Final Project : What's Your Addiction ?

What have you learned from your audience feedback ?

Audience Feedback


From our audience feedback a lot of material from our audience research (shown below) was reiterated. For example the idea that the audience like the documentary to focus on one person rather than a group. Another example would be how individuals in the audience research were intrigued by these documentaries of, less covered by the media, addictions and wanted to learn more about them. Yet as shown in the Audience Feedback the last person we interviewed knew someone with the same addiction, highlighting how common these addictions are in today's society. The audience researched also conveyed the idea from many individuals that they'd like the documentary to be observational in some area but also to help the individuals which is what we attempted to do.

Audience Research

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

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

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

Our ancillary texts went through a few drafts of ideas however I now feel very comfortable in saying that the combination of our main product and ancillary texts is extremely effective. Our TV listings was originally to be promoted by a celebrity Jeremy Kyle as he is an ex-gambler who struggled with addiction. We first thought this would help promote the makeover idea as his chatshow is of a similair genre in the way that it helps people with their personal problems. We then changed our mind though as we thought the series would be more personable and more popular if it focused more on the individual charachters who struggle with their addiction. However we still used him as the interviewer for a cameo appearance. As far as design for our ancillary product goes we originally were going to use every letter in the 'What's Your Addiction?' title to represent a different addiction but we thought it would be make the documentary less series so we only changed the 'o' into a roulette wheel to represent the first episode of our series, gambling.

We thought if we produced a more traditional advert it would be more successful as we learnt from the TV documentary Seven days which tries to incorporate new media unsuccessfully. We used the Radio Times despite the fact that TV listings magazines are becoming increasingly less popular. We thought that this would be the most successful as it is the most prestigous listings magazines and that we make our series appear to be a new phenomenom, much like Snog Marry Avoid.

Our Second ancillary text was a 2 page newspaper spread which focused more on the individual episodes. The idea of our newspaper spread is that it would change each week, using a different image depending on which addiction we were focusing on that week. Therefore our spread focuses on a roulette wheel as our main product and first episode is on Gambling. We chose to put this spread in The Guardian as we believed that we be the most likely newspaper to dedicate such a spread to a documentary. As far as design,in our second ancillary product, we took a picture of a roulette wheel to illustrate the first episode of our series gambling. We also have the ball placed on the number 10 to represent what time the documentary was on.

We believed that Channel 4 would also be imperative to use as it has so many successful documentaries and makeover shows and we thought it would be the ideal launch pad for our new series 'What's Your Addiction?'. We believe this ancillary product is extremely effective as it clearly promotes the exact format and theme of the show, clearly illustrating to the viewers what they are going to see. This can fluctuate from week to week as the series continues, as different people have different interests and connections to the variety of addicitons.

Russell Brand Idea

As we were filming I came up with the idea of using Russell Brand as our presenter. I thought using a celebrity with past addictions would be a good focal point of the show as they could understand the struggles that these addcits are going through and be more empahetic. As well as increasing awarness for the show by givng the documentary more media attention, which would increase viewers for the series, What's My Addiction ?

After filming with an actor we decided not to use Russell Brand as my group was wary that the series may appear to comical with him as the presenter so we eventually decided against it. We also decdided against using Russell Brand as we feared that the addicts would be less inclined to open up to a celebrity as they would feel as though they couldn't connect.

Production Plan

Monday 14th Feb
• Script for BK at Coral, script for interviewing a staff member (during lesson)
• Retake ancillary product pictures (6.30pm)
• Interview a staff member, ask for access (4.30pm)

Tuesday 15th Feb
• Continue writing script for BK (during lesson)
• Interview another staff member (4.00pm)
• Interview Drew and Chiamaka (7.00pm)

Wednesday 16th Feb
• Day in the life if BK and filming of him going in and out of Coral (9-10am/ 2-6pm)
• More pillow shots – lottery ticket stands (2-6pm)

Thursday 17th Feb - Catch up work (during lesson)

Ancillary Product 2

Our second ancillary product is an article in a listings magazine of our first episode of 'What's Your Addiction ?' We used Jeremy Kyle to interview the producers of the show as he himself used to have problems with addictions. We originally thought of having him as our main focus and big picture however we decided to use the characters from our documentaries so that the audience could easily identify the individuals struggling with addictions. Much like our original ancillary product, we advertised and emphasised the timing and channel of the new series by including the Channel 4 sign again and the time, so that the audience are well and easily guided when and where to watch the new series.

Filming this week

Our plan for this week was to film in betting shops and get some shots of the virtual roulette and virtual blackjack etc. However this is proving difficult for me and my group, as we are finding it hard to gain access to film on their premises as it is company policy that people cannot film in the betting shops. The other thing we were going to do was to film some shots of lottery ticket stands and scratch cards in post offices etc, however this is also proving hard as we are not allowed to film on their premises either. In order to overcome the situation of gaining access in a betting shop, we phoned head office of a betting shop called William Hill in order to try and get permission to film in a local betting shop. The person we spoke to on the phone was very helpful and said he would speak to a few people in order to try and gain permission, however he didnt get back to us, but we will continue to try and get it sorted out.


If we do not gain permission, we may have to resort to secretly filming in a betting shot. This could however mean that we get some poor quality shots and have the risk of being asked to leave the premises.

Ancillary Product

This is the first poster for our newspaper advert. Our group attempted to get as close as we could to the format that Channel 4 uses for it's newspaper adverts. We attempted to do this by embeding their logo and using a font as similiar as possible. This is one of the five posters made for the different episodes of our series; Gambling, Self Harming, Sex Addiction, Shoplifting and Gaming. My idea was to keep the layout and design the same for each poster, but change the background picture in order of the content of different episodes.

Audience Research Video

For our audience research we took to the streets in Cambridge and started to film as many people we could. We asked them the 6 questions shown below and here our their responses. Some of their ideas will be later incorporated in to our final product.