Practice two

The lessons i leanrt in the first practric i took on to my second practic.

we used lego this time and we found it a lot harder to move and the bike kept fallening over. This was a constant problem witht he placement of the chracters. We than had another problem with the right coner creating a lot of shadow. It wasnt all negatives the fact in how we manged to move the Lego in the way we did was a postive. Another point we relised was the fact how much work we needed to do. What we took an hour to film and it was only six seconds long.



lessons i have learnt

blue screen

Light blue
This worked well because the only colour blue we used was see through dark blue. With didn’t really affect the way the background. The shadow from this card did make a fair amount of shadow however this wasn’t a problem with the high powered lights.

silver

The colour silver worked very well. The shadow was limited to bar minimum and took most of it off straight away. The only colour that was like it was white however this worked well. Until I saw that the Lego character we used was silver/grey. Therefore this blended into the background and found out that the flash made an image in the card.

orange

The orange was really bright but it did blend into the red too much. It also gives a very bad contrast to some of the lighter colour.

Preparation for Lego filming

Preparation for Lego filming
We had to book out the lights for our filming. We did this on Friday the 27th. That meant I would pick the lights up at 12 50.

How would I get the lights home?

I asked if I could use the car off my parents for a day, after passing my driving test this summer. I put the lights into the car and take them home.
What colour green screen are you using and where are you getting it from?
I went to the arts shop in Worcester PHW on the high street and looked for colored card. Know I knew that we used number different colour. We used green so we couldn’t use this. I looked for three different ones I decided to buy an orange, silver and a light blue.

Main character

Because of the problem we had with our main character having to look like a school kid we had to search on the internet for a single character. We tried several different websites like EBay or Lego official website .However we found the best thing was Harry Potter and replace his head with a different one to have no recollection to him.

Surport teacher

I than had a support lesson and I was going on about the brick problem in my blog till my support teacher mentioned the fact she just sorted out all her sons Lego and was willing to bring it in that I could borrow therefore it was a problem solved fast. The deal was that if we borrowed the Lego off her the Lego we brought our selves we would give her after we finished it. This solved the problem by putting Lego on eBay or not having to find a charity. I plan to pick the Lego up next Friday at 11 30.

From:
Subject:
Date:
________________________________________
Hi Zac
I have heard that you are looking to source some original lego for your filming. I have quite an assortment of bricks and models if you are interested. When you have finished with all your lego it would be appreciated if I could have first refusal on purchasing it.
Sue Wilson

message from kate

From: Kate Wolstenholme
Subject: Lego
Date: Tuesday 10th Nov 1:59pm
________________________________________
Hi Zac, I'm sorry I haven't been able to find any of the lego bits you need. I have basics and lots of Star Wars figures if any of that helps!
________________________________________
Print message


Spoke to my parents to see if we had any Lego however we managed it throw it away when i was younger.

I than had a convocation with my previous media teacher Kate Wolstenholme if I found any. To find out she might be able to help us out she said she would portal me to tell me if she found any. By the message below you can see this didn’t because she only had Star Wars Lego and wouldn’t watch the mise on scene. .

More problems with eBay

We yet again had some problems with EBay paying for items however we browsed for a while and we found this fire-mans play set. It has enough basic bricks that we needed in the first place and the use of colour does have a lot of blue or green in it. It also has basic Lego people we can use and plenty of items we can contract for our animation piece. This cost £15.97; divided by two it works out about £8 each. We still need to look for some more bricks to add to this.



We than thought we would need to buy another set of bricks whoever it was costing about £15 for post and delivery. However we were deciding on this however the main problem we had been they had green or blue bricks.

First purchase of Lego

I spoke to Aaron about this problem and we had agreed to go into town and look for Lego in shops. I went into town to look and went to the entertainer to look for anything that could help us to discover everything was quite expensive, however me and Aaron had looked at the villain which we chose to use we had come up with using a power mining Lego toy .These happened to be in the shop and cost £8 so £4 each therefore we had made our first purchase. The only problem about this was the colour was green which meant we had to use a different colour screen so the preferred to use is blue we are agreeing on.

