Object Lesson

In today's Media Project II Online Class, we were told to find an object and write about it; how it makes us feel, what it makes us think of, things like that. Because I came back to my home country from the U.K., I was placed in a hotel room for a two-week quarantine period and I have limited possessions with me. One remarkable object that I have is an Optimus Prime-shaped Bluetooth speaker.

Taken from Tformers forum

It was a birthday present from my aunt, who gifted this to me to resolve a problem with my iPad's damaged speaker. This speaker reminds me of the character in question; Optimus Prime, and the kind of person he is.

Optimus Prime in the movies has a habit of protecting humanity, despite his frequent findings of humans being terrible people such as siding with his enemies to enslave the world, or even hunting down his own allies. I always see bad news from quick glances at articles on the internet that involve someone doing something terrible from someone vandalizing something precious to the community or ecosystem to terrible decisions made by politicians, but I always know that there are some people that are better than them, and I hold out hope for humanity a little more, just as Optimus Prime has. I much preferred something Bumblebee-related, but Optimus Prime also has some qualities that I like, such as his inspirational leader-like personality, his compassionate yet fierce voice, and he is also blue, which is my favourite colour. He can be considered a very good role model if you ignore his brutal fighting style in the films he appears in. With all this that I discussed, the ideas of faith in humanity do not really match with my previous blog saying I want to do something calmer for my project, but the plan has not been set in stone yet, so I shall see where this goes.

I very much enjoyed discussing this speaker on my blog and I look forward to whatever idea I come up with for my project.

Image References:
Tformers.com (2017) Transformers Bluetooth Speaker Heads For Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee & Sqweeks From Camino. [Online] Available at: https://tformers.com/transformers-bluetooth-speaker-heads-for-optimus-prime-megatron-bumblebee-sqweeks-from-camino/31541/news.html [Accessed 31 March 2020].

Welcome Back!

Today is the second day of the new term; Term Three.

As a result of the recent COVID-19 outbreak, all classes have been moved online to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra. Because of this, interactions with tutors will be difficult, but I will try my best to complete my projects. In this term, I will try to come up with new ideas different from my previous action-oriented projects and hope to write something more casual, fitting of the current mood with everyone in isolation currently. Funny enough, I came up with this before the outbreak happened and I wanted to try my hand at something calmer.

I hope for all the best this term.

Media Project Term 2 Final Post

After ten weeks, I have finally completed my Major Project. It had some ups and downs, but I am glad to have finally completed it. There were many difficulties to completing it, mostly personally problems preventing me from progress but I will not delve into that. In this post I will reflect on what I have done good, and what I need to improve on.

First, I will discuss my strengths of what I have done in my project. Because I write as a hobby as well, I already outlined my story from start to finish, so I have an idea of what to write. I also know when to output blog posts at the right time, but I often do not write enough, the matter of which I will discuss later. I also have a good idea of where to draw inspirations from and how to mould those inspirations into my own unique ideas for my script. I am also well-versed in the script writing format so I know how to write a script properly.

As for weaknesses that I need to improve on, there are many. I am often easily distracted to many things due to my ADHD and sometimes spend ten minutes just listening to music when I am supposed to be writing at home, so I will have to try to not listen to music at all in those times. Another major flaw is that I do not read my tutor feedback on my blogs that detail what I have done wrong, the reason being is that I am afraid of criticisms, but I will try to listen more next term to get better marks on my blogs. Because of my procrastination, I sometimes wait until the last minute to do my work, which sometimes leads to things being rushed and flawed. One dilemma that has been brought up this term is a very personal experience that left me depressed for a week and prevented me from doing my work, and while I will not detail it I will say that I will try my best not to let emotional problems get in the way of my work, and ask for emotional support from others when I do.

In addition to my strengths, I have also learned to keep my brainstorming mind-map smaller to what I am actually doing.

Pictured above is my Milanote mind map from the previous term where I planned out my script meticulously. Some of these ideas were planned for concepts later on of the script's series and were essentially unnecessary in the beginning, which led me to not put enough time in my script.

Pictured above is the mind-map from this term, which is considerably smaller. This is because I only planned for what I will actually write for my script, which meant that I worked quicker and spent more time on my script, so I will keep this in mind for next term's project.

https://danialshamshuddin.wixsite.com/redactedstudio

That said, I have updated my Wix website to add my new script, remove personal information, and update my About page, which can be found in the link above. I look forward for my next project next term, which I will try to do something different from my previous projects. I hope to learn to write more "chill" episodes, or even a horror setting for my script, as I am interested in writing a more broad array of settings.

Target Audience

This has been long due, but I am writing this post to identify my target audience for my script. My initial target demographic for the story depicted on the script would be for early teenage boys, otherwise currently known as Generation Z, for its superhero content. Because I took inspiration from other similar media such as Power Rangers, another children-oriented show, as the basis for my script, I thought of aiming it to that age demographic. To get a better understanding of demographics, I was given a document detailing target markets by my tutor Miss Zoe.

This document details data relating to demographics such as age, gender, race, etc.

To define Generation Z, according to the document, they are people born between 1995 and 2019, aged between infancy and 24 years currently, and are roughly 25% of the world's population. They are the most connected with technology and are more familiar with modern technology than their previous generations, which can be a factor in their interests that can attract them to sci-fi media. On average, one member of Generation Z spends 3 hours on their devices. Because of their exposure to compact technology, the older members may be uninterested in watching television and prefer a streaming service such as Netflix for entertainment. My script is aimed more on the younger side at 10-13, but may gain traction with older audiences.

