Kyle: Ancillary Task: Newspaper Advertisement Plan

One of our choices for our ancillary tasks is to create a newspaper advertisement.

We have agreed that we aim to use the advertisement in papers such as The Sunday Times, The Times and the Guardian (for our final draft we will use the house style of the "Culture" pull-out magazine within The Sunday Times to demonstrate it's effectiveness.) We have also agreed on other key features of the article:

1. The time and date the programme will be shown will be in mid-December, and after 9:00pm (we will finalise this decision in due course).

2. The blur should include a brief overview of the documentary, whilst not condescending any aspects of the programme itself. It will also include a brief opinion from a "critic", hopefully strengthening the promotional level further.

3. The photo used will be a still from the documentary. Our options are to either use one of the hosts, both of the hosts or the initial title sequence.

4. The advert will be shown as if it's a "Critics Choice", giving it an extra promotional strength.

Here is an example product of what we intend to follow:

Both: Planned Photoshoot

For one of the auxiliary tasks we have chosen, we are required to create a double page spread in a TV listings magazine. For this double page spread, we will require a photoshoot to be undertaken to attach to the text.

Props

We will require only a few props for this photoshoot. We will require a table, a television set, a games console of our choice and an assortment of relatable games cases to accompany the console. These objects all relate to the topic of the documentary. Games posters and other diegetic items may also be used to add to the mis-en-scene of the location

Location

As for the location, the plan is to use a room that has either nothing on the walls or has easily-removed items that can be replaced with diegetic objects and our props. The room will need to be spacious as we need to fit a rectangular table and four people into the room without anything appearing to be cramped. Lighting will be diegetic and (should we decide on the appropriate shot) may emit from the television set itself into our actor's faces to give it more of an effect. 

Actors/Members of Group Present

The actors required will be the host's of the documentary, Amber Rickell and Kyran Lowe. As well as these two, there will only be one member of our group available to attend the photoshoot and operate the camera equipment. Callum Petch will be the one doing so, as the other member (Kyle Edwards) is due to take an examination that would conflict with the scheduled photoshoot.

Costumes

The costumes intended will be similar to the theme we used to film the documentary; clothes that don't promote any un-related items, but instead that are either just plain or publicise game-related brands/quotes. This will let us keep strictly to the genre in question.

Both: Copyright Disclaimer

We acknowledge that we have used copyrighted music, game footage and images in the final production of our documentary. However, in the Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. This documentary is purely for educational purposes and is not intended for direct public use.

Kyle: Auxilliary Task Product Research: Newspaper Advertisement

As previously explained, we need to heighten awareness of the documentary. One additional method we can use to do this is by advertising in appropriate magazines using newspaper advertisements. The problem with using only one type of advertising is that our main target audience may not pay attention to. In our case, it may be that not everybody buys TV listing magazines and, instead, buys newspapers daily which, in a few cases, also contain a guide for certain TV channels. This would make it an ideal place to advertise our documentary further.

The Times

The Times is a well-known British newspaper, meaning it already is well-established and sells well. Advertising in this paper as well as listing magazines would mean that our documentary would be getting more publicity. Also, unlike some TV listing magazines such as What's On TV, they do not automatically give "spotlight space" to popular soaps or programmes that are on daily, but try and give each programme equal publicity, with rarer programmes getting slightly more than the traditional daily programmes in some cases. Each featured channel also gets equal column length, giving some programmes the opportunity to "sell themselves" to those reading this section. Also featured in the section are detailed reviews by popular critics for the magazine on some of the programmes listed (mainly the unique ones), providing an opportunity for us to promote our documentary to a higher extent. This is something we should aim for when making our advertisement.

Both: Our Documentary Questionnaire

We have created a questionnaire for our documentary.  A sample questionnaire has been uploaded below.

Questionnaire

For all questions, please state why you chose your answer.

Did the hosts keep you interested the whole way through?

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How was the audio? Was the narration always clear?

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What did you think of the title sequence?

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Did you find the on-screen graphics suitable or distracting?

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Do you feel that the file footage used was appropriate to a gaming documentary?

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Were the backing tracks suitable for the documentary in general?

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Did the interview segment hold your interest?

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Were there any parts or segments of the documentary that you found distracting?

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On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being “abysmal” and 5 being “fantastic”), what would you score our documentary? (Ring around your answer)

1 2 3 4 5

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Is there anything you would have liked us to have added to our documentary?

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Both: Final Cut Of Documentary

This is the final cut of our documentary.  The upload here on this blog has been mixed-down and reduced in quality to actually get it to upload.  The version that you will receive on disc to mark will be of far better quality.

Both: Film Schedules and Storyboards

During the filming of our project, we have been creating storyboards so that we are able to point out what we want the actors to be physically doing during the recording. We have also been planning the schedules so we are able to identify who is needed for which sections of the filming, what they are required to wear and where it would take place. We have scanned examples of us conducting these:

Example of one of the storyboards produced for paragraphs 5,6 and 7 of the script:

Example of one of the film schedule's produced for the filming of paragraph's 6 & 7 from the script: