CREATIVE PROCESS for "America's Got Talent: Cartoon Characters"

Our process of creating a hit show was not an easy one. It involved a brainstorming session with the group to narrow down the best ideas to create a great hit remix. One of the first thoughts we had was Biggest Loser meets televisions favorite fat cartoon characters. However, the group quickly realized that there were not any fat woman cartoon characters. This was essential if we were going to imitate the real show. Then the idea of Biggest Losers meets two of televisions favorite families, the Griffins from Family Guy and the Simpsons from The Simpsons came to the groups mind. However, that idea was shut down due to lack of available content. The content we needed was the families, the Griffins and the Simpsons, working out or doing any physical activities. This was simply unavailable on YouTube or any other related video sites. We then came up with America’s Got Talent and cartoon characters as our winning idea. In that same group meeting, the task of finding character performances was assigned.  A few days after we volunteers were asked to do the following for part one of the pitch: a preliminary story board, a pitch for the series, a power point.  We then decided that the editing should be done in pairs, 10 group member 5 pairs. Each pair would receive a flash drive and have one week to add to the content that the previous group had worked on.

After receiving constructive criticism from the class and Dr. Postigo, we decided to throw in a drama element to our show.  Our drama element would consist of Brian Griffin from Family Guy and a performer on America’s Got Talent, would have an affair with Sharon Osbourne, one of the judges. After we figured out what we were doing, we then decided to look up videos on YouTube and figure out which ones would work best for our project. We looked up videos with Spongebob and South Park along with Family Guy. It was not an easy process finding videos to put in the final piece. Another challenge was trying to find cartoon charters performing on stage. We thought if the characters were on stage, it would look more cohesive with America’s Got Talent and their pre-existing set. Each team download the video from You Tube or other related video sites. For some teams, it took longer to figure it out what they wanted to add to the previous content than other teams, who already had an idea in mind. After each team had downloaded the video they wanted to work on, it was editing time. The editing process is very difficult to understand unless you have done it before and you know what you are doing. For many of the groups, it took hours to edit only 30 seconds of the pitch. Additionally different pairs used different editing tools such as Camtasia or imovie.  Despite all the challenges, group 12 came up with a cohesive and interesting variety of cartoon charters and talent.