References

Bbc.co.uk (2010) BBC - CBeebies - Story Time: Watch and read along to stories featuring all your favourite CBeebies characters. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/stories/ [Accessed: 10 May 2012].

Gunter, B. and McAleer, . (2005) Children & Television. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Kidshealth.org (2001) How TV Affects Your Child. [online] Available at: http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html [Accessed: 09 May 2012].

Musburger., R. (2005) Single Camera Video Producation. USA: Focal Press.

Young, R. (2010) The Focal Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro 7. Oxford, UK : Focal Press.

Evaluation

• Overall I think that we are all really pleased and also proud with the final outcome of our children's television programme 'Jimmy Jammies'. 
• Everyone in the group put an equal amount of effort into producing the program in both the practical and research and planning parts. 
• We can all rely on each other and I would definitely work with all of the people in my group again in future products.

Music and Sound Effects.

• Because our television programme is aimed at children we wanted to attract their attention and keep them engaged with the programme through out so we used a number of different sound effects during the show. 
• To find these we used resources such as the BBC Sound Archive and the Garageband  software program on the iMacs. 
• For the music at the beginning we wanted a short, child friendly, jolly, upbeat song and for this we decided to use the beginning few seconds of the song 'Somebody That I Used To Know' by 'Walk Off The Earth' which is a cover of the original song by Goyte (see youtube clip here).
• This song worked perfectly and was just what we were looking for and we are really pleased with how it fits in with the opening tittles and short text animation.
• For the theme song at the end of the programme (click here to listen to the song) we wanted a much slower paced one that the opening piece of music. This was because the children watching the programme would hopefully be settling down and getting calm ready to head into their bed.
• From the beginning, the pace and rhythm of the program gradually slows down more and more so the children are in the right state of mind to go settle down and go to sleep because it is a bedtime television programme. 

Software: Final Cut Pro

• To edit our television programme we used Final Cut Pro 7. 
• Both me and Cat had used this editing programme before but only had minor experience, and we had never edited with a green screen or used the chroma keyer and most of the other effects and tools which we used to edit our programme. 
• However, we got the hang of everything fairly quickly and only had a few problems when adding some parts of the green screen and making the images more sharper around the edges. 
• Before we shot the actual footage in the green screen for our programme we decided that it would be a good idea to do a small test run in the studio to see what it would be like in the actual shoot. 
• This footage also meant we could play around with it in final cut and get our heads around how it worked because it had been a while since we had used it last. We also used some of the green screen backgrounds which we had found. This was to see how they would work with someone moving around in them and just generally how we were going to edit Danny in the different scenes when it came to the real thing. 
• When it came to editing the footage with Danny, we made it a lot easier for ourselves by the fact we made sure that we took a lot of coverage shots and placed Danny in different positions. 
• This was so that if Danny messed up in any of the takes or we wanted to play around with putting him in different positions within the green screen backgrounds then we had that option to work with and do so. 
• When we did get stuck with the editing and weren't sure what to do we used the book 'The Focal Easy Guide To Final Cut Pro 7 - Rick Young' and also videos clips and tutorials on youtube for example: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAZTYhmh8h0) these really helped us when we were struggling and were very simple to follow. 

Filming with our little star 'Mia'

• As we are creating a children's television programme, we thought it would be ideal if we could get a child to feature in the programme. 

• We thought that this would add another dimension and would enhance the programme's content. It would allow children to connect with the child on screen and engage with the programme more. Getting hold of a child to act and feature in the programme could have proved to be quite a big problem, this was because we are students trying to produce a film. This problem was however fixed because Cat's Goddaughter (Mia) lives in Essex which is a short drive away. Mia's Mum was totally fine with her being in our programme and luckily Mia was the perfect choice for the role. She fits into the correct age group for the programme, she is cute, and she is also fairly confident in-front of the camera. 

• We set off to Essex to film a few little scenes with her and it turned out to be a really nice day out. We as a production group even bonded a little more as well. The weather was perfect and everything on the day went to plan! 

• This is a photo of us and Mia on the day: 

Script

This is the script which we wrote for the programme. 




Children’s TV Programme Script. Obviously some of it has changed slightly and was re-phrased during the shoot because we didn't use an auto-cue and Danny isn't a professional television presenter (even though we thought he was very good at filling in the role!)

Filming In The Green Screen Studio

Filming in the green screen studio was actually surprisingly quite straightforward and simple. I think the fact that we went in to the studio as a group, knowing exactly what shots and scenes we wanted and how we wanted to shoot them really helped us. 


There was a slight problem in that Danny (the presenter) had quite a few lines to say and he didn't have much time to memorise all of the script. This meant that we had to film the programme in small takes so that he would look more relaxed and comfortable in the studio environment. This would help the final product to look real and like a professional children's television programme. During the shoot we decided to write some of the points that he had to talk about on a whiteboard. I held them up behind the camera so if he forgot or wasn't sure what he was meant to say then he could just have a glance at it and he wouldn't stop talking or stutter. This worked almost in the same way as an auto-cue, and if we were to make the programme again would would have put the script on a computer screen in large print so Danny could just read straight off that. 


We made sure that we filmed plenty of coverage shots in the green screen. This was because we wanted to make sure every shot looked good and Danny's delivery of each line was clear and in the way that we wanted him to say it. We also wanted as much time as possible for editing and post production. Overall shooting in the studio went really well and we were really pleased with the outcome and footage that we took. 

Here are a few photos from when we shot in the green screen studio: