Evaluation

Here is the evaluation for my finished advanced portfolio A2 media coursework, my local newspaper for the Gordano Valley and two ancillary texts: a newspaper advertising poster and a newspaper radio advert.

Evaluation - Script

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

(Opening slide – say nothing)

Slide 2 – Question 1

Slide 3

My newspaper publication uses many common aspects of a conventional local newspaper, for example on the front page of my publication, I used a large main image as this was a common feature I found in many other examples of local newspapers.

I also used blue bar lines to separate my page, and to further incorporate my colour scheme of bright blue so that it was more obvious to my target demographic. I chose blue to be the main colour to my colour scheme because I thought it fitted in nicely with the fact that my newspaper was aimed at the residents of Portishead, which is a town located directly beside the marina. I felt the colour blue connoted ideas of the sea, boats, seagulls, which are things commonly associated with Portishead itself.

I also included three adverts along the bottom of my front page, which was a feature I first discovered on the front page of the newspaper The Mercury. (pictured in the next slide!) I decided to have three adverts so I could use this as an opportunity to appeal to as many different interests of my target demographic using just my front page.

Overall I was pleased with the final result of my newspaper publication, and felt the layout was an effective way of positioning my articles and images to complement each other.

Slide 4

Here are some examples of similar newspapers with a similar design layout to my own. Firstly they both have large main images to attract the reader’s attention which is a feature I carried over onto my own design. I wanted to use this particular convention because in my opinion images are one of the most effective ways to attract people to reading an article or story. They also both have a clear set colour scheme; the Scunthorpe Telegraph for example clearly uses blue as my own newspaper does, and The Mercury uses red and this is made clear by the colour of the masthead being red in this case.

Slide 5

On the second page of my newspaper publication, I used the typical convention of including multiple stories on the page – these often aren’t entire articles, I have written “turn to page 27” for example at the end to encourage my target audience to delve into my newspaper to read on. This is a convention used by many newspapers; on the first few pages they will have short introductions to more interesting, lengthy articles, and then instruct people to turn to a certain page later on to “read on”.

For my article about the See No Evil art exhibition in Bristol, instead of writing a small caption in the corner of my photograph accompanying the article, I chose to include a small, blue caption ‘bubble’ positioned just to the right of my main headlines reading “See No Evil, See Stunning Art!” which is also a common convention found in newspapers such as this. I  thought it was an interesting design technique, and it also usefully filled in a small white space that existed there before, so I was pleased with this creative decision as it had a positive effect on my second page as a whole.

Also, for my bottom article about a case of Facebook cyber-bullying, I decided to position the photograph associated with this story directly in the middle of the article, with the text appearing either side of the image. I made this creative decision because I felt it made my page more effectively weighed out in term of the ratio between images, adverts and text in terms of layout.

Slide 6

For the first article on my front page of my newspaper, I initially had just two wide columns for my main article but then I made the creative decision to change it to have three slimmer columns. This was because it made the text easier to read, and more conventional of the expected features of a local newspaper front page. I was more pleased with the overall effect of my page once this small change had been made.

Slide 7

As I mentioned before, I decided to have three small adverts along the bottom of my front page. Each of these adverts was designed to appeal to a different type of person within my target demographic of people of both genders aged 24-50. (From the left)… the one furthest left is for a Marina Boat Trips service which I thought could appeal to either gender, or perhaps for families wanting to take a trip out. The middle advert is for a car repairs company, which I also could thought could appeal to both genders, but stereotypically more so for men. The third and final advert to appear along the bottom of my front page in the bottom right hand corner was advertising a local hair dressing salon, which again stereotypically speaking would be expected to appeal more to women. By specifically addressing each of the genders specifically, I felt this would make my newspaper appear more interesting to my target demographic and therefore would increase readership figures.

Slide 8

I also found examples of this on other newspapers, including this edition of The Mercury. However on this front page, one advert along the bottom is considerably larger than the other two. I decided to make all my 3 adverts the same size as I preferred the overall effect of this layout design.

Slide 9

On my front page, I chose to position a ‘Business’ section, as this was a typical convention I found on newspaper front pages. I used a blue band because this was my chosen colour scheme and I felt this was a good opportunity to incorporate blue onto my page. At the bottom of this small section I also wrote “>Page 12” as an indicator of where this section would be found in the newspaper. After I had added this section onto my front page, I began to feel more pleased with my newspaper as I believed it made it begin to appear more professional.

