Evaluation of Advanced Portfolio

Evaluation of media a2 coursework

View more presentations from GemmaBicknell1.

Ancillary Tasks: DVD Cover

This is my DVD cover for my Children's TV Drama 'The Groovy Gang'.

Ancillary Tasks: Magazine Front Cover

This is my magazine front cover of 'Groovy Gang' Magazine.

Final Groovy Gang Video

This is my final cut of the Groovy Gang. I added other shots in like others advised me to, although quality isn't too good, which is just from exporting. 

Arthur DVD Cover Evaluation

I chose to evaluate this as the program has a similar target audience age as mine also is a modern DVD cover (2008). They have a simple front cover, making the title bold and in colour as it is the name that is most important and is also still in the style of the program itself. Has alliteration in the description to make it easier to read and roll off the tongue.

Plans for Ancillary Task

Magazine cover - Magazine name will be The Groovy Gang Mag - just so audience know exactly what its about and so I can use the name logo that is used in my piece which will also draw my audience in as they will know the name from the program and so will associate the magazine to their liking of the program - therefore making them want the magazine. I think I will use a large photo of the whole of the girl gang centralised. Background colour will be purple or pink as they are colours associated with girls typically. I will have teasers on the front in bold with white backgrounds, have them being in shapes of clouds, hearts etc, to tie into the shapes that are used in my opening. Teasers will say things like 'Wordsearch inside' and other games that will tie into the characters personalities, for example 'Helen's football frenzy game - look inside to play!' as this I think will attract my target audience as at that age activities that could also be educational as well as fun might be an idea to include. I will keep my front cover simple, adding more pictures and illustrations to it rather than words as this will attract my audience in more.

DVD cover - On the back of the DVD cover will have descriptions of episodes included and next to it picture of a scene that is in the program. There will be about 3 or 4 episode descriptions. Background wise it will be of a neutral cover and maybe have random shapes added to background ( if I have that skill to do it ) for example ones that are already in the piece, so hearts, circles etc. Logo will be The Groovy Gang which will be on the front plus picture of all 4 of them maybe in square placed in the centre of the front of the DVD cover. Use a teaser on the DVD cover like 'With extra never before seen footage!' to draw in that it is worth buying the DVD as you get more from it then if you just watched the episodes on the television.

Magazine Research

Disney and me looks like it is aimed at a target audience of about 4-7 year olds. It has a very simplistic front cover where mainly pictures of disney characters cover the front, this is I think a good way of attracting their target audience as each individual child will have a different favourite disney character and by seeing even one of them on the cover they will want the magazine. It has very few teasers advertising competitions or what is in the magazine, as judging from its target audience they wouldn't be able to apply unless and adult did it for them and so it isnt really necessary. It does say about activities in the magazine, including colouring in pages and pull out posters, which I think is a good idea and will include on my own magazine front cover. Also, I will make my front cover have all of my characters from 'The Groovy Gang' on my magazine cover to attract all children who would watch the show.

An update of work.

I showed my work to my teacher who suggested that for the introductions of my character, instead of having them doing the same thing of cheesy smiles and waves, i should shoot different shot locations to make it look like there are clips from other episodes to introduce them, which is the technique they use in the opening of 'Saved by the Bell'. So, I have now shot a few different clips that can be included in my opening, but I would say I haven't got enough just yet and in need of some more ideas, as I have had difficulty into coming up with ideas to include and shoot. My photos he did say were good enough, but I'm not too sure, I think I could make the lighting and quality of the pictures better, so I am contemplating re-doing them.

Second Rough Cut

Update on progress

After seeing what I had produced for my first rough cut, I thought it would be best if I do another one to give me more of a visual idea of what my real product would be like, as my first rough cut was not really good enough in my opinion. My second rough cut will be posted shortly, but what I have learnt so far from it is that adding footage makes it look much better than just the focus on the pictures and by allowing myself to re-try and create a better version of what my final product will look like, has given me more experience into both stop framing and filming. For example I spent much more time in taking pictures, allowing the shapes to move less to allow more time for each characters introduction and also for more realistic movement. I also made sure I took the advice given from presentations I have previously blogged about, adding another character from a different ethinic background, which has also helped boost the amount of time that the opening will be. Camera's are difficult I find, as when taking pictures sometimes the lighting will change, and so I have learnt I need to change the lighting settings to make sure that that is decreased, this also helps the product look more authentic. Footage is hard also for the same lighting reasons, plus getting everyone together to get the footage done, and the space in which to do it in. I had to make sure that I got my actresses to play out their waving etc. to have more duration to their filming, I only asked for them to do 5 seconds each originally, but after editing my second rough cut I realised that it isn't enough, and so getting more footage is much more efficient than getting less or your own estimated amount, as any extra footage can just be cropped out.

