Magazine cover progression

So today, Joe and I have been working on our magazine front cover.


We looked at some common layouts of children's magazines and started to design our layout to something similar to the most popular ones. We looked at various magazine covers and came up with some general layouts they seem to follow (one of which can be seem below to the left, and two at the bottom). These will affect how we chose to layout our cover.

Link to Joe's post about some flash problems!

Joe Cracknell, 3376, A2 Media Studies.: Flash Problems 1

Narrator's voice

So, for our OTS, we need a narrator to introduce the characters briefly. Looking at some other children's tv programme narrators, they all seem to sound rather similar! They all seem to use received pronunciation - which is probably indicative of the times - but also they have rather colourful and expressive voices. Narrators in shows such as Mr Benn, Bagpuss and Button Moon all have this certain sound to them and this was something we wanted to replicate for our show.


Also, considering things such as sentence structure, we thought 'Trumpton' was a good example to use for how we would like ours to be.


For example, it uses repetition and simple sentence structure and these are two things we are keen to use in our narrating. 


We have chosen John as our narrator. His voice sounds very stereotypically suitable for children's tv :)


Here is a brief clip of his voice.

We took recordings of him saying a LOT of different phrases, in different tones etc so then in the editing process we can create the best version possible. 

Article in the Observer

This article was recently printed in the Observer. It backed up what I previously thought in my post about society and gender and brought up some interesting quotes and facts :)

Furthering image creation

We furthered our work on image creation and also did some simple animation sequences. Here is a deconstructed Hazel in order to be able to manipulate her different body parts separately to create a better quality animation. 


Although Joe is far better skilled at using flash than I am, I have to have the skills necessary to use Flash, we taught me some more about the programme today!

Final images

These are out coloured and edited version of images with the hope to achieve our desired, cartoon, unrealistic look. We completed this process for many images; including Barnaby's hutch, the garden, his water bottle and others. 

Hand-drawn sketches

So, these are some of the hand-drawn sketches that Joe and I did in the image creation process. After hand-drawing, we then scanned them in and coloured and edited in photoshop. We felt it was better to colour etc in photoshop because it would allow us to try new things with the image with unlimited attempts (rather than colouring in by hand and decided we didn't like the colour so had to start again!)

A catch up after the Christmas break

Product placement

In 2011, the ban on product placement (sometimes referred to as 'embedded marketing') was lifted. References to products and services are now permitted in shows produced in the UK. The first product to be shown after the ban was lifted was a Nescafe coffee machine on "This Morning".

Product placement 'logo'

Some people have disagreed with the ban being lifted and believe it could damage broadcasters' credibility and promote unhealthy lifestyles. However, under 'Ofcom' regulations, broadcasters must display the 'product placement logo' before and after any programme they show containing reference to particular products or services.

The BBC still ban product placement in their programmes and by any broadcaster it is not allowed to be used in news, current affairs or children's programmes; neither is it allowed to endorse alcoholic drinks or foods high in salt, sugar and fat.


In the USA, product placement is a largely used device within films and TV programmes; with companies such as Apple or Coca-Cola paying millions of dollars to have their products shown/referenced. Comercial broadcasters and independent producers say that the ban being lifted off product placement should help pay for programmes - so surely this is a good thing for our media? 


If Ofcom have the necessary restrictions and guidelines in place, then I personally see this as a positive thing as it will put money into our nation's media - and goodness knows we need it after seeing the closure of the UK Film Council and British 'small time' companies finding it ever harder to produce.


NB: product placement could NOT be featured in mine and Joe's piece as obviously it is a children's programme and we would be looking to be aired on Cbeebies which is a BBC company who do not use product placement.