Production Concept: Music Production

On Monday, Gabby and I posted an advertisement using Music Network Pro. After much research into children's television, we have decided that it is crucial for us to have a strong soundtrack (Theme and Songs). So far we have had three people contact us with interest for our production who all look quite promising. We still have a week left for our advert before it is removed too.

Production Concept: Character Building

We have been asked to look at our characters in more detail, and think about their situations and their representation within our show.

Gabby and I spoke about our human presenter Sid. We have researched other children's Television Programs which he is featured in, often as himself, and we really think that his acting style is perfect for our show, just as he presents himself in any other program as a presenter.

We spoke about our Puppet character too. We have already confirmed that our puppet will be a female puppet but will be a muppet/monster style puppet. We looked closer in detail at our outline of our show, the situation that these puppets are going to represented in and how they will be perceived. Our puppet needed some more personal 'traits' which are concurrent within each episode. We both agreed that our puppet should have a quiet and almost shy personality, and looking at other shows which feature puppet character, we needed to give our character a certain characteristic which would make her more relatable to our viewers. We have decided she would become a bit of a bookworm. She will love books, and have a bookcase in the basement of the shop (always present in charity shops). Here is how this idea fits in with out plot....

Each episode a bag arrives in the basement via the chute, our characters start to look through the bag. an certain 'unfamiliar item' is pulled from the bag and Sid, will start to wonder what the object is and where it is from. He will turn to our puppet who will look in her 'bookcase' at a certain book which she remembers reading about that object in. She will open the book, and start to read, as we focus into our book, our characters will be almost transported into the book, to the place where that object comes from.

Production Concept: Advancing our ideas

Today Gabby and I met just to clarify a few discrepancies which were brought to light after our pitch on monday.

We discussed the overall idea of a 'drop shop'. Does such a shop really exist? This brutal answer is, No, it doesn't and now, we have chosen to make our shop a charity shop. There were a few reasons which this was more suitable for our idea. Firstly, charity shops are increasingly common today, and have always been a part of the british culture and the high streets that we shop in, meaning they are a familiar place to many children. Secondly, we had issues with the idea of other characters bringing in an object to the 'drop shop'. This was a problem as we would have to introduce new characters to our show every episode and build up relationships between them and our regular characters. With our shop being a Charity Shop, items are dropped off anonymously, meaning we do not need any form of character to drop off items to our shop.

We have introduced the idea of a 'chute' which bags of miscellaneous items would be dropped down to be sold in the charity shop. Our characters are going to work in the basement of our shop, pricing up each item that comes through the 'chute' to be sold in the shop. We think that this idea is much more solid, giving the show a clearer outlook and a plot which is easier to understand for the viewers of our age range.

Production Concept: Our Package

For the Hand-in of this Unit, Gabby and I will produce a full package which will contain certain production elements for marking. We will produce these as if we were using them to pitch our concept for commission.

We have devised a list of these elements which we aim to produce to include within our package;

• Treatment, Synopsis and Pitch
• Production Schedules and Planning
• 6 x 10 minute Original Scripts
• Design Ideas, and Visuals (Storyboard, Mood Boards and Notes)
• Set Design
• Puppet Design & Stereotype
• Casting and Crew
• Location Information
• Music Production
• Title Sequence
• Branding and Marketing

These elements will build up our package to a substantial amount of work which will be split equally between Gabby and I. Although we will both specify in compiling work for different parts of the production process, we are keen to work together on certain elements so that we are able to obtain the best possible outcome from our wrk using both of our knowledge.

Production Concept - The Green Light Pitch Presentation

Here is the Presentation that Gabby and I put together for our pitch. We Have revised our idea to give our a more substantial theme and improved content.

After our feedback, we are going to advance our idea more to something more suitable. We received feedback which highlighted the show's name 'The Drop Shop', and how it may not sell what our show is about suitably, and also about giving our characters certain 'traits' which make them more relatable to the audience.

Although we still have to revised some of our ideas, we were given the 'Green Light'. This means that our production concept is viable for a real TV show and we will prepare a package for our unit had-in based on this initial idea.

Production Concept: Collaboration Correspondance

Yesterday I received a phone call from 'The Jim Henson Company'. After my initial shock on the phone, the man who I was speaking to, Peter Brooke, told me my information had been passed to him from an English Colleague, who I had contacted via her website, now working for them in the US.

I was told that our details would be passed on to the team in the UK and they would be in contact! For anybody that doesn't know who The Jim Henson Company is, they are responsible for the most successful puppets in the world, 'The Muppets', 'Sesame Street' etc. I am so pleased that such a huge and incredibly successful have got in contact and I'm looking forward to hearing from them again soon.

I have also had some luck with another potential puppet designer who I contacted about our project, she sent me an email which is below I am going to give her a call today and see if somehow we could work together. Her Name is Sally Preisig. She runs Mimics Productions and she is behind the works of the Tweenies, The Shiny Show and has produced costumes and puppets for Big Brother and for companies such as Carte Blanche.

Production Concept: Finding Collaborators.

For our production we have discussed what creative tools we might need for our presentation of our works. Taking the creative side of the project, I am responsible for finding collaborator which we could potentially work with.

We have spoken with a Graphic Designer, Ben Kemp about logo and website design. Ben is currently studying 3rd Year Graphic Design at another University. This is a great opportunity for us to work alongside other students in similar positions to us from other universities.

I have also been in contact with several puppet design companies from around the UK. One of which is http://www.puppetsmagic.co.uk/index.html who are a very successful company which make custom made puppets for your needs. these puppets are the same style as what we originally wanted. Here is the email which I have sent to potential puppet Designers/collaborators

Production Concept: Channels and Casting

For our show, we have been researching into different Cbeebies presenters. After looking into the channel's mission statements and what their aims are, we have decided that Cbeebies would be the perfect home for our show.

Looking into presenters for our show, we have chosen a current children's TV prsenter who we believe may be perfect for our show. This presenter is Sid Sloane.

We have decided to use Sid as our presenter because of his extremely successful career within the Children's television Industry. He is a well established name within the Industry has previously presented shows which we would like our show to become as successful as.

Production Concept: The Idea

So for my Production Concept Unit I have decided to partner up and collaborate with my fellow classmate Gabby Casey. After discussing our initial ideas for our independent concept ideas, we decided to bring our ideas together and form a show which combined both of our plans.

I decided to revisit and old pitch which I devised last year during our Studio Production Unit and use the basis for my concept for this current unit.

Our Idea:

Our Concept is to hypothetically produce a children's TV show in the format of 6 ten minute episode looking at cultural diversity within the UK, concerning the lives of children. Our Program will feature a presenter and a puppet within a studio based environment, but will also include VT's featuring specific children, which teach viewers about what their lives are like, being part of a specific culture in the UK.

Gabby and I have decided that we would take lead roles, myself, the more creative role, looking into designs of set, puppet design, logos and titles etc. and gabby, more of the written side focusing on scripts etc. We would both like to play a part in each others roles to and really work together to create the concept.

We have discussed working with outside collaborators to help us visually create our package for our show, looking into set design, title sequences and prop design.