Tuesday, 16 March
Today we had our final tutorial with Trevor Hearing and he advised us to concentrate on the marketing viability of our product and its cost and profit element of the varytales business model in the presentation. Currently our video artefacts are being edited though there is a problem with the development of our website so Chris has decided he will develop it for our presentation. Trevor has advised us to maintain eye contact with the audience during the presentation and keep the energy level of the presentation at a high tempo on Thursday.
Wednesday, 17 March,
Today we spent time preparing for our presentation, creating our PowerPoint and running through the script and running order for the presentation. James and Glenn got copies of the Little Red Riding Hood video from the editors and Chris bedded it into the PowerPoint presentation. Glen wrote the marketing and business model section of the presentation and we divided up the presentation script between myself, Chris, and Glenn. I took the section on who our product ' Varytales' is aimed at, as well as the part of the business model section about regulation and why our product would be attractive to Pearson educational publishers. Glen took the section on the marketing and business model behind varytales and Chris took the section explaining the storyline and educational value behind varytales. We had trouble getting help creating our website so Chris produced the interactive example of our web page for the presentation.
Thursday, 18 March
Today we gave our presentation, we presented our artefacts as part of our product and explain the cross-platform elements behind varytales and its marketing value and business model potential. We also gathered together the finished artefacts and documentation ready for our hand in date of Monday next week, (22 March)
Friday, 19 March 2010
Friday, 12 March 2010
Cross-platform blog week four, days four and five
Day four; Today we recorded our groups audio artefact in the studio. We recorded the voices for the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale, Chris voiced the narrator, Lorenza voiced Little Red Riding Hood, Dougal was the wolf and Cristianna was the mother and grandmother. While we were in the studio Lorenza also voiced the fairy godmother's voice which is audio that will be incorporated onto the website. Tonight I helped Chris out with the presentation by writing up my notes on the position in the marketplace of our product 'Varytales', and where its niche in the market is. (Educational value) I also researched which products are its main competition in the market and the crossover between interactivity, entertainment, and soft learning.
Day five;
Today we had a radio academic clinic with Tim Wright who has written a cross-platform drama
'Say What You Want To Hear' (S W Y W T H) for radio four. We learned the value of interactivity to cross-platform radio productions. Today I also helped Chris in the editing suite in Audition editing the audio we recorded in studio yesterday. For organisation we had each different characters voices on a different multitrack so we could order them easily. As well as this we used the BBC sound Fx library to add sound Fx like a creaking door, footsteps going upstairs, woodland ambience, indoor ambience (a fireplace), a thud for the killing of the wolf and a burp for when grandma gets saved.
Day five;
Today we had a radio academic clinic with Tim Wright who has written a cross-platform drama
'Say What You Want To Hear' (S W Y W T H) for radio four. We learned the value of interactivity to cross-platform radio productions. Today I also helped Chris in the editing suite in Audition editing the audio we recorded in studio yesterday. For organisation we had each different characters voices on a different multitrack so we could order them easily. As well as this we used the BBC sound Fx library to add sound Fx like a creaking door, footsteps going upstairs, woodland ambience, indoor ambience (a fireplace), a thud for the killing of the wolf and a burp for when grandma gets saved.
Wednesday, 10 March 2010
Cross-platform week four part three
Today we had a meeting with Matt Northam the website designer for our product 'Varytales'. He was impressed with the content we had sent to him to work on however, he wanted more detail on the layouts of the individual pages for the website, with a maximum of four pages being created due to time restrictions on the project and the amount of work he has to do for other groups involved in cross-platform. Therefore our next task from the meeting is to decide which pages from which fairytale we want Matt to build into the website. Daniel has created good background research into the cognitive behaviour of six and seven-year-olds in the form of a handout for the presentation, that will be incorporated into the main body of the presentation that has been designed by Chris. In a discussion with Daniel after the meeting with Matt we discussed the appearance of the fairy godmother and we decided to make a 2D still image of a traditional fairy godmother that can then be incorporated into the website by Matt. Tomorrow I will record the radio artefacts with Chris for the Little Red Riding Hood story and the voice for the fairy godmother.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Cross-platform week four, part two;
As part of my research I discovered the Sesame Street website made interpretations of fairy tales such as Pinocchio and Rapunzel with Kermit the frog interpreting the tales and putting a Sesame Street style spin and gloss on the stories. Today we had a meeting to go through where we are with the presentation that is upcoming and myself and Chris have booked the studio on Thursday between two and three thirty in order to record our radio artefact with voice-over actors Holly, Dougal, and Lorenza. We will be recording from the radio script for the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. This is a change from what was decided earlier as the voices for the audio section of Rapunzel will be recorded by the video actors on scene and this is the same for the Pinocchio fairy tale. The main role therefore for me and Chris in the studio on Thursday is to record the voices of the narrator, Little red, mother, and the Wolf. We will also be recording the voice of the fairy godmother who will be used as a website tool to guide the player through the game and give tips when they're having difficulty. Tomorrow we are meeting with Matt, the website designer to discuss the development of our online material having given him some prep work that we did last week. Chris has started a draft of the presentation along with PowerPoint slides and I have agreed to help him present it. We were advised to treat it like a Dragon's Den style pitch and to possibly put narration to the PowerPoint slides, we were also advised to prepare our business model for possible questioning over issues such as the licensing fee, and publishing spin-offs for the educational publishing company Pearsons who we are pitching the presentation to.
