Evaluation

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

The title sequence is there to introduce the narrative and characters,set the scene, establish place in time, creative enigmas and to draw the audience in. As it is a children's film it didn't need to be anything to in-depth or confusing but to get the excited about the film to come. Bright girly colours simple backgrounds and curly writing highlight this theme. The sequence shows snippets of the story without giving away too much. Our inspiration, the Catch me if you can animated sequence shows the main character travelling and changing his identity without telling us how he did it or how it finishes.The audience are introduced to Layla, the main character. As she is an animated sequence the viewer doesn't see what Layla's human self looks like or who she really is yet and her character will develop during the film itself.
Children's films are mostly animated, but Layla's star isn't actually animated, it is just the titles which reinforce that this is a children's film and it would catch their attention. The music is also playful and happy to appeal to youngsters.


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

My film has been created for the enjoyment of a young audience. it is there so that Children, in particular girls, can relate to the character of Layla. Layla's bedroom has a purple bed (girly colour)with a teddy and a few other toys beside it like children would. She is also wearing her colourful pajamas. It's not easy to be able to relate yourself to cartoon image, but i think children's imaginations would help with this. I think little girls watching would want to be Layla because she is lucky enough to find a fallen star and to look after it.


3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

I originally thought of Dreamworks but then remembered that our film is not animated, it is just the titles. I'd say a company known for creating children's films like Walt Disney Company as it is very popular among children.The Walt Disney Company can help promote the film by selling merchandise in Disney stores to our target audience. Sponsorship deals could be made by McDonalds in their adverts or making a happy meal for kids with Layla's star toys.


4.Who would be the audience for your media product?

The film is aimed at middle class young boys and girls aged 4-13rs, but particularly girls, as the main character is a girl and the storyline is much like a fairytale which is more appealing to girls.I think that mums and dad's may also enjoy watching the film with their children. These boys and girls would enjoy watching films like Polar express or Enchanted. i see it as the type of film their parents would take them to at the weekend. They would like to watch the Disney channel, cartoon network, and read storybooks at night. They would be interested in spiritual/ magical themes.


5.How did you attract/address your audience?

I attracted my audience by having the protagonist the same age and gender as our target audience. Once again, the pastel colours attract the eye and the playful music track will ease the audience into the film. By using an title sequence at the beginning will help catch the attention of the children and to give them an insight as to what the film will be about. Seeing animation will remind them of the shows they watch on television or any other Disney or Dreamworks films they have seen.


6.What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

i have learnt that you must never let a computer know your in a hurry...
Making an animation meant spending most of our time on the macs and computers. i am familiar with using i-movie and have used it for previous media and film work and i feel comfortable using it for this task. Even so, i still have learnt to apply new effects for our pictures we added on there. Sometimes the images we added we too slow or fast so we could change the speed if we needed. As there were a lot of pictures that we needed on there the memory was gradually dropping and at one point shut of the program.This is when we remembered to save a mot more after changes made and to empty our trash to give more memory space.

Photoshop was the software i used the most during the process. I enjoy using Photoshop at home, in art class and for media tasks. It was long laborious task having to save each picture one by one which would only appear for a split second, but it was easier as we got used to it. I found it as best to create a background and to create any other object on a separate layer so i could move them individually without affecting anything else. When making the opening scene i filmed at night to keep the star theme. However when putting the footage next to our animation it was bad quality and not clear. Which is when we learnt to film in day light and shoot Layla waking up in the morning.

I've found using the blog a pleasant experience and would say appeals to almost everyone my age. Whenever i have an idea or problem i can document it. It is simple to use and allows you to customise your own blog to make it more personal. It also allows me to upload pictures and videos which help me as well as show others what i have done.


7.Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

It seems such a long time ago since we started to look at samples of opening sequences, and making the continuity sequence. I have learnt to experiment a lot more on programs to see what works and whats does. I have practiced making short animation sequences at home, but never one that has taken this amount of time and work . It has shown me how just one second contributes greatly to the film.It was a challenge, and the group new from the start, but we wanted to try something different. Looking at other students work you can see how different they all are and all work as title sequences.

There were times when i became fed up doing the task as it is frustrating spending hours in front of a computer which won't upload your work, but now i feel happy that we went through it to get our finished product. I know that when working with close friends that you know they will work hard and do what we need to do to get things done.I have also learnt to give myself more time because i always find the last week very busy and rushed. I didn't manage to put the finished title seqeunce onto the blog, which i felt disappointed about. Hopefully i can add it on when i go back to school. Overall I'm happy with the finished product and i would like to use animation in a future task.

