The Multimodal Text is Finished!

What has been included in my Multimodal Text

Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic

• Animations; in every scene there is an animation, pictures appear on the stage with either the 'fly in' or 'compress' animation. When pictures have no been animated this is because it is used as a background to set the scene
• Sounds; sounds are included to set the scene such as a school bell ringing every new day that has started. Some sounds were downloaded from the internet either by converting a Youtube video to an MP3 file with the program Youtube Downloader or a specific website; 'Soundjax' that allows you to download WAV files that you can only use on the slides
• Font; in my text I have used the font style 'Segoe script' due to it looking similar to handwriting and in pink to highlight that it's a girl's diary
• Videos; I have used two videos in my text to produce meaning, both which were downloaded through Youtube Downloader and then I could cut the videos down to a reasonable length; for example I managed to download the whole scene of Harry Potter fighting the snake in the second film but this was more than a 5 minute clip so with Youtube Downloader I could cut it down to around 20 secs but still portraying the original message of Annabelle's imagination of fighting a snake!

Postmodernism

• Use of conflicting modes; I have used drawings, pictures of classroom settings and also cartoon pictures
• Tension created within focus of text; I have used hyper-links so that the reader will click on the headteacher to see what he actually sees rather than just Annabelle's point of view
• The use of hyper-links allowed me to move away from the setting of being in classroom to Annabelle's dream to show why she started to attack the teacher thinking there was an alien capturing holding her captive

The Multimodal Text

Link to Google Drive with Multimodal Text

Creating the Multimodal Text: Part One

Day One Completed

Today I have finished creating the first day of Annabelle's school on Microsoft Powerpoint, before starting it today I had read about the use of framing in picture books. Nikolajeva and Scott (2006), explained the use of framing and how it can help direct the reader to where to start on the page. I have used this idea in my own text in the use of polaroid frames; to keep the theme of a diary. Even though in a previous post I said I did not want to use frames because I wanted the reader to feel immersed in the story, after creating my idea it is clear that the use of frames is more appropriate so the reader can enjoy and laugh at the mishaps in Annabelle's diary. 

Semiotics-wise

In this part of the text I have included;
- sound effects to emphasise what is going on; for example the sound effect of children to remind the text is set in a school
- picture in the background - to show that the text is set in the school's dinner hall
- red - red bottle of "poison"; red means danger, but it reality it's a red bottle of tomato ketchup both recognisable by the reader

References

Nikolajeva, M & Scott, C. (2006) How Picturebooks Work. London: Routledge

Genre and Intertextuality

Genre

In the dictionary, genre is defined as 'a style or category of art, music, or literature'. According to Carolyn Miller (1984); 'the number of genres in any society... depends on the complexity and diversity of society’. Therefore genre develops alongside society, with the increase of technology and the media, genres have expanded to not only comedy or romantic, but now we have 'romcoms' which is the mixture of both.

The genre of my multimodal text is Children's Fiction; this genre includes child appropriate content. The fact that it's fiction means that it can include realistic fiction; an event that could not happen today but may happen in the future, for example; man being able to go into space would have been realistic fiction back before the 70's. It can also include non-realistic fiction which is an event that could never happen, commonly includes technology that is impossible to create or another type of life form, such as an alien. 

The reason why my text is children's fiction is because it includes child appropriate content so it includes imagination, also fiction such as an alien and a dinosaur. It is also set in school which is recognisable to children with characters such as a dinner lady, head teacher, teacher and librarian which a child grows up with, therefore the setting is very relate-able to a child. 

Intertexuality

Nikolajeva and Scott (2006) describe intertexuality as referring to 'all kinds of links between two or more texts: irony, parody, literary and extraliterary allusions, direct quotations or indirect references to previous texts'. In this sense then my text does contain a case of intertexuality as during one of the scenes Annabelle; the main character, discovers a snake in the girls toilets so decides to attack it, which ends up the headteacher catching her and another student wet through. To try and show the attack without words I decided to use a clip from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets where Harry has to kill this huge snake, by using this clip it adds irony and parody to the text because I am relating the imagination of a normal school girl to the story of a magical wizard in the School of Hogwarts of witchcraft and wizardry. By adding a video clip to my presentation also ensures that my text is a multimodal text; a text with many different types of material which produce meaning; for example a red picture to show warning or loud bang to show an accident.

References

Miller, C. R. (1984). “Genre as social action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70(2): 151– 67

Nikolajeva, M & Scott, C. (2006) How Picturebooks Work. London: Routledge

The Characters!

The Characters,

Main Girl: Annabelle

The Dinner Lady

The Headteacher

The Librarian

Mum

The Teacher

These characters have developed from the layout of my story which I described in a previous post. When drawing these characters at first they were sketches without colour, I decided to add colour to keep the theme friendly for a child to read. It also helps as it differentiates between the characters, especially when there are two pupils wearing the same uniform in a scene.

