Researching Public Information Films

This is a public information encouraging people to make more complex passwords that are simple to remember. The voice over is enthusiastic and clear and starts by telling the viewer the simple facts about the common mistakes people make when creating a password. The voice over doesn't use any jargon therefore the video reaches out to a very broad audience, even school aged children would be able to understand the video and learn from it. 

It isn't dark and brutally shocking like a lot of videos on internet safety as I find a lot of internet safety videos try and scare you and put you off of using the internet making you feel as though nothing is safe. This video however uses simple tactics that just hint the problems that you may face, for example, a credit card belonging to 'Penny Less' which is a clever pun that will make the audience think and figure out the point that is trying to be put across. 

A positive attitude is enforced by this video through it's bright colours, simply designed animation and happy characters. Repetition is used to make the storyline clear and easy to follow as there is a problem in the beginning and a resolution at the end. The credit card pun was a good idea so it's repeated as the resolution at the end and the name is changed to 'Miss A O'Kaye', showing that the problem is simple and quick to alter.

As an end card to the video, the information about where to find out more about the campaign is given, for example, a website and social media links. This is helpful as people can click straight from the video to read more information and also find similar videos.

Beginning To Mind Map

As my magazine is primarily going to be aimed at teenage females with the aim of encouraging them to vote. After mind mapping some ideas and concepts about the aims of my magazine I decided I would like to include an article about the Suffragettes and the right for females to vote. Points I would focus on are:

• Who were the Suffragettes?
• Why weren't females eligible to vote?
• What did the Suffragettes do?
• When did females get the right to vote?
• Key personalities in the Suffragette movement.
• Why it's important for females to use their opportunity to vote.

Here are some images that would work well with the topic of the article as well as the style of my magazine:

As some of my magazine will be in an arty, scrapbook style I think these images would compliment the design because of their vintage look. The images are strong and biased towards making females look good which I hope will encourage teenage girls today that they too can have the same power as the Suffragettes did.

Magazine Focus Group

As part of my research to discover the best way to design a political document aimed towards young people, I held a focus group with five people in the class to compare a political magazine with a popular magazine aimed at young people.

I showed them the cover and examples of articles from Company Magazine and Total Politics Magazine along with a list of talking points, those were:

• Target audience
• Layout
• Texts/fonts
• Images
• Image/text balance
• Colours
• Tone
• Is it appealing
• What would you change
• Best features
• Which do you prefer

I also asked whether the group thought the modern, fun design of Company magazine would work as a design for a political document aimed at teenagers.

Overall, the group preferred Company magazine as they liked it's modern layout that was clear aimed at young people. They liked the colours and images used and the fact that they weren't too bold and over the top kept the tone of the magazine mature. One of the main points of Company magazine that stood out was their '#readitandtweet' feature. The group thought that a feature like this would be a point of interest in a political document aimed towards young people as almost all teenagers spend most of their time on social media and it would be a fun way to keep up to date with politics.

Total Politics magazine was very unpopular with the group because of the general tone and layout. It was described as looking like a newspaper that was far too text heavy and the small, boring images didn't break the text or add a point of interest to the articles. Total Politics magazine is an example of the typically boring information that is accessible if you want to find out more about politics, it doesn't appear to a young audience and the group feel as though continuing to produce magazines like this won't help engage young people in politics. 

Magazine Layout Textual Analysis

Marie Claire is a popular women's magazine that focuses on fashion, celebrities and lifestyle. I have decided to aim my political multipage document towards young females so by looking at the features of magazines in general that are aimed at females will help me to discover what the female audience are attracted to. 

The headline is written in the trademark Marie Claire font so that regular readers will automatically notice it on a shop shelf and also non regular readers will recognise the repeated style which may intrigue them to purchase and read the magazine. The headline is pink which matches the colour scheme of this months issue of the magazine, the colour scheme will change to compliment the cover image and in this case the pink text used ties in with Pixie Lott's pink toned make-up which is visually pleasing as the text and image compliment each other to look professional and neat. Pink is the stereotypical colour which is used to target a female audience and the use of pink almost automatically suggest that the audience of the document is strictly just female. As my document is primarily going to be aimed at females but most of the information will also be relevant to males I don't want my main colour scheme to be pink but I would consider experimenting with a purple colour scheme.