Podcast

Podcast day!
Today was the final day to create our the podcast as part of our evaluation. Taranpreet, hannah and I went into the library because it is always quite and we wouldn't have interference. We briefly noted what we were going to say and then went for it. This morning we finished the sequence and burned it onto DVD and now uploading the Podcast. (we have actually been in the process of doing this for around an hour now, because i think we bring a curse onto all technology :O)

Today was the final day to create the podcast as part of our evaluation.We went into the library because it is always quite and we wouldn't have interference. We briefly noted what we were going to say and then went for it. This morning we finished the sequence and burned it onto DVD and now we have uploaded the podcast. Later i will add the written part of the evaluation on here to answer questions more in depth.

Have a listen....

Music!!

Yay!We now have a soundtrack! Ian Elmslie has very kindly composed the track for us which is perfect! we appreciate his help very much! He gave us a few to choose for as well! As soon as we listened to the songs it was clear that track one straight away was exactly what we were looking for. Its very twinkly and magical and also matches some of the images. For instance, when Layla dicovers the star has disappeared and she starts to cry, the music becomes more dramatic which anchors the clip well. We are very happy bunnies right now because the music track has certainly lifted the sequence and it has become more enjoyable to watch.

The Title sequence so far...

This is what we had to show during the crit. We received mostly positive comments about the drawings and the time in which we had done it. On the negative side it was said that the absence of music slowed the film down, which we very much agreed with. When the music is added it will lift the sequence up and bring it too life. Nina also suggested that we could add an opening scene to take us into the film. on 19th March we filmed an opening sequence round one of Hannah's friends house named Hattie. We began with a panning shot from the window to Hattie laying in bed early morning. She gets up and goes downstairs to get a glass of water and looks out the window. Her friend was also present at the time she played the part of Layla's sister, waking Layla up from out of bed.

When trying to upload our footage at school the next day, we discovered that the tape had screwed up and we only had the end half of our footage. We were very frustrated at this point because we are so close to the deadline and we needed to get this done. So the following week we made arrangements to film again. We did the same as before, only this time Hattie's friend was not round so we didn't have the sister role. Instead i called her to wake up from outside the room.

Our plan is to edit tomorrow at lunch time, which shouldn't take us long as we only have around a minutes worth of footage. As it is trouble for Kirsty to put her music which she made for us onto the mac, we are going to ask Ian Elmsley, a drama teacher at the school to help us out. We will burn what we have onto a DVD and ask him to watch it so he can make a theme on piano to match the image shown. This week we also need to do a extend the shot of the title "Layla's Star," make a DVD commentary for our opening titles and write a short evaluation on our blogs. A very busy week lies ahead!!

Music

Well last week we once again had problems with the film and almost lost it! but luckily the almighty gerry found it! Still, the film hasnt got a music track and we have been testing out differnt tracks that we can download copyright free from websites. We were listening to music box and xylophone tracks which are childish and twinkly which is what we was going for, but when we added the songs to the film, it didnt mix. The music seemed out of place, it didnt fit the images shown. So we are a bit stumped with our music choice at this moment. We are presenting the sequence to the class and im not very happy with what we have to show knowing that it is incomplete.

Target Audience

Demographics

Judging from our opening sequence, i can see that our film would appeal to a younger audience, the majority being girls. Our opening sequence was animated, but the actual film would be shot in real life. Just like the openings for Casino Royale and juno. Our film stars a young girl, which automatically hints at a young female audience. We have used "girly" colours like pinks and purples and the typography is curly and dreamlike. As the storyline from the book "Layla's Star" is a book for children from about ages 3-8, but i think the film would appeal to audiences up to the age of around 14. I think the kinds of films the viewer would be interested in would be Pixar films like Finding Nemo(2003), Dreamworks films like Shrek(2001),Disney films such as High School Musical (2006), Cinderella (1950)or Enchanted (2007), and other films like, homeward bound(1993), Wild child(2008) and Hairspray(2006). They would have a mixture of animated and non animated films. Enchanted is a good comparison to our film. The majority of the audience would be young girls in primary school and early secondary school. It begins as an animated fairytale kingdom and then collides with modern day life, so it has a bit of both worlds. I think our audience would be engaged with stories and fairytales and have a creative imagination. It would also be family friendly so mums dads and brothers or sisters would go to see it.

One day remaining...

Today we have been tweeking a couple of scenes that we had by adding more frames to make it smoother. taranpreet has done this for Layla crying, Hannah did the ballons drifting into the sky and i did layla walking to her room. These are frames 5, 12 and 18. There are 20 in total for this scene. Kirsty didn't manage to bring in the music today so fingers crossed we will have it for tomorrow to add in, free time in lesson 3, 4 or at lunch.