PROFESSIONAL PLACEMENT; THE ROLES I DID

During my professional placement, i did a range of different roles whilst attending a range of different events in order to learn as much as i could. Firstly, i went to a corporate event Natixis in London, i helped out the transportation of the kit into the room where the event was taking place. Also i helped with the staging by building the chairs and tables for the presenters to sit on stage.



Moreover, i helped within their warehouse with the organisation of the kit, i helped and learnt how to properly wrap 20 meter cables properly, the reason they are quite particulate about this is because it makes it a lot easier for the crew to unravel when getting rigging an event. The way they work in the warehouse is they have 'standardised' the kit, so each camera or sound kit comes with the same amount of cables; normally more than what they would use but it means they have spares and extras if needed. I helped put these kits together particularly focussing on cables which allowed me to learn about the different types and what they do, for example, XLR and speakon cables.

Another event i went to was a premier league football match, for this their wasn't a lot i could physically do, purely because Sound credit got there to set up the commentary machines, they have to have them all set up by a kick off so that the commentators are ready to start on time, with this one its quite important to be good on working with timing deadlines. During the match i sat with some of the foreign commentary for Denmark and MUTV, i was there in case they had any issues with their commentary machines or if they needed anything else. This event in particular was really useful in seeing how the process works.

PROFESSIONAL PLACEMENT; RESEARCHING INTO THE KIT

Whilst still completing my placement, i have been introduced to a number of different pieces of equipment that i had not used/heard of before and therefore wanted to look into more.

1) Audio and Vision Mixers - this was something i had heard of before, but haven't ever used. Originally and simply i thought that these just edited the audio and vision together, but i found out on my placement that this was not the case. An audio mixer can amplify incoming signals which allows the volume to be switched up or down and most importantly, it allows for multiple audio signals to be layered together correctly enabling for a smooth sound. For example when a piece of music is layered with the audio of someone speaking. A vision mixer is a piece of equipment that is used to select between a range of different video sources; for example this is most important with any form of live event that a multi-camera set up is being used. Within the event i was at with Sound Credit; they were webcasting a presentation event for a french banking company, therefore they were using about 3 cameras in order to cover the entire stage that the presentation was set on. Within this the mixer would be useful as it would allow the director to move between cameras as the people on stage move around, allowing for the best coverage.


2) Speakon Cables - this was a term that i hadn't ever heard of before, I first heard it when i was at my first event with Sound Credit and then when i was back helping in their warehouse for a few days i asked a few questions about what is was. A speakon cable is used to connect a power amplifier to a loudspeaker, because of this they are most commonly paired with XLR cables, for example XLR cables may be plugged into the piece of equipment that will be recording the sound and going into the mixer, and the speakon cable will be used to amplify the sound to be heard through a loudspeaker. Most commonly used for live events with many speakers being used, a speakon cable comes with 2 main advantages of use over any other type of audio cable. Firstly, a speakon cable can take a very high current and therefore be used for a lot more high voltage events with lots of big speakers etc, secondly most of the cable comes with what is called a 'twist and lock' connection by which you secure the cable into the amplifier/speaker by locking it in, therefore the chance of disconnection is very low.



3) PPU; Portable Production Unit - In essence this is the main component of a live studio production, its portable and designed to easily fit into the back of a van to allow for quick movement from production to production. Standards PPU's can run up to 12 cameras; using a digital video switcher. Connecting with the audio and vision mixers allowing both to run out for a smooth transition.

PROFESSIONAL PLACEMENT; CHOOSING AND RESEARCHING THE PLACEMENT

For this unit, we have to undertake a professional placement at a tv related company in order to gain a wider knowledge of the industry. Firstly, we were given the option of this or we could have made a short film for the unit, the reason i chose to do a placement was because i believed I was lacking real experience within the industry and wanted to build up on it. Firstly, i wanted to do a placement with Renegade Productions, i wanted to do this because i believed it most closely linked with what i hoped to do for a career; I'm really interested in pre-production, aspects including script writing, ideas generating as well as organisational tasks such as casting and organising shoots. However due to time and spaces already I wasn't able to do my placement with them. This led me to not be too sure on what i actually wanted to do for my placement, i tried to find myself another one but as i needed one where i could start fairly quickly; i struggled to find a suitable one. Offered by the course, i chose to do my placement with Sound Credit TV; originally believing they hired out equipment to productions i decided to choose them because it was the area of TV Production where i felt the least confident, using and being around technical equipment i would say is my weakest part and i have a distinct lack of knowledge in this area, therefore i believed i would get the most from the experience in terms of learning by choosing Sound Credit.

