Ancillary Product - Planning

After looking at the different listings magazines we have decided to target the Christmas edition of the listings magazine Radio Times. After writing various drafts as the producer view and having various conversations with our teacher we have come to the conclusion that we want to have our listings spread as an interview with the people being interviewed being us. However this thing has a whole tie to it as know we have decided to include Stephan Fry, not in the documentary itself, but as executive producer of our documentary. We want to make our two page spread an interview by Stephen Fry interviewing us. I think this is a pretty good idea as it helps us to express what we feel in a leisurely fashion without trying to sound sophisticated or Superior, but just being honest on what we were doing and which difficulties and joys we have faced during this production. My initial Idea:

'Do they know it's Christmas Time at all?' featuring Stephen Fry

A documentary produced by two young film makers with executive producer being no one less than Stephen Fry, Britain's glorious and clever actor/comedian most famous for the programme QI. This collaboration has had the outcome of the fantastic controversial documentary ' Do they know it's Christmas time at all'.

Stephan Fry:What is the main issue you are trying to raise and portray with your documentary?
Us: Firstly we want to portray the correlation between capitalism and 'the celebration of joy and love' as this time brings a lot of controversy and contradiction with it mainly because of it's changing tradition. Also, we want to explain and portray the origin of Christmas and what Christmas is like today and what little baby Jesus birth in a barn in Jerusalem has to do with presents, pine trees and roasted 'traditional' food.

Stephen Fry:Does this Documentary have any approach towards the Marxist perspective of the world?
Us: None at all. For us the change in tradition and over time is of interest as well as the origin of traditions and celebration (Christmas in this case). Our documentary is not Anti- Capitalism but considering the fact most modern/western societies engage in this economic system, we want to show how consumerism and the economy change and alter traditions as well as showing how they motivate us to conform to these new traditions and ideals. It is simply fascinating to see the history and change of this really important event in the year.

Stephen Fry: Right, so what is your personal interest in Christmas?
Sonja: What fascinates me personally is the myth around Santa clause. When I was young i got told this story about Santa being an invention of coca-cola. Apparently Coca-cola took the mythological Russians figure father frost and simply made him a little fatter and a little rounder ever year until one year he was wearing red and driving a sledge led by reindeer's. However recent coca-cola adverts show Santa adjusting to evolution as he is know driving a huge red truck delivering joy and coke to all. I ask myself whether he makes it to Ethiopia...

Stephen Fry: Does your Documentary feature any religious aspects?
Us: Well we are trying to see the link between society becoming more secularised and how this affects traditions and values around this time of year. As Christmas is a christian religious celebration we want to show that people nowadays don't really celebrate the birth of Jesus anymore but now have different values and reason to engage in this celebration.



these are the initial question however i am sure that further research will change both the questions and the interview structure. I will continue with this soon and add more questions and research towards the Ancillary Product.

Before I forget: Our audience research is based on this on this Survey.


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7Z25YV6

Radio Times

During our research we have found that the listing magazine Radio Times has a lot of additional background and production information on current media products in order to attract their target audience. It seems that Radio Times targets middle-class people, which is also the audience we are hoping to have for our documentary.

Furthermore Radio times is known for bringing out a special Christmas edition every year. This edition coming out at the festive time of the year and usually focuses on Media products concerning Christmas. Over  the years the cover has changed but a recent one produced is also portraying the changing nature of Christmas.

People are prone to be interested in Christmas Media at this celebratory time of the year. As the cover above shows us also radio times have noted the changing controversy of Christmas. This shows us that the topic we have chosen for our documentary is already widely discussed and established in the real world. Additionally this gives us confidence that the public is aware of the changes of tradition as well as having an active interest in this topic.

What's going on?

Momentarily we are facing some difficulties with our audience research as the computer it was filmed has broken down due to some spilling water. The computer is in the repair place however we don't know whether we have to film it all again as all footage may be lost. So far we have done most of our filming however on tuesday we need to finish of filming by interviewing certain individuals for our documnetary. Also we need to finish of our ancillery products which we have already finished planning.

Ancillary Product

Our ancillary products need to be a poster and a two page spread in a listings magazine. In order for our products to be as real as possible we have researched  various aspects of listing magazines as well as posters. In order to figure out how to make our article for the listings magazine we have looked at various different and popular listings magazines. This has helped give us an overview on what is important when creating this piece as well as figuring out what the appropriate way to do this and how many different options we have. The magazines we in-depth looked at were Radio Times, What's on TV? and TV choice. We later on discussed the target audience of the magazines as well as debating the quality of each of these magazines.

http://www.radiotimes.com/

http://www.whatsontv.co.uk/

http://www.tvchoicemagazine.co.uk/

For posters we looked at a website called 4 Creatives. This website gives us and overview on the types of posters are used for different genres and different types of TV products. Also this website helps us distinguish about which images we find powerful and intriguing and which we find boring and not appealing to the eye.

http://4creative.co.uk/flash/#/print/press_and_poster/disarming_britain_1

Making an Animation

Recently we have decided to include an animation in our documentary extract. To find out how to do this |I have researched it on the Internet.
Here are some websites which appear helpful:
http://www.fluxtime.com/animate.php

also I found a funny video which may be of use, however seems to be a little more complex than we would like our animation to be.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8683020727511417227

On YouTube you stumble across millions of videos of peoples animation they made in their free time which makes me confident that we will be able to create an animation piece as well.

Production Plan

For our documentary we have made this production plan showing us the steps we have to take in order to achieve our extract.

• different shots of different people expressing their emotions and opinions on Christmas without the audience knowing what they are talking about. By doing this we want to show all the diversity of opinions people whilst making the audience curious about what this documentary might actually be about.
• titles ---> film title + produced by: ( music: Santa Clause is coming to town). With the music we want to give a taste what the documentary is about as well as the usual titles which are needed.
• different shots of streets with Christmas decorations as well as voice-over. With this shot we want to be able to show the viewer what we can see during Christmas time in order to remind them what happens at that time of year.
• brief history of Christmas and the Christmas origin. Personally I think this is one of the key features of our documentary as we want to portray the commercialisation of Christmas and how it has actually nothing to do anymore with the birth of Christ
• during the voice-over we want to show some archive footage of historic Christmas. This is interesting as once again it portrays what Christmas was like in the past, even though we obviously will not be able to travel back 2011 years.
• show interviews: Christian Science shop keeper, Harrods manager, child, monk/nun/priest, parent. With these interviews we want to show the diversity of people who Christmas has and impact on, either because of religion, because of the profit that can be made or because of family life and traditional values.
• myth of coca-cola inventing Santa clause. I am really interested in this myth and I have been for years already. I think this is also and important aspect of our documentary as we want to show changes over time, and lets be honest a chubby old man in a red costume delivering presents really doesn't have anything to do with the Birth of Jesus
• ancillary products. We want to make a poster with some graphics on it portraying or documentary> also we need to have a two page news-paper spread but we are probably going to do this last once our extract is complete.