Analysis of Children’s Film Opening

Jordan Ry Gurr

My Media Product

My Children’s film opening follows the beginning of Jillian (Pictured) and his magical adventure through a forest on his way to Tesco’s, his adventure is stricken when he discovers the face of ‘Sharon’ and the magical brush of joy and sorrow. Being chased by Ian the Evil Evil an elf man who very much desires the brush and eventually Jillian comes face to face with the top of the evil hierarchy that is Glenda.

Background Information on Glenda

Glenda 2 was a continuation of the original Glenda (Preliminary Task Piece) which followed

the story of Glenda and her dream of having a beautiful brush.

Glenda herself was designed to be visually unattractive and horrific but yet not too frightening for the younger audience.

In what ways does your media product use,

develop or challenge forms and conventions of

real media products?

My children’s opening sequence uses the same conventions as that of a real children’s film.

To verify the reality of the film I looked at various other childrens adventure based Media products such as the story of Red Riding Hood and looked at the wood setting and used Mise en Scene with Trees and basic wood environment.

Obviously one of the main conventions of a children's fantasy/adventure film are characters. The character Jillian represents the average main character, kind hearted and simple. In this production there isn’t any form of sidekick to the main character because the idea of the story is that Jillian is a lone boy on his way out. The two protagonists of the film opening Ian and Glenda portray rivalry and evilness but of course not too evil for young viewers.

Another convention I used in the production is music, the audio consists of mostly music with a small amount of dialogue and background sound effects from recording. The music was selected to fit what was happening on screen, one problem I did find is that in a few places the music does seem to be too different to other tracks used. The first track used in our production gives a vibe of adventure in pleasant upbeat environment which is fitting to the genre, the track then slips into a creepy, scary track which was originally used in a horror game to signify the mystery of a creepy house, whereas in this production it adds a lot of mystery and fear around the ‘Sharon’ mask.

Within my opening sequence there were a wide variety of camera shots used. Examples of different camera shot types used includes;

Establishing Shot – Used at the start of the product after the credits.

Close-up – Used at the end of the production zoomed in on Glenda’s face.

Low Angle – Looking up as Jillian picks up the mask and brush.

High Angle – Over Jillian’s shoulders looking down at the mask.

Point of View – Jillian looking down at the mask.

Panning – When Jillian looks back to see Ian on the floor after the chase

Tilt – Following Jillian and Ian whilst running.

Hand-Held – During the chase sequence.

The camera shots helped to contribute towards the genre because the different angle shots helped us add mystery to certain objects such as the “Sharon Mask” when first discovered and the hand-held was used to give the chase sequence more of a realistic point of view, showing the audience that there was indeed a person chasing Jillian through the forest.

The final close up on Glenda’s face is to give the character of Glenda a fearful vibe about her and for shock purposes, this helps build the narrative in so setting up the story for the film.

Whilst producing this product I used different types of editing to improve the quality of the opening. This includes fade ins/outs during scene changes. Also during a flashback to a scene in the preliminary task we used earthquake and crystal lighting effects to give the flashback a dreamlike and powerful feeling. As well as adding a fantasy and serial vibe.

How does your media product represent particular social

groups?

My Children’s film opening is directed at children between the ages of 6 - 14 but can be enjoyed by whole families also. The storyline can be quite hard to understand due to it only being an opening sequence and because it’s a sequel, but it is still comprehendible to young children.

The character of Jillian is quite relatable to younger kids as he is carrying a shopping bag which young children will know about but also the mystery of the mask of Sharon and the frightening portrayal of Glenda makes the film opening appeal to elder children (of around 12 years). The somewhat vague plot gives the viewers the ability to think about what’s going on and try to piece the story together, also the effects and tense but at times humorous events is a good view for younger viewers.

What attracts your target audience?

Areas of my children’s opening film that attract the target audience of children would be the humour element to the scenes, such as Ian the Evil Evil during the chase scene when he falls to the ground. And various other humorous moments. This appeals to children because humour elements keep younger viewers interested.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and

why?

