Print and radio codes and conventions.

I have researched a variety of print adverts to gather information to build codes and conventions of a print advert.
It is key that the print advert should have one main focus image which is kept simple from editing and colour is used lightly.It should be directly involved with the documentary and have some significance to it.

From this print advert you can see the simple image of Jamie Oliver over a plain background but the image used is directly linked to the program.

An ident is always shown for adverts for example the ITV1 or channel 4 logo which ever channel it is being shown on and usually shows a website. It most commonly used in the right hand side of the screen.

This print advert shows the channel four ident which is clearly presented on the right hand side of the image.

Other graphics are kept simple, showing date and time of the documentary and slogans are sometimes used. Graphics are kept very plain, clear and to the point and little colour is used so as not to detract from the main image

Here is an example of the simple graphics used shownin black font and doesn't draw too much attention from the main image shown. Also it shows a tag line with the channel four website undernearth the ident.

I am aware that these are not all documentary print adverts but as they are less popular it was harder to find examples to demonstrate as clearly the codes and conventions of a print advert. Also i have used examples for Channel 4 as there were not documentaries with imagery available from ITV1 and not as wide a range as channel 4.

Radio advert.
Radio trailers like the print advert should give imformation about the program of the times, dates and channel of the documetnary.
It should have a constant music bed with relevant music.
The same voice over should be used from the documetnary to link them. The voice over introduces the topic and details of the program and with puns and questions to draw an audience in to want to watch it.
It should also use relevant extracts of the program for example main parts of the documentary to show the audience an insight.
The radio trailer should be played at a relevant time for the target audience to hear for example, our target audience is the elderly and housewives so it would be played in the daytime.
I have used radio adverts from youtube.com as it was difficult finding documetnary radio trailers over the radio to record.

Edit decision list.

This is our edit decision list. It's really useful to us as we planned it out before we started editing so we knew how we wanted it to look, and when we got into editing we just had to select the sections we wanted. Some bits of the edit decision list have been changed because when we put it together some bits we felt didn't look as good when we actually saw them but from our log in sheets we could change round for what would look the best.

Log in sheets

This is the log in sheets we did. They are very useful to us because whe editing we don't have to look through our whole documentary but instead can chose the bits we needs eg questions like 'which is your favourite brand of tea' in vox pops we can find them on our log in sheets and cut them out and then select the number it is from our log in sheet to transfer onto our edit decision list.

Audience feedback

Audience Feedback Questionnaire

1. How would you rate the documentary out of 10? (10 being the highest) ......

2. Did the poster/radio advert make you want to watch the documentary? (Circle yes or no)
Yes/No

3. Did the on-screen graphics help you understand the documentary more?
Yes/No

4. Did you notice the music?
Yes/No

5. How well do you think the various music fitted in with the documentary? (Rate out of 10) ......

6. How do you think this documentary could be improved?

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7. Would you watch our documentary again?
Yes/No

8. Did the print advert catch your attention?
Yes/No

9. How could the printout be improved to make it more noticeable?

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10. Did the radio advert appeal to you?
Yes/No



11. Which media product do you think was most effective? (circle one)

Documentary Print advert Radio advert


12. Do you think the voiceover suited the documentary?
Yes/No

13. Which was your favourite part of the documentary?

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14. Do you have any comments on the editing?

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The results we gained from these questionnaire gave us a lot of information which we can then evaluate.
Question one shows how our documentary was overall popular as 10 out of 15 people rated our documentary ten out of ten.
The results we gained from these questionnaire gave us a lot of information which we can then evaluate.
Question one shows how our documentary was overall popular as 10 out of 15 people rated our documentary ten out of ten.


When we asked our target audience if the radio and print advert make you want to watch the documentary? Twelve people said that yes it does and only three said that it didn’t, this shows that our other ancillary texts were successful. Those three people who said that the other media texts did not make them want to watch the documentary said that it was because the topic did not interest them.
All of our target audience said that the graphics did help them understand the documentary. So this means that we were correct to use them in our documentary.
We asked our target audience if they noticed the music in our documentary and fourteen said yes they did and only one said that they didn’t. This means that overall we were right to find tea related songs because the audience would notice if it was out of place. However, to justify the one person who said that they didn’t notice the music this could have been avoided if we had a constant music bed throughout the documentary. We did have a constant music bed but then we received comment that the lyrics in the songs were distracting from the voiceover and other content. So we should have found some more relevant instrumental music.


