Georginas Evaulation Blog

Overall Evaulation.

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



The conventions in which i had to look into were that of children's television. I studied such programmes like Peppa Pig, Mister Maker and Balamory as well as many more. From each of the programmes in which i studied i took many ideas from each. For my advanced production i developed ideas and conventions of real media, the reason i did this is because the style and the age group i wanted to work with i felt it would be difficult to challenge conventions of a children's TV drama.


Animation: In my animation i looked at Mister Maker. The producers of this programme helped me think up my idea. I took the creative idea of the spectrum from this programme which helped me to make my ideas come alive. Mr Maker is a creative children's learning programme. As well as other ideas i wanted my animation and my whole advanced production to be a learning programme as well as a creative idea. When creating my animation i had difficulties which were to do with my main character. However in my first post i stated that i would focus on my animation first, then my print work i didn't. I did my print work to come up with the idea followed by my animation. Through out my whole project my main character was a monkey which i took from Microsoft office clip art. The only problem i had when the creating my animation was including my main character. The reason for this is because my image was a 2D flat image from a computer and my animation was a 3D. To over come this problem i challenged the ideas and conventions of typical open sequence. I did this because i would of been too difficult to change my 2D image to 3D without making it rubbish!


Print: In my print work i just followed and developed conventions of real media products. I looked at such products as Peppa Pig and Balamory. Looking at the styles of concluded my ideas about how to show my print work. Examples of this are Balmory. Having a clear DVD cover which shows the characters and what would be happening in the episode. In my Digi-Pak i took ideas from DVD covers such as Peppa Pug and Bamory again. From this i took the ideas of play- and extra things to do. This also reflected in my audience research.
How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?


Within my whole advanced production project i made sure that my main product and ancillary text were linked. The main reason for this is because of the audience in which i studied, this being children's TV. Learning from my audience feedback i realised that children like familiarity meaning that if i linked all the products together children would recognise it as being one of the same. I did this by making sure that on all of my print work i had the main character clearly on the front. On my magazine i made sure that it was larger that the text, this is to make it stand out against the rest of the magazines which it would be sold competitively against. Also as well as the characters being the same and making the production link i made the colours similar also. For this i made the DVD cover and the magazine cover in a blue gradient colour - this is so it would be familiar for children to recognise. However to make the production more child friendly and to make it more to my development structure i wanted to i decided that every month the colour of the magazine would change.


With my animation i tried to link it best i could to the ancillary texts but with also trying to go around my difficulties. Even though the animation didn't have the main character actually featuring in it i tried to over come this by focusing more on the creative side. The creative side is focused on through out the stories which also includes the drama.


What have you learned from your audience feedback?


From my audience feedback i learnt that children like things that are linked. From this i took the ideas of colours and style to make it more recognizable. Also i learnt about what styles of programmes children like and the age of when it changes. From interviewing younger children i realised that girls are tend to like vet programmes and teaching and boys are to like 'goodies and badies', i also learnt the reason why they like these styles is because it is the games they play. For example : Girls play mummies and daddies and schools, and boys play superheros. Taking this into account made me realise what styles and conventions i need to include within my advanced production. Including factors which i took from the audience feedback i wanted to add in a learning part to the programme as my original ideas were for a programme which is for preschool children to help them learn the basics before starting school. After looking at examples like Balmory and Peppa pig i realised that children also like repetition. A good example of this is in Bamory - at the end of the programme they sum up the programme in a bubble.


Also from my audience feedback i realised the type of things they like to see within the programme. When making my advanced production i had to make sure that it fitted to the ideas of my audience as my programme would be made for them. Also my audience feedback gave me a clear idea of what colours would be good as it helped me think about what would keep a child interested.


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


For my advanced production i had to create a children's TV drama opening sequence, a magazine cover and a DVD cover. I put a lot of extra effort into the production and this can be shown by the digipak. Though out this blog for each piece of work i have done i have done a evaultion and a run though of what i did and what gave me what ideas. In these paragraphs i am going to explain the teconology i used to create the final images and what i thought about it. If i had extra time to do more on my production i would have liked to create a bigger digipak maybe something like a booklet to show my understanding of children's ideas. My favourite piece of work which i did was my animation. As this was my first ever time of using the iCanAnimate software i thought I did well. I will explain more about the software further down. When it comes to understanding the brief i think i did this well, as i have followed what had to be done and have the finished proof made up. Trying to evenly share out my time on each thing was more difficult that i orginally thought - this is because i didn't follow my original plan on the working production blog.


Pages
After using Pages last year i had a more of a advantage as i knew what to do and where things were. However as i didn't use it for a while between the production from last year it meant i did have to familize myself again. Pages is a software on the Macs which can let you create anything for a magazine cover to a leeflet. Pages let you create text boxs and coloured shapes. I was really happy that i could transport my images from a Windows computor onto a Mac as i didn't know how well it would work. When working on my magazine cover i felt that Pages meant i couldn't do everything i wanted to as Pages has a way of making sure words don't over lay by making text vanish and as i had a big image on the front i felt this was difficult. However if i layed my work in the right places this was ok. When working on my DVD covers i felt that pages used in my advantage. After i mesured the sizes of my cover and put the shapes into Pages i could work on it on a real scale size. Using shapes i managed to size up each side of my cover (front and back) so i didn't go over on any sides. Using the text boxs on Pages is easy as you just select and type what you want - very simular to Pages on Windows.


iCanAnimate

This was a new set of software which i had never used before, this is because last year when i did my coursework i choose the magazine question. When it came to actually using the Macs to record my animation it wasn't as difficult as i thought - so much so i could easily do it again! The camera and the Mac and linked together so i just had to set up the camera on the image i wanted and just press the capture button on the Mac. Using iCanAnimate meant i could easierly delete and duplicate slides if i want to and it had a play back function. After i had created my animation it was easy to transport it to another format to use in other programmes which made it easy to use. If i had more time on my animation i would have like to create another animation to have a choose of programes but as time was short i wanted to focus on the correct things and then if i had time at the end to bulk up the work.


iMovie

iMovie is another set of software which i'd never used before. iMovie meant you could upload files from iCanAnimate and edit them. To begin with i found this completly confusing as i had never been taught how to use it before and as it was all new to me i didn't have a clue. After a bit of help i learnt how to remove parts of a film - however if i didn't have this help i wouldn't know how to edit film. This programme is very confusing to people who don't know how to use it but when i got the hang of it it was easy enough to use. iMovie meant that you could take out unwanted scenes and bits of broken film.


Garage Band

Just like iMovie and iCanAnimate this was new software as well. I knew when i created my film i needed to put music to it and i didn't want to sing on it. After coming across Garage Band i thought it was simple enough to use however i can understand why some people can't get the grips of it so easy. In Garage Band you drag the music seletction you want to create a group of diffenrt instrements at the same time. I understand tempo and keys so creating a small sequence wasn't too difficult as i knew what goes with what and i knew how to make sure it was all in time. However i think that for people who didn't have any music knowledge would struggle a lot more as it is all based on your opinion on what you think fits.