried to get together to film during half-term but unfortunately we couldn't get any decent filming done. Both Sorcha and Luke were away for the week with previous engagements. I tried to meet up with Reiss at Clapham Junction, but the station was too busy and we missed each other, not being able to find each other we decided to stop and film on sunday instead.

Luke was still unable to film and so was Reiss but Sorcha came and we met up at Stockwell to take footage at the skatepark. However, despite the fact we were organised and met up with plenty of time and a charged camera, The weather was against us and we were unable to film due to rain.

Shona

Media Presentation

This is the visual aid we put together for our 10 minute pitch. There's no writing on the presentation because all the information was presented verbally. The youtube video is the link shown on one of the slides. It's a video of one of our interviewees, Rory Milanes, skateboarding.

Shona 

Media Documentary

View more presentations from skateboardingdunraven.

Storyboard and Drafting

This is my first storyboard and written draft. Both in the initial phases of design, certain elements will be disscussed, altered, and /or removed with parts yet to be finalised. This will hopefully give us a rough idea of the shape our documentary is going to take and will help us to hone it into a much better whole.

Shona ☺

Audience Research

I created a survey to find out about the attitudes towards skateboarding and skateboarders in general. It was given to various age groups, but those of a younger generation seemed more at ease with skateboarders than older citizens. Younger people seemed to be more relaxed around skateboarders, comfortable in their presence and even stopping to watch them practice. They also seemed more enthusiastic to learn more about skateboarders, even those who hadn't expressed intrest in watching skateboarders perform. The older generation was more close minded and more awkward around skateboarders, prefering to cross the street rather than confronting them. Personally I think that this research has shown that our documentary is designed for a widly ranged audience: the younger members will enjoy the information about skateboarding as well as the visual style and numerous skateboarding tricks. The older members will see the more creative side of skateboarding and hopefully will see that some of the negative stereotypes that surround skateboarders just aren't true.

(The questionairre pictured below was filled in by one of the older generation of people we asked.)

Shona☺