The different location of filming the lego

this location was on the side of a cabinet and was a good height for the filming. The problems we had with it was we didn't get a lot of room to move and the main problem was the lights became a health and safety risk. The room we got didn't give us a lot of room to move around with either.




I than deiced to move the set to on top off my TV stand this worked well with the height.And gave us a flat wall to put up the blue card.The lights had a good amount of room to move around and no shadow was gained from light coming through the window.

Lego animation

The main problem that showed us down was looking for Lego on the internet. This was really hard because of the vast amount that came up. We did use EBay and Amazon to look for products however we found this to be harder than expected.



The main problem we had with eBay is that looking for just bricks came in 100-about 300 this was a problem because we haven’t got any idea of what we are looking to buy in the first place however we don’t have a clue on the size we need to purchase. Another problem is because eBay is a huge conglomerate thousands of people bid against you. We found this out on different times for example these happened below. The price had increased quite a lot than we expected from other people bidding.

skills and concepts

The conpect of of redunducy means the normlity of the common the programmes or genre of that thing is.However the conpect of entropy means the unscene message or differen than redundancy. If a programme is new and is entropy over the time the entropy item will become redundunce e.g the monalissea.
This is very common in the film industry as soon as 28 days came out there was a huge zomble craze however now there zomble films are deing out and becoming redundancy.Else creative and very formalic.

The genre of our media piece of work has a medium term of both entropy and redundancy.
The genre of our media coursework has many different conspects of redundancy for exemple our main location(logestic arguments) is set in a school, we are including moral messages which would be scene as the correct way to live.The target audience is in educations therefore by the programme set in a school is does relaye to a redundancy. The element of use using a childrens Tv drama is redundancy however by the creative imput(entropy)into my work by using the lego.This idea however by using a lego superhero turning into a child is based on the idea life on mars or ashes to ashes so by that its coping the idea of this into a redundacy vaule.we decided to make it to a wide audience to get the largest possiable target audeince rather than a nicher market by marketing it more

auter theroy

The way in which i show my work
when i have my own piece off work i kind of make sure its something i would want to watch or want to go see at the cinema rather than other people.This is one of my biggest strengths however biggest falls.
In both peices of coursework i have used my creative skills to help me develp the idea. In my peices of work i take a even balance of entropey and redunducey for exemple my first year coursework is very conventucal in the way i use the conventsion to my advantage however the way in which i use these conventions to benift the plot of my work does show.In both peices of work i have had
my first year coursework. the way in which my chracter have two different lives is an auter for exemple my as coursework my main chracter was a cross dresser and had two different prosonars asfore my new courseowrk lego/human.

The way in which i am going off this in my A2 courseowork is i am making it a more traditional messages and vaules. This is becuase i am targeting a market in which the programmes have to be civil to the target market.

The way in which i have included two huge twists in my work does than show m atuer theroy of making my audeince think and guess of what going happen next.

The differences of course i am lookign at the year rather than last year is the target market last year i was basing my targeted market about 15-25 this year 5-13. This is a big change in how my work is going to change from last year.The way in which i the genre of the film is different does come into concepts of hoor/childresn Tv drama. My messages and vaules last year of my work . Therefore my auter theroy does show the fact i challange messages and vaules however this is going to change there to target audeince, therefore the messages and vaules have to be good unlike my work before which shows messages and vaules to challange masculity or feisium.

ploblems encountered

Problems encountered
On the Sunday I had a thought that the collage forgot to give us a video tape in the brief-case so therefore I had an email. We decided from this unexpected problem that before we meet on the Tuesday if I went into town and found a tape. I discovered that you couldn’t buy a separate tape on its own so I had to buy a pack, the price changed from £12-20. I looked in all the shops of high street media conglomerate such as comment, Currys or Jessops. I decided to get the Sony tapes which cost me £12. This was an unfortant because it meant increasing our budget to £32. This was a problem without being unorganised because we should check we had a tape before hand.