Another use for adding colour to the sketches was influenced by the idea of semiotics; for example in one of the scenes; Annabelle has seen the Dinner Lady add some sort of sauce into the children's food, Annabelle believes that the sauce is dangerous/poison and that is why the bottle is red because red is commonly known as dangerous. But in reality the sauce is tomota ketchup, which is also commonly identified to be in a red bottle.

Developing my idea for the Mulitmodal Text

As my multimodal text will look like a diary and is set in a school, I need to decide what rooms will need to be included in my story. 
My multimodal text will cover a school week where my main character will cause a mishap each day in a different part of the school. Each scenario will first include the main characters version of events; and because he/she is a kid it will be a made up version of what actually happened, this is so it adds humour to the story and also because the children can relate to the story. Therefore I needed to think of 5 different scenes and think what might happen in them.

My first scene will be set in the canteen, looking at a canteen it is clear that a food fight should happen in this scene; with use of the tables and chairs, the food and involve the canteen staff too.
  
One idea could be the main character versus the evil dinner lady who looks something very similar to the one below.


My second scene will be set in a classroom, when looking at a primary school classroom, the main things that need to be included are a teacher, maybe a teaching assistant, pens, pencils, books and maybe paint.

Ms Battle-axe from Horrid Henry books

 

Miss Honey and Matilda

In this scene, the main character tells the story of how he/she saved the teacher from an alien that came in through the window so needed to attack the alien with the classroom supplies such as paint and paper bombs. But in reality, there was no alien and instead the main character ended up attacking the teacher.

My third scene will be set in the school library, in the school library the main character will interact with the books. My main idea is for him/her to make a den out of the books to hide from either the teaching assistant or maybe some small creatures.

My fourth scene will be set in the toilets, he/she will have a water fight with another student and found soaking wet by the headteacher. The main character will say it's because the other student started it but really it was his/her own fault. The headteacher will be just as scary as Ms Trunchbull or a huge male headteacher that resembles an army officer.

Ms Trunchbull from Matilda

And my fifth and final scene will be set on the field, the main character will end up getting incredibly muddy at school and having to be picked up by their parent. The child will say it's because they had to find the lost treasure but again it's only their imagination.
These are possible ideas for my story, the next thing to do will be to try and draw these characters and scenarios and make them possible.

Starting to think of the story for my Multimodal Text

When thinking of an idea for my multimodal text, I've decided to base my idea from a book I read when I was in primary school. The book illustrated a girl's day at school, I remember enjoying the girls description of her events. That is why I've decided to have my multimodal text set as a diary. 
I had my first day of placement today which meant that I could look at examples of texts in the classroom. 

  

In the book corner, they had novels by Roald Dahl, Jacqueline Wilson, the Horrid Henry novels, Doctor Who books also the Alex Rider novels by Anthony Horowitz. I believe my idea of a story will be similar to these novels as it follows one specific character and what happens to them. 

As my multimodal text is set as a diary, I thought I should look at the children's work in the classroom, how they drew but particularly how they drew people because in my text there will be interactions between the main character and his/her classmates.

  

 

I also looked into the children's books which they brought from home to see the illustrations which were similar to what I picture to be in my text.

When looking in the book corner, I picked up a Horrid Henry book because it is a character and book that is very popular. Henry's mischievous actions makes these books enjoyable for the children to read so that is why my character will get up to naughty mishaps in my multimedia text. But to show really how mischievous she/he is, I will also include a true version of what happened in the day, which may be shown through the eyes of a parent.

Starting To Think about My Multimodal Text

Starting to Think about My Multimodal Text

Last seminar session I analysed a picture book and looked into how different semiotics were used to create meaning. And in this blog I will discuss how I would like to use semiotics to create meaning.

The first signifier I would like to take into account when creating my own work is the positioning of the characters. In my text I think I would like to make it clear to the audience who is the character as will make the story clearer and then the reader can relate the story to the pictures of the characters and feel within the story. One way in which I can do this is by positioning the the main character always on the left of the page facing their fellow characters on the right as this is a well known way of showing the main character. I would also like to close ups of the character as she is the main focus of the story.

Text wise, I think I want to use something 'light-hearted' as I think I want to create on story very similar to those of Disney; something with a little adventure that ends with a happy ending. 

So looking at this font, I have decided that my font would be similar if I used something that is rounded and curly rather than a rigid font like Times New Roman as it isn't as friendly. And for my audience; which I am targeting as a young child, the friendlier the font the better as it will appeal to the reader.

The actual pages is something I need to consider, I would like all or the majority of the pages to be covered by a picture, so no white frame, this is because I want the reader to feel within the story and in the adventure rather than an outsider so they can fully enjoy the story and get excited by the action!

Another aspect of the pages I want to consider is the use of colour as that really stood out to me when analysing the picture book. I want to make sure that the reader has a sense of what's going on and how the characters are feeling through the colour themes on every page. I will take advantage of using bright colours in times of joy and dark colours when the characters are worried or frightened of the action in the story. 

These are a few things to consider when creating my multimodal text but my ideas will hopefully grow as I gain more of an idea of what my story entails.