Ancillary tasks - Radio advert script.

RADIO ADVERT SCRIPT:
(Duration: 30 seconds)

Q. Have you ever noticed the changing ‘preferences’ of today’s generation?

Q. Have ‘indoor activities’ taken their course on the young minds or the ‘outdoor activities’ paved their way through the impacts of indoor activities?

Discover the answers from people among you from CHANNEL 7 present INDOORS ALTERS OUTDOORS, a documentary capturing the latest priorities of the youth of today!

PREMIER ON 7^TH MAY 2013, EXCLUSIVELY ON AAG.



My picture while coming up the radio advert script

Ancillary task - Ideas for the radio advert.

posted by: Aiman and sabaina

As we have gone through the codes, conventions and research of our radio advert, its time that we write the script of our radio advert. We have a lot of options for it. We can either straight away ask the narrator to narrate the topic to the listeners, but this form would have been too dull and mundane or even give the impression of us imposing the idea on the listeners which is not what we are aiming for.

We could give general information regarding the main elements of the topic and then give an introduction of the topic itself.

So, after a lot of discussion we finally agreed upon one advert. We decided to start the advert with a question or two, this would create curiosity among the audience and they could actually relate the questions to themselves. Those questions will be linked to the topic of ours. Then, the narrator will introduce the title of our documentary, compelling the advance to watch the documentary in order to find the answers to the questions raised earlier. We will make sure that the narrator adds a natural and enthusiastic feel to the narration so that the audience feels the same way after listening to advert. 

Ancillary Tasks - Ideas for the Newspaper advert (Changes)

Posted by: Sabaina and Aiman

There have been a change in plans in regard to our newspaper advert. Earlier, we decided on an idea which consisted of a picture of a kid who would be segregated from the middle with the help of a think line. One half of the picture will be having a cricket bat or tennis racket i.e. anything related to an outdoor activity. In the other half the kid will be holding some console in his hand. This was to incorporate the major elements of our documentary i.e. indoors alter outdoors. With this picture we managed to capture both the aspects. However, we released that this idea has been used by many other film posters due to which it is very common.  Example the poster below of the movie 'Ice princess'




We did not want to make something that would give an impression that we copied an exact same idea from another media text. So, we started to think of another one. We came up with three main ideas which we decided to make:

1) To draw a cartoon picture of a cricket bat and a remote control of a console. In this we planned to show a race between in these. The bat and the remote were to be drawn in a way that the viewer had the impression that they both were running towards something. Then, we thought of drawing a kid sitting in front of the bat and the remote control, looking at them two. The idea was to show that the indoor and outdoor activities were having a race of reaching towards the kid first. It connoted the competition between these two activities these days. 

2) The second idea we had was to draw two IPhone, from front and black both, the front was supposed to have a sketched picture of Dawood from the documentary in the screen of the IPhone and the back would have had the logo of our documentary i.e. Indoor Alter Outdoors, which has been posted earlier in our blog. This defined the transformation of children from outdoor to indoor activities with the help of the picture of an IPhone on the poster.

3) The last idea was to take a picture from the documentary and sketch it from top to bottom on Photoshop. The picture had to select in a way that had some prop in reference to the documentary that could have explained the idea well. After the sketching the logo and the dates were to written in reference to the codes and conventions of the documentary. The idea was simple yet very effective in conveying the message as it was to be extracted from the documentary itself.

After a long discussion, we decided to go with the third idea. This is because the idea was very much in reference to the documentary and we did not want to take the newspaper advert over the top. The newspaper adverts are supposed to be comprehensive and created with brevity and we believed that this idea would be the most suitable from all the other as they all had a risk of giving a very artificial look to the audience.

Ancillary task - Ideas for the newspaper advert.

