Pitch

http://www.slideshare.net/kandmstudios/pitch-42713384

- Here is our pitch for our animation.

Risk Assessment 2

This is our film production risk assessment 2. This includes any hazards that whilst production might increase risk to is. The three main hazards for us include: computers and the fact that our whole production to going to be computerised which may be a problem as we could loose all our data, our work being only saved fully on one of our computers so we must remember to put the animation on various platforms as a saving method, and finally we need to be careful of wires when charging our computers as this could be a hazard if we trip up on them while working. All of these hazards would affect only us two (Molly and Katie) as we are the only ones working on the animation, producing and editing. To prevent these risks from happening, we will make sure that we are constantly backing up our work, and saving everything that we do and we need to put the wires to one side and remember where they are at all times so we do not trip up on them and get injured.

Risk Assessment 1

Risk Assessment for initial ideas for our animated short film

Copyright is a legal right that was created by the law of a country, which grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator to receive compensation for their effort. Copyright is a form of intellectual properly applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive. Copyright protects the physical expression of ideas. As soon as an idea is given physical form, e.g. a piece of writing, a photograph, music, a film, a webpage, it is protected by copyright. Copyright is a property right and can be sold or transferred to others.

Intellectual property rights are the legally recognised exclusive rights to creations of the mind. Owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of assets such as musical, literary, and artistic works, discoveries and inventions, and words, phrases, symbols and designs. Common types of intellectual property rights include copyright, trademarks, patents, industrial design rights, trade dress and trade secrets. Intellectual property is either protected automatically from theft or copying, or it can be register it to protect it. By knowing your rights and having the right type of protection, you can stop people stealing or copying: the names of protects or brands, inventions, designs or the look of a product or things that are written, made or produced.

Our animation is fully original as our characters, storyline, music and ideas are all made up by ourselves, so we will have copyright as our company. We could also put trademarks on our company and characters if we feel this is appropriate. Our animation is completely unique, we have not taken ideas or character designs from any other company, and the music we use will be totally original. Therefore, we do not have to contact anyone for permission to make our 2D animation. One thing that we will have to do is contact the BBFC in order for our animation to be rated. We would have to submit our animation so it would be under the catefory U so it would be appropriate for children.

The British Board of Flim Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organisation, founded by the film industry in 1912, is responsible for the national classification and censorship of films. The BBFC is the United Kingdom’s regulator of film and video, providing age ratings such as U, PG and 12A. They are a designated body so have the legal power to rate films and sometimes even cut or reject works. All decisions are based on public consultation and guidelines, which form a contract between the public, the film industry and the BBFC. The BBFC’s aim is to ensure that children, and all film viewers are protected from harm and illegal material and that they can make informed decisions about their viewing choices. We will need to contact the BBFC in order to publish our animation to the public so it is made a U rating, suitable for all ages, especially children which is who our target is.

BECTU is a trade union in the United Kingdom, it has around 25,000 members who work in broadcasting, film, theatre, entertainment, leisure and interactive media. BECTU is financed entirely by individual subscriptions from members. Any individual working in the sectors covered by BECTU in the UK can apply for membership. This is something we could potentially apply for.

Evaluation of quantitative research

Evaluation of Quantitative Research

This is an image of our quantitative research.We chose to look at popularity percentages of various children's animations because we wanted to see whether they were liked or disliked within the public. We thought this would be helpful to us because we could see whether or not animations with animations in were more popular than ones without.

We looked on the website rotten tomatoes, which gave us figures and ratings of the most popular 2D Disney films. all of the films listed are aimed at children and all have the highest scores, all 70% and above. This is relevant to us, as they're aimed at the same age group as ours. We also noticed that all of them include animals, which is a great result due to our main character being an animal. From this research we have gathered confidence, as we now know children's animations are always popular, and we will have a good audience to make our animation successful.

Evaluation of Questionnaire

Evaluation of our questionnaire based on animation

For our first part of the research, it was our job to get people to fill out a questionnaire on animation. The age group we targeted was around/the age of our audience for our animation. We asked 5 year 8’s (12 years old) a set of 6 questions based on animation, and their opinions on animation, just to research that what our animation was on, and what we included in it, fit the target audience well. We felt that a questionnaire would fit well for our research as we wanted to find out what children's favourite animations were and which animations they disliked, etc. We also thought it would be a good idea to ask them what animation they would choose to make, to see what their preferable animation would be based on.

Question 1 – Do you ever watch animations? If so, what animations are your favourite and what did you like about the animations?

For this, 4 out of 5 said they enjoy watching animations, which is a good thing, as it shows animation is a popular thing. The majority of them put Disney animations that include animals, Toy Story 3, Frozen and Finding Nemo. These all include animals which helps us a lot, as it means that we can be confident that animals is a good use of character to use within our animation. The final one said that they enjoyed Family Guy, which is a 2D animation, which is what we are focusing on, and it is also comical, which is what genre we went for on our planning for our animation.

Question 2 – Have you ever watched an animation that you did not like? If so, why did you not like it?

