TV comedy research - Peter Kay's Car Share

You need to know the following information: the day, time and channel of the programme (in this case Peter Kay's Car Share).

Research the following:

• Who commissioned the programme? (Details of the company)
• Who produced it? (Company details)
• What audience is it aimed at? Why?
• Why is it on at that time and on that channel? Link to 'type' of comedy and target audience. 
• Is it on after the watershed? Why? (Find out what the watershed is)
• Know the audience demographic
• Peter Kay (Other programmes and characters he is known for/notable successes)

TV channels - BBC 1

Our mission, vision, and values inform the work of the BBC and are how we promote our public purposes.

The public purposes are set out by the Royal Charter and Agreement, the constitutional basis for the BBC.

Our mission

•  To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain.

Our vision

• To be the most creative organisation in the world.

Our values

• Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest.
• Audiences are at the heart of everything we do.
• We take pride in delivering quality and value for money.
• Creativity is the lifeblood of our organisation.
• We respect each other and celebrate our diversity so that everyone can give their best.
• We are one BBC: great things happen when we work together.
• The Royal Charter and Agreement also sets out six public purposes for the BBC. See Public purposes.

We run nine national TV services providing entertainment, news, current affairs and arts coverage for the whole of the UK.

Our output is available via digital TV, live online via channel websites and as video-on-demand via BBC iPlayer.

BBC One

On BBC One you'll find news and current affairs, drama, comedy and entertainment programmes.

Keith Lemon - research task

Task: Find out all about Keith Lemon (Leigh Francis) and create a couple of pages about his unique style of TV Comedy. Use the questions below to help you collect enough detail for a couple of pages in your exercise books explaining your research findings. Remember that this information will be essential for your exam preparation.

Find out what shows have been developed using the character Keith Lemon.

• Create a timeline of his TV Comedy shows.
• What genre of TV Comedy shows has he produced.
• Explore his successful show Celebrity Juice, explaining how it appeals to audiences (consider audience pleasures here).

Read through some of these articles to support your research:

• Guardian
• Digital Spy
• Radio Times
• TV Comedy

TV comedy research - Celebrity Juice

You need to know the following information: the day, time and channel of the programme (in this case Celebrity Juice).

Research the following:

• Who commissioned the programme?
• Who produced it?
• What audience is it aimed at? Why?
• Why is it on at that time and on that channel? Link to 'type' of comedy and target audience. 
• Is it on after the watershed? Why?
• Know the audience demographic

Peter Kay's Car Share - further research

• Compile a biography of Peter Kay - include programmes, tours, records that he has been responsible for.
• Write a brief plot summary of each episode of the show. If possible add broadcast dates and times. Also, include initial viewing figures.

Audience Demographic Categories

What are the codes and conventions of Action Adventure Film?

Narrative

• 12/15 certificate, maximising youth audiences
• Often hybridised with Sci Fi/Adventure/Romance
• Major Hollywood studio produced and distributed
• High production values including CGI FX. Fast paced editing
• Classic Hollywood 3 act narrative structure
• Predictable chain of events – cause and effect
• Single stranded, linear, closed narrative
• Dramatic non-diegetic sound (soundtrack music)
• Clear binary oppositions (good v evil)
• Star Marketing: Audience identification/expectations (Cruise/Pitt/Johnson/Thurman/Jolie/Tatum/Craig/Di Caprio/Damon)
• Generic Typecasting and Secondary Persona apply (stock characters)
• Romantic sub-plot, humorous dialogue
• Relationships with new technology (youth audiences)
• Use of close ups
• Dominant representation of gender: male/female action hero.

• Narrative led films contain tightly woven story arcs, where the dialogue drives the plot rather than builds character.
• An action adventure film is essentially one long quest with a succession of different chase sequences, each one more death defying and seemingly impossible than the one before. The trick for the producers is to ramp up the tension as the film progresses to a storming end sequence. Will our intrepid explorers make it, or will the evil antagonist get there first.
• A strong story ark of a quest for treasure, or an incredibly valuable object, or an item which has occult power.
• Love interest that both hinders and supports the main quest.
• A fast moving narrative with constant set backs that are overcome one by one, leading to fairly complex plots.
• In many respects this genre of films derive their energy from being more exciting, more adult and much more dangerous versions of children’s stories of adventure such as Enid Blyton’s Famous Five or Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.
• Thrilling action where the protagonist saves his fellow travellers through a variety of non realistic but apparently logical escapades.