Buzzwords 'Best' and 'Life Changing' are used on the front cover, they are used to attract your attention to the articles inside the magazine and emphasise the interest and importance of the articles. The reader knows that the story won't be life changing but by seeing the words written down they are likely to want to discover how great the information really is. Buzzwords are very affective because they make the reader question whether what they're about to read really could be the information they've been wanting to know for a long time. The use of buzzwords makes the magazine publishers seem confident about their content so I would like to use buzzwords on the front of my political document as I think that they will be good at adding interest to a topic that is usually considered boring.

The cover line on the front of the magazine is 'Fashion Forecast' followed by a smaller strap line that reads 'Cool spring trends- plan your new look now'. When I read the cover line and it's strap line I noticed that alliteration has been used throughout, alliteration is attention grabbing and also cuts down bulky sentences as what 'Fashion Forecast' really means is 'this is what we will predict will be in fashion'. The strap line underneath also has an alliterative feel with the 'plan your NEW look NOW' continuing with the subtle alliteration keeps the strap line snappy and interesting rather than too informative. A large amount of information is unnecessary on the front cover as the aim of the front cover is to encourage the reader to want to read what is inside the magazine, so if the explanation on the front cover was too in depth then the reader may not open it up. 

The most effective style for a women's magazine is to have a large, attractive image and minimal text that is punchy and intriguing. Marie Claire's cover is appealing to a female audience firstly because of the colour scheme and secondly because of the way they tease the reader into wanting to read more about the segments advertised on the front cover. A casual, gossipy tone is used to sound friendly and inviting and although my political document is on a more serious topic than women's gossip, I think that if I create a chatty and casual tone the audience won't feel as pressured to try and take in lots of serious information. 

Statistics On Young People Voting

• The green 'Electorate' section on the chart is the amount of people eligible to vote and the red 'Turnout' is the proportion of those people who did vote. 
• The highest recorded turnout for an election was in 1910.
• The country with the highest turnout is generally Wales and the country with the lowest turnout is usually Northern Ireland.

• Since 1964 you can see there was a decline in the turnout of people aged 18-24 voting in the General Election, however in 2010 there was a significant rise in young persons turnout compared to the previous election.

• The chart above shows the turnout of young people at General elections compared to all of the older eligible voters.
• It is clear that the young voters are the minority ad especially in 1997-2010 the amount of young voters compared to the rest of the voters is considerably less.
• I think this may be linked to the fact that as the world becomes more modern and teenagers have a lot more to engage in, the thought of voting and being interested in politics is almost unconsidered. Therefore, I think it is extremely necessary to create and get involved with campaigns to encourage young people to start voting otherwise the amount of young voters will inevitably continue to decrease. 

Aliyah Dar. (03/07/2013) Elections: Turnout [online]. Availible at: www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01467.pdf.  [Accessed 02/01/2015]

Multipage Doc Questionnaire Results

Using Survey Monkey I created a questionnaire to find out what young peoples opinions on multipage documents are in order for me to take on information about how I can design my political multipage document to interest young people.

21.3% of the 14 people I gave the survey to are old enough to vote. The other 78.7% are not yet eligible to vote but are all eligible to vote. Therefore I still find their opinions on what they want to see in a multipage document helpful as in a short amount of time they will have the chance to vote, and young people should be encouraged to vote and understand voting from as young as possible so they know what to do when the time comes.

57.1% of the people I collected results from were male and the other 42.9% were female. This is a fairly even balance, enough for the results to be unbiased when discovering the most popular magazine in the sample of young people.

No one in the sample of young people read magazines daily, which is a likely result as most magazines are released weekly or monthly. Only 7.1% of the sample reads a magazine weekly and 28.6% read a magazine monthly. The fact that over quarter of the sample I asked read a magazine monthly shows that it's likely they would still be interested in engaging in a multipage document even though there is large amounts of information about anything you want to know online and on the television. Although over half of the people in the sample rarely read magazines, by looking at the results of what interests them about a multipage document, it is possible to create a document that they will be drawn to and engage in the information that the document includes.