Research into Sound Credit TV; 
Researching into the company themselves i discovered they are a company that hires out both kit (cameras sound lighting etc) as well as crew to different companies. Within Sound Credit there is 2 different strands of work they take part in, firstly they do many different sporting events, this involves providing the sound commentary for events such as premier league football. The second strand of work they do is with corporate companies. They provide the filming, sound and sets for corporate companies who wish to hold events, Sound Credit film these events and then webcast it into the relevant links for the people the company want to see. Boasting a huge amount of credits the company has done a lot of work for a lot of big broadcasters, they hold a base in Crayford where all of their equipment is kept and transported to and from events.

An example of some of Sound Credit TV's Credits

From the placement i hope to learn how a production is ran and organised, I'd like to get involved with the actual kit and just learn what different pieces of equipment do and how they can benefit a production. I realise a lot must go into it but it is going to be very interesting to see how much planning and organising goes into making a production work and with the most important part of providing the crew and kit for a shoot it will be very engaging to see how this process comes along.

TV NEWS; CRITICAL EVALUATION

Finally, we have come to the end of another project and it is time to reflect on what went well and what could have been improved on. With this project i was a little bit aphrenrsive because it was a group project again, working with the same people as i did on the last one i wanted to make sure that anything that went wrong last time we didn't do again.

What Went Well

-I think the first thing that went was was working in a group. In comparison to last time working in a group, i think we were all clear on what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. We knew first off that we needed to communicate more and understand what roles people wanted to take on. This time, Katie wanted to get more involved in actual editing rather than just graphics, so we kept all the files and edited from her laptop, this i think worked better, we all contributed to editing in some way from her laptop rather than it being left to one person. Also, Laura wanted to get more involved with the camera work, so on the live shoot with Rosie and Joel, Laura was on 2nd camera; the more complex one that involved sticking on a close up shot of Rosie. I wanted to get more involved with editing, the post production side and i think i achieved that in some way. One of my strengths i think is taking an idea someone gives me and putting it into practice; therefore after getting feedback from our rough and fine cut tutorials i felt like i had more of an idea of what i wanted to edit, i sat with Katie and together we rearranged the timeline and put more GVs in on both occasions after our tutorials. 

-A strength of our actual project i think was the live aspect of the package. We filmed using two cameras, something i had suggested because i believed though it was a live, we could still use a variety of shots and make it look very professional with good coverage. I thought we needed one camera to stay on a close up of Rosie because she was our main subject, and then the other camera Katie decided to use a wide shot to illustrate both of them talking. I also came up with the idea for Joel to switch looking cameras on his last link to close the programme; something id seen and researched in programmes before and i thought would work well. Part of this as well that was really good was the fact Rosie was such a good contact; she was an expert and gave us great answers and content, this was down to Laura for finding her. 

-The whole branding of our project was really good; we had a good colour arrangement and everything linked, right from the social media pages created by Laura and the website which was created by Aimee. This was down to the knowledge of adobe after effects that Aimee and Katie had, Aimee created our logo as well as an animation of it which i think really set our project aside and gave it a definite professional look. I didn't get too involved in the graphics side of it; i enjoy more the pre production organisational stuff and was trying to get more involved with actual editing - this is something i think i would like to get more involved in in the future. 

-Lastly, i think our last strength was taking feedback from Helen and putting it into practice. From both our rough cut and fine cut tutorial sessions we recorded what Helen said and made sure to put in place what she had told us. For example, we completed changed our introduction, i wrote out a huge page of voiceovers and Aimee arranged for Joel to meet with us to record them, this enabled us to still put out the information we needed to say to the audience, but in a more simplified way. We really used the valuable feedback from Helen in  a way to completely improve our project and highly believe we were successful for that. 

What we could improve on

-Something we needed to watch out on was framing, we needed to make sure that in the midst of all of our filming we make sure there was nothing in frame. For example on the live, Rosie's sound pack was in shot in the background and we didn't notice.

