Wednesday, 30 November 2011

Filming Diary


Tuesday 1st November 2011:
Today we went into Warrington Town Centre and interviewed an employee, named Charlie, from “The Entertainer”.  We asked her questions from our questionnaire and filmed her responses; we also filmed opinions on toys. Also in the shop we took pictures of different toys and toys she mentioned during her interview for cutaways. However during filming, we had a problem with the clip on microphone as the battery was dead. We overcome this by using the microphone on the camera although the sound quality wouldn’t be as clear as if we had used the clip on mic.

Thursday 3rd November 2011:
Today we filmed a family member playing on his Xbox. His name is Luke and he is 14, we interviewed him for a teenager’s opinion on video games and also we thought that he would have a contrasting opinion to Charlie as she works with physical games and is also older. We also filmed an interview with him and when we edit it together, we will use the footage of him playing on his Xbox as cutaways in the interview. We asked him about his favourite video games and how he interacts with people all over the world on Xbox Live. We also asked him about board games and why he prefers the Xbox over playing older games.  There was a problem while filming, there was bad lighting as when we watched the footage back on the camera before finishing, and we noticed that there was a reflection in the window of the light and also of us filming, so we had to re-film the cutaways and the interview.

Saturday 5th November 2011:
Today we travelled to Liverpool to interview a different family member.  Katie is 8 years old and we interviewed her for a child’s opinion on toys. We interviewed her and asked her what her favourite toys to play with were. We also filmed the different toys that she talked about to get cutaways. There was only a small problem whilst filming this as Katie’s room was very small so it was hard to fit all the camera equipment into the room.

Wednesday 9th November 2011:
Today we filmed three of our friends outside of college. We asked them what their favourite toys when they were younger and what toys/games they play with now including games on their phones and iPods. Although the interviews were good, the mise-en-scene was poor as we couldn’t use the blue screen as it was occupied. Also when we played the interviews back, the sound wasn’t working because the microphone was picking up the wind. We decided against using this particular footage because of the poor mise-en-scene and no sound. We also went into Warrington Town Centre and asked shoppers to answer a few questions. This was difficult as many people were in a hurry and wouldn’t talk to us. We got two interviews with an older lady and one with middle-aged women with a child before a security guard told us that we would have to leave as we didn’t have permission from the college to film on the site.

Tuesday 15th November 2011:
Today we interviewed two girls in college using the blue screen available in college. We asked them about their favourite toys when they were younger and what they used to play with. We also asked them if they think that new gaming i.e video games are becoming anti-social as some people from our first audience feedback said that they think it is becoming that way even with Xbox live. The girls were talkative and great for a girl’s perspective of modern gaming. Using the blue screen was new to us so that was a challenge getting the lighting right for the shot.

Wednesday 16th November:
Tonight we are taking the camera home to film some more cutaways for our documentary as it lacked variety. We are filming a friend called Theo who is 17 and we will film him playing with an Ipad, on a Playstation 2, a board game and on the Wii.
Thursday 17 November:
Last night we filmed Theo for the cutaways. We filmed him playing with the different toys and games but there was a problem with the Wii console so we couldn’t film him playing on that.

Tuesday 22nd November 2011:
Today we filmed two more of our friends, Dec and India. They are both 17 and we asked them their opinions about Barbie dolls, Ken Dolls and Action Men. We asked them about when they were younger and what kind of dolls they had. They responded well and we used the blue screen to put images of different dolls to put behind them to make the mise-en-scene appropriate.

Thursday 24th November 2011:
Today we filmed some more interviews with two more friends, Rachael and Becki. We asked them about their favourite games and their favourite board games and who they play them with for example; board games are more of a family game whereas some games are just 1player. We used the blue screen for these interviews as well to make the mise-en-scene appropriate.

Tuesday, 29 November 2011

Interview Questions

For our documentary we have set up an interview with a worker in a top toy store, The Entertainer. So we are prepared for the interview we have set a list of questions that we intend to ask the interviewee.
Interview Questions:
What toys did you play with when you were younger?
What toys were your favourite when you were growing up?
Do you still play with toys now?
Do you play games on your phone? if so which games?
Did you play with Barbie/Ken or Action Men?
Did/Do you play with board games?
Do you play on the Xbox/Playstation/Wii? If so which games do  you enjoy playing?
Do you think that newer gaming is becoming anti-social?
 
We will also use these questions for our other interviews and vox pops.
However when we set up an interview with a teenage friend we had to change the questions slightly…
What toys did you play with when you were younger?
What toys were your favourite when you were growing up?
Do you still play with toys now?
What do you play on your xbox?
What is your favourite game?
What do you think of modern gaming compared to olden gaming?
Do you still enjoy playing with board games?

Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Location Sheets

Before filming we had made locations sheets of the places we where going to interview in so we could see where would be best to film and place the camera.



This is the media room that we used in college to film interviews and we used the blue screen here to make sure the mise-en-scene was appropriate.


This is the layout of "The Entertainer", a toy shop in Warrington Town Centre. This is where we filmed the interview with one of the employees.


This is the layout of Katie's bedroom where we filmed an interview with her. We used her bedroom because this was the best place for the mise-en-scene as she had a range of toys around her bedroom.


This is the layout for Luke's bedroom as this is where we filmed the interview with him. We chose this location because this is where his Xbox was and we needed to film him playing on it for real footage.

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

Storyboards




This is the storyboard for our final documentary. This is how we plan to set out the film and what we intend on filming. We chose this because we think this would appeal to our target audience which is adults and teenagers as they will able to relate to the older toys and also to the newer toys as the adults would be aware as the are buying toys for their children.

Tuesday, 1 November 2011

Running Order

Running Order

Documentary: Toys Are Us
Channel: BBC3
Scheduling: Friday 9th December 8:30-9:00pm 
Duration: 28 (including advert break)


Montage of primary images of toys – Lego, dolls, teddys, cars, xbox etc
15 secs
Opening titles – stop motion of lego forming title – Toys are Us
7 secs
Cut a ways of children playing with toys (primary) intro to the documentary with facts that we found from our questionnaire (graphs)
40 secs
2 interviews with parent and their child, including questions from our questionnaire, cut between the two
1 min
Interview with toy shop worker talking about their best selling toys with cut a ways of the toys
1 min
Stills of primary and secondary images of toys with facts and graphs of best selling toys and most popular toys Selling toys and the most popular toys – Own research and secondary information
15 secs
Interview with a worker from a toy shop their opinion on the toys they sell and new games
30 secs
Quick history of Barbie
10 secs
Interview with Barbie and Ken (Crazy Talk)
18 secs
Interview with older generation about older toys
2 mins
Images of older toys
5 secs
Toy review – Modern Vs Older toys/games, talk about the different aspects of each game, how each game is played (1player, 2player, teams etc) Talk about how each toy is made (video game – using computer programmes. Board Game – physically made and crafted) how each game has effected the different generations.
5 mins
ADVERT BREAK
3 mins
Montage of toys – Lego, dolls, teddys, cars, xbox etc
15 secs
Graphs with information on our questionnaire
30 secs
Interview with teenagers
3 mins
Importance of toys – Primary videos of people playing with toys
30 secs
Interview with parents about the importance of toys in children’s lives
2 mins
Cutaways of “educational toys”
30 secs
Interview with toy shop owner about educational toys
2 mins
Survey about educational toys with cutaways
2 mins
End Credits
40 secs