film diary

Film diary 27 of October
We had all the logistic arguments organised and I set off to go get the video tape from town (relate to problems above). This made me 15 minutes late because town being busy and the longer I had to walk. Aaron was at collage with his bother Jordon (actor) and the equipment. I arrived at collage at about 11.15. We went straight into six form collage and as expected the rooms where locked apart from selected rooms because of a church event, this was unexpected and called an annoice to our work. We than agreed that a shot in the room wasn’t our first shot and we wanted to keep it in cronical order, so we went to where our first shot was set, this was a large empty space was we where walking up the stairs Aaron had the idea of using the library therefore so we did. This was good because it was empty.

Battery
Problems we encountered where we only got given one battery which started to die straight away. I spent at least 20 minutes either trying to find a media teacher or the technician (Ian). I did end up finding him in the end however he didn’t have the key to the media room because of the door being new and only one key. This therefore gave me and Aaron time to plan what we were going to do next. Ian actually came up and found me and gave me a spare battery.

Filming went well for a while, we followed the story board which we had brought with us and we came up with some new shots which we didn’t include. I am very pleased with one of the shots i came up with was a tilted hand held camera of a shot looking down at his hand and turning them over this connoting that the change from Lego hand to human hands and the confusion our main character is going through. We than spent a lot of our time redoing the shot and making sure we had plenty of shots to edit. This was experience from which I and Aaron learnt last year from the chance of getting a jump shot, 180 rule or having a bland range of shots.

The only shots we didn’t have in the lrc was the hand held panning spin shot of him at the end , the classroom shot and the shot of him looking in the mirror. As me and Aaron had planned before it was easy to find the janitor in which said we could film and use the rooms, therefore he gave us the key and opened a room.

We spent about 4 hours filming 2 and half minutes of film this is which we are looking to cut down to about twenty or thirty seconds of footage. I was happy with the filming and apart from the unexpected mistakes that happened everything went according to plan. The actors Jordon was good and helped and even tried to come up with some of his own ideas himself .I think mine and Aaron commutation skills where good and we talked about everything and sorted out the problems.
Me and Aaron have agreed on the first Monday back we sort out everything and scan everything into our blogs and trade the selected piece of work what we doest so we haven’t missed anything out.

Custom
Because of the Lego character we are basically going to try find a Lego super hero for a main character and a villain. In the second half of our piece of work as I said Jordon would be wearing the Nunnery Wood school outfit. This outfit links with change of clothing and the audience will reconsgn the school uniform outfit and relate to the main character. The uniform is green which is a compression to what we are doing with the green scene being opposite; this is a hidden message what the uniform connotes.

story board

Story board
In the last week of collage between the 18-22 of October me and Aaron agreed to meet up in a couple of our free and put together a story board this was a brief and rough sketches of the shots we thought would be appropriate for the filming. We had to come up with a basic narrative of what’s going to happen.

We have agreed that our character wakes up in an empty classroom or location in a school. We need the used shots like pan and long shots of the environment to show the new environment and where he is. We are going to demonstrate this by close ups we agreed and possible a hand held camera.

The last shot we came up with is the character (Jordon) sat at a desk in a room on his own with a voice over saying episode one name of the episode on a white board that is turned over to show the audience. This is going change every week with the different number and name of what the episode.
If we have agreed to improvise and have an idea we agreed to up this in while we are filming so we got plenty of shots to pick from and sort out.

Shot list

There are a list of shots i might use:
• High angle
• close up
• Mid long shot
• Point of view shot
• Medium shot
• Hand held
• Long shot
• Pan
• depth of focus

planning

In my media coursework there was certain aspects we had to plan for doing half our filming and the other half the green screen (stop frame animation).

