Research

Research For Toy Documentary on Prezi

Formal proposal for Documentary

Formal proposal for Documentary.

Toys are us, is a documentary that will make the audience relive their childhood and discover their inner child. We will be discussing how toys have evolved over years, from generation to generation. We will then be exploring toys today vs old toys and argue whether new technology has made toys more or less sociable for children. Toy are us will be an Expository Documentary as we will follow the codes and conventions of what is included in an expository documentary, and will address the audience in the form of authoritative commentary, it will also contain images and archive material to back up our argument. We will be using BBC 3 to air our documentary as it is a great platform for up and coming documentaries. It will be presented in an informal manor, also making it direct towards the audience. It will be shown at 8pm so it isn’t on too late that people wont be up or to early that people will miss it, as our audience is between the ages of 15-18 and also 40-60 as there is going to be a wide range of ages in the interviews and there will be references to the older and younger generation.

For our documentary we will be filming a lot of primary research, as we want a wide range of interviews from younger people, teenages, parents and even grand parents so we can cover all aspects we wish to question. Also will are filming footage of the toys we mention, to make it more visually pleasing for the audience. We also will be using statistics from our audience research so we will need to make them into charts to show on screen. Finally we will need to film our cut aways, we want to show people using the toys we are talking about, stores we are talking about. For our secondary research we need to gain our archive footage of adverts of the toys and demonstrations of the toys. Also we need different types of music to accompany the documentary.

Our documentary will follow a linear structure, because with our audience age ranging over a wide amount it will be better to have something which is easier for all the ages to understand. The content of our documentary will be interviews with students and teens, parents and the middle aged and finally grandparents and the older generation. The archive material will be of adverts for each toys. We will have cutaways of toy images, stop motion of toys playing, footage of toy shops, images of games and footage of people playing with toys. Will want to have two voice overs a teenager and an older person as it will give variety to the documentary. We also want to make reconstructions of people using the toys to make it more visual pleasing for the audience. And finally we will be using the jack in the box theme to open out documentary as it is a well known theme tune and it will lead the audience into the documentary without having to say what it is about.

Brainstorming of Content

Here is a brainstorm of our documentary. This shows what we are planning to do for our final plan and what we intend to do in our actual documentary. We have outlined who we want to interview, the music we plan on using, cutaways we think will work and also the voice over. 

Music: 

• Jack in the Box music
•  Danny Elfman "Breakfast machine" 

We have chosen these as ideas because when people hear them they remind people of toys and playfulness and that is what we want our documentary to be about.

Interviews:

• With students
• Parents
• Grandparents
• Toy shop worker - The Entertainer, Hawkins Bizarre, Argos, Asda

We decided we should have interviews with people of all ages to get a wider opinion on games and also to give the documentary variety. 

Archive Material:

• Old toy adverts - Barbie, Board games etc.
• Newer toy/game adverts - Xbox games etc.

We thought we would have adverts in our piece to show the audience what toys were like when they were out and also to show the difference between newer and older games.

Cutaways:

• Toy images
• Footage of people playing with toys
• Footage of a toy shop
• Images of different games
• Stop motion clips of dolls, Lego etc.

We will use these as cutaways during the interviews so the audience can see what they are talking about if they had not heard of the toy before, they could see a picture and recognise it. Cutaways also give the documentary a variety to just interviews.

Voice Over:

• Students
• Parent (older voice, sounds more professional)

We have planned to use an older voice as our voice over to make the piece sound professional.

Audience Feedback: Questionnaire Results

This bar chart shows that half of the amount of people that we asked we male and the other half female. We did this to get fair results and not to be biased by one sex.

This bar chart shows that most of the people that answered our questionnaire were aged 15-17. This is because most of the people we asked were people around our college. This makes our results slightly biased towards people of a younger age, but we do still have some that are older.

This bar chart shows that more people that answered our questionnaire preferred digital games to board games. This is important for our documentary as we now know to include more digital games as more people prefer these to board games and therefor more likely to watch a documentary about digital games.

This bar chart shows the amount of hours a day people played with their toys as a child. This shows that most people played with their toys for 1-3 hours a day but the results were close.

This bar chart shows the amount of hours people play with their toys now. The results show that most people play with their toys 1-3 hours a day which is the same as when they were a child.