I asked the sample what their magazine of choice is in order to choose a magazine to look at as part of a focus group. I was expecting for more than one person to like any specific magazine but my results show that everyone in the sample has a different magazine of choice. However there are similarities with the genres of the magazines. 42.6% of the sample would choose a women's gossip/fashion magazine and two people from the sample prefer music magazines. From these results, for my focus group focusing on the appeal of magazines, I will choose a popular women's magazine and a popular music magazine.

Half of the sample prefer magazines with more images than text and just under half of the sample prefer and equal balance of text and images and only 1 person prefers mostly text. To me this information tells me that my document should have lots of images but enough text to make the point of the images clear and relevant.

Just two more people in the sample prefer vibrant colour over subtle complimentary colour, so in terms of colour on my multipage document I will experiment with different designs, some with brighter colours and some where the colours are more subtle. Choosing the colour scheme may come naturally when choosing the images for the document, I think the colours used should compliment the colours in any photographs or images so nothing clashes.

Just under three quarters of the sample haven't ever seen or read a political document however over a quarter of them have. The people who haven't read one may find them uninteresting or unappealing. If a political multipage document was aimed specifically at young people they may show more interest and engagement.





As a conclusion of my questionnaire results I have decided that I would like to make a magazine aimed at females as my political document. From my results, the most popular magazines are women's magazines therefore I think women would be more likely to pick up and read a magazine. I decided against making a leaflet as people often see them as rubbish and throw them away as soon as they receive them and I decided against an online publication as most teenagers go to the internet go to the internet to escape and have fun so they would rather be on social media or watching video clips whilst online rather than reading information about politics.

Young Persons Voting Reports

In the last general election, only 44% of eligible young voters actually took their opportunity to vote, so no wonder young people are being highly encouraged to take the opportunity to vote if they have it. 

All young people should be required to vote in the first election they're eligible to vote in (IPPR cited by BBC. 2013)  The IPPR think tank may want to make it a policy that eligible voters should vote at their first legal election so that they're aware of what the process is so that they don't shy away from it or decide against voting at an older age. At least if they vote at their first legal election and feel that it wasn't right for them, they have a valid reason not to vote again rather than just being uneducated about the process. 

The Daily Mail Online (2014)say that 59% percent of teenagers won't vote in the 2015 election because they think politicians only care about celebrities, pensioners and successful business people. They also asked young people who would do the best job at running the country and the result of this question was Ed Milliband, the leader of the Labour party. If when asked unofficially who young people think should run the country an answer is given, then all of these young people with an opinion should vote in the election so that they're voice can be heard. If young people leave the voting to the rich and famous then they aren't taking their chance to make a change.

In the video above you can watch Tv's Rick Edwards Ted talk about how to encourage young people to vote. Previous to the talk he did research to discover what teenagers currently thought about politics and voting and from this research he discovered that most teenagers are just lacking in facts and information about parties and their policies. When Rick himself realised that he was little help to the young people when it came to informing them about where they could find out political information, he decided that he should make a change in order to increase the amount of young voters in the 2015 election.




To make a change, Rick has taken it upon himself, with some help, to create a VAA app for 2015's young voters to help them learn about parties and their policies as well as taking a survey to find out which party they should consider voting for based on which policies they agree with and support the most. (Rick Edwards 2014)

As a popular television personality with young people, this app could be a very successful break through to increase the amount of young voters as they will be able to easily access the information they may have previously spent ages scouring the web for, and the survey to give the young voters an idea about which party they should consider voting for is a very helpful extra boost.

Getting Teenagers To Vote- Political Campaign

Encouraging teenagers to vote can be difficult as politics always seems to be a boring subject that isn't really spoken about in day to day teenage life. However, if 18 year olds have the right to vote then why shouldnt they? It's time to encourage young people to make use of the vote that they've been allowed.

What are young people interested in?
No matter what style of genre, all young people enjoy listening to and engaging in music as it's something that you don't have to focus hard on, it's available whenever you want it and it  can make you feel happy and more settled in situations. 