Equipment
The equipment we are using is going to be taken to Aaron’s house because he lives a lot closer to collage than me. However because collage being open on the day if didn’t have necessarily be taken however was sencerable we took it.
In using the digital video camera

We booked the equipment out on the 22 of October. This included tri-pod, camera and spare batteries.



Green screen
We will need a back of the colour card using, SLR camera this camera we will use my own personal camera because I feel more comfortable with it.
Other equipment
Lego and lighting which we will look out for the times needed when we get back from collage.

Location
In our work by using the narrative of our children’s drama we had set a lot of our work inside a school with the first couple of shots. We had to write a letter to nunnery Wood high school if we could use the premises to film.



In the response it clearly says we can’t use the current badge of the school or we can’t use the name of it. This therefore does have the complicates of not being to do the 360 pan shot, because the name of the school being outside the front.
Dealing with the problems

To get around these problems we used an old blazer which we borrowed of my partner (Aaron). This included the old badge from 4 years ago. This therefore solved the problem of the badge we than only had to get cover p the writing on the badge with a pen through it. To get round the problem with the use of using the front of the building and a couple of shots in our work.

Here are the minutes of the convocation of me and Aaron asking the jaintor at sixth form about if collage is open in the half term.
Zac: hello
Janitor: hello
What can I do for you?
Aaron: we are looking to film our media coursework in the holidays and I was just wondering if the collage was open and if any rooms were.
Janitor: collage will be open every day from 9-5. If you’re looking to get into any rooms ask one of the janitors around collage or reception where you want to go.
Zac: alright thank you

Different locations we are going to film at:









Actors
Because of the two different methods we were using we only need to use one actor as the main character in our work. Because of preferred target market being 6-11, we agreed to have a actor aged 11 so a younger audience could look up to them and see them as a role model and see what higher education actually seemed like for further years of their lives. We agreed to ask my Aarons younger brother (Jordon) if we could include him in our piece of work. Jordon is 11 and at his first year of Nunnery Wood high school. Because of the actor being fewer than 16 we had to write a letter to the parents of Jordon to ask for parental consent. We have agreed not to have any talking in the start and have a voice over of the whole piece of the work because it makes it easier for us to explain the change that’s happened to a new member of the audience watching the programme for the first time. We don’t think we need to include a voice of an 11 year old because we think we can use an older voice to make it sound more professional and clear.

Letter to Aarons parents:

Supermarionation

We looked at another form of animation this was marionette puppetry dubbed Supermarionation. This is most used in Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. The use of puppets is used to make the characters moved with necessary strings. The characters are animated as the screen is recorded.

picture showing Supermarionation

In our own work we intend to make a helicopter look like it takes off without any use of touching it, we are thinking of using Supermarionation in our work by connecting strings to the helicopter to make it take off.

Video of our helicopter

Lego messages and values

The messages of Lego is basically the levi Struss of the theory good and bad. For example Lego have a lot of categories like Cops and robbers or Star wars which is a clear example anyway. If the intention is still made for the BBC than there is going to be a level of good and bad showing messages and values. Because of course of the films used to make sets of Lego take there messages and values.

Lego sponser

Lego also sponsor Vue cinema films for children these are an other way of using synergy to sponsor this. This is another way they can show there products for free advertising and relates to the target audience.

The Lego website

The Lego website has many different attractions to attract there target audience ranging from the layout and designs to the actually use of colour to attract them. The actually colour scheme of the mainly blues and greens portraying that there audience is mainly males. The website has pop ups to selected sites of new Lego toys coming out or to the Lego theme park Lego land. There are forums for the website that they can use to discuss new Lego products however the use of media 2.0 isn’t a high amount because our age of our target audience not using the use of Facebook or other ways of communicating However if we where doing music video the use of media 2.0 would be more important.

Star wars

Lego have taken there work and used synergy to create there own use of computer games such as the Lego batman or star Wars. This is a very good marketing deploy because he keeps the name in there head. Of course because Lego are combining these products they well have to give a certain percentage to the copy write agreements. The Lego company have also made a Bionnicle film which is made with there own product.



