Evaluation of Media A2 Coursework.

By Gemma Bicknell

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

real media products?

• My research into my chosen task really helped me to understand and know the codes and conventions of a children’s TV drama.

• We were asked to research into openings of children’s TV drama’s, so I chose programs like Tracy Beaker, Even Stevens and Saved by the Bell – the program in which I took most influence from for my product.

Moving objects such as this football would move across the screen, I did this also in my final product using stop framing.

A lot of colour used in background. Titles matching the theme of the opening. Character

introduced with animated action carrying on in background, also clips from other episodes shown to introduce them. I used a masking technique to create this.

Saved by the Bell – how it influenced my product.

(0.27) ‘The Groovy Gang’

Other Conventions I used.• From my research I found that an average Children’s TV Drama opening is

about 30-40 seconds long, so that is how long I made mine.• Also, characters in Children’s TV Drama’s are from all different ethnicities,

so I made sure that I also followed this convention – as this appeals to a wider target audience.

• I used both animation and filming in my piece, which is quite a common convention to use in Children’s TV drama openings – my research evaluations that are evidence for this can be seen on my blog.

0.19 seconds, ‘Final Groovy Gang’

Different ethnicity character used, common convention in Children's TV Dramas.

Animation and footage used in my opening, another common convention.

Conventions I used..• In the creation of my opening, I decided it was unnecessary for me to

include a high number of credits into it. In real media products, they do not use too many, or when they do it is sped up at the end of a program and I’ve found that this is because in a Children’s TV program it is not important. Young children aren’t going to be paying attention to who directed or produced the program, they will be most interested into who is in the show, plus seeing images and movement as this keeps their focus on the program they are watching. So, introducing the characters that are going to be in the episode that they are about to watch is the most important thing to present to this particular target audience in an opening. This is why I only included one title into my piece, and decided to keep it to the theme of the rest of my opening, as of course the creator still needs to be established when showing any type of program.

Conventions I developed and challenged.

• I do not think I challenged any codes or conventions to do with Children’s TV Drama openings, I do not feel like I have done anything that is very different to any other real media opening. The only technique I used that I feel could be said as different would be that I used stop framing for my piece, which I cut out and made my own animations and took the pictures of them moving to be put into the background of my piece, instead of using computerised animation like cartoons which is what is more commonly used in real media products, for example Tracy Beaker.

0.10 - an example of one of the openings I researched that shows both animation and real footage being used.

Conventions used for my Ancillary Tasks – Magazine Cover.

I found in the research into magazine covers for Children’s Magazines that a lot of smaller images are used or one big picture for the cover – this also means that they then tend to be the focus of the rest of the magazine – for example in one of my Blogs titled Disney Magazine, they have on the cover of Disney Magazine a big picture of the characters The Incredibles because they are promoting this particular film, and other teasers on the cover are also to do with the film. So I took this convention and used it for my magazine cover, having one big picture of the whole gang to show it will be about all of them and that way it will also attract all my target audience, instead of just using one of the characters and then the magazine only appealing to the children who’s favourite character is on the cover.

Conventions used for my Magazine Cover continued..

• Colours for my background of my cover had to symbolically be a girls colour, so I used pink, as my product is aimed at 5-10 year old girls and pink is typically seen as a girls colour.

• My logo was also my title ‘Groovy Gang’ used in my real opening. Magazines like Disney Magazine have the famous Walt Disney signature used on the cover as it is instantly recognisable and will attract in their target audience better this way, so I used the same technique. I also did this by adding the butterfly that is also in the opening to the front cover of my magazine, for familiarity.

• I also used the same type of teasers that are written on covers of real media products, so advertising games that are inside, posters, and I made them bold. I did not add too many though, as too much wording would probably put off children from wanting the magazine, as images and free gifts – which I also added on my cover – are more of what would attract my target audience into wanting a magazine.

Challenging or Developing Conventions of Children’s Magazines.

• Again, I do not feel like I challenged or developed any conventions of real media products. I used the conventions I found more because I feel that there aren’t a lot of conventions that I can challenge. Although, if I really wanted to challenge a convention I could have made my magazine cover colour blue instead of pink to subvert its usual symbolic meaning i.e. Blue is for boys. My main idea for my main product was that the Groovy Gang had different personalities in the gang because they accepted people who were different and liked different things, so I could have put blue as the cover for a statement that girls also like blue – it’s not just a boys colour. On the other hand, this particular choice could have backfired, as my target audience may not have wanted to buy a magazine that is blue as they may just assume that it is for boys. This is why I used conventions more than I challenged them, as I feel that it is easier to lose a child’s interest in a product than it is for other audiences, which is why I kept my magazine cover simple.

Conventions used for my Ancillary Tasks – DVD Cover.

• Real Media products for DVD covers I found tend to be quite simple, they keep to the same theme with colours, images etc. as the program. They have a huge illustration or picture for the front, so I used this with mine – having a picture of the whole gang.

• On the back cover there are episode titles with descriptions, also pictures of clips of the episodes on the DVD. I used this, although did not put descriptions of the episodes as I did not see it necessary. The titles I made are quite self explanatory and my target audience would most likely not read or be interested in the descriptions of the episodes and so I didn’t feel it was needed.