Shapes I have made and am using in my Final Piece

Sunshine with yellow and orange rays

Lollipop

Teddy that waves

Handbag that swings

Butterfly

Hearts

Circles

Waves

Football - Goal and Foot to kick the ball into it

Space Hopper

Ice Cream

Henna Hand

Candles

Balloons

Cupcake

Rain Cloud

Art easel 

Paints

Flower

Keyboard

Filming for my Final Piece

For my final piece I have to have an introduction for each of my characters  - I have now made all the shapes for each of my characters backgrounds and have now filmed on my own camera each of my characters introductions. I first of all filmed 2 of my characters, (Helen and Amber),  separately to the other two characters, (Sophie and Rashi), and then did the group of them together when doing the second session of shots with Sophie and Rashi were being done. This was a mistake for me  - as this now meant that Helen and Amber are wearing different clothes to when they were shot for their individual introductions. This is not good as I need to show continuity and by having them wearing different clothing in my final piece it will be too obvious that the filming was not done at the same time - showing it to be unprofessional. To solve this I can either when uploading the film onto a mac - I can zoom in further into all of the faces of my characters so therefore you can no longer see what they are wearing anymore or will have to re-shoot. I think re-shooting is my best option - I can still try and zoom in on the footage I already have, but at least if that doesn't work, I still have a back up plan. This I will also have to do as soon as possible as I need to keep to my deadline.

Rough Cut Process

To make my rough cut I had to create all the shapes that were going to be in my rough cut that would then be organised into 3 different sections as they had to be associated with the 3 different characters that will be in my final product as film, as seen in my mock idea blog. Then I had to set out where the objects were going to be on a flat surface with a white paper background. I had to make sure that I moved each object a little bit at a time and each movement counted towards 2 photos. In total I took 146 photos to make my rough cut. 

When putting it together though, I realised that this doesn't seem to be enough to make an average length opening, my rough cut is about 11 seconds, whilst a children's TV drama is about 30 - 40 seconds long. I think this was because and when looking at my rough cut you can see, that I seemed to have concentrated a lot on sophie's part of the opening, it is at the length that each of the characters should have, but Amber and Helen's parts are a lot shorter, especially Helen's. This is my fault, as I made the movements a lot more drastic than slowly getting to where they need to be, therefore making it a lot shorter. I also think that if I had more objects to move in Helen's shot, I would have therefore more duration, so when doing my final cut, I need to make more shapes to be added where can be fitted in the shot.

Additionally, I am going to add another female character in my piece from a different cultural background, this will add more time to my piece and will branch out more to a wider target audience. I also did not add the titles into my rough cut, meaning the actual title and that it was created by me. This is because I am indecisive about whether to add the titles in from after effects on the mac, or to make my own titles to the theme of my opening. I think making my own would be better for my piece. I think also, I need to make sure the quality of camera I use is good enough, as when looking at my rough cut in full screen, the quality becomes blurry, although this happened in the editing process, before this the quality was fine, but camera change might avoid this problem.

Overall I am happy with my rough cut and I have learnt a lot from it in terms of knowing what improvements I need to make from it to make my final piece the best I can make it.

Rough Cut

Animatic

This is my animatic of my idea. I have story boarded my idea down into images that is a rough example of how I want my idea to turn out. As I am using stop framing for my idea, I realised story boarding this is extremely difficult to do, as to show each movement that would happen in the production of my real product, there would be a lot of unnecessary story boarding, so instead of this I tried to show the drastic movements so that people will have an idea of what is happening. Before presenting my animatic to the class, I showed my mock up video so that the people in my class would have a better understanding of my idea.  

My animatic has no camera angle changes, a midshot of the person in the circle will be there the whole time, including the time at the end when you see the whole group together. The objects will change depending on the person in the circle, the objects will be specific to their personalities. I have done my idea on a gang of girls, each one of them with different personalities, one who is girly, another who is creative and another who is into sport. I chose to do this as in my research I found that children expect there to be stereotypes, this way they can relate to the characters on screen. 

Feedback I got from when I presented my work was;

• With characters, maybe add another to make the opening longer, also make it so that there are multi cultural characters as this is a typical convention of a Children's TV drama that I haven't included yet. 
• Add diegetic sound, which I'd already planned on doing, but make sure that when I do add the diegetic sound that it doesn't interfere too much with the backing track I have used, they need to be in sync with each other.
• Good idea, having objects that will be associated to each characters personality will be good for targeting my specific audience. 
• When the person in the circle is moving, make sure that they will do movements that will also be specific to their personalities.