Lego computer game

Lego synergy

Lego joins with loads of different of different film to create synergy with different media products. The reason they do this is because it already does connect to the audience with two media images they already recognise the two images for example. Harry Potter was used as synergy because it was turned into film but than it was made into Lego so this was Front loaded with another product success. The use of Lego made a huge comglument with using Lego with films. This has also been turned into many different them parks throughout the world showing Lego to be a huge global comglroment.

My parents are aliens

The opening of this is meant to be a copy of the actually TV opening this wasn't executed well. The colour of the green screen is bright purple and they use a green base.this is a clear mis conventions of greening. The camera is shaky and it moves around a lot.Which easily could have been avoided with a tri pod. The camera doest’t stay still for one shot.this is something me and Aaron will need to avoid this. The actually motion of the characters is poor and the movement when the spaceship hits the floor is done in about 4 shots which is extremely poor when this sequence should take at least four seconds of this screen. The label of the card and is in the centre of the set. The only good things about this animation is they used Supermarionation for the falling space ship and how the actual scene is just like the actual my parents are aliens.

Lord of the rings

This features a lot more Lego figures and in the scene they don’t move each figure this one isn’t has good as the super Mario in the way it flows, however this on has a lot more different camera shots and pans successes across the whole battle. It has blue sheet in the background but doesn’t look like card, more of a bed sheet. The actually context of this doesn’t wok well because of the movement are slow and not as steady as it goes. There is a voice over of this scene which is extremely poor because it just overall gives you a understanding of whats happening.

Super Mario

This is one of the first games of super Mario which has been coped 100% of the game. The mise on scene of this is perfect coping everything that happens in the game, from when the change of the custom happens the out-fit changes. There is no jump cuts everything in this clip flows smooth throughout the whole clip. The camera of this clip looks like it pans thought out the whole thing but in actually fact this is just a change of setting and location. The background for this is blue which is another colour used a lot in animation. The actually scene includes the background music (non digetic) of game and is created well and different times of the game. This is timed perfectly to the time in which would happen in the game.

Green screen/ Lego animation

Lego animation is a huge contemplates of Lego which probably appeals to a older audience, a lot of these videos which are made are a pardy of films or other media products for example;

Lego

We searched on YouTube for Lego animation and we got a lot of different websites where you could purchase and than narrowed it down to Lego animation. This is shown that a large number was still shown. One of the reasons of this is because this shows that there is an active audience who makes these videos.



http://www.filmschoolexposed.com/?gclid=CIGWmdSqqJ0CFVtn4wodIA5Yiw

http://vignettebricks.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

Above is a blog of somebody how has recreated films or events into Lego

http://www.brickfilms.com

The opening times of children tv drama’s

Name of childrens Tv drama show Duration of time in sequance


By looking at these times for the results of these tv dramas the average of a opening sequence is 32.5. This is what I am hoping we can achieve to get our own prject to around this time because of the change between lego and real life filming we are going to try and half the amount of time making each amount of time 16 seconds long. However 16 seconds in lego is 15 frames a second, so ending up with 240 photos.

Grange Hill opening.

The opening to Grange Hill has many different shots in it of a numerous children getting ready for school, this starts as soon as they get out of bed to the moment they get to the school bell. The editing of the programme is done very quickly with every clip only featuring a couple of second’s length. All the clips are cut together well. As soon as you watch the programme you can tell the programmes about school and how children behave in a school environment. The mise on scene is appotire because the use of school uniform and different forms of transport bikes and buses. The theme tune is the tune in which they start with in 1978. This is so as soon as it comes on children instantly releases what shoes on TV. The time limit of the show is 38 seconds long and has all the detail need to show what the shows about.
Grange hill is a very good opening to a TV drama but the idea of this doesn’t really go with what i intend to do with my Opening TV drama.