Monday, 8 March 2010
Cross-platform blog
Week four
At this stage we had the task of positioning our product 'Varytales' in the market. Having agreed a name and logo for the web-based product and artefacts I was tasked with finding a niche in the market for our product as well as identifying which products were likely to be competition. Examples of other products on the market that shared our demographic of appealing to 6 to 7-year-olds included the Grimm fairy tales website as well as Disney's film and interactive DVD enchanted, and DreamWorks serial Shrek. However the educational element of our product provides its niche as long as it can compete with other educational web-based programs that use fairytales in an educational fashion to encourage literacy. The issue we had to come to terms with now is how do we market 'Varytales' so the product can make money through a realistic business model and still be used as an educational tool. Originally we thought we'd sell the distribution rights to a third party like say, the BBC to put on their website however we were advised that it may be more sensible to contact an educational publishing company because schools are unlikely to pay for educational content that they can get free elsewhere. It was therefore clear to us we were more likely to get our product into schools if we used an educational publishing company that dealt centrally with local education authorities, rather than a media company like the BBC whose public service remit means they cannot deal directly with local education authorities in a profiteering or commercial sense.
At this stage we had the task of positioning our product 'Varytales' in the market. Having agreed a name and logo for the web-based product and artefacts I was tasked with finding a niche in the market for our product as well as identifying which products were likely to be competition. Examples of other products on the market that shared our demographic of appealing to 6 to 7-year-olds included the Grimm fairy tales website as well as Disney's film and interactive DVD enchanted, and DreamWorks serial Shrek. However the educational element of our product provides its niche as long as it can compete with other educational web-based programs that use fairytales in an educational fashion to encourage literacy. The issue we had to come to terms with now is how do we market 'Varytales' so the product can make money through a realistic business model and still be used as an educational tool. Originally we thought we'd sell the distribution rights to a third party like say, the BBC to put on their website however we were advised that it may be more sensible to contact an educational publishing company because schools are unlikely to pay for educational content that they can get free elsewhere. It was therefore clear to us we were more likely to get our product into schools if we used an educational publishing company that dealt centrally with local education authorities, rather than a media company like the BBC whose public service remit means they cannot deal directly with local education authorities in a profiteering or commercial sense.
Cross-platform blog
Week three
Having come up on the idea of an interactive fairytale told via various media artefacts such as a website, video, and audio, the next step was working out the structure of the storytelling through the script and which sections of the website would be video and which would be audio. It was decided to adopt a choose your own adventure style to the fairytale where different decisions led the player to a different fairytale. However for the sake of time it was decided to only make artefacts for one strand of the story because if we made both strands the story would expand exponentially which would require us to make too many artefacts in the time available. Although we recorded the potential to make two strands were our product to be fully developed it was decided to only make artefacts for the one strand. Of the three fairytales we are producing there is a radio element to Pinocchio and Rapunzel as well as for the voice of the
fairy godmother. The role of the fairy godmother is to give tips and hints to the player as they move through the game which will be contained on the website.
Having come up on the idea of an interactive fairytale told via various media artefacts such as a website, video, and audio, the next step was working out the structure of the storytelling through the script and which sections of the website would be video and which would be audio. It was decided to adopt a choose your own adventure style to the fairytale where different decisions led the player to a different fairytale. However for the sake of time it was decided to only make artefacts for one strand of the story because if we made both strands the story would expand exponentially which would require us to make too many artefacts in the time available. Although we recorded the potential to make two strands were our product to be fully developed it was decided to only make artefacts for the one strand. Of the three fairytales we are producing there is a radio element to Pinocchio and Rapunzel as well as for the voice of the
fairy godmother. The role of the fairy godmother is to give tips and hints to the player as they move through the game which will be contained on the website.
Week two
as a group we came upon the idea for fulfilling the brief of creating an artefact for children by producing an interactive fairytale for children aged 6 to 7. It was agreed that this artefact would be multimedia with elements of video and audio according to our specialisms. At this point I did some research into websites that told fairytales and traditional tales in an interactive fashion and found that there were plenty that incorporated both sounds and visuals interactively. Following further research it was discovered there was an educational element that could be incorporated into the product. In year two at primary School as part of key stage one in the national curriculum children are required to learn about fairytales and traditional stories as part of their English literacy criteria and this meant our interactive fairytale could have a role within schools if it was marketed correctly.
as a group we came upon the idea for fulfilling the brief of creating an artefact for children by producing an interactive fairytale for children aged 6 to 7. It was agreed that this artefact would be multimedia with elements of video and audio according to our specialisms. At this point I did some research into websites that told fairytales and traditional tales in an interactive fashion and found that there were plenty that incorporated both sounds and visuals interactively. Following further research it was discovered there was an educational element that could be incorporated into the product. In year two at primary School as part of key stage one in the national curriculum children are required to learn about fairytales and traditional stories as part of their English literacy criteria and this meant our interactive fairytale could have a role within schools if it was marketed correctly.
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