Ancillary Task- Poster

For our individual ancillary task I decided to do a poster. For this I needed to consider carefully what to include in order to make it a successful piece of work. I needed to think about how I was going to design my page and the variety of fonts and text sizes I was going to use. Colour was important as it makes it much more exciting and easy to read.  I also needed to consider the appropriate language to use as it was important to use media terms throughout. Use of pictures that were related to my topic were important to use as it broke up the text as well as added something interesting for the readers to look at. A variety of camera angles throughout our documentary were important as it allowed the audience to have a different perspective on certain things.

Our archive footage in which we included in our documentary was important to include in my poster as it shows the statistics of both schools and their exam results.

Pictures of uniform and facilities were very important to include as they were some of the main differences.

Jodie Marsh - My Secret Past

Throughout the development of our A2 course, I felt it was important to continue to watch documentaries. Not only because they are interesting and entertaining to watch but I felt it was a good idea to get as many ideas as possible. It gave my ideas on interview techniques and particular camera angles. 


This documentary in particular was a very touching and very personal one as it was based on the topic of bullying and the extent of tragic damage it can do. I felt in some ways it could relate to our documentary topic as a lot of bullying takes place at school. Glamour model, reality TV star and body builder Jodie Marsh tells the full story of what effect bullying had on her and how it has made her the person she is today. Jodie faces up to some uncomfortable memories from her time at school. It is an emotional journey that sees her exploring beyond the boundaries of her native Brentwood to uncover the true extent of bullying and its impact on its victims. When Jodie was at primary school her nose was broken during a hockey match. At secondary school her crooked nose was crooked became the subject of bullies’ taunts. Constant verbal abuse led Jodie to contemplate suicide and caused her parents to offer her a nose job when she was 15. It made no difference and the bullying continued until her parents removed her from school. With her own personal experience in mind, Jodie connects with some of today’s young victims of bullying. How does it affect them and what support do they receive? How do schools deal with bullying now compared to when Jodie was at school? Is their approach effective? Jodie knows that bullying experienced at school can affect people for the rest of their lives, and she wants to help others recover from the psychological damage more quickly than she did.

It was an amazing documentary and was extremely sad to be able to witness some of the effects bullying has, even later on in life. On the channel 5 website people were able to leave feedback about the documentary which was very interesting to look at. 

Change of plan!

Unfortunately along the way of our filming we had a few problems. After doing our filming and interviews at Heathside school, it was time to move on to filming at our private school, which we had chosen to be St Georges College. We called up St Georges in order to ask for permission to film but unfortunately their policies didn't allow us to.

Our new chosen private school is Reeds School, which is based in Cobham and has beautiful grounds. Our filming will take place there next week as we need to film the grounds and do some interviews in order to complete our documentary.

Planning for double page spread

Magazine Article- Group ancillary task

For our group ancillary task we are doing a magazine article. Doing this presentation allowed me to get more of an insight in what to include. Doing a magazine article will be good for our documentary as we will need it to be appealing looking as well as including the right text to attract an audience. We thought our magazine article would be effective if it was based around exam results or the stress of pupils as this would be appealing to both old and young people. It wouldn't just be something the pupils themselves are interested in, it would also be very appealing to parents and teachers. 

Filming Interviews

The clip above is part of our filming process. We believed it was crucial to include interviews in our documentary as the audience can really relate to them. The interview between Nick and myself was important as I have attended both a private school and a public school so the audience can clearly listen to my point of view and my opinions. The positioning of Nick and myself worked well as we could clearly listen and speak to one and other. The audience could also clearly see what was going on. We made good use of the 180 degree rule. The questions within the interview flow nicely allowing the audience to get a good understanding of our opinions.