-Also, i think we needed to come up with an idea quicker than what we did, it took us so long to decide on an actual idea that our research was delayed. At first we all came up with our own individual idea; mine revolving around the advertising of Christmas becoming earlier and earlier every year. We needed to come up with an idea that was different; originally wanting to go down the halloween route but realising that many other groups also wanted to do this. Finally Katie Aimee and Laura expanded on my christmas idea, pairing it with their idea of debt and credit. I think because we came up with this idea so late we didn't have as long to do all of the research and we also wanted to film ASAP because we were aware we didn't have long to edit, and with the graphic ideas we had in mind, we wanted to make sure we had as much time to edit as possible.

-We needed to plan more sequencing and GVS. Especially with the package involving Kerri, i think we should have planned more sequencing to cover the cuts, because when we were editing we found we quick ran out of GVs to cover the cuts and needed to film last minute other ones, which although that worked fine, it just wasn't ideal. 

-Lastly i think we needed to be more prepared with our audio. We planned our voice overs last minute so we had to film using a DSLR; which wasn't good in comparison to the clip mic we used for the other ones. 

Overall

Overall i really enjoyed this project, i liked the topic and had quite an interest in it. I think i had a really good amount of contribution to the project which included calling up organisations such as Citizens advice trying to find out some more information, as well as writing the voiceovers and helping out with editing somewhat. Something  new in this project was bringing in external people and interviewing them, i enjoyed this part as well as i think i was quite confident around them, i introduced myself and the rest of the group and i took the lead on making the guests feel welcome and up to speed with what they would be doing with us. I thought that would be best as the more comfortable they felt, the better content they would give us. The video itself i think was really successful, as a group we all collaborated well and in the end i think we all put in equal effort, equal contribution and created a good news piece.  

Our final video can be found here:

TV NEWS; FINE CUT FEEDBACK

After making the changes to our video that we needed to make after out rough cut feedback from Helen, we had our fine cut feedback session with Helen. From this, there were three main points that came, one positive and two to improve on.
1) Firstly, Helen liked our intro, after changing it completely to include more voiceovers rather than the big long filmed studio links from Joel. We edited studio links way down and made them voiceovers, using a lot more GVS relevant to the words being used

2) Secondly, Helen thought that for our package, our main interviewee Kerri, spoke a bit too much, she would make some very good points that were absolutely perfect for our package, but some of what she said wasn't that relevant.
What We Did - In order to change this, myself and Katie sat and edited Kerris bits down. We did two things to do this, first of all we took the 30 second introduction part (which included the graph on money spent on retail advertising) split it up completely and used to weave in and out of the points that Kerri was making. We felt this worked out a lot better because it in a way backed up what Kerri was saying, giving the audience some context. Secondly, we placed some more GVS in when Kerri was talking, this was because we had to split the clips up to edit her down, therefore there were a few jump cuts, so we had to put more GVS in to cover the jumps. For example we put in a clip of the Debenhams Christmas advert.

3) Lastly, Helen still didn't like our last link with Joel, Rosie was sat in the background and so Helen said we should use some graphics to cover it up and make it look more professional.

What We Did - Aimee tried to create some form of graphic on a trial and error basis, however we felt as a group that it didn't look that great therefore we decided to leave it how it was. With more time perhaps we could have done it but because we only had one proper day of editing until hand in we didn't want to damage our project, so we decided to stick with what we had. 

TV NEWS; ROUGH CUT FEEDBACK

Now that filming on both sections was completed, we began fully editing everything together. Katie took the lead on this, we had the clips on her laptop but we all sat around a big TV (with Katie's laptop plugged into) so we could all cast our opinions and still edit together. Aimee and Katie both began creating the logos and other graphics needed using after effects. Furthermore Laura took the role of creating all of our social media sites - we now have a youtube account, a twitter account and a Facebook.