I then searched for audience breakdowns of films and television shows similar to my script with sci-fi and superhero elements. I first searched for audience breakdowns of the Power Rangers television series to find some viewership data, but could not find anything other than an article from The Hollywood Reporter on the 2017 Power Rangers movie. They reported that 34% of viewers were aged 18-24 and 39% being 25-34 to total up to 73% (McClintock,2017), but the other 27% were not mentioned and unknown. I tried to search for the source of their statistics, that being PostTrak, a polling service for films, but the report appears to not be available for the public. To further my search, I broadened my sights to more popular superhero sci-fi film series such as Marvel, as suggested by Miss Zoe.

I found a Reddit post on r/marvelstudios that conducted an extensive survey last year on the audience data of recent Marvel films. It shows that 40% of viewers who took part in the survey were aged 16-20 and the male audience was at 87%. This fits in as I predicted, but I went to analyse the gender portion of the audience demographic. Earlier I also consulted with Miss Zoe for help and she showed some examples of sources to look for material for my research, one being another Reddit post with an attached article from that pointed out that 45% of Ant-Man and the Wasp's viewership was female; the highest the female viewership has ever been at the time (McClintock, 2018). I explored more into this and found another article by Film School Rejects that covered more viewership data for Marvel films that suggested that female viewers increase over time, with Ant-Man and the Wasp and Black Panther having the highest percentage of female viewers at 45% because of their increased focus on female lead roles (Campbell, 2018); the Wasp, and Nakia, Okoye, and Shuri, respectively.

With this information, I now know who my script can be targeted at. If I want to attract more viewers I should have a balance of male and female characters in my stories as well as engaging content to keep the audience interested. I will keep this information in mind next time I create a script with a certain target audience.

References:
CAMPBELL, C. (2018) 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Draws a Bigger Crowd Than 'Ant-Man' (Especially With Women). [Online] Film School Rejects. Available at: https://filmschoolrejects.com/ant-man-and-the-wasp-box-office/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

Flamma_Man (2019) Demographic Survey Results - 2018 : marvelstudios. [Online] Reddit.com. Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/marvelstudios/comments/aun51w/demographic_survey_results_2018/ [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

McCLINTOCK, P. (2017) 'Power Rangers' Gets a Surprise Box-Office Boost From Millennial-Age Fans. [Online] The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/power-rangers-gets-a-surprise-box-office-boost-millennial-age-fans-988830 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

McCLINTOCK, P. (2018) Box Office: 'Ant-Man and the Wasp' Buzzes to $76M in U.S., $161M Globally. [Online] The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/box-office-ant-man-wasp-crushes-first-purge-76m-1125547#ampshare=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/box-office-ant-man-wasp-crushes-first-purge-76m-1125547 [Accessed 6 Mar. 2020].

Media Project Process Post 6

I have already completed a first draft of my script and it is currently 26 pages, 27 counting the front cover title page. I had completed it by adding a scene where Hayato, the main hero, transforms into the superhero Genus and fights the bee monster Apis Taxon with the Extend Slugger; a futuristic bat weapon that was based on the futuristic baseball bat used by Griff Tannen in Back to the Future II, chosen because club weapons were believed to be used by early humans.

The fight itself was written with only specific directions as the fight choreography should be kept separate, according to my previous tutor from last term. After the monster's defeat, the scene ends with a close-up coin flip that transitions from the past scene and into the present scene in Hayato's hands. The scene then continues into the present where a team of superheroes that the elderly Hayato leads deploys to their duties as a reminder of the future that he helped to forge.

That concludes the script, but I will continue to develop the draft into its final version, and the drafts of my progress from start to finish can be found in the link below. My teacher Miss Bettina has once again brought out some comments on my script with most being compliments on certain parts and very few suggestions. She has stated "You have effectively created a detailed other world where this story takes place. Your descriptions of character are  visually strong." on the world-building within the script, and "You have reached an ending for the narrative of this episode and you have set up events for the next episode here. It is good not to tie up all the ends but instead to indicate how the story will continue." on the surprise cameo of the new user of the Cross Brace in the present day at the end of the script. I am happy for these responses by my teacher and feel satisfied, but I also feel like I can improve more. I will do this by actually researching more scripts this time.

As I have stated in my posts from last term, I have looked at Writing TV Scripts by Steve Wetton for the basics on writing scripts.

Also mentioned in the aforementioned post, I used an unused draft script for the 2017 Power Rangers film, but I have since examined other scripts. At Miss Bettina's suggestion, I searched on the BBC website to search for a script and found one for the Doctor Who Series 10 episode "Oxygen", which is one of my favourites in the 
season. Upon examining this script, I have seen that I have already used the standard format to writing my script, but there were some differences to the professionally-written one. In most of the "Action" sections the characters' names are written in all capitals, and more actions noted in parentheses beneath character names in the dialogue.

I will aim to add these elements to the final draft of my script and future scripts as well. I then sought out more material to study from, so my tutor Zoe suggested a website to find good examples of scripts, the link to that can also be found below. I selected one of the three screenplays to choose from under "action/adventure" to look at: The Bourne Ultimatum. The script was largely the same usual format, but it was written with ellipsis (...) throughout the more dramatic scenes alongside double dashes (--), and there were also important points in and out of dialogue that are underlined.

I found this use of punctuation to make the script itself look as exciting and suspenseful as its content, but I felt largely unsatisfied.

I then decided to review the two other screenplays under the "action/adventure" category: Lone Survivor and Aliens. The format and usage of punctuation in both scripts are standard to what I used in my script already, so I was more or less satisfied then. I will use some of these techniques to improve on my final script alongside comments from my tutors. In hindsight, I should have done this a long time ago, but I will aim to improve my final script based on these findings.

Links:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=18FKmtIy-7Gy2xkAMGlwOserhEEQNsECo
https://www.scriptreaderpro.com/screenplay-example/