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

As well as producing the newspaper, me and Alice had to produce two ancillary tasks: a local radio advert, along side the 'Portishead Beacon'. The purpose of the local radio advert and poster was to promote the 'Portishead Beacon'.

• The radio advert's production was difficult at first, due to the fact that no other local newspaper radio advert exists and therefore there is a lack of inspiration and judgment. However, despite this occurrence, we feel that we have created a authentically sounding radio advert, encompassing the conventions (and in some cases challenging) of a radio advert (see previous blog for details on this issue). The radio advert continues to emphasise the local community of Portishead, by encompassing stereotypical West Country/ Somerset accents, that perhaps only the people of Portishead would know about and accept. Additionally, the radio advert coincides with our newspaper, because it continues the theme of the 'Beacon' (a lighthouse). More than likely, only local people would know about the lighthouse that is situated in Potishead and therefore the locality of the area is embellished. The newspaper's slogan ('Shining a light on you') is used again and this combines well with the main product.
  
• The poster, we feel, also compliments the newspaper well. Like the radio advert, our newspaper keeps up the theme of locaility and community spirit (one of our main aims for the 'Portishead Beacon' newspaper). The fact that the free book was written by a local author, reinforces this. Also, the loyalty factor of the newspaper also pays dividends towards community spirit and local pride; if local people continue to buy the 'Portishead Beacon,' they will recieve a prize for their commitment to the local community. The colour scheme also compliments the newspaper. A poster's main purpose is to attract the attention of potential buyers and let the product essentially sell itself. The purple/pink/purple colours in the poster could attract the attention of someone passing by and may persuade them to buy the newspaper (which is not as bright and colourful as the poster- its job is to inform the local community of local events that have unfolded. Typically, a more formal approach has to be adopted). The poster could also link in with the 'local heroes' page (Josie Reese could be considered a 'local hero').

Overall, we are happy with the result of the two ancillary tasks and think they compliment the main production task well. We also discovered that many newspapers create a radio advert and poster. purely to promote the newspaper and hope that sales increase.

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

We used several new media technologies to produce our newspaper, radio advert and poster.

• The internet ('internet explorer' and 'safari')- This was an invaluable aid in all aspects of our A2 coursework. This technology was primarily used for research of other local newspapers already available to buy, that we often took inspiration from e.g. 'The Evening Post' (see earlier post for more details). However, the internet also encompassed several resources that were important to the production of our main and subsidiary tasks e.g. sound effects for radio advert. It was also interesting using an internet explorer on an iMac computer, learning that more than one type of internet explorer is available to use for researching, planning, constructing and evaluating any project.
• 'Adobe Photoshop'- this technological software was used to manipulate photos. We also built upon the skills we learnt at AS level. Me and Alice, since our AS productions, had partially forgotten how to cut out images and place them onto another background. Fortunately, once we began using the software at the start of the year, memories on how to do the operation flooded back to us and we were able to manipulate photos in this way, for example, the photo of the dance teacher and student in the 'millionaire saves dance group' story was manipulated (the main image was placed onto the carpet background). Another manipulation technique we learnt was adjusting a photo's contrast/brightness, colours and so on. The dance group photo was initially very dark, so we had to adjust the brightness, contrast and colours, in order to make the subjects clearer and easier to see. Ultimately, this software package was mainly used in the production of our media studies coursework.
• 'Garage Band'- This software package was available on the iMac computer. We used this technological software package to produce our radio advert. In using the software, we learnt about mixing levels, panning and the layering different tracks. Additionally, we learnt how to download sounds from various different free sound bite websites and upload them to the software.
• The blog- the blog was mainly used for evaluations. Throughout the blog, me and Alice have written about the process of production and have continuously evaluated the success of any operation and have also gained an outsider's opinion/evaluation, for example, feedback on our newspaper pre, during and post application and similarly with the radio advert. The blog was also a great way of documenting the process of producing a newspaper, radio advert and poster and perhaps, in some ways, emulates the production of newspapers that we took inspiration from. Evaluations were essential to our A2 coursework, because often, one can be so enwrapped in one's work, that often an outsider's view is required.
• 'Microsoft publisher'- this type of technological software was mainly used to plan and construct our products. From previous posts, the reader may have noticed that when we planned the initial layout of our newspaper, we used 'Microsoft Publisher'. We used this type of technological software, because desktop publishing programmes are generally easy to use and amendments can be made easily and quickly.
• iMac computer- this technological piece of hardware encompassed many of the programmes we used above. Therefore, the iMac computer essentially constructed, evaluated, planned and researched our newspaper, radio advert and poster.
• A3 newspaper- to make the newspaper look as authentic as possible, we printed the final copy of it in an A3 size (the size of an average genuine local newspaper).