Characters and locations

• These are not realistic films, although the characters must be believable. They are set in a stereotypical world of the not too distant past e.g the 1930s, or the fictional world of storybook adventures e.g. A high tech, futuristic maze.
• A main protagonist who is a seen as a 'normal' person and who just happens to have amazing powers of endurance in the face of extreme danger, and is also very clever. James Bond is a Secret Service agent. Captain Jack Sparrow is at first an ordinary good for nothing pirate with incredible agility and luck, although he later takes on supernatural powers.
• There are always helpers who are a team of innocent characters who happen to get caught up in the action.
• Humorous dialogue often diffuses taught and sometimes frightening situations.
• The characters take the twist and turns of the plot very seriously as they are often in mortal danger from an assortment of unusual animals, machines and monsters orchestrated by an evil antagonist.
• Exotic locations where the characters have to contend with extremes of climate, as well as evil forces.
• The aim is to please the audience by keeping them on the edge of their seats through a series of mind boggling chases, exotic locations and hair raising adventures in historically inaccurate but somehow elementally possible settings.
• Action Adventure films are designed to create an action-filled, energetic experience for the audience who can live vicariously through the exotic locations, conquests, explorations, struggles and situations that confront the main characters

Task: Having read through this description of the action adventure genre (characters and locations), apply each area to an action film of your choice.

The film must be from the last 5 years.

Explain your points, using examples from the film as evidence to support your ideas.

Production Log (Research and Planning) and Evaluation: Magazine

The Production Log

The production log will provide important evidence to the teacher and moderator of the individual
candidate’s role and personal contribution to the production. It must be completed individually and is expected to include the following:

• evidence of research
• evidence of planning, such as outlines, still test shots, sketches and storyboards
• key dates, decisions and deadlines
• a record of the individual candidate’s exact contributions to the production, such as:camerawork, photography, interviews, copywriting, design, audience research, redrafting or editing.

Evaluation

The individual evaluation is to be produced by the candidates under supervised conditions.
The presentation of the evaluation may take the form of any one, or combination, of the following:

• a written commentary
• a slide presentation (PowerPoint, Keynote, Impress)
• a podcast – video and/or audio
• a DVD with extras.

Those candidates offering a written commentary should aim to write between 500–800 words. A slide presentation (which centres may wish to video), should include 10–15 slides. A podcast/DVD with extras should be about 3–5 minutes in length.

Deadline Day - Friday 14th October

Friday 14th October is Deadline Day

You must hand in your folder at the end of Mr Smith's lesson.

Your folder must include:

• Research and planning LIST HERE
• Draft magazine cover on A4
• Draft magazine contents page on A4 or A3 (as appropriate)
• Draft magazine double page spread on A3

All magazine elements must be in printed in colour.

If any of the work is missing you will have an after school detention in the week following half term.

11W - Coursework Schedule (Thursday 1st September - Friday 14th October)

Thursday 1st September - Friday 2nd September (3 lessons)

Complete research and planning (work detailed here)

Monday 5th September - Friday 14th October (15 lessons)

Complete the following:

• Flatplans of cover, contents and double page
• Write an article or an interview for your double page
• Take suitable photos for all pages of your magazine (preferably all images will be original)
• Draft version of cover, contents and double page

Deadline for draft cover, contents page and double page spread - Friday 14th October

10W - Research and Planning Deadline

All research and planning must be completed by the first lesson back after the summer holiday. 

You can print it out upon your return if you wish.

It should include the following:

• Research the genre-conventions of the magazines within your chosen genre
• Examples of existing titles within the genre
• Analyse a cover, contents page and double page spread from an existing title within your genre
• Colour palettes-five examples of colour palettes you may use. Add examples from your genre.
• Fonts-five examples of the type of font you may use. Add examples from your genre.
• Language register (A/A*)
• Moodboard-create at least one for the ideas that have inspired you.
• Audience research (UK Tribes)-which tribe would buy your magazine? They are the tribe/ target audience you are aiming your magazine at.
• Use SurveyMonkey to create a Questionnaire aimed at your audience. Ask at least 5 people to answer it.
• Create audience profiles for a male and a female audience member.
• Analyse the media institution that will publish your magazine

Magazine Research by Martha Causier

GCSE Media Studies Magazine Production from LouiseDownie

Analyse a Magazine

Analyse a cover, contents page and double page spread from an existing title within your genre. 