Ned's declassified opening

This programme is focused at children going into high school and in the opening of the sequence you can understand this through the voice over which gives a basic plot of the programme and it indicates the main character in the first opening seconds. The voice over has a non digetic music in the background which runs throughout the whole of the clip. The shots in the clip are taken from different clips through the series. This shows what the programme is like to the audience. The main characters are named. The clips of the shot don’t flow there isn’t extracts taken out to create an opening sequence. The programme has loads of different writing and captions in it are make the audience involved. It uses a bit of animation to show a text book opening and having different episodes in this. This is all related to high school with different topics e.g. fashion and friendship groups. The time frame of this opening is 40 seconds long. This is longer than i would hope mine would be because it means a lot more time in Lego animation. This also gives us the idea of using names in our work and titles of the programme.

Opening sequence for Tracy Beaker

The opening sequence focuses on using drawings to illustrate, which was taken from the cover of the books. The main character is both in person and in cartoon. The other characters are mostly in cartoon apart from a couple of seconds of footage where you see everyone other important character in the tug of war shot. By just looking at the opening sequence there is a equal amount of males and females which could show there is a shared gender audience.
He colours used are very uni sex with a blue to a pink with shows the programmes diversity of gender and children find brighter colours more entertaining. . This signifies she is the main character to the audience.
Because of the programme being a book by law they have the writer name and the illustrator but apart from that there no other information. There is non digetic music over the top which fits every movement with the rhythm and the beats.
The time frame of the opening is 20 seconds and it has enough time to understand the programme is jumpy and fun.

children Tv drama's.

This features a lot more shows on the sky Chanel nickelodeon. A lot of the programs have an American influence e.g. Zoey 101 had Britney Spears sister in. Show more British deal with really life situations for example teenage pregnancy or smoking. British TV dramas are more realistic. A program like Grange Hill was on BBC instead of sky for education reasons and a child's day to day life. The Amercian cast of a Tv show will be quite small not going larger then about 7 main chracters because they try make it like a Amercian soap. With the use of all the technology will include alot more cartoons such as spider-man (with the comic book craze this went into Lego as well) or sponge bob square pants.

A british cast for exemple Grange Hill has main different chracters who drift in and out of the series. Children dramas are very good for taking young stars and turning them into future stars for exemple Ant and dec started on Byker grove.

list of TV dramas

there is a list of the top of my head of some recent TV children's dramas.

Genie in the lamp
My parents are aliens
Grange Hill
Zoey 101
Tracey Beaker
Dexter
Young Dracula
Ned's Declassified
Hollywood Hang
iCarly
Drake and Josh
H20
The Naked Brothers Band
Big Time Rush
True Jackson, VP
The Troop
Queens nose
Berands Watch

Media studies research

Children’s TV opening
The first thing I aim to do is set out to identify my target market, when I am giving the description of children it is aimed to a target range of still 0-18, this of course makes the market harder to target for example over the age of 16- a child is more likely to watch adult TV dramas as well.

Of course what is a child?
A child (plural: children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. "Child" may also describe a relationship with a parent or authority figure, or signify group membership in a clan, tribe, or religion; it can also signify being strongly affected by a specific time, place, or circumstance, as in "a child of nature" or "a child of the Sixties."[1]

What is a Child's TV drama?

Here is a list of the top 100 TV shows. The Simpsons and Doctor who are in this however the creators of this programmes don’t count these as real.because of this the top order was redone by E4 in 2005.Addition changes were made to suit these changes however this does concept the changes of the new shows by increasing the top order of more children’s TV dramas e.g. mi high and Tracey beaker. Grange Hill got into the top 5 which is the highest children's TV drama. The fast that the simpons and Doctor who where classed in these show the creators got the wrong Target market or creates a range of children who watch older programmers.

By looking at these different types of opening it is quite clear to see how different tv drams get into top, for a younger audience it is pretty young this point is proven with the use off Children’s TV programmers being more cartoon based with non-human characters.

Lessons I first learnt by using the green screen.