Slide 10

One feature I found important when capturing my images for my newspaper was ensuring I used bright colour photography. This is a common feature on most modern newspapers, including The Sun, The Mercury, The Evening Post etc. It helped my newspaper page to stand out, and the high quality of these images was important in making it look genuine. Newspapers have to compete amongst many other leading publications in order to sell enough copies of their newspapers and reach their readership targets and appeal to their target demographic.

Slide 11

Here are some examples I found of other newspapers well known for their use of bright colour photography.

Slide 12

I also thought to include the date in very small lettering and a traditional Times New Roman font just under my masthead on the right hand side. This was to make my newspaper appear more realistic, and it also allows the audience to make sense of what season the articles they are reading were based in, as stories in newspapers tend to be recent of the time in which they are published.

Slide 13

For the main article on my front page, I thought it would be a good opportunity to illustrate my understanding of articles with an element of tragedy being a very common feature of newspapers. “Fury at Local Burglary!” was the title for this article and I thought that as we were aiming to create a local newspaper that this would be a worthy front page article of a small area, as a burglary would really capture people’s attention and encourage them to want to read on.

Slide 14

I also used forms and conventions of real local newspapers in my choice to use large headlines for each of my articles to make it clear which headline matched up to which story and to make it clear as possible for my target audience to read these headlines.

Slide 15

On my second page I included many articles as this is a common convention of local newspapers. I tried to lay them out in a sort of box-like layout, to make it clear as possible when one article ended and another began. The use of columns to this effect is often used in newspapers to break up articles and allow the page to be busy, but not confusing.

Slide 16
I included a tagline for my local newspaper to abide by normal conventions of many other newspaper publications: “At the head and heart of our community.” I deliberately used the word “our” to suggest that the newspaper is part of the community, and wishes to represent the people within it. Also, by using the word “community”, this connotes the newspaper to be representing a smaller town, rather than a big city such as London or Manchester for example.

Slide 17

The title of my newspaper, “Gordano Express”, was my final choice because I thought it was important to have the name of the location which it was set in it. I then made various mind maps of the expected types of names newspapers often had and this was the one I felt had the best ring to it.

Slide 18

This is my finished newspaper advertising poster. I was pleased with my use of fonts and photography for my poster, but if I were to go back and repeat the process then I’d have used a grey or perhaps a light blue background, so to give a bit more weight to the overall image and so the hand looks less like it’s floating around in mid air.

Slide 19

This is my finished radio advert for my newspaper. (The file saved as longer than I intended, but the advert itself ends at 27 seconds.) I was happy with my advert, and decided to use a horn sound at the beginning to catch my audience’s attention straight away. I then had the sound of waves crashing in the background and the sound of seagulls over that. I decided to opt for this sea-side theme for my radio advert to go with the fact that Portishead is located next to the marina and I wanted to address this. For the voice over, I asked my mum to be recorded for me. This was because she fitted the perfect medium for my target audience age of 24-50. I thought it was important to have someone with a clear speaking voice, and no pronounced accent so not to make the radio advert difficult to understand. I was pleased with the way this sounded overall. I considered placing some sort of sea-side type music over my radio advert, but after testing a few ideas out including Hawaiian music and a soft guitar sound, I felt that layering any music over the top of what I’d already created would simply ruin the effect I’d already created and make the words not clear enough to understand. I felt being as simple as possible with the radio advert would would advertise the paper more effectively.

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

I think the combination of my main product and ancillary texts were very effective, however if I had given myself more time I would make some changes to the poster. For example I’d perhaps change the colour of the background of my poster to blue, to further incorporate my colour scheme and make the poster and newspaper appear more related.

I think both my ancillary products combined very well, as on the poster it reads “Grab your copy today!” and this is also the last line of the script for my radio advert. I felt it was important to have something linking these two products together so people would be able to recognise the same newspaper was being advertised in both cases!

Overall I was pleased with the effectiveness of my combination of main product and ancillary texts.

•What have you learned from your audience feedback?

In a lot of ways, the audience feedback helped me to realise just how important it is to ask certain questions to the people you aim to be appealing for, as they do not always give the answers you would have expected them to give. This is why by double checking, you get much better chance of appealing to the people you want to attract to your publication/product.