In this question you can see how we got more positive answers on the music fitting in with the documentary. However, I do think that this could be improved by the same point as before, by finding relevant instrumental music so that we could have a constant music bed so that the music could play a more important role in our documentary.
Number six in our questionnaire gave us a lot of audience feedback which can be analyzed. The question was how could our documentary be improved, we did receive a few answers saying that it didn’t need to be improved or that they wanted it to be longer as it was very good. However, this was not possible as we had to stick to the strict five minute maximum length. We also received some good critical feedback such as two people said they wanted to see more of Janet, this was an issue in the editing process as we had trouble editing down Janet as she gave all good footage. In the end we had to cut it right down so that we could show some of our other interviews and have a variety of footage. Other comments which we received were that the documentary needed more facts and information on the origins of tea. We did plan to feature some footage on where tea comes from, but when we were editing we realized that we had filmed too much footage so that meant that we had to cut things from our running order.
We asked our target audience if they would watch our documentary again and all of them said that they would, which gives us positive feedback and tells us that our documentary would be successful on television.
The next question was did the documentary make sense to you and there was only one person who said no. This can be justified because we challenged the convention of narrative with Janet in our documentary and we decided to keep coming back to her and to give the audience a break from the factual narrative.


Just over half of the people we asked this question said yes which suggests that it wasn’t a successful advert. However, when we asked them to explain their advert they said that the teapot stands out but the words don’t. When analysing this answer we can see that this keeps in with the print adverts codes and conventions as the image is meant to be the centre of attention and the text is not meant to distract the audience from this. So this feedback is successful as it shows we have kept with the conventions of print adverts.
When we then asked how our print advert could be improved they said that a different font should be used, the words should be clearer and a different coulour should be used. Since we have had this feedback we have changed our print advert so that it does this.

As you can see from our new image on the left we have changed the colour and font of the text and moved it to make it more visible. Also we got told that the words should be bigger than the image to improve it, but we are not going to make this change as it would go against the print advert convention.

This graph again shows that a small percentage thought that our radio advert appealed to them. A reason for this could be that they did not like the music underneath the content, as we used classical music this could mean that the classical music made the documentary look like it was aimed at an older generation.

This graph shows that our target audience thought that our documentary was our best product and this is good because the others are only meant to support it and make others aware of the documentary. So our documentary should be the most affective.
We the asked if our target audience thought that our voiceover was effective and only one person said no and most people gave the feedback that she had a lovely and nice voice. This shows us that we chose the correct voiceover to suit with the documentary.
Our next question asked what they thought the best part of the documentary was and we got a variety of answers from Janet, the bit about Turkey and the opening titles. This showed us that our documentary had a variety of good moments.
Our final question was do you have any comments on the editing?We also got a lot of positive comments like it was good and the opening titles were edited well. However, we also got some good critical comments like it was too fast. We tried to make the docunmentary fast paced though so that it didn’t risk getting boring and so this comment suggests that we have succeeded in this. Also to back this up another comment said that they liked the fast paced editing. Another comment which we got with this question was that the sound volume was inconsistant throughout the documentary and we could have changes this by having all the same levels but it still would be inconsistant because some interviews were louder than others.

Voice over and radio advert script

Voiceover Script
We all love a good cuppa. Day or night, young or old, there’s nothing we enjoy more than being sat down with a cuppa tea in hand. After water tea is the most widely consumed drink in the world. So it’s no surprise there’s such a variety of brands out there.
We British love our tea, it’s an essential part of our lives , and on average we drink 3 and a half cups a day. But which country drinks the most?
But they’ll be shocked to find out that the biggest tea drinking country is actually Turkey, who can’t get through the day without drinking a whopping 10 glasses of Ceylon tea.
Tea is a widely regarded social drink. In fact 70% of people said they regularly offer it to guests and utter those magic words of Milk and two sugars?
But these days more and more people are going to coffee houses as a way to socialise, so how do local tea houses compete with these big brands?
Radio Advert
There’s nothing better than a good old cuppa.
(clips of voxpops)
Day or night breakfast or supper we can always find time for tea
(interview clips)
Ever wondered how to make the perfect cup of tea, which brand is the best quality or why people offer tea to guests?
Find the truth about tea, Milk and 2 sugars, Wednesday at eight, ITV1