Conventions of a child's television programme
The conventions of a children's television program is that the characters are all young teens aged around 9-16. This is so the audience can relate to the characters easier. Another convention of a children's television program is the settings. They tend to be set at the family home and at school, this is so the audience can relate to the characters easier as most children go to school. A convention of a children's television programmes theme tune is having an upbeat theme song with fast paced editing to make the overall opening sequence energetic. It is also conventional to use bright colours throughout the show with high key lighting to make the setting bright and to give the scene more realism as they are most likely at school or at home where it is bright. It is also conventional in a childrens television program to over exaggerate stereotypes, we will use this in our filming as we will be using the very stereotypical characters such as a geek which will be wearing a shirt with trousers and trying to look very smart and formal, they will also be wearing very dull colours and very simple colours such as grey and beige. We will also be using a sporty boy aswell who will be very stereotypical as he will be wearing trackies and a hoody to emphasise this. As well as these we will also be using a popular boy and a popular girl who will be in a relationship and the rest of the school envies them. Since the program is based in a a school we will also be using a teacher as one of the main characters who will be a popular teacher who the students get along with.
Conventions of a children's magazine
There are many conventions to a children's magazine. One of these is having bright colours for the images and the masthead and the cover lines to make the whole page stand out from the rest of the magazines on the magazine stand in the shop. We will be using colours such as yellow, blue and pink to match the characters personalities with the popular boy and girl being the main characters. Another convention of a children's magazine is having the main character of a popular children's television program. This is so that if someone is a regular viewer of the show then they will recognise them as then want to see what the story is about them and the program. Another convention of a children's magazine is having cover lines relating to the main image on the front page with some others relating to the main content in the magazine. On the cover of the magazine we will have a group picture of the five main characters. We will also use composition with the popular boy and girl in the middle with the sporty boy next to them with a football and the teacher the other side looking formal with the geek holding books and being separate from the others. We have chosen this because of our audience research we done. The information we gathered was that books and glasses are associated with geeks and nerds and so to make the character's personalities recognisable we associated them with the character. The same with the sporty boy and the football.
Conventions of a children's DVD cover
A convention of a children's DVD cover is having bright colours all over the page with having the background an image of the main character with the other main characters around them. We will also be using the same colour scheme as on the magazine as they match the characters and there personalities. It is very conventional to have a very bright masthead on the DVD cover so it stand out and so if someone watch's the program they will be able to recognise it and is more likely to buy it. This is the same reason why they have the main character on the front as if you recognise them there is a higher chance of you buying the DVD. Another convention of a DVD cover is having the slogan at the bottom of the cover, this is to attract children who don't watch the program to get into it and to buy the DVD.
What we have found out from our target audience
From our target audience research we found out many different things such as what specific age to target and how to target them with the use of colour and images. The colours we have found out attracts the children's audience are bright colours such as blue and yellow as these stand out. We found out what specific things do people expect to see in an opening sequence to a child's television program, we found out that most people expect to see clips of the main characters in during the show. We will use this during our finished product as we will also include clips of the main characters during the opening sequence. This helps during the show as it makes them more recognisable as the main characters. We also found out that its the narrative of the program that attracts people to a children's television program, we will use this information we got from the research by focusing on the narrative more than other aspects of the filming process.
