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

My Poster

My Front Cover


 

For the Media coursework we had to create a one - two minute soap opera trailer introducing a new soap.

We decided to aim our soap opera at teenagers as we ourselves found the audience relatable and understand what others would like as we have a similar perspective of entertainment.

As big fans of E4's teen drama Skins, we thought it would be appropriate to create a soap opera similar to this. We wanted to be fearless and be able to tackle any issue appropriately in our own soap. This is why we decided to look at homosexuality and drug abuse. Two common, but tender subjects that a lot of teens are familiar with, if not directly involved in.

E4 logo

Skins cast

Thus, Boys' Village was created, the title coming from its filming location, it connoted a sense of child like fun and although predominately a male title 'boys'' our tag line let us appeal to both sexes. 'Boys' Village, where the girls come to play.'


So our main task was to create a soap opera trailer. After we had done this, we had to create a Front Cover of a magazine promoting our new soap and a Poster as the ancillary tasks.

Photoshop

We got to explore and gain new skills whilst using Photoshop we made our front covers and posters. The whole experience was fun as we got to do a photo shoot and use professional cameras. However, in our heavily computerate generation today we didn't think posters and front covers had the best place to gain a wider audience, unless they were digital posters and front covers.

Here is one of the main characters, Paige. In the film she has blonde hair but in our photo shoot, poster and front cover she has brown hair. 

Between creating our film and our poster one of our main characters, who we based one of our posters and front covers on dyed her hair. However this was not a problem as it just shows how teens like to change their appearances and ideas about themselves a lot, and we were able to show this from our trailer to the poster.

I got my inspiration from a Radio Times magazine featuring Robbie Williams. I changed the football for a party blower and have had them pulling a similar pose but have decided to use different, brighter colours to intrigue a younger, wider audience.

I decided to base my front cover on the drug dealing character Karl. We got to take over 1000 photo's on our photo shoot so I had plenty of choice to look through and choose from. I decided to do take a photo of Karl with a party popper in his hand like a cigarette. During the photo shoot we had lots of balloons, party poppers, hats and blowers to create a party like feel to fit in with the 'parties, pills and puberty' feel we wanted to show.

Here are an array of photos taken from the photo shoot, there were over 1000 photos taken on two professional cameras, one camera belonged to my friend Nia who was also in the film and the other camera belonged to the schools ICT technician.

Here is the original picture of Zak. We used party hats and blowers to play on the 'parties, pills and puberty' feel we wanted to create. 

The second ancillary text we had to do was produce a poster to promote our new Soap Opera. After I had chosen the picture I didn't want to change it much. I felt adding text on top would be enough, I wanted it to be simple but not boring. To get a colourful background on the word 'BOYS VILLAGE' I used a simple text font on photo shop and made the writing transparent. Then I included a picture of a rave/party to get this effect. To make my poster appeal to a younger teen audience that I wanted I included a code for them to scan, this would then take them to the e4 website which was linked on the side of the picture.

On the left is a close up of the font I used and the image I put under it. On the right I  put the image that I used.

code used

Both my ancillary texts complemented my trailer for my soap opera in different ways. During the trailer we do not use any party hats, balloons, etc. But we show the teenagers having fun and drinking, suggesting at a party like feel. Especially as we were using 'parties, pills and puberty' to explain our soap opera. The alliterative tripled phrase excites our teenage audience and shows three different area's of life that they will be familiar with.

When putting on a media showcase for the staff and upper years of the school I got to use my poster to promote the event. I added some information about the event so people knew what was happening. Here is the poster;