Our Final Children's Film

This is our final introduction to our children's film. It's about a 10 year old girl called Betty Baker and gets bullied after going to disco.

Timeline

The Princess Diaries.

The Princess Diaries is about a 15 year old girl who struggles at school because of her shy and socially awkward personality yet she is still very bright. She discovers that she is a princess of a small country and she has to make up her mind whether to take her place at the throne or stay a 'nobody' at school. The film shows her transformation from a geeky girl to a princess. 

In the opening sequence I found that at the beginning the music is very light and dreamy, slow paced and fairytale like, which fits into the narrative of her becoming a princess. There is also ambient sound of police cars guarding a limo, which gives of a contrast between a fantasy tune with a powerful sound.

When Mia is introduced the music changes to a rock tune with a fast and heavy beat, this represents that underneath the shy exterior Mia may be a rock girl with a bit of attitude. This adds to the genre of a comedy from when the music changes from a light and dreamy tune to a very hard edged one. The music fades slightly when there is dialogue between her and her mum, where her mum asks 'Are you confident?' and Mia replies with 'Not really.' This shows that she is a very shy girl and may feel out of her comfort zone when she is at school. 

The music changes to a techno beat when she travels to school on a electric scooter, this gives of the impression that she may also be a bit of a cyber geek and know a lot about technology. 

Just before the opening sequence ends it shows three cheerleaders singing at the top of the stairs with everyone looking up at them. This gives of the impression that within the film it may be that these characters are high class and Mia may envy or be afraid of them and they see themselves as higher up then everyone at school. 

The music creates a lively and happy atmosphere in the opening sequence which gives of that the movie may be a happy one, but with the rock song it gives of a contrast of good and bad which also says that the movie may not be the typical fairytale one that the viewers expect. 

Planning for our 2 minute children's film clip.

  As our film is going to be an animation, we do not need to do our filming outside of the classroom. Our whole filming can be done in class, but will take a lot of time and effort in the short space of time we have to film.
  We shall set up a small set, using items from home to create our dolls disco area and bedroom and street. We shall be using ''Polly Pocket'' dolls as these are not only easily relatable for children as they are dolls, but also easy for us as we have these items at home. We also have Polly Pockets stages - The bedroom and the disco area and so we will bring these in to use as our sets as they have been created to suit the dolls. This way we do not need to worry a lot about what set we can give the dolls as this is pre prepared. We shall have 4 dolls. One which plays Betty, the main character who is bullied, two girls who are the bullies and a mum. The three girls are all of the same age, around 10 years old. We shall need to use a torch at one point to act as a car driving past the doll when Betty walks home, so one of us will need to bring in this prop too.
  In the first filming lesson and half of the second filming lesson, we will be tackling filming the disco scenes, so scene's 1-5 as these are the hardest as they need the most amount of movement and careful filming. Once this step is out of the way, we can concentrate on filming the rest which will not take as long as it is mainly close ups of a mobile phone and a little movement of a hug from the mum and daughter. All of us will be participating in bringing little things in to help with the sets and dolls, and as for filming we shall allocate each other areas to focus on and alternate so we each get a fair share of trying to film successfully. The only problem with filming the clips (doing one stop animation) is that the characters will have to be placed in the exact same place as they were previously videoed on, which means careful preparation for the next filming lesson, but with good team work we will be able to achieve this and carry on filming as usual.

Story Boards

our story boards for our children's film.

This is our shot list for our 2 minute filming clip.

Opening sequence of Mr Gadget

In the opening sequence of inspector Gadget the credits are made to show the genre of the film, and also appeal to the target audience (children).
The genre is shown by having all the gadgets, nuts and bolts and other random items to create the G for gadget. the credits are then printed onto the items and onto the G standing for gadget. Whilst this is being done there is a theme tune and sound effects to appeal to the target audience. The theme tune is catchy and clear so that it gets stuck in the viewers mind. This theme tune is well known everywhere, and anybody would be able to put the name to the film after hearing the song. The sound effects are noises that you would usually hear from children's toy's and other children's cartoons. There are also bright obvious colours which appeal to children and stand out against the grey background.
  The opening credits give very little away but the noises and build up is very appealing and makes you want to watch more, the G is created by random objects being thrown towards the half made G then magically built together. This of course is appealing to the target audience, as children often have a very broad imagination and they find things very believable.