1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
My media product uses the traditional conventions of Children’s TV Drama’s of using the younger generation as the main characters as this enables my audience to connect easily as they face the same problems and issues therefore can relate. I received a positive reaction to the age of my characters from my target audience. I took my inspiration for this from Tracy Beaker and Dani's house as these received high percentage of votes for favorite TV shows, this enabled me to understand what sort of characters that my audience would respond to most.
Another convention I developed was to use two main characters that would feature regularly as opposed to five or six that I couldn’t focus on to any great extent. An example such as Tracy Beaker too has a central character that is the main focus of the episode although there are additional side stories. I chose not to include additional side stories and just to focus solely on my two main characters lives although other characters will also feature.
I also use the convention of using bright colours in my title sequence to gain my audiences attention. For example with the costumes and the location I tried to pick places that had a lot of light and would be bright and vibrant on camera. Bright colours are also a popular convention in children’s TV dramas because it is easier to distinguish that the target audience is children as most adult programmes focus on real life situations which usually are linked with plainer surroundings.
I do however challenge the conventions of music of children’s TV drama; I do this by using a slower more melancholy song as my theme tune this is because I felt it suited the style of my drama more than that of an lively jolly tune. Although during my audience feedback I discovered that a more upbeat melody may have received a more positive response as some of my target audience said that they felt the music “wasn’t in keeping with the theme and a more upbeat tune would have been better”.
2.How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
I feel that the combination of my main product and my ancillary texts was not as successful as I wished it to be. Although my main product was made to how I envisaged the overall plot was not as perceived as clearly by my audience. I feel also my ancillary texts did not reach expectations.
I kept the same house style of using the same image on both my DVD cover and my magazine cover so the audience would recognise the series easily. I also used the same font for the two texts. I ensured my logo was on both my ancillary text and my main product to ensure that both were easily recognised by my target audience.
However the background of one of my ancillary texts is not following house style but this was to ensure that my magazine appealed to the girls of my target audience which was a larger fan base and were more inclined to be interested in the magazine than the boys.
In future I would ensure that both my ancillary texts and my main product reflect my idea.
3.What have you learnt from your audience feedback?
By using questionnaires I was able to use my audience feedback to create and develop my original idea; this questionnaire enabled me to find the prime storylines and locations that would interest my target audience.
From my audience feedback I have also learnt that my idea was not as easily understood as I first believed when I created my original idea. Through my questionnaires I could easily see the issues that my target audience had with my children’s TV drama. I was also made aware that my music was too melancholy and that a happier tune would have been more appropriate.
I used focus groups as well as questionnaires to gain an understanding of what my target audience really felt about my main product and ancillary texts. This also gave me a chance to get more in-depth answers from my target audience and allowed me to question their reasons why.
Overall I feel I used my audience feedback to the maximum capacity as I used the thoughts from my target audience to build and develop on my original ideas.
4.How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research planning and evaluation stages?
The new media technologies I used when researching my children’s TV drama were firstly the internet, I used BARB (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) to gain an understanding of which channel would be best to broadcast on also I used the internet to research previous children’s TV dramas.
Secondly I used an online blog to document my progress in this project. This was a successful way of showing the development of my work as it was easily accessible and it was all in one place. This has improved my quality of work as it was easier to document the research and information I had found.
When creating my Children’s TV Drama I used a Kodak Pocket Video Camera which enables me to save my footage to memory card as apposed to saving it to a tape.This made the process of video production simpler and improved the quality of my work. I also used Adobe Premiere Elements to edit my video footage. This is a large improvement on having to cut film negatives as it allowed me to test and try several different techniques. It also allows me to correct mistakes and re-edit drafts easily.