This bar chart shows how many people use their mobile phones as a source of games. The results show that most people do. This shows that gaming has reached new technologies and you can access games anywhere.

This bar chart shows which kind of games people play on their phones, this chart shows that Angry Birds for the Iphone is the most popular. 

This bar chart shows that most people would let their kids play the toys that they played with when they were younger. This shows that most people think that their toys were appropriate for kids and not violent as some people do think that video games are too violent.

This bar chart shows that most people think that modern gaming is more anti-sociable than older games. This shows the development of gaming and that even though modern gaming is connected to the internet, most people think it is more anti-social than older gaming where you interacted with your friends to play the game.

This bar chart shows that most people that answered our questionnaire prefer newer games to older games. This is important to our research as we now know that in our documentary we should focus more on newer toys rather than older toys.

In this bar chart, it shows that most people agree that video games aren't too violent.This is interesting because in the media (the news and newspapers etc) it seems that most people believe that video games are too violent with people recreating violent parts of certain games, but our research disagrees.

This bar chart shows that most peoples parents bought them games which were over 18 when they were younger. This shows that people have been exposed to violent/inappropriate games from a young age.

Most people thought that the Xbox 360 was the most popular game from last year as you can see from this bar chart. These people were right as this was the best selling item on this list from last year.

This bar chart shows that most people did own what they thought the most popular selling toy for teenagers last year.

This bar chart shows that most people when they were younger played with their toys with their friends, this shows that older toys were more sociable and people actually went outside and played with their toys. Not just sat at home on the xbox talking to their virtual friends on their headsets.

This bar chart shows that most people think that modern gaming is more sociable than older games. This could be due to the internet and people can chat online with their games and now, most games require more than one player to play.

Audience Feedback: Questionnaire

 

Toys Questionnaire

1.    Gender:

Male                           Female

2.    Age:

15-17              18-20              21-30              31+

3.    Which do you prefer?

Board Games                                    Digital Games

4.    What was your most memorable toy as a child?

Dolls/Action Figure              Board Games                        Teddy Bear                Cars

Other

If other please specify:

5.    Rate these toys from coolest to lamest in your opinion (1 = lowest, 10 = highest)

Barbie

Action Man

Skipping Rope

Rubik’s Cube

Yo-Yos’

Leggo

Wind Up Toys

Xbox, Play station, Wii etc.

Toy Babies (Baby Annabel)

Slinky

6.    How often as a child did you play with your toys?

1-3 hours a day                    4-6 hours a day                    6+ hours a day

7.    How often do you play with toys now?

1-3 hours a day                    4-6 hours a day                    6+ hours a day

8.    Do you use your mobile phone as a source for games?

Yes                 No

9.    If you answered yes to question 8, what genre of games do you play?

Classic Games (Snake, Pac-man, Space Invaders etc)

Angry Birds               Tap Tap                      Brick Breaker                        Other

If other please specify:

10. What was the most recent toy you have bought?

11. Would you let your kids play with the toys that you played while growing up?

Yes                 No

12. What is your opinion on modern games/toys?

Anti-Social                Social            

13. Do you prefer older or newer toys?

Older              Newer

14. Do you think video games are too violent?

Yes                 No                   Don’t Know

15. Did your parents buy you video games that were rated 18+?

Yes                 No

16. Can you guess what the most popular selling toy for teens was last year?

Wii                  Digital Camera                     Amazon Kindle                   

Ipod Nano                 Nintendo DSi                        Play Station 3          

Xbox 360

17. Did you own what you think is the most popular game of last year was?

Yes                 No

18. When you were younger, did you play with your toys with your friends?

Yes                 No

19. Do you think modern gaming is more unsociable that older games?

Yes                 No

Planning

Initial Ideas:

Clothing - How clothes have changed over time, Different styles now, Fashion Icons

Recycling

Different dance styles

Toys - Childhood toys Vs New toys

Music Genres

Food

Social Networking - Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, Tubmlr

Final Idea:

Toys - Childhood toys

• People our age (teenagers/college students), older and younger sharing their favourite toys
• How toys have changes - Board games, social games to Xboxs and PlayStations
• Target Audience - wide range, 17-20 40-60
• Channel and scheduling - BBC3 8:00pm
• Title of documentary - Toys Are Us