Institutions such as dream works or Disney would probably be interested in this film due to the mysterious fantasy but yet comedic twist to the plot. And the hugely developable character that is Glenda would be a huge hit.

A media institution such as Cinemas and TV channels such as Film4 and Sky Movies would be interested to increase the variety of the channels/cinema seating's audiences.

The opening sequence has similar features to that of popular series such as Harry Potter, magical and mysterious items with villains and evil doers.

Glenda 1 Glenda 2

To make the film appropriate for children we had to take into account scenes of sexual/violent nature and reduce them. Such as between Glenda had a large cleavage to imply that she is of large frame, this was not used in Glenda 2 because it would seem inappropriate for kids. Also violence has been reduced such as when Sharon was hit by the chair in the flashback, the chair didn’t actually hit Sharon making it less violent.

When the idea of Glenda was first created she wasn’t originally going to be part of our children’s film opening, however after the good applause received after the original Glenda production we decided to continue her story into Glenda 2. Because of this I decided to make Glenda into a stronger more villainous character.

I think Glenda comes across as a good character for a child’s film as she is not pleasant but at the same time she is not going to give them nightmares. To improve on this it would be a lot easier to focus more on children if we had access to more actors and a wider variety of locations.

What have you learnt about technologies from the process of

constructing this product?

These are the technologies I have learned to use whilst producing this project;

-Using Final Cut Express

-Controlling A Video Camera

-Embedding Videos and uploading to YouTube

-Using GarageBand to edit soundtracks.

Using Final Cut Express

We used Final Cut Express to edit our Video footage down to what we wanted and to add special effects. This program is pretty simple to understand and I have had experience of using Final Cut Pro before so tasks such as rendering and cropping weren’t a huge problem.

Video Camera ControlIn our project we recorded our footage using a Video

Camera, myself and Lynsey all used the camera throughout our production, Lynsey recorded the still shots whilst I recorded the Hand-Held shots. This was my first time using a Video Camera like this so it was quite difficult and we did loose a little bit of footage because of accidental button pushing.

GarageBand

In our children’s film opening we used music as our main soundtrack, and we had to use GarageBand to edit the soundtracks together and to shorten each track so that we had the sound we needed. I had only ever used GarageBand to make new sounds so editing ready made sounds was new to me.

Title of Glenda

In our children’s film, there were two titles used, the main title “Glenda 2” seen at the end, and the subtitle of “Jillian’s Jumping Journey of Joy”.

We made each title within Final Cut Express to save time and because it was familiar to us.

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

product?

Since doing the preliminary task I have learned a lot more about using tools such as GarageBand and working with different shot types which would generally improve the quality of our production.

Also because I had a larger knowledge of GarageBand we could edit together the soundtrack for the production.

The original head used for Glenda had been destroyed so we had to create a brand new one, the box was a lot smaller the second time around and clearly does not look the same as the first.

Also we discovered a wider choice of editing software so that we could improve visual quality.

The final piece has progressed compared to the original production, one of these improvements includes a large amount of editing to make the scenes flow. Also the original piece’s soundtrack consisted of footsteps, 4 words of dialog and clear signs of laughing in the background.

However the preliminary was a lot simpler to understand than the children’s opening.

The preliminary helped us develop our children’s opening a lot because it gave us a base story to work with as well as establishing a few characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXyqL3nsdyY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DLKtcwXe1c&feature=related

Youtube links to both Glenda Videos.

Problems with the final pieceThe final piece had a couple of errors that were unfortunately irremovable, one of these errors is when Jillian turns to see Ian on the floor, you can see Lynsey standing by Ian, we worked around this by adding Lynsey as “The Pixie Fairy” who is a character that will appear in much more depth later on in the film.

There are also a couple of bad edits such as when Ian falls we have two shots of the falling which I felt didn’t really fit together.

I also personally felt that the soundtrack of The Benny Hill Theme was slightly inappropriate to the chase itself but there was a lack of chase music available.

ConclusionThe final piece lasted for 2 minutes 7 seconds which is slightly over the time limit but it isn’t a huge problem.

The opening credits take up most of this time anyway.