Movie Ideas

   For our Children's Film, we are going to make a PG classified film because there will be a more grown up theme of cyber bullying and bullying. We have decided that we are going to use animation as we believe that this will appeal more to children as they enjoy animation and also we have the props that we can use to create the film.
   The outline of our story is going to be about a little girl at the age of a round 10 who is getting bullied by other girls that are mean to her and pick on her on a regular basis, eventually the 10 year old tells her mum and everything is sorted and they all live happily ever after. The moral of our story is not to bully, and if you are being bullied to tell someone as you shouldn't suffer by yourself as other people can help.
   All of us are going to share the roles, but we will mainly have a specific role to play when creating our movie. Each of us will help with moving the small characters, and will take it in turns to do the camera work as moving the characters and items will take a lot of time and a lot of people are needed to make the film successful. After filming is done, one of us will focus on editing, one of us will focus on sound and the other will focus on making sure everything pieces together and is linear and flows properly when the film is put together.

Contraversal films.

Films that are given the certificate U (universal) or PG (parental guidance) are made to be suitable and enjoyable for children.
For example Toy story, contains children's favourite toy's and characters. It also plays without their imagination, it has good morals so overall a good film for that age range. even though it contains some minor violence in the form of toys abusing other toys.

Although any film that is rated U or PG is watchable by children and usually containing little violence, offensive language and scenes of a sexual nature, some films are questionably rated in the wrong category.
For example, watership downs has a U certificate but contains gory scenes and lots of violence. Even though this film is animated children could still become upset or disturbed by this as most of the television they watch is animated as it appeals to them and their imaginations more. So any violence they see no matter if its animated or not can and will affect them.
   The film contains bullying, threats, and violence resulting in pain, death and blood. The animated characters are rabbits, well knows for a young child's favourite animal and seeing this film could upset them.

PG Classified Films

PG stands for Parental Guidance. A PG rated film is only suitable for children that are 8 years old and over, and parents must decide whether their children can handle it. they must consider whether the film is appropriate for them.
Discrimination can be seen in a PG but only for educational purposes and a strong message must be told through the film that whatever the discrimination is, it is wrong. Drugs can be mentioned in the film also, but must carry an anti-drug message so that the children watching it understand that this too is wrong. Horror may occur in the film, however it must be short and not be intense as otherwise the children may find it hard to handle. However, a PG certified film does carry more grown up themes, such as Domestic Violence, however the theme must be strongly portrayed as negative and wrong.

The definition of a children's film; 'No special effort is made to make the film to appeal to different audiences' does not apply today as films such as 'Stardust' is rated as a PG however appeals to older audiences as although there is fantasy violence, children can still enjoy it as they enjoy fantasy films and movies that run off with your imagination, but also adults can enjoy it as there is adult humor included in the film which isn't too old, but the kind of humor that adults will understand better than children. Also, not all adults enjoy violence in films, and because of this, Stardust can be easily watched for adults, as it does contain a little violence, but not too gory or horrific. In films such as 'Coraline' however, it can appeal to an older audience who enjoy fictional horror as there is a part in the film where the characters wanted to sew buttons onto their eyes, which may be too scary for some children but easy to watch for an older audience.

U Classified Films

U stands for Universal, meaning that it is suitable for anyone to see, over the age of 5. 

The British Board of Film Classification say that ' a childrens film should have no special effort made to make the film appeal to different audiences.' I don't think this appeals today because of films such as Toy Story as the humor used can be enjoyed by adults aswel as children.

A U certificate film must have a positive moral within the story, to educate children without them knowing it and sending out good messages. It should also have a reassuring counterbalance to any threat or horror that was seen in the film, for example, Monsters Inc. could have been seen as a scary movie, but to make sure children didn't get scared it showed the monsters as fluffy and cute and scared of children themselves. The movie has to be suitable for children to view alone, meaning that they can go watch the film by themselves without having an adult or older person with them to explain what is going on, so it must have quite a simple storyline. There must be no bad language, drugs or discrimination shown in the film and also no emphasis on real or accessible weapons, for example, in Power Rangers the weapons used are not real and cannot be accessed in the real world. Lastly, there should be no sexual content only love, for example the traditional storyline of the prince and princess falling in love, or the princess and the frog. 

Rocco - Animation

This animation is effective as after the opening credits, the music was engaging and you immediately introduced to the main character, Rocco the mouse. You were brought up on suspense for a little while due to the opening credits and zooming in slowly with quick transitions to text, to who the main character was and as soon as you found out, you were engaged as to what was going to happen or what Rocco was going to do. The main character appeals to the target audience as a lot of people and especially children like animals, and so it automatically would draw in their attention. Also the establishing shot at the start of the animation as to where the story was set, tells the audience where the story was going to be based around - The Alleyway. The clip was also very colourful, and when the lights lit up, it attracted the target audience more as children love bright and colourful things. The moral to the story is that even if you don't have a lot, you can still achieve things - you don't have to be rich to be make something great, the mouse lived in an old alleway, and he didn't have a lot, but he still managed to create the electricity to be creative and light up the lights that he found.





In our group we may do animation as we believe that animation can appeal more to children than real life, as children enjoy fantasy and adventure movies. For example, Disney do a lot of animations which become hugely well known as they appeal to the younger generation. For example, Bugs Life, The Lion King, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast as well as newer films such as The Incredibles, Toy Story 3 and Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The only problems we may face in doing an animation is that they take a very very long time to produce successfully overall. We may have group members who will not always be available at the time to help with filming and creating and so we'd have to prepare carefully for this if it were to occur at any time. As we'd be doing one-stop-animation, which is a series of photographs put together to create a film, it may be hard having to come away from creating the film and packing up to finding where everything went the next day or when we were next able to return to it, which could mean that it would mess up the whole film. It may also be quite expensive as it would depend on the props we were to use, which would mean that some things we would want to include in our opening clip, we wouldn't be able to.

The Incredibles.

In the opening sequence for The Incredibles the start has quite tense but happy which builds it up to seeing the main characters. The main characters are introduced by using an interview, this allows the children to see and hear simply what each characters personality is like by hearing what they talk about and seeing their body language and how they act. As Mr.Incredible is interviews first this gives the impression that the film focuses on him more out of all of the main characters within the film. As the interview takes place each character is in the superhero costume which states the the children that the movie is an action and that it will be a classic superhero against villain type on film. Also, the background colours used and red and black which adds to the action genre as red is known as quite a powerful colour, the superhero's, and black is known as an evil colour, the villains. Also later on in the film The Incredibles outfits turn to red and black showing the power they have and contrast between the good and bad, showing the classic example of an action film.

Robots.

 In the trailer for the movie Robots we had to analyse  whether is met the opening criteria and if it met the expectations for a Sci-fi genre. Through out the clip there was engaging, bubbly music as a man voiced over telling the storyline and setting the scene for the audience. We get introduced to the main character, Robby, and also get introduced to his family, mainly his mum and dad. Robby is the same age as what the majority of the target audience would be, this allows the children to be able to relate to him. There is an establishing shot to give the children an idea of where Robby is from and his sort of life style, from this we see his not a wealthy robot and gets 'hand-me-downs' from other family relatives, children watching the movie may be able to relate to Robby and see how he solves his situation. Bright colours were used thought out the clip which shows that this movie is going to be a happy and maybe quite comical also. From watching the clip and from the title i found out that the movie focuses around robots. I also saw that it will involve fixing and solving situations that the robots will face, the main one is Robby not wanting to wear his cousins 'hand-me-downs' and to create a style of his own and become one of the coolest robots in town.