Magazine Cover Research and Planning

Magazines that come with children's TV series allow for 'insider knowledge' - something that isn't already known from watching the shows. This is what interests the reader. Therefore that should be included in the front cover either in cover lines or screamers.
Here are other typical parts of a childrens magazine:

Effects Research and Uses and Gratifications

Effects Research



Effects research focuses on 'what the media does to the audience'. They presume that audiences are passive, and audiences are the same. Most famous research done on this was the bobo doll experiment carried out by Bandura, Ross and Ross, the research they claimed to find was that every child reacted the same to what they saw, so the audience is directly affected by the media. This has been heavily criticised.





Uses and Gratification



Uses and gratification focuses on 'what audiences do with the media', audiences are not considered passive, audiences are now considered individuals with needs to be gratified. Individual needs will lead to individual interpretations of media messages, and the texts contain many possible meanings with equal chance of being selected or rejected (polysemic). Research done by Blumler and Katz (1974) said that audiences have 4 broad needs that are fulfilled by TV - Diversion, Personal Relationships, Personal Identity and Surveillance.

Storyboard

This a very basic storyboard of whats going to happend in our title sequence. However it does involve the transitions were going to use from shot to shot, including pushes and wipes.

Voiceover

Over the top of our title sequence we'd like to use a voiceover, this is very common in other title sequences of childrens tv drama. Our voiceover would be something like this:

1) This is my town

3) and this is me [name here]

4) I have a whole bunch of friends like [names here]

4) and you guessed it the crazy parents

4) oh, and the annoying sister

5) you would think im any normal kid

6) but im actually... a superhero saving the world from the evil [name here]

8) bent on chaos and destruction

10) but to do that, im gonna have to work on my powers, yea...

11) I am [name here] and this is -

12) [Title here]

The numbers relate to storyboard and which shots he says it in.

Narrative

With our coursework being a title sequence to childrens tv drama its hard to discuss narrative as we cant really portray a story. However the title sequence will have omniscient narration, the audience will know more than some of the characters know as this needs to be clear for our target audience to understand the concept of the drama and the characters themselves. We could also apply Propps theory. As our tv drama is for a mainstream audience, the narrative needs to be simple for our target audience to understand.

Minutes

Me and Dan earlier discussed problems we may occur when trying to shoot clips out of college time, as its winter now, if we finish at 4.10 it will start getting dark, which could cause problems when we try and shoot our setting and the characters. We have decided to start shooting wednesday 18th, as we finish earlier in the day and our shots will be clearer.

Audience Profile

From our feedback there was some confusion on what the age range should be, some said higher and some said lower on what we originally had.


We have now chose the age range 8-13, we think this appropriate for our the channel we want it to be showed on.

If I was to describe a member of my audience I would say:

• They want independence but still the care of their parents


• Their peers have a big influence on them


• They are creative and like to show this


• They have a short attention span until something really interests them


• Having nothing to do is not an option