How can music be used to get young people to vote?
There are a few different ways that music could be used to get young people interested in voting. Students from any course could work along side the music students to write a song that will appeal to everyone, that can be played in class and around college to enforce the message of the vote.
Another idea of using music could be to build up a college choir that could sing the voting song. If the debut of the song is well advertised around the college by the media students and arranged to happen at a time when a lot of students will be free to come and watch then groups of students may decide together that, if they are of age, they will remember or decide to vote.

How can the act of voting in the election be made interesting?
Political party broadcasts can be pretty boring and very unappealing to a younger audience, so if students from around the college from courses like media and performing arts could work together to produce a sort of 'parody' of political broadcasts, that still deliever the correct information, then it may add some comical value. Also, if students see their friends getting involved it makes the idea of voting more appealing to them as teeangers often follow the crowd.
The thought of having to leave the house and make a special journey to a specific venue to place a vote may put a lot of young people off of voting as it may be out of their way, they could feel intimidated by some of the older voters or they just can't fit it into their schedule. If there was a place in college where just college students could go to place their vote, a place where everyone feels as though they're of the same value and worth and that's easy to get to, college students may be more likely to vote in that instance.
Voting online would also be a good idea as all students in college have access to a computer and the internet and feel comfortable and at ease when they're using a computer. If college students knew that they could place their vote and it would only take a few seconds, most students wouldn't hesitate.

Which media formats would work?
Posters are always a good way of presenting information to teenagers as they can be big and bold. They are easier to look at than leaflets as all of the information is easy to read and to the point, rather than having to pick up a booklet and read a lot of detailed information. If there was a poster on the wall with key information, most students would read it without even realising.
As all college students use computers everyday at college, it would make sense to have some online content. Around the time of the general election in may, the Moodle home page could have a big, bold notice reminding students to vote. Also on this home page there would be clear links to pages where the students can find out more information.
Remaining along the lines of internet content, as well as the Moodle information, all students at the college could recieve a reminder email along with voting and party information that they are free to read at any time.

What would the style, content and information be like?
The posters and online information would have to be colourful and eye catching as dull and drab colours aren't very uplifting for teenagers and it enforces the idea that making a vote is boring, therefore colour must be used. It would be good to use images of popular famous faces or students around college as they will be familar to the young people at college therefore interesting and engaging them more. The information must be brief but clear and important. All that will be needed is information about when and where the voting will take place and just a few sentences on what each party aims to do, incase some students are completely unaware.

How would I go about researching this to find out..
What people at college currently think of politics/voting?
This is something I have already done in college, I produced a questionaire and asked students around college questions about their knowledge on politics, here are the results.
How to get young people interested in politics/voting?
As I know what courses Bath College has on offer, I can make an educated guess on what young people in the college are interested in. For example, if a voting campaign was musical then it should interest music students. If the campaign was promoted with lots of art work then the art students would pay attention to it or if lots of figures, facts and statistics were given then the business students may want to get invloved. As a teenager, I know what teenagers are interested in meaning I know the things that would grab their attention.
What media I could create to promote voting?
If there was a survey on the Moodle homepage asking students what they look at regularly e.g. internet, blogs, social media, magazines, tv, books, I would know where to put the information about my campaign. Which ever media format gets the kost attention from teenagers would be the best place to promote my campaign.

InDesign Practice

Using Adobe InDesign we work towards learning how to make a print publication in a Swiss Style with the grid method and minimal colours. After this we worked on our own poster design learning the skills we picked up.

Before this practice on InDesign, I had only used it for very basic interactive activities and I hadn't used it for designing anything based on a particular movement with specific rules and layouts. The only practice I'd had at designing posters in a Swiss style was by hand so I just used rulers and coloured pencils. Using InDesign makes it more specific therefore neater and closer to the style of the movement. 

As a class we all followed the steps to create a poster in a Swiss grid style. The content of the poster isn't relevant except from the title and small piece of text underneath, just to get some contrast between different sizes of text and how to lay them out. We worked with differnt layers making sure the background colour, title text and the main body text were all on different layers, just focussing on one at a time.