At the beginning of my research process, I created some pie charts using the information I gathered from a select number of people, so I could easily compare the figures I got and know which methods would be best to use when making my own newspaper.

From the second question I asked, I was able to find out that there were as many people interested in reading a free newspaper than there was reading a bought national newspaper which was useful to know, as this meant I could still aim to appeal to a very wide audience.

I also asked whether they thought colour photographs would work best on a newspaper, rather than black and white images and a large majority of my audience said yes that they’d prefer the photographs to be in colour.

I then asked which newspaper they preferred to read out of The Post, The Times, The Observer or ‘other’. Most people answered ‘The Times’ so in my research and ideas for layout and design I looked at some physical copies of this newspaper to see if I could find inspiration for my own work.

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

In the construction of my newspaper, I used InDesign as the programme to create my newspaper itself. I found it very easy to use after some practice, and found the tools and controls easy to pick up in time. For example, the positioning of text boxes around the page, and use of layers came in very handy when creating a publication such as a newspaper, as it needed to be constantly edited and changed along with my ideas.

For most of my adverts for my newspaper, I used Photoshop to edit and create them. I was really pleased with how my adverts turned out, and I am glad I had a chance to practice using some of these Photoshop skills for later projects I may do in the future.

I used a Sony a230 DSLR Digital Camera for capturing the photographs for my newspaper. It was important to me that I used a camera of such high quality, to get a successful range of images. I was pleased with the way my photographs came out, though if I could go back and change anything it would be to retake my main image on the front page of the mirage building and make sure it was taken on a day where there were blue skies! I could have changed this also on Photoshop, but I struggled for time slightly towards the end and wanted to use my time on the Macs in school productively as possible.

Over the length of the course I have however greatly improved my skills on the different programmes, technologies and software I plan to use these skills and build upon them in any later projects I do. 

http://www.slideshare.net/pollysnell44/powerpoint-evaluatio-nx

^ Here is one link to my evaluation powerpoint, however this version has no sound as it's on slideshare!

Ancillary Task 2 - Radio Advert - Final Product

https://soundcloud.com/pol2405/radio-advert-finished-30-secs 

Here is a link to my finished radio advert!

I decided to use a boat horn sound at the beginning of my advert, as a tool to alert my target demographic and grab their attention immediately. I chose to use a boat horn specifically because I felt that it suited the area which my newspaper was aiming to appeal for; being the residents of Portishead, a marina-side location. For the background noise of my advert, I decided to have the sound of gentle waves crashing with the sound of seagulls over it. I chose this sound instead of music so not to make my newspaper radio advert too overwhelming or unclear for my audience. The voice on my radio advert was actually my mum, who I asked to record for me as I felt she perfectly fitted the medium age for people in my target demographic of people aged 24-50. 

Ancillary Task 2 - Newspaper Radio Advert - Planning

Concept for my Radio Advert


As my newspaper is a local newspaper for Portishead area, which is a coastal town located  on the Severn Estuary and is well known for it's marina, I have opted to go for a theme based on a seaside type town. I chose to do this as I thought it would give my target demographic an appropriate impression of the area, and would understand the fact that the sounds inspired by the sea relate with the fact that my newspaper is based in Portishead.

Bearing this in mind, I have thought about which sounds would fit into this theme, for example:

Seagulls

Sound of waves crashing

Boat sounds - boat horns

Wind/rain sounds

Upbeat seaside music

Here are some examples of music that I think would be suitable for the radio advert I aim to create:

• http://www.soundsnap.com/seagulls_squawk_constantly_in_the_distance - This is an example of some of the seagull/bird sounds that I may wish to include in my radio advert. I thought using these kinds of sounds would help build up an impression of a seaside sort of town and would suitably relate to my newspaper setting.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyA5c-ajXyg - This is another example, although this sound effect includes the sounds of seagulls and the ocean waves crashing in the background.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sle3d8GllMI - Here is an example of a boat horn sound effect I found on youtube, which I thought would be a very effective sort of sound to include at the opening of my radio advert, in order to immediately hold people listening to the radio's attention and make them alert to what they will then hear in the radio advert.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjZyZ8IuSzw - Here I even decided to include some Hawaiian style music to give a sense of the theme I will be trying to put across. However, I don't plan on using music as slow as this, and as my newspaper is based in England I have decided not to have such sunny-sounding music in my advert as it will not suit the setting of my newspaper. 