Feedback - We had a rough cut viewing with Helen where we received some feedback based on our rough cut version on 'Guidance to Finance'
-Joels beginning links is too long, at the moment amounting to about 1 minute and a half it is a bit to informative and too 'wordy'
-The graph that we used to indicate how much companies spend on advertising needs to reference where we got the information from in order to back ourselves up
-Case study; our case study Kerri needs to be built up more, we need to create more of an image as to who Kerri is, who she represents
-Talking about christmas, bring it in earlier, get to the point and express the underlying issue earlier
-Cut down ending



What we did to improve
After receiving our feedback from Helen, we all sat down to organise because we still had a lot to do. Though everything was filmed, we needed to switch everything around in terms of the order within our timeline, as well as organise some extra content. Katie sat there and went through the timeline, we had to be fairly brutal and remove anything that wasn't significant without worrying about timing issues. I sat there and organised our voice overs, Aimee organised for our presenter Joel to come back in and record the voice overs so i sat there creating them. It wasn't too hard as i already had a rough idea of what we needed Joel to say. I just found the main weakness in creating voiceovers was making sure they fit into a certain time frame and obviously i couldn't predict how Joel would say what i had written. We changed around the order and shortened down Joel's beginning links, replacing them with more GVS filmed by all of us, and the voice overs written by myself.

FICTION ADAPTATION; BRIEFING AND WORKSHOP

For our next unit we can choose between one - Fiction Adaptation, or another - Professional Placement. Today we had a workshop with Mike Rhymer and were had an introduction to the fiction adaptation course so that we can make an informed decision to what one we take. We were given a haiku as well as some web links to some stock footage sites and had to create a 30 second video based around and adapted from the Haiku. Myself and Laura worked together and we choose the following Haiku

No one travels
Along this way but I,
This autumn evening.

From this we wanted to show many clips of a city; we wanted to highlight the fact that within big city there are lots and lots of people and to show this we used many different wide and bird eye shots of big city buildings with bright lights and fast cars. However we had one clip of an old man walking alone down a road, we kept cutting back to that to demonstrate how within a big city; people can still be alone and feel lonely.

TV NEWS; SHOOT DAY

On Monday 9th October we had our very first filming day, for this day we had 2 different parts that we wanted to film, this included
1) Joel (Main presenter) opening and closing links filmed behind a green screen)
2) Our 'live' section - an interview between Joel and our credit expert Rosie Evans
We first of all booked out one of the lecture rooms in the base room to use for filming; we thought that would be best because we planned to transform the room into our own little studio set to film in. We arrived at the studios at 7am to set up the room; with our presenter arriving at 9am; we took all of the chairs out of the room and set up the sofas in the corner, Aimee had created some paper logos and we stuck these onto the mugs that we had set up on the set coffee table, something we had seen before in other news/magazine shows such as this morning.


 Furthermore we had already had the other half of the room set up from Friday, we set up the green screen as that is where we would be filming Joel on his main links. Our main issue with this came from being able to light the green screen properly. We hadn't had a lot of experience with this so it was very much a trial and error situation; we used the 650 tungsten lights and just kept repositioning them until we eventually got there.

I think that overall this day of filming went quite well. Something that was new for us with this was having an external person coming in to take part who none of us had met before. Anyone i have used before including Joel we have always known, Rosie Evans who we interviewed as our expert was someone we had sourced ourselves and it was interesting to see how that was; we had to make Rosie feel welcome and looked after but also make sure we got the answers we wanted. When we filmed the live interview between Joel and Rosie i was timing the 2 minutes on my phone whilst the others were on the camera; we soon discovered that 2 minutes went very quick and we only got 2 out of our 6 questions answered; therefore i looked over the questions and condensed them down to three; asking Rosie and Joel if they would mind filming it again so we could get some more content; in the end the second time it worked very well.

Next Steps; Next up for this project was finding a case study - we wanted to put the credit schemes we were talking about into context and create a story around someone who had these problems themselves and how it had effected their lives. We tried multiple ways of contacting people - Aimee and Laura created different posts on Mums net and other social media sites such as Facebook, however we got no response. Finally i managed to find someone through a friend of a friend who was willing to take part if the interview is anomalous because it is such a sensitive subject. We have played around with different ideas on GVS of our case study without showing her face and we are hoping it will work out very well.

