Questionaire Evaluation

From my questionaire i managed to gain information as to what my target age group are interested in within TV drama. In addition to this, i founf that the most popular childrens TV dramas at the moment are: Tracy Beaker and Doctor Who, from this information i can assess that children enjoy both fantasy and real life within their programmes of choice. Furthermore, i founf that the most popular genre in itself were Drama and Comedy, again a wide spectrum. Within an actual opening the favourite aspect was On Screen Action, helping me within my planning and the choices i am going to have to make in order to create my piece. As for favourite character and setting, Schools and 'human' characters were chosen as the favourite. Lastly, my target audience aged from 7-12 mainly prefer it when real life issues are presented within TV drama, again helping me within my planning.

21st September Planning- to be continued...

Today i decided to brainstorm further ideas for my childrens TV drama opening.
Ideas that i thought of were:

• Setting the drama within a school environment with a 'real life' theme.
• Creating a title sequence which is engaging to a younger audience and also longer than on-screen action.
• Making the plot relate strongly to real life issues.

Furthermore, i have decided to think about the sort of character that i would like to include in my opening- maybe a stereotypical character that is only seen for a second (elaborated further later). I would most probably only have one character shown- but with extras.

By making these decisions i am using themes/ideas that are present within other childrens TV drama's such as 'grange hill' and 'the demon headmaster'.

Film Noir

Within todays lesson we viewed a television extract on Film Noir. From doing this i have learned that genre is created through stylistic conventions such as lighting, narrative and structure. Also, about characterisation and how it is used to re-enforce conceptual ideas.

Here are some of the things i noticed within 'Film Noir':

• There is dark lighting, and on-screen action is always shot in black and white.
• Women are powerful within a sexual manner and men are through power and violence.
• There is always a dark storyline to be followed.
• Media culture has literary influences.
• Voice overs are used to connect charcter and audience.
• As are phychological messages and effects.
• From 'Film Noir' iconic music was founded.
• There is always a build up of suspence.
• Framing of character challenged conventions at the time.
• Artificial lighting was used.

Although i cannot directly use all of these factors within my Childrens Tv Drama opening i can develop a couple in order to make my piece original. For example:

• Using some artificial lighting.
• Framing characters in a different way- challenging conventions.
• Representing the way children live in a different way than the norm.

IDEA'S FOR OPENING (so far):

• A 'Grange Hill' type of opening but futurised/ modernised to present day.
• A horror theme e.g. Goosebumps.