The first idea we came up with had a cartoon picture which showed the two aspects of the topic. One the left side we showed a playground with swings, see-saws, badminton rackets laying idle on the ground with cricket bats. In that, we drew only one kid in the picture. In contrast, there was picture having a sofa on which we drew a lot of kids holding consoles, Wii, PSP etc. sitting in front of a television. Now, the main idea lies in the number of kids we showed in the two pictures. By putting only child in the play and a lot of kids in the living room, we wanted to give an idea of how a lot of children have been attracted so much by the technology these days that many are not interested in going outside in parks etc. Whereas, only one kid in the Park connotes how the number of children visiting parks have decreased and the reason for this change was displayed simultaneously in other picture. However, this idea was not appreciated by our media studies teacher as according to him we were imposing our idea on the audience, whereas, an advert must have a neutral message to give to the consumers. We certainly are not aiming at a conclusion in our documentary and so this idea was discarded.

Here is a picture of a VERY rough sketch that I made of the first idea for the advert.

However, after a lot of discussion with our media studies teacher, we finalized another idea which not only adapted a neutral approach but also managed to define the basis of our documentary more accurately. Now, we are going to create an advert of one kid who will be segregated by a thin line from the middle. One side will be dedicated to the outdoor activities, showing bat or maybe a tennis racket in his hand, whereas, the other half will connote the indoor activities by showing a console in his hand. This advert will aid in creating curiosity aiming the audience to find which side has have a more impact on the youth. The conclusion will be left upon the audience to make after watching the documentary.

Ancillary tasks - What makes an Ad attractive for the consumers?

Posted by Aiman and Sabaina: 

We did a lot of research before making our radio and newspaper Adverts. We kept in mind the codes and conventions of advertisements.

While we were doing the research for our adverts we realized to use the audience theory so that's easy for us to target our audience. One of the audience theory we applied for our radio ad was the hypodermic syringe theory. It will directly inject the message to our viewers.This theory basically is a one directional communication process where the audience wont question the producer.

For our newspaper advert we applied the The uses and gratification model theory/opposite of effects theory. As newspaper ad is accessible for everyone so while making the ad for it we kept in mind this theory, that audience is active. It uses texts for its own pleasure and the power lies within the audience and not the producers. The audience has to decided. We are just giving them information.

To make an ad attractive for the viewers its important to be innovative so that the audience does not switch to another radio station when the ad comes. As a radio advert is not visual so colours and other visual aspects cannot be used to attract the audience. The main strong aspects of this kind of medium is the person who is narrating the ad, the idea and the background music.  

Ancillary tasks - Codes and conventions of a radio advert.

Posted by Sabaina and Aiman

Its important to know the codes and conventions while making an radio ad.
Radio ad codes and conventions
-       Includes a voiceover by the narrator
-       Background music
-       They are usually 20-40 sec long
-       The channel is mentioned where the media text is going to be played on
-       Catchy tagline is used
We are going to keep in mind all this codes and conventions so that we are able to come up with a well made advert.

Ancillary task - Codes and conventions of a newspaper advert.

There are several codes and conventions that are taken into account while constructing a newspaper advert. After research on these credentials, I came across a lot of different pointers which confused me a bit. However, the mutual ones I found helped in forming a clearer picture of the proper ways of making and advert; the conditions are as follows:

• There is always a main image which portrays the entire idea of the media text. This image is mostly simple in nature as to clearly send out the topic on which the product is based on.
• There is a logo. Logos are normally placed at the bottom right of the advert.
• The channel logo is incorporated on the advert as well on which the media text is supposed to be aired; augmented with the website and the time of air mentioned at the bottom left of the advert. 
• The text is written with brevity, considering that the newspaper adverts are small in size. So, in order to prevent both the image and the text from jumbling with each other, the written part is normally kept very short. 
• There is a slogan. A slogan must not be confused with the logo of the final product. Slogans are solely based on defining the meaning of the product in a more woolly and informal way, as to make the advert catchier.
• The color combinations used in the advert are interlinked with the story background of the product in order to make it relatable and cohesive.
• In some adverts, the mise-en-scene could also be displayed to give reference to the media text aimed upon.

The two pictures below are newspaper adverts of two different films, taken from the internet and labelled accordingly by us.