TV NEWS; IDEAS FEEDBACK

This week, we had a tutorial with Helen to go over our ideas, cast and locations to make sure everything is running smoothly and planned as it should be. From the feedback session there was two main things that Helen gave us to think about
1) Argos - would it be right for us to film with them? Due to the fact Laura works there, there could be a conflict of interest because we wouldn't be able to be objective in interviewing Argos, for them it is purely a bit of promotion and they would only want to talk positively about their Argos card rather than anything else.
What We've Done About It; Having this discussion with Helen made us realise that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to have an interview with Argos; within our piece we don't want to glorify Argos Credit Cards, something they may want to do therefore there is an extreme conflict of interest. Furthermore, instead of this we are looking for a case study. Someone we can interview and in essence someone we can tell a STORY about. Ideally someone who has or has been in debt, because they will be able to talk objectively and from experience about whether or not credit/store cards are a good thing. 

2) The second issue we had when talking to Helen, was what the issue were trying to deal with in our news piece was. We aren't 100% sure of what the issue is, the problem we are trying to deal with within the piece and what we are actually talking about
What We've Done About it; I looked into some research and the best, most reliable source was the bank of Englands website. From there, we found that on average, people spend an extra £500 a month on in November and December as Christmas preparations get underway; this includes presents, christmas food and alcohol. At the moment we have narrowed the problem down to this; With Christmas starting earlier and earlier every year within shops, and so many finance offers and cards being offered, are people getting into debt too easy?

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES; WORK

How can you incorporate the impact and implications of media freedom or censorship into your own work?
We can look at how an adaption has changed, for example within a book it is only the written word, therefore they have more 'media freedom' within a book, they can be a lot more explicit because there is less restrictions on what can be written and published, rather than filmed and shown. For example with the Fifty Shade of Grey films, there was a lot of critical response that said a lot of film didn't reflect the true nature of the books

What censorship laws/organisations can you explore with reference to your own research/essay?
Within my own essay I'm not 100% sure on what texts i am going to be looking at for my essay, but at the moment i am doing some research into 13 Reasons Why. With this i could look at some suicide charities and organisations, because within the Netflix programme the main character kills herself, she slits her wrists and the way in which is was filmed including the sounds made, is extremely graphic. From this the critical response that was made was that it was far too graphic for the audience and there were many complaints that it 'glorified' suicide.

What are often the hidden cultural contexts which might impact upon what is possible in terms of both drama and news journalism?
Within 13 Reasons Why, it is set within the 21st century where this is such access to immense technology and social medias, therefore the bullying that takes place within the programme is a lot more intense. Within that, the reason she kills herself is because she believes she has no friends, it could be looked at that without all of the bullying that takes place she may not have thought that and ultimately not killed herself.

What themes can you explore? differences in the written word and moving image?
Within 13 Reasons, i think the main theme to consider will be death; something i think that will be really interesting to look at is how the TV production team managed to translate the death of Hannah, from the written word to the TV screen.

Find sources to utilise and add to your reference list
https://contexts.org/blog/13-reasons-why/
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/apr/26/netflix-13-reasons-why-suicide

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

Independence within the Media
-We will be examining the implications of freedom within the births media
-Mary Whitehouse - media mediawatch UK
-Censorship - BBCFC

Is it important for the media to be 'independent'?
-What even does the question mean - is anything we read or watch really free from opinion or conjecture?
-Is it really possible to have a network of media platforms which are free?
-And if so, what is the price of that freedom and who does that benefit and disadvantage?


'Danger - television can be bad for your moral health!'
-Ever since the early days of photography and film, people have viewed the visual media as potentially 'dangerous' to viewer's morals.
-The written word has also been subject to moral scrutiny - obscenity is, relatively speaking, a modern invention
-During the industrial revolution in Britain (late 1800s) such notions became particularly widespread

Case Study; Lady Chatterley's Lover
-Lady Chatterley's Lover was first published in 1928 and almost immediately banned
-Caused outrage because of its graphic descriptions of sex
-It became a test case for the 1959 Obscene Publications Act, it stated that publishers could escape conviction if they could prove the literary merit of the work
-The jury decided it was fine and that publisher Penguin was not guilty of publishing an obscene article, within a year the book sold more than 2 million copies

Mary Whitehouse vs TV
-With the advent of TV came a new voice for censorship, Mary Whitehouse - formed the 'National Viewers and Listeners Association' now called Media watch, in 1965
-She had the BBC firmly in her sights, even Doctor Who did not escape her criticism claiming it contained 'some of the sickest, most horrible material'
-She campaigned against what she perceived as the broadcast medias negative influence on moral standards
-21st Century - Media Watch UK, the National Viewers and Listeners is now known as Mediawatch UK
 -Mediawatch campaigns for socially responsible media and against content which is potentially harmful

