2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?

which gender, age, race and class is our product aimed at?

1. In what way does your media product use. develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products? (ie. of film openings)

Does your use of conventions indicate that other opening sequences have influenced your work?
eg. grease.
We were inspired by the way grease goes from animation into live action.
We made the animation look like long road and so the live action could follow on from that.
Unfortunately when creating our piece not realizing that the animation wouldn't go on for as long as we thought, we had to improvise and use ourselves as characters in the animation, this meant that the costumes did not match.
Title font and style - Its not very exciting but its clear, easy to read and flows.
Camera work - we used different camera angles
characters - We had to use Abby to pretend to be a guy.

The Finished Childrens Opening

Thoughts

After creating our children film opening we soon realized that due to improvisation of the live filming, it wasn't as good as we expected it to be. We felt that the live film didn't meet our expectations as we felt after looking at other movies of children film openings, theirs was more engaging and exciting. For example, 'Madagascar', 'Greece', 'High school musical' etc.. However after discussing as a group we realized that although the beginning is important, all openings are different and usually most interesting/exciting part of the film is the middle. In conclusion if we had more time we would have extended the animation and have no live action.

Credit ideas

I think for credit idea's it should link into everything in the opening, it should be quite colourful but not too in your face, and the font should be middle sized. After watching some credit openings, i think that we should have credits over the animation, in this we arnt wasting any time, and the viewer wouldnt be bored by credits.



Toy story shows the idea, the music is very happy also, and it suits the scene perfectly. i think we could use a idea like this, it could be very effective. Even with the very simple font of the credits its still effective, you can see them clearly and it doesnt clash with the background at all.

Mood board

Greece's opening credits is animation so we could use this idea and have our animation as opening credits going into the movie.

Change of plan

Unfortuantely the claymen we created hardened and didn't work very well, so I thought that we could do stopframe animation using paper cut outs. I created backgrounds which Abby and Fiona coloured in. I created little figures where their bodies hands, arms, heads legs and feet could come apart so we could move them. I made several different heads for the characters so we could switch them to express a mood, Abbey and Fiona also coloured these in. unfortunately after Fiona and I had filmed the animation while Abby made the music, we realised that the clip only came to 17 secs. We could probably make that sequence into opening credits and next lesson film a drama to take up the rest of the time.

Credits Ideas

After watching the credits for films such as 'Madagascar', 'A series of unfortunate events', and 'Shrek the third' I've noticed that the producers have made the credits interesting to watch by using animation. Shrek the third and Madagascar had quite upbeat music and the animation was exciting and eye catching for children. The series of unfortunate had quite interesting music, its not very exciting but the animation would grab the childrens attention. I think that animation at the end of credits is clever as children want to watch it because its exciting especially if the movie was good and they didn't want it to finish.



I think we should use bold exciting font, I think the font should be 'SimHi' as its very clear for children to read. I think the colour of the font should be white, something quite bright and simple. We don't have much time but if we did have lots of time I would suggest that we could create an animation for the end credits and have upbeat fun music. As we don't have much time I think we should keep the credits simple, maybe Orange background so that the credits are bright. I think maybe a 'credits:zoom,in' overlade. Here is an example:

However I recon for the real credits we should state our name and last name.

Credits Idea

After watching a few examples of both adult filming and childrens filming credits i've noticed that the appearence of them are very different from each other. The childrens ending credits are still made to amuse them therefore they are, in the aladdin example, orange and in a fancy font. I think that we should try and keep them simple as we have very little time left to both film and make credits. I believe we should use a fun font but nothing too small or large and have a unisex colour for example orange or yellow.
It would have been nice to add music to the background but only having 1.5 hours left, i dont think we will have enough time for it. Also, i think that pictures would have been good to add in aswell because i've noticed that when you go to the cinema if there is pictures at the end people stay a little longer to watch them.
To make it look more appealing to people i think we should try and have them fade into the next scene which will be just a plain background but it will add effect.

The making of the characters

This is fiona and eloise making the charecters for our childrens opening scene! we decided to take pictures of the making of the people to see how they got made.

Storyboad's and Timelines of the opening scene

We did a storyboard to allow us to plan ahead of what we are going to have in the scene, also we did a time line to show us the exact timing of our scenes and to have everything planned and sorted so we have a smooth time filming the opening.

Research for the animated childrens film.

When i watch the start of this clip i can instantly tell its a childrens film, the bright colours and animation, and the charecters soon start to show its a childrens film, we can apply this to our opening, by establishing the charecters at the begginning, so the people watching can instantly create a relationship with the charecters. The bright colours are another thing we can apply to our opening, bright colours are very entertaining for young children, and also it gives it a happy feel to the film.
Also another good thing about this film, it doesnt seem like a typical childrens film, we can tell that Lilo the girl in the clip is a diffrent girl, and sometimes children can relate to that situation, we may be able to apply this very modern twist to our opening.

Animation research on Shrek trailer

Immediately when watching this trailer I can tell that children will be drawn in by the mysterious opening to this clip, the ship followed by the hooded figure on the horse. Next the scene follows onto seeing donkey then shrek, immediately children will recognise their favourite characters from the previous two films.First seeing shrek and donkey the trailer introduces them with a funny clip followed by catchy fun music. We are going to take these ideas into account, the establishing music, the bright colours and humour.

Research for Animated Childrens Film

Here i looked at an animated series to get an idea of how to create the right atmosphere and look on our characters in our two minute opening scene which we will be producing as an AS level piece.
I noticed that Mr Beans facial expression was tied in with his movements as well as his emotions.
Looking previously at other animations its shown me how different they can be but still give across the same messages. For example the Klaymen piece shows emotions through body language and the tones of voices however you can also use facial expressions and movement.

Back to the Future Storyboard Practice.

Together we watched the opening scene to back to the future but individually we focused on different effects that made up the film. Abby looked at the various camera angles, Eloise looked at the characters positioning and Fiona looked at the music types within the five minute clip. After taking notes on these seperate effects we combinded them together to create our storyboard.
We also wrote various pieces of extra information underneath the pictures to add to the effect of the opening scene.

Initial Ideas

In our childrens opening, we are going to be using animation, the characters will be created using plastacine whereas the background will be made using differenet drawings and props will again be plasticine.
Our characters will be contrasting between both looks and personality. They will give the message of the common phrase "dont judge a book by its cover."
A breif description of our opening scene is how a wealthy guy comes into a small, down to earth town from a far and meets to very different girls. One being completely gorgeous yet so horrible and the other being less fortunate in looks but has a gorgeous personality. By the end of our two minutes filming the idea of him falling in love with the less fortunte girl is unlikely however by the end of the movie it happens :)



Researching a various amount of videos using plasticine we noticed that looking at this particualar video, we can identify that we can create a certain attitude in a character through body language and not just in facial expressions. This is an amuteur video by Knox's Klaymen.

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Task

What we feel the preliminary task is for, is to introduce us to the feel of using the different equipment and to prepare us for the tasks to come in the future.

The preliminary task consists of six different camera shots all involving two characters those being Eloise (character 2) and Fiona (character 1), Abby is in control of the filming.
Our scene begins, using an establishing shot, character 1 walking down the corridor about to enter a classroom. Once she has entered (showing a close up on the door handle) she approaches character 2. Character 2 plays a teacher within' the room, afterward a reaction shot is used to create a feel for the persons attitude toward the teacher.
The long shot shows the classroom as a whole consisting of both the teacher and the student.
A conversation is held about why the student is there in detention and lasts around 4 minutes.
End Scene.

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