Script for my Radio Advert

"Do you want to read important stories from your local area of Portishead?
Then look no further!
Gordano Express is the local newspaper for you.
It has tonnes of interesting stories, all about local people and local events. 
So come on, don't wait any longer.
Grab your copy, today!"

Ancillary Task 2 - Newspaper Radio Advert - Research

Radio is mainly seen as an entertainment source for primarily driving, and background noise at work. These are two key times to bear in mind when creating an advertisement, as you want to taylor the ad to suit those sorts of times and environments. For example, using loud, intrusive, fast music, people may not take in the information if they happened to be sat in a quiet, working office environment. 

If you buy any radio advertising, it is useful to be aired during drive time, as this is prime opportunity to catch people's attention when they have nothing else to focus on apart from driving. 

At home, radio use decreases as people these days can use iPods and computers to listen to the music they enjoy without necessarily needing to tune into a radio show. This way they can avoid commercial interruption. 

The radio industry understands that many people don't want to be interrupted with advertising while trying to listen to music. Many times radio stations use this fact in order to promote themselves by offering "more music, less commercials". 

However, there are many good reasons to advertise on radio to, such as the following:

1. "Research proves that radio regularly reaches consumers within 2 hours of their largest purchase of the day." It is convenient to advertise to these consumers when they are on their way to the shops in their cars!
2. Radio has the potential to be played anywhere, at home, work or at play. This means products have a good chance of being advertised to the right person at the right time.
3. Radio sells with intimacy - some could argue that without the flashy images and bright text used in some television or newspaper adverts, radio allows the message to be put across more gently, making people more inclined to purchase certain items.
4. Sounds on radio adverts can evoke emotion from the audience, as they have the ability to use their imaginations when picturing the images suggested by the sounds a company or product manufacturer chooses to put in their advertisement. For example, a child laughing or a large band playing.
5. Radio devotes less than 1/5 of it's time to advertising, or roughly 10 minutes of advertising per hour. So it is less cluttered with information, less adverts will make the target demographic pay more attention and memory to each advert individually.
6. The costs to advertise via radio grow less than any other form of advertising.
7. Newspapers and TV are 'reach' media, which means they reach large varying numbers of people. Which is obviously a very useful thing when trying to advertise a product. However, psychologists say that "consumers need to be exposed to an advert or a message at least 3 times before the information begins to penetrate". This is made easier by radio advertising, as this way smaller companies can afford to do get enough frequency to effectively sell their product.  
8. Radio allows you to place your advert in a place where your target demographic are likely to hear it. Radio's targeting ability based on music genre and type of radio station can save companies money.
9. Only 1 advert can be played and listened to at once on the radio! So when you pay for advertising space, the time in which your advert is played, all the attention is simply one the company's one product. Unlike in newspapers or magazines perhaps, where 10 different adverts can all appear on the same page at the same time. 

Also, as part of my radio advert research, I decided to have a look at some existing radio adverts that I have heard in the past, and analyse what music, sound effects and voices they used in their adverts so I could use some of these ideas in my own work. I also thought by doing this I could begin to get an understanding of what makes an effective radio advert. 

 

The first radio advert I chose to analyse was for The Medical Foundation and it was called 'Future'. This advert begins with just a man speaking, and he has a fairly humorous voice and is speaking about what he wants to happen after he dies. "I want hundreds of people in inconsolable tears!" he says about his funeral, (in a jokey way). This is a clever way of attracting people's attention as they might be initially quite surprised at this man's opinion's on his own funeral! By having a middle aged man's voice, this suggests that this is the sort of age that this radio advert is aiming to appeal for. It would be inappropraite for example to have a child's voice talking about their own funeral, and people may take more offence if this was the case! After listening to this radio advert, I have began to consider what sort of age I wish to have speaking over my radio advert. I will opt to have someone older, with a more mature voice as my target demographic is for people aged 24-50, so having someone young speak over my advert may not be entirely appropriate when aiming to reach my audience. It also includes some more serious facts about the foundation, to balance out the advert after hearing the man speak humorously about his own funeral. This advert has no music over it whatsoever, and I think this is effective in this case so not to detract from the the information the man is trying to get across. Before listening to this advert, I had not considered not using any music at all over my advert, but after hearing this I think I will think more carefully about whether music is entirely necessary for my own work, or whether this will just make it difficult to understand and make out the information. I will experiment with Garage-band and Audacity when it comes to creating my own product to see which way works best.