Mediawatch - stated achievements and aims
-Legislation which made images of child pornography illegal
-Encourages people to talk and think about the effects of violent entertainment and pornography on society
-Regularly called upon for comment by the media
-Much of their current focus is online content and they created the website 'safeonline.org.uk' in response to a government consultation on the subject of child safety online

OFCOM 
-Is the government approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom
-Stated regulations - Transmissions should not include anything which offends against good taste or decent or is likely to encourage or incite to crime or to lead to disorder ro to be offensive to public feeling
-Licensees should take note of the guidance contained in section 1 of the ITC programme code, in particular that relating to the use of bad language and bad taste in humour

Censorship and Film; some cinema history
-In terms of cinema, the Hollywood Production Code - 1930s is an interesting case study in moving image censorship
-In 1922 the Hays Office was set up to Police Hollywood, if filmed in bedroom a man and woman had to have one foot each on the floor
-During the 1930s the Hollywood Production Codes basic premise was that
'Hollywood did not have the same kind of freedom accorded book authors and Broadway playwrights to produce artistic work.

TV NEWS; WORKSHOP

We had a workshop around scripting and filming, for this we were given a news article and from this we had to create a script with the intention to film. The article we were given was about a conservation project to increase the population of a rare species of butterflies. We created a script that involved a news anchor introducing the story, and then engaging in a live interview with a ranger from the project, engaging in conversations about the project.

We decided to film at 2 different angles, firstly we had our main anchor (Laura) standing up looking directly toward the camera as she read out all of the current headlines for that day. Then as she begins to delve deeper into the information of the main story of the programme, the camera cut to further out as Laura walked to where she was standing up over to a desk, at this point when Laura reached the desk we zoomed in to a close up shot as she started to engage in conversation with Natasha (Aimee) our news ranger).

With the interview we used the same shot for both of them as that is quite a normal classic shot for any news programme, to have the person you're filming in the middle of the screen filming them straight on in a close up. We used split screen because it made it a bit different, as Natasha greeted the news anchor (Laura) we decided to use the split screen effect. However when the actual interview started we cut between the two, because we thought this would engage the audience more. In terms of editing we edited it together and used some special effects that Aimee created. We did the normal tagline on screen to introduce the newsreader and Natasha, and we also had a headlines bar at the bottom, this was because in the script we introduce 3 main headlines of the day so we thought it would be quite a normal convention to put this in.

Feedback - Today we showed our edit of 'Nature One' to Helen and Ferg and received some things to work on

What went well
 - Using words GVs was a good addition because it keeps the audience engaged, people like to see examples of what they hear the news reader talking about and it brings the story alive
- Good direct shot sizes, keeping the newsreader int he middle of the screen
-Good use of creativity using the split screen effect

Improvements
- Don't leave too much headspace, in our shots of Aimee there was quite a bit of headspace and the makes the shot look less balanced
-The titles we used on screen, move them down and make sure they aren't too thick that they cover too much of the screen, only put them on the lower third of the screen
-Always think about timing, make sure that you understand when you're actually filming someone it will take them a lot longer to answer the question when you think.

TV NEWS; IDEA UPDATE/DEVELOPMENT

After running into a few issues we have had to change our idea. The reason we have had to do this is after conducting some research, we found that although young people are still getting into debt, they aren't actually using as much credit/loans as we thought. We basically decided that there wasn't enough evidence for us to continue with the idea of younger people and loans, therefore we have gone back to one of my previous ideas. As i couldn't be there, Laura, Katie and Aimee, took the idea i had a few weeks ago regarding christmas and advertising, and adapted it to fit a different concept.

NEW IDEA
We are still continuing with the name 'Guidance 2 Finance', however we are now focusing on targeting adults, with this particular episode we are looking at how the stress of being prepared for Christmas can affect adults financial situations, due to the immense early advertising by retailers now and the amount of different finance schemes that are offered by many different companies now. With this idea we wanted to talk to a few different people in order to gain some more information regarding Christmas. Laura spoke to department store Selfridges, who are already have their Christmas stock out, a whole 137 days before christmas. From this conversation we found out 2 main things
- They put their christmas stock out early for customer who come over from overseas and to keep up with competition of other stores
- Sales are pretty steady now however they are nothing compared to how busy they get during the actual festive period.