Lessons I first learnt by using the green screen.
• It is very important to use correct lighting to remove the shadow from the selected screen.
• As well the selected colour used for the screen has to be not used in the model.
• The movement of each character has to be moved a slight amount every time, this therefore does contract the problem of a jump shot.

practic one

We used the green screen to contrast the green screen to contrast the TV emote moving across the screen. This is done by using the SLR camera to take a picture of the image and replace the image in its new direction. We started off quite easy just by using basic lighting (cold lights).This decreased the shadow of what the TV metor had created. We slowly moved the image across the screen taking around about 100 photos. Took this simply and didn’t try attempt to much with this apart from turn it a slight degree. This worked fine.Know when you are making a stop frame movie you have to follow simple steps of constructing it together.On the camera you go on to menuThan you go town to construction settingAfter you clicked on this you move down the cursor to you reach the bottom of the page.Than click on motion movieThis than brings you to a menu constructing the size of the motion movie and then start menu comes up after you have successfully done this.It selects the start and the end of the selected film.You have successfully created a motion movie.



When this has been finished you take the memory card out of the camera and insert it into the memory slot (D). This than opens up premier pro. The concept than comes up with the idea of using chrome key to but the background to the same as the figure of animation. This than makes the background the same colour of the moving shade.

Brief history of TV drama

The history of children’s TV dramas started with the BBC in the 1950s. These dramas were for large based audiences not just the target market. The first children’s TV dramas where front loaded by books, Most of these early productions were adaptations of turn of the century literary standards such as Little Women (BBC, 1950) and The Railway Children (BBC, 1951, 1957, 1968), there therefore resulted in the children turning channel to ITV.ITV at this time was offering a more adventurous children’s TV drama the adventures of Robin Hood (1955-60).




After this failure of the BBC children’s drams they gave up on this department and its funding was given to adult TV dramas. As for the time since the BBC were not funding children TV dramas, ITV were still leading the way with Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Secret Seven. These were books which were a series of 21 individual books. BBC had come back with a small budget series called Carrie's War in 1974 however this was still a front loaded series based on the origins of an authors work. This was one of the series which made children’s TV drama a more emountial piece rather than just a happy programme where nothing went wrong ,this triggered the change in the way how Children’s TV drams where shown.

In the mid 70s the change for children’s TV dramas changed when they became more chractisics of the children who watch the programmes, so as a result the resilim was more working class characters. The late 70s had some of the huge successes such as Golden hill (ITV, 1975) which featured a local gang and its council and ‘while A Bunch of Fives’ (ITV, 1977-78). At this time the BBC launched one of the most famous and long running children TV dramas Grange Hill (BBC, 1978-present), which dealed with real issues they faced such as bulling, drugs and under age pregnancy.




The golden age for the children’s dramas has at its peck with both ITV and BBC coming out with some more unusual programmes including fantasy and sci-fi children TV drama. ITV was doing a special dramarama which was just aimed for a children’s market.

In the mid 80s the BBC was at a peak turning out series after series of British TV drama, they and a series called a box of delight (BBC 1984) which was a spin off series of the chronicles of Narnia. These were supported by the help of America funding. The BBC had following successful series which had hits in America such as Tom’s Midnight Garden (BBC, 1989), The Borrowers (BBC, 1992-3) and The Phoenix and the Carpet (BBC, 1997).

In 1989 BBC put on air Byker Grove, which was about a youth club. This therefore was queried if it was more like a soap opera rather than a children’s TV drama. The BBC was turning out 20 episodes a year which was dominating the market with spin off series of selected characters of play in real life. The change the BBC had made they were making programmes the Children could relate to.

In the present day there of course is a huge more amount of channels including sky and free view. This creates a lot more opportunities for new programmes for children TV dramas. There is a lot more American children TV programmes such as Zoey 101 or Genie in a lamp. These programme Americans the TV drama TV market. This is how the messages and views are Americans. By the use of technology they can use green screen and animation to create new programmes. Stars that start in children’s TV programmes end up in the end moving Into Hollywood productions or adult TV.