Question 1

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

real media products?

Where did my ideas come from?…

My own creativity?

Existing products?

Inspiration?Generic conventions?

By challenging existing conventions?

‘Real’ media products which are a similar when looking at my final product…

Similarities between my final production and existing

programmes…

Tracey Beaker & Walks of Life Similarities…

Illustrations falling in the background, similar objects.

Same cut out person effect

Squiggle/ glow around edge

Bold colour palette used

Rich girl poor girl & Walks of Life Similarities…

Crown and cap on the protagonists heads, and a

layered picture

Their names In front of them in bold writing

The ‘girly’ girl is

stereotypically wearing pink and they are shot with similar posture

Mortified & Walks of Life Similarities…

Zoom in On title of the children's TV

drama

Brand image emerging by the end

of the sequence

Use of yellow and black.

Length of title sequence similarity…

Similar length title sequence to two other children's TV dramas which are on CBBC

Does this suggest that

my idea is just a

reworking of ‘old’

ideas?

Looking at clips of my title sequence suggests that I have ‘copied’ existing products and not been creative or original.

I think I have created a good element of redundancy through media language, therefore the audience can start to understand the genre and narrative of the children TV drama.

If you look at the mis en scene the richer protagonist looks rich, and the poor protagonist looks poor! This is redundant as it is based on a stereotypical view of classes within society and a generalization about people that are lower class or higher class, people have ideology about these people and I hope I would challenge that with my media product.

Rich and poor, binary oppositions- are presented the way the audience wishes to see them firstly, making it pleasurable and not confusing, acting as an establishing shot. I have used icons such as a crown and big house for rich and a backwards cap and little house for poor, this is so that the target audience can understand which character is which, therefore starting to form their own ideology based around the icons I have used for each protagonist. Media products of this kind conventionally use illustrated and simple icons such as Tracey Beaker and mortified I haven’t challenged this convention because then it would not be suitable for my target audience which is the main priority within making a production.

I have then reworked the generic conventional idea of the rich and poor divide, by changing their personal relationship to ‘best friends’ rather than enemies. The establishment of relationship between characters within a title sequence is conventional but in the first shot of mine they are separate sides of the screen, and when the words best friends come up a bit after and they are together. This maybe unexpected to the viewer therefore be entropic and resulting in them wanting to find out more about this relationship.

I was inspired to ‘unite’ rich and poor in my children TV drama hoping to teach children the lesson that everybody can get on no matter what and to change their overall ideology. Children TV dramas often have an underlying moral and so it is conventional, but I feel by challenging this particular binary opposition I have transformed prior texts (intertextuality) therefore making it more original.

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