In conclusion, modern technology in general was essential in all aspects of our A2 media studies coursework. Had technology not have advanced and been available for home use, we doubt very much that we would have been able to have completed the coursework.

Evaluation

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

throughout the blog, every time we have inserted a new piece into our newspaper we have mentioned why we have put it in due to the conventions of newspapers that we have previously studied.

As we were making a newspaper we were limited to the amount of creativity and use of our own imaginative ideas as newspapers often stuck with the same conventions. There were obvious conventions that we had to use, which were:

• The newspaper name



• Types of pictures



• Slogan



• Logo etc...

but we were still able to design them the way that we wanted. With the logo we chose something that would compliment our headline and fit in with the theme of our magazine. As our newspaper name was the Portishead beacon, and our newspaper was about providing the people of Portishead with news we thought a logo of the lighthouse in Portishead was a good idea, as the lighthouse shines a light on people and guides them, our newspaper provides them with news and also it is a recognisable symbol in Portishead.

In our research we looked a lot at other newspapers and the types of stories that they published. We also asked the local residents of Portishead about what they were most interested in and what they like to find in their local newspapers. As the results were varied we decided to cover the main types of stories that our target audience liked and ones that were covered in other newspapers. In our newspaper we decided to insert something that had not been found in other newspapers which was the local heroes page. We decided this was going to be a weekly feature page focused on someone in the community who deserves it. This would attract more people in the local area to read the newspaper making it more successful as they may know the person. It also makes it a more of a local newspaper as people can get involved and have a chance themselves to be published on this page.

The types of photos that we chose to publish in our newspaper followed closely to the ones that were published in real newspapers. For example the dance photo ....

this was a common set up of a photo as it gave a clear picture of all of the girls faces. Also the outfits their wearing you can tell they do some sort of sport and the place where the photo is taken straight away gives a clear indication of what the story is going to be about which is, I think, a main aim when a photo is published.

In both of the local 'heroes' page we put in action photos. Here we challenged conventions of a real media product as when we conducted our research most of the photos found in the main section were posed or set up to look a certain way, the only action photos were found in the sports section at the end of the newspaper. So by putting action photos on these pages we were trying something different.

On the July front page we decided to put a panel down the side of different stories found in the newspaper as we found this was a common convention found in several different newspapers, but in the September one we changed it to a story so that our local newspaper did not show the same layout every time it was published, giving it a variety of looks but still recognisable by the name, logo and colour scheme.

To go along with the change in image we also chose different styles of photos to publish on the front page. On the July front page we used various different shots from close ups to long shots of the victim in the main story but on the September front page we did not have any photos of people but of something that was very recognisable to the people of Portishead. By doing this we thought it would show the variation of stories covered by the 'Portishead Beacon' on the front page, following conventions of other newspapers.

The layout of both of the front pages were very different to show we didn't produce the same layout everytime and that we were able to be creative givin that we had to stick to 'newspaper guidlines'. On the July front page we had the headline and story at the bottem with the pictures just above it, where as on the September front page we moved the headline to the top and put the story and picture below it. Either way, we still felt that the layout of both front covers looked effective.

When we researched adverts we came accross bussiness that were advertised quite frequently, resturants, hairdressers etc, so we thought it was important to follow the same sort of bussiness but design them the way that we wanted. With the resturant one we made up our own name of a resturant and designed it the way that we wanted. Even though we never came accross a taxi advert we thought it would be a good idea to insert one, firstly to not strictly follow the same adverts published in local newspapers but also taxi's apply to pretty much everyone and we thought it would be a useful advert to insert.

Some of the basic common conventions of newspapers we felt we had to use to make our newspaper look authentic. These incluced the captions under all of the main photos, date, newspaper slogan, newspaper name and logo at the top of the local heros pages and full date also at the top of those pages. These conventions, we felt gave our newspaper a more authentic look.

On the september local heros page we have inserted a pull quote in the middle of the text. In one of the local newspapers we looked at we found that they published specifit quotes by people they had interviewd next to a photo of their face. We followed this similar idea but changed it slightly by not publishing a photo, as we thought there was no need due to the whole artical being about the person who said it, and by it being a quote that was in the artical but just shortened down to become a 'pull quote'

Another main convention that we thought we had to follow was the short sharp headlines used by all newspapers. By using these types of headlines it should draw the reader in making them want to read the artical straight away. On our July newspaper we came up with Stopped, Stolen and left Stranded. With this headline we thought it was 'catchy' due to the alliteration of the 3 S's and we feel like it makes the reader want to know what happened. One of our headlines on our local heros page, 'spun gold', can be adressed in two different ways. One of them is; as the person in our photo is holding a medal the 'gold' bit can be addressed as a gold medal and also 'spun gold' is a phrase commonly used in tabble tennis which is that our artical is about