After creating a vertical, four columned grid and using filler text to fill up each column, we had to rotate the grid 35 degrees so that it reflected the Swiss style we were inspired by. By dragging the points on each corner of the text boxes on the grids, we were able to make the text legible and fit in the rotated grid.

After learning the basic structure of a Swiss style poster on InDesign, I started to work on one of my paper poster designs that happened to be a Swiss style to make my design more complete. Above is the start of my effort to create my poster.

Why do we do a recce?

Here is a visual representation of why we do a recce, above are all of the things you have to look for and think about when you go to a location that may possibly be the location for your filming.

Comparing locations
We looked at two different locations with the intention of finding a setting for a romantic sci-fi film. 

The first location was a play park. It was a slightly larger location that covered a wider area of varied land, by this I mean that there were different slopes, hills and craters with trees mainly around the outside. As it's a play park, it comes filled with different play equipment that may or may not be suitable for you film, with the play equipment there you would have to fit it into your film somehow. This location was very close to a busy road, meaning that there was a lot of noise from traffic which would interfere with the filming unless you wanted a busy traffic filled scene. 

In my opinion I think that the second location we looked at would be more suitable. The space was more empty an open, there were a few slopes that would look good as craters in a sic-fi film but they wouldn't be a hindrance if you just wanted a large, flat, open space. As this is an open area of grass, there is no play park equipment meaning that it's down to the director and gives the director more freedom when it comes to bringing in props and building up the scene, as the only existing features that would have to be included are the trees and surrounding houses. The sound at this location would also be better because it's not next to a busy road, however wen we went to look at the location there were dustbin trucks that were an eyesore and main an unpleasant sound.

Whenever you do a recce at a location for your film, you will almost definitely find cons about the area but if you're willing to improvise you can overcome these issues. You have to weigh up the pros and cons of each location and chose the one that suits your film the best and is the most practical when it comes to transporting a cast and crew, accessing power and sanitation and lighting and weather issues. I feel that there should always be some flexibility in the script that gives you room the alter some aspects of the film to fit with a location if the perfect location isn't available to you at the right time.

Sucker Punch Notes

Political Questionnaire Statement

From the political questionnaire we asked people around the college and the city of Bath, here are the results I discovered.

How many people who’re old enough to vote support a political party?

Altogether, the questionnaire gives results for 51 people. 20 of these people were 18 or over and 6 of these over 18’s support a political party meaning that only 30% of the over 18’s we asked support a political party. Throughout the whole questionnaire, including the under 18’s only 7 people support a political party. The most popular party is Labour which has 3 supporters. 2 people said that they support a political party but did not state which specific party they support. Conservative and Green party each have 1 supporter and Lib Dem and UKIP have none.

The result of a young age demographic not being heavily interested in politics is a result that we expected. Many people in this age group will not be interested in politics as it is a rather complex and not extremely ‘fun’ subject to have interest in. Many teenagers and young adults may not choose to watch the television channels that give the public political information and it’s unlikely that this age demographic will read heavily political newspaper articles. We feel that under 18’s will probably begin intentionally researching political information when they’re old enough to vote.

The people that we asked that do have an interest in politics mainly access their political information online. Political information on the internet is available at any time and you can search any topic you want, whereas the radio and television coverage of politics gives you a fixed amount of information that won’t be as wide as what the internet can offer, although there is a lot of misinformation on the internet.

What was the task?
To come up with a range of questions to ask people in the age demographic 16-25 about their views and knowledge on politics. We then had to plot the results into a shared spreadsheet to get a wide range of results to analyse. Analysing the results meant making a statement about the facts we found and the assumptions we made from those facts.

What did I know at the start?
Before asking the questionnaire I was aware that any people in the age demographic of 16-25 wouldn't be heavily interested or informed about politics however I didn't expect that there would be people over the age of 16 who are unaware of who the British prime minister is as this is an age where everyone has been educated in school about the basic political situation and most people will have accessed some sort of information in the media about politics, the general election in particular.

What did I learn?
That there are people in the college who support specific political parties and intend on voting in the general election. I also learnt that most people access their political information online as it easy and available at any time, as well as accessing most political posters online, most people prefer digital posters to non digital posters.