These comments I will have to take on and this should help me know how to make a good final product.   

In my AS project, the group and I didn't make a realistic storyboard, meaning our shots were much too difficult to do with the little experience we had when it came to filming. So I made sure when storyboarding my animatic and with the overviewing of my idea, that I knew, that what I wanted to do was what I was capable to do. After creating my mock up idea, I knew that the idea I had would be something I could do and do well, and so by doing that it made it easier to make my animatic and to have realistic ideas about what I wanted in my piece. This should make it more simple to create in the long run, as in my AS project, because we weren't too sure on the shots we used and our idea changed so much, this I believe was our downfall.  

List of Possible Objects to use in my Piece.

Doodling on page??
Sunshine?
Painting from a paint pallet, paint a smiley face.
Musical instruments, keyboard that when gets played a musical note will appear above it?
Football - being kicked by a cartoon foot? flies across screen into a goal on the other end - sound of cheers in background.
Drawing of scissors on paper, cuts out paper doll chain - gets stretched out onto screen - could be at end where I could have a gang photo of my characters and the name of the program on the paper chain dolls.
Stars - layering
Hearts - layering of them
Flowers for the more girly girl in the group
Glasses for the brainy girl
Books that are layered
Skateboard for a tomboy type character?

Idea Changes.

For my piece, I decided that I felt my target audience needed to be streteched out further to a slightly younger audience, but from looking at children's TV programmes, there are no TV dramas that are aimed at children younger than the age I have already researched (7-12 year olds). I thought about doing it at a younger audience as after doing my mock up idea, i thought that my idea would be more suited to a younger audience than the audience I had originally targeted. This was because of the bright colours and simple shapes I had used in my mock up, I didn't think that a 12 year old would be appealed to watching a program with what looks like quite a childish theme to it. So I decided to aim my piece at a younger target audience - youngest being 5 or 6 years old and the oldest being 9 or 10 years old. I will still use the same idea as in my mock up, but instead will theme the objects - I will base it on a girl gang of friends and so will use objects that can be associated with each of their different interests and roles in the group, for example one can be brainy and shy, another quite outgoing and into music and another into art. Letters can then move onto the screen when the characters are shown to show their names. This also doesn't limit me with where it needs to be set to film my characters, as the gang could be at school together or live near eachother etc. I so I can decide this. I believe this will make it more significant to my target audience. I will also give my piece a comedic effect, I'd like to make my programme a comedy drama for kids, as I beleive that from my research, this is the most appealing type of Children's TV drama.

Mock up idea

To test my initial idea 2 - my preferred idea - I made a short stop frame animation in the style I potentially will use in my final piece. To do this I had to cut up shapes specific to what would appeal to my target audience and then set up a still camera on a tripod. I then gradually moved each shape I had made and with each movement I would take 2 pictures. After this, I imported the stills onto the computer using imovie, and then exported the footage into Adobe After Effects where I green screened footage of a character I had filmed earlier. This effect didn't work well because some of the green showed through, so as an alternative I created a vector mask - which is a square shape that cuts a hole in the top layer of footage to reveal the footage of the actress underneath.

Initial Idea 2

This idea was inspired by the opening of 'Saved by the Bell', the same technique used, only in a more modern way and use of other objects. In 'Saved by the Bell' objects move around the screen according to what was popular at the time it was made, also when the characters are introduced there is footage of them from past episodes also shown to display their personality. 'Saved by the Bell' was aimed at teenagers, so I would be aiming mine at a younger audience and therefore would use younger characters. Also, I would set mine in a modern time and so would have objects that would be more specific to my target audience, i.e. mobile phones, computers, etc. I would also use more than just drawings of objects, I could also take pictures of the objects or use the actual objects for a better effect. I like this idea as it would be a clever way of doing a title sequence and I really believe that it would appeal to my target audience.

Questionnaire Evaluation

I asked 8 males and 12 females all between the ages of 7 - 12 years old and overall I found that most of the participants liked Children's TV dramas to have a normal surrounding in them, for example School or home being most common.
They also circled most of the stereotypes I had listed in my questionnaire to be in my real product, meaning they obviously expect a variety of characters in a Children's TV drama.
The results also showed that the majority of people asked preferred a Children's TV Drama to have real people in it and also both real people and animation - so I should include this into my title sequence.
Music was the most important aspect of a Children's title sequence according to my results, but animation and clips from other episodes were also a common result and so I could use both or either of these techniques for my title sequence.
Most popular genre type was Comedy - so to make a popular program that my target audience would be most appealed to, a comedy program would be my best option.

I will take everything I have learnt from the questionnaires and make sure I apply the information I have gathered into my Children's TV drama sequence.