• I also added the space hopper and ice cream that is in my opening to the back of the DVD cover for again familiarity, children will recognise the objects from the opening and so makes it more likely it will attract my target audience and they will buy the product.

Conventions I challenged or developed for my DVD Cover.

• I kept to the conventions I found from my research like I did with my other media products. With DVD covers for Children’s Television programs it is kept simple as they normally are cheap to buy as the episodes would most probably still be on the television and so this would drop the price and make it less likely people will buy the DVD if they know they can still watch the programs for free. So if I were to develop on a convention I would have added teasers to the DVD stating about extra footage or episodes that have not been seen on the television, as this will make it more appealing to the adult to buy and for my target audience to want to watch.

Would have added a teaser here in the corner saying ‘Episodes Never Seen on TV’ if I could change what I’ve done.

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

• I think that the combination of my main and ancillary texts are effective. The ancillary’s I think are important as they are evidence into promoting the main product. If my products were a real media, my target audience would not only get to see the program, but also be offered more activities to do with the program like reading stories on the gang, or colouring with the gang like a magazine offers, this enables them to interact and feel involved which then helps to keep my target audience interested in the characters and therefore the show.

Allows further interaction that watching the program does not offer, therefore helping to promote popularity of product.

Continued...• A DVD offers my target audience to watch the show whenever they chose, this will

help with keeping my target audience interested in the television program as they have access and the freedom to decide when they want to watch the show and what specific episodes they want and would like to watch that’s on the DVD.

To create synergy, I made the DVD cover and the Magazine cover similar so that there was continuity throughout my work. Also, using objects that are in my opening, like the butterfly, and showing all four of the characters like I do throughout all of my products on my DVD and Magazine Cover also creates synergy throughout all three of my products.

Made both of my ancillary’s similar to make them obvious that they all relate to eachother.

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

• When showing my piece to my target audience the response was mainly positive. One girl, Raman, said that she liked the music, saying it was ‘Upbeat and Jingly’. She also liked that there was somebody from a different culture in the piece. Another really liked Helens character, saying she was most realistic to how they were as a person and so related to her the most. This supports the theory I had before making my product, that putting in different types of personalities into my piece will help my program appeal to different people.

0.16 seconds in.0.26 seconds in.

Continued...• Audience feedback I had that was negatively critical of my piece was that some of

my target audience did not understand why my characters were waving in between past episode shots when being introduced. If I were to improve this, I would have left out the footage of my characters waving and had just used more footage that would have been from past episodes that featured mainly the character I was introducing in.

0.09 seconds – example print screen of a ‘past episode’ shot used in my final piece.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and

evaluation stages?• In my planning and research stages, my main use of a new media technology was YouTube.

This was so that I could look at other Children’s TV Drama openings, my research can be found on my blog – for example Tracy Beaker Opening. I looked at the openings and it helped me find the conventions used in the openings to then use in my own piece and also find inspiration for creative ideas to be put into my opening. Ideas I found for example were mainly from ‘Saved by the Bell’ which without YouTube I wouldn’t know what the opening was like as I had not seen it before doing my research. I was then able to embed these openings onto my blog – which can be found on blogger.com – another new media technology that I also used to track and evaluate all my progress, research, planning and products that I had created.

An example of my blog.

Construction and Evaluation Stages

• In the construction of my main media product I used Premiere Pro, which is where I was able to upload all my pictures and footage into the program and put it together to make my product. I then used After Effects where I can add effects to the shots and pictures I already took, so for example with my pictures, they all had green square in the middle so that I could use a green screen effect to add my footage into my opening, so I added this in after effects. YouTube was then used again after compressing the files into QuickTime videos, to be uploaded onto my YouTube account and then embed the link onto my blog.

Continued..

• Then I went back into Premiere Pro so that I could add in my title sequence music which I found off of freeplaymusic.com and then downloaded the track onto iTunes. I could then import the music from my iTunes library into Premiere Pro and add it into my opening. I can then crop the music bar that appears in Premiere Pro to the length of my piece. I found this part to be much easier, but using Premiere Pro was also a struggle for me, when making my AS product, I did not really use the program as I wasn’t in charge of editing and so my skills with technology were limited.

Continued..

• For my ancillary tasks I used Photoshop – a program that allows me to choose what size paper I want to use, different texts and to add photos I already have or ones from the internet that I can crop and merge together to make my product. I found this particular program challenging to use as I have not had much experience into using it before doing this project, and so required help, but I do think I learnt a lot from the help I was given, how to organise the layers and add to them, also to add effects to text – for example stroke which I used a lot in my ancillary’s.

Black background behind the text is an effect called stroke.

Evaluation of my technological skills..

• I do feel like I have improved with my technological skills, in learning how to import images and footage into Premiere Pro, add music and effects. Also with Photoshop in how to add effects to text and add pictures and also cropping and transferring them to other software’s that I used to add to my products e.g. I print screened a part of my final opening so that I could crop out the shapes of some of the objects flying around in the background to then add to my Magazine cover. Although, I do still feel still that my knowledge is limited and if I could improve one thing it would be to know more about how to use Premiere Pro and Photoshop. I feel my skills are very basic and if I knew more on how to make and add more effects, my products may have come out better than how I have made them.