Music - Prank Wars

101 Dalmatians:

101 Dalmatians is a 1961 American animated produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel The One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith. We watched the first part of the Disney classic and we focused on the music. At first, the intro music sounded quite classical, plus suited its time era which was in the 60s. Also, the music included orchestral instruments, such as violins, xylophones, etc. The fact that the music was upbeat, it suited the children film genre, the tune gave an almost uplifting feel. On the other hand, the music did not relate to any situation or scene in the film. However, the music in the introduction could show the audience that this particular film is going to be child friendly.


Prank Wars - Initial Ideas for Music:


Now that I have researched music in children's films, such as '101 Dalmatians', our group has a brief idea of what the music is going to be like in our children's film called 'Prank Wars'. We would like our music to be upbeat (we could do this by including a mid-fast paced beat in our music, with a funky guitar tune perhaps), and our music has to have a cheerful feel to it, therefore it will match our film genre which is comedy.


We shall include sound effects in the music, such as people screaming, etc. All the music making will be done on Garageband.

Mindmap: Final Idea- Prank wars

compare + contrast your main character with a character from a similar U or PG film

In contrast to the main character in spy kids(alex vega as carmen cortez and Daryl sabara as juni cortez) our main characters are represented in a negative way, where as the characters in spy kids are portrayed as role models for the younger audience. However there are some aspects of the film that are similar to the spy kids feature, for example both films have male and female main characters. The spy kids film shows differences between the brother and sister duo. These differences were eventually solved by the end of the film. The same happened in our film , by the end the 2 characters put aside their differences and became closer than they were at the beginning. The main plot of the film however is significantly different. In spy kids the plot is a brother and sister trying to save their parents from a villain. while in our film there is no heroics or 'secret agent' styled footage. 

What can our target audience learn from our film.

In most children's inspired films there will be an underlying morale or life lesson that the characters should realize by the end of the film. The lesson that we tried to represent in our film was the importance of friendship and to strive to maintain a relationship. The film includes from the outset the 2 characters are constantly playing tricks and childish pranks on one another and the degree of discomfort applied to the other person increases until the 2 enemies eventually mend their ways and become friends. hopefully it should also illustrate that holding anger or a grudge towards someone is childish and unnecessary.

Final evaluation of Prank wars

our final product was a success and was completed with few problems. Were happy with the shots that we collected and the soundtrack that we created on garage band. We found some difficulty in creating the sound track because of our group not being experienced in using garage band.  It was a learning curve and hopefully we can use our newly discovered skills in garage band to be used in other projects. The program itself posed problems towards the end of the project. Transferring the footage to the garage band was impossible and the footage that was transferred was just  black screen and we couldn't time the music to the footage. This wasted allot of our time and threatened our progress but we tried to time the music as well as we could.  We have a wide variety of shot types and gave a professional appearance to the film. we also ran into trouble transferring the garage band soundtrack to the computer that housed the edited footage. After running into more time delays and trouble with the portable hard-drive we eventually made the mp3 file transfer and we could polish up the film.  At this time we wee nearing our deadline when the opening title font made more problems as it was becoming distorted through the clip it was laid onto. We quickly rectified the problem and completed our film.

Final Children's Film:

Prank wars filming progress

Today is our last day to complete our filming for prank wars. we were able to shoot all of our needed shots to tell a linear story. We may need to add shots when we stat the editing process and we could notice mistakes in the footage . No problems occurred in the filming process and went smoothly. We break up for the half term and will resume working on the film afterwards.

target audience

The target audience for our short film is the ages between the ages of 8-12. we are aiming for a PG certificate due to the content we are planning to use in our film. The certificate will be a PG for our film because the pranks we have filmed are slightly violent and promote misbehavior towards others. Also it includes hitting a fire alarm which is not suitable for very young audiences. The age group that is in a PG will understand that the content of the film is just for fun and should not be reenacted by themselves or their friends.