For their answers to this, one did not answer due to the answer to their previous answer about not watching animations. One answered that they like them all, which is a good thing and means that they may be an audience out there for us that don’t mind what animation it is, just as long as it is animated it is enjoyable. Two out of the 5 said that they didn’t like Frozen due to the fact that there is too much singing in it, this is a great result for us because ours doesn’t include any speaking or singing, and is narrated by the characters actions. The last one said that they dislike the Simpsons, which may also be a good thing as the Simpsons has speaking, and is narrated by Humans, whereas ours is an animation of animals, which may be more enjoyable to some.

Question 3 – Would you rather a short animation be comical or serious?

All 5 of the questionnaire candidates said that they would rather a comical animation, which is a great thing for us as ours, is comical.

Question 4 – If you could create your own animation what would it be about?

One of them said that they’d like a good storyline with talking furniture, which is interesting, and we plan to make ours interesting too, to hopefully achieve this. Three of them said that they would make it about something that is funny, which is good, because that is our aim too, comical. Some of them said that they’d like sport an adventure, which would mean ours probably wouldn’t appeal to them.

Question 5 – What would make you want to watch an animation at the cinema?

The majority of them on this answer put that they would go see it if it was rated highly and was funny. This is good, because we’ve done quite good research into our audience; it means that we would hopefully get high ratings, as we’ve researched the preferences of the age group of our audience. Also, ours is comical, and clearly comical is what attracts the majority of this age group.

Question 6 – Our idea for our animation is about two chicks, one of them is eating and the other comes along and steals the food, which then results in one of the chicks getting knocked out. There is a comical feel to the animation. What do you think about our storyline and what do you think could be improved?

For the answer to this, all of them put it was a good storyline and will be enjoyable and funny. However two of them put that we should maybe add another character or add s;lightly more too it, which is agreeable, however a short animation can only be a certain length, and this storyline seems to fit that time limit. 

Evaluation of viewing figures

Evaluation of Viewing Figures

Through our quantitative and secondary research, we found that childrens’ TV channels are extremely popular, and that the most popular programmes on these channels are made from 2D animation. We wanted to look at viewing figures because these are real life figures that we can rely on, also we wanted to focus on children's animations and see what their ratings were and how popular they were in cinemas and when they came out on DVD. We looked at the monthly viewing figures for June, July and August this year and found that the top childrens channels in the United Kingdom included Cartoon Network, Cartoon Network +1, Cartoonito, CBBC and Cbeebies. All of these channels produce 2D animation programmes. This information is useful to us because our animation is aimed at children and in the UK, the top channels all make 2D animation and specialise in these kind of programmes. In addition, we looked further on the viewing website BARB and looked at the top 10 programmes for Cartoon Network on August 14^th (we picked a date which is recent so it is more relevant). We found that the top programme is a 2D animation show called Adventure Time, which had a huge 156,000 viewers in whilst being shown. Another type of data that we looked at, still on BARB, was the share of audience percentage that was taken from September 14^th, 2014. The biggest share of audience was for entertainment which had 17.58%. This was beneficial research as we are aiming for our animation to be entertaining and comical, so to see that the biggest share of audience is for entertainment is a hugely useful. Another section of share of audience that was useful to our research was the children’s TV section, which had 5.21% of the audience share. This is useful to use because our animation is aimed at children so it is good that they have a huge share of audience, which means a lot of people will watch our animation because it is going to be both entertaining and aimed at children.

Evaluation of our Focus Group

Evaluation for the Focus Group

 For our primary research, we got together a focus group of year sevens, including male and females, aged 12. We got to use a focus group because we would be able to find out exactly children's opinions and it allowed us to use questions that allowed them to expand on answers so we got the best understanding that we possibly could.
Before giving out our questions, we got the focus group to watch the video ‘The Cat Came Back’. Our first question was “Did you like this animation?” three of the five said said because it was funny, clear to watch, they liked the music and it was random. However, two of the five said no because it was weird and boring because there was no speech. This information is useful because the feedback we got was positive and we want to use entertaining music, and they all agreed that they liked the music so with that feedback, we know that using music will be enjoyable for younger children. Our second question was “How do you think it could be improved?” four out of the five said that it could be improved by including speech, and one said that it was too weird so it should be more normal. From this, we can take that children would prefer speech in an animation so this is something we will think about and keep in mind. For our third question, we asked “Did you like or dislike the storyline?” all of the group said yes for different reasons. The reasons were that it was funny, that it kept them smiling, that its what cats would actually do and it was funny but random. What we can take from this is that the group liked the humour and the actions of the cats, however it was too random in some places. In our animation, we will try and not be too out of the ordinary and random and it was proved that they liked the more normal parts of the animation. We also found that they liked the humour throughout the storyline, so we will defintely stick to our theme which is entertainmnet and comedy. Our final question was “How do you feel about the characters being silent?” The feedback was that they liked how unique it was but they thought it was quite strange. Also, they said they liked the animation with no speech because they still understood the story. One of the focus group said that it was interesting with no speech, so in our animation, we will aim to make it as interesting as possible to avoid children thinking it isnt an an interesting animation.​