The second radio advert I chose to analyse was for The Carphone Warehouse and is called 'It's a Miracle'. This advert again, like the advert for The Medical Foundation, has no music playing over the top of the man speaking. Again however, I think it works very well and is effective in making sure that the information in the radio advert is put across to the target demographic Carphone Warehouse is trying to appeal to. I like the conversational style of this advert, where there is a clear dialogue between the man who owns the phone, and the voice representing his 'poorly' or broken phone. Again like the advert before, there is an element of humour to this advert and I have found in my research that this is a very common feature of radio adverts, as it helps make the advert stick in people's heads without the help of visual aids that one might achieve from using television or magazine advertising perhaps. This advert again used a man's voice, but I think in my own advert I may opt for using a female voice to go against the conventions of a lot of adverts using male voices.

Here is my third radio advert I chose to analyse for Thames Water, which is called 'Puddle'. This advert differs slightly from the previous two, because there is a soft, jazz-type music playing quietly in the background behind the man's speaking voice. This upbeat sound is effective because it makes the advert seem more exciting and may make it stick in people's heads more effectively. Again, this advert has chosen to use a male narrator so for my own advert I am going to use a female speaker to challenge this convention. In the background, the voice for the man's wife comes through but quite softly, suggesting she is perhaps in another room calling to him. This gives the advert the feeling that it's recorded in someone's home, which is a clever technique used to suggest that the people speaking in the advert are just like the people they are aiming to appeal for, making the target audience feel that they can relate with these people and therefore will follow their instructions to try and save water for the better for everyone. Out of the three adverts I have analysed so far, this one is my preferred one because I think the use of two people of both genders is more effective in addressing an audience. However in my own advert, I don't plan on using the conversational technique used by many other companies. I may just use one, female voice to speak my entire advert to make it clear and easy to understand, with no distractions. Like I said before though, I will have to wait until I've experimented with Garage-band and Audacity, the programmes I plan on using to create my final radio advert. 

Ancillary Task 1 - Newspaper Poster - Final Product

This is my final newspaper poster which I created on InDesign. 

I used the tagline: "Grab your copy today!" because I felt like it suited my image of a hand 'grabbing' the newspaper and made it clear what  my poster was advertising. 

I edited my photograph using Photoshop, and decided to cut around the outline of my image of a hand holding a copy of my newspaper in order to layer it on top of a plain white background. 

Looking at my final product, if I were to make this poster again I would use perhaps a grey background so the text wouldn't appear to be 'floating' around my image. I think by using a darker coloured background my poster would be easier to make out and recognise as a poster. 

Ancillary Task 1 - Newspaper Poster - Planning

For my own newspaper poster, I have chosen to base my ideas on this poster for The Sun newspaper which I included in my research: 

Before I began planning my own newspaper poster, I thought about the key elements of design that I would have to keep in mind in the creation of my publication:

 

• I thought about what style of photography I would be using, and felt it would be important to use an actual photograph of my newspaper itself, instead of using metaphorical photography like some of the other newspapers used in my research, for example The Daily Mail used a high heeled shoe to represent women's interest as a topic in their newspaper.
 
• I also considered whether I would be using colour on my poster, and decided that this would be a good feature to have, in order to attract my target demographic's attention an compete amongst other publication's posters. I also found in my research that most other newspaper posters featured colour on them, allowing me to recognise this as a positive decision for my own work.
 
• Additionally, I thought about whether I was going to feature any text on my newspaper poster. Initially I planned not to include any, but then decided against this idea in order to make my newspaper poster as clear as possible.

 

I have chosen to select this poster (pictured above) to base the creation of my own design on as I think this is an effective use of photography  used to advertise this specific newspaper. This poster makes it easy to decipher what newspaper is being advertised, in this case The Sun. In my own newspaper poster, I will specifically position my newspaper in my model's hand so the masthead can be easily read by my target demographic. 
I will use a colour photograph, because I plan on having either a white or a grey background and I aim to make the hand holding the newspaper stand out over this background.

 

I intend on using Photoshop to edit my image, and use the select tool to cut out the section of my newspaper in the hand, so I can then lay it on either a white background or a grey background. I will test to see which of these look better, and plan on justifying each decision I make in the process.