Use the examples below to help with your cover analysis. 

This will help with the contents page. 

This will help with the double page spread.

Magazines - Research and Planning (1) 10W

Genre choices are:

• music 
• fashion
• sport

Today's work:

1. Decide on your genre
2. Research magazine titles within that genre. Make a list of existing titles.
3. Collect images of as many different covers as you can. Group by title e.g. Vogue, Wonderland, iD (all fashion titles).
4. Annotate a magazine cover identifying key features (see post above)

Analysing Movie Posters

Task:
Select a poster of your choice from the action genre and answer all the questions below.

Posters occupy a space between art and advertising. They have a clear commercial purpose - to promote an event or product - but they also have artistic value. People buy them and hang them on their walls. Museums have whole galleries devoted to poster art. When analysing a poster it is important that you evaluate both how well it fulfils its purpose (i.e. promotion) as well as its aesthetic value.

First steps

• When analysing a poster, you should consider the following broad questions before you start to focus on the details:
• What are the main colours used in the poster? What do they connote?
• What symbols are used in the poster? Do you need audience foreknowledge to decode the symbols?
• What are the main figures/objects/background of the poster? Are they represented photographically, graphically, or illustratively?
• Are the messages in the poster primarily visual, verbal, or both?
• Who do you think is the intended audience for the poster?

Given that all movie posters have the same purpose - to get audiences to go see a movie -

• What persuasive techniques are used by the poster?
• Which genre conventions are referred to?
• Is a star used as a USP (Unique Selling Point)?
• Are "expert witnesses" (i.e. critics) quoted?
• What pleasures (gratifications) are promised by the poster?
• How is attention gained (humour, shock, surprise familiar face of a star)?
• How does the tagline work? (humour, pun, alliteration etc?)
• Who are the institutions involved in production?

The poster can also give you important information about the production context of the movie:

• How much does the poster tell you about the institutional context of the movie's production?
• How important is this information on the poster (think about information hierarchies)?
• How important a part of the whole marketing campaign is the poster? Where is the poster placed?
• How expensive was this poster to produce?

Critical Evaluation

Finally, you have to pass judgement on the poster.

• Is it a good poster?
• Does it communicate effectively with the audience?
• Are there any alternative readings which might harm the message of the marketing campaign?
• Is the poster offensive in any way? e.g. representation of people or places

10YMs1 Work To Do

Period 1 Monday 22nd February

You will need to design two posters (a teaser poster and a main poster) for an action adventure film (of your own creation) aimed at a teenage audience.

In today's lesson you need to make progress on the following:

• Decide on the sort of action adventure film you will be making the poster for
• Choose a suitable title for your film
• Decide on a tagline for your title
• Write a brief plot outline for your film
• Decide on the stars who will appear in your film

Research for Scheduling Question (4a)

4. (a) Compare how and why two programmes were scheduled on different channels.

State the day, time and channel of each programme.

• Who commissioned the programmes?
• Who produced them?
• What audience are they aimed at? Why?
• Why are they on at that time and on that channel? Link to 'type' of comedy and target audience. 
• Are they on after the watershed? Why?
• Know the audience demographic

You must know:

1. day 
2. time
3. channel

for both programmes (Friday Night Dinner and Bad Education).

Extension work:

• Research original scheduling (time of broadcast) for both programmes and any subsequent scheduling that may be different. 
• Account for the reasons why the programmes were broadcast on their particular days. If this changed from series to series comment on this too.

Tomorrowland - Representation Of Teenagers (Casey)

Consider the ways that teenagers are represented in Tomorrowland (this will really help with your coursework essay).

• Make notes on the representation of  Casey. 
• Consider things such as what she wears, hairstyles, body language and attitude. 
• Is she a stereotypical teenager or is she more realistic (a countertype)? Explain your conclusions.

Find images that illustrate your points.
This example on The Hunger Games has the sort of detail you need.

Tomorrowland: Research Task

Create a research document based on the film Tomorrowland.

Include:

• Main characters
• Plot
• Director
• Location
• Genre

ALSO

• Look at how Tomorrowland fits the codes and conventions of the action adventure genre.
• Explore how the teenage girl is represented in the film, using the image below.

Magazine Research & Planning by Jasmine Aldridge

GCSE Magazine Research and Planning from Neill Ford