This leads us to wonder how much influence the early christmas advertising actually has on shoppers habits and how effective it is. We decided from this that we wanted to talk to and actually interview two different people for our news piece, someone who can offer financial advice and someone from a retail store. We believe these types of people will be able to give us the right answers and contexts to form a good story. I also spoke to the money advice service (pictured above) who emailed me with some more information for us to use.

Who do we have?
So far for our news piece we have 2 confirmed stars and one waiting to be confirmed. As a presenter we have Joel Blundell; he is a graduate of radio and broadcasting who also has a youtube channel, we believe he is a very confident person who will be able to successfully lead our news package. Secondly, we have financial advisor Rosemary Evans, who is the director of the Medway Credit Union, myself and Laura got in contact with Rosemary and have exchanged some emails to with her, she is very interested in the project and we have settled with October the 9th as the preliminary filming date. The last component that we are currently waiting on, is confirmation to be filming at a retail store, we are in contact with Dobbies and Argos and are hoping to be able to interview a manager from one of these stores.

Developments
We have all contributed to writing the script and that is almost done, we have written all sections apart form one. We have written Joel's opening link, the voice over that we would like him to introduce the subject with, as well as the interview questions for Rosie and the ending link for Joel. So far i think we are quite organised with this project, we have all equally had some contribution to the work and are quite organised in terms of getting our cast and filming dates together. Katie has created a possible logo for us to use also. The last thing we need to do is find a location, we are thinking of creating a studio set within one of our university classrooms but are still waiting to confirm this.

TV NEWS; RESEARCH INTO NEWS

'News broadcasting is the medium of broadcasting various news events and other information via television, radio or internet in the field of broadcast journalism. The content is usually either locally produced in  a radio studio or television studio newsroom, or by a broadcast network'
The term news within TV, is quite a broad term because of the different types of  news television programmes that there can be. As well as that it is quite important to look at the same codes and conventions that apply to other genres such as dramas, things such as mis en scene, colours and branding are just as important in a news piece as it is in a drama; just because it is factual it still serves the purpose to be there to be watched by an audience; the directors/producers still have to appeal to an audience. Its quite important to look at the different types of news programmes there could be;

1 - Breakfast News;
-Morning show that broadcasts nationwide
-Often running from about 6am right through till about 8/8;30
-Aimed mainly at adults, hence the title its on before people are leaving for work and school runs etc
-Often it will be a mix of normal news, as well as some more light hearted informative entertainment through celebrity guests
Example; There is three main examples of this type of news programme that comes from three of TVs biggest broadcasters, you have Good Morning Britain (ITV), Sunrise (Sky) and BBC Breakfast News (BBC). The main one that i have looked into is Good Morning Britain - as i believe it fits mostly into the above described attributes of a 'breakfast news' TV show. For example, Good Morning Britain has 2 main anchors, who hold the show throughout; however they have other presenters there for different reasons. There will be a newsreader there who sits at a desk with a direct mode of address who would read out the top main headlines, in a way the more serious stuff. Moreover they also have an 'entertainment correspondent' who would be on screen on the sofa, talking to the two main presenters filling them in on all of the most recent 'celeb gossip' and entertainment news. An important aspect in Breakfast News, is branding, for example Good Morning Britain is very bright in its colouring, the title has an orange background and the sofa they sit on, the walls of their set and everything else is included in this theme by taking the same colouring.


2 - Regional News;
 -Can be anytime through the day
 -Appeals to a local audience and is usually from a specific county
 -Often includes a lot of local images and videos, names of the local towns that that                                           particular story applies too
-Often a mix of hard and soft news stories depending on what news has broken that day                                 and what is relevant to the specific town the news would be about
Example; The BBC as a broadcaster is the main example that would link to this mostly, they have programmes such as BBC News London, Midlands Today and BBC Look North etc. The format of this takes the same as that of the normal news programmes; a main news anchor at a desk running through the headliners, passing onto different news anchors to present their own packages.

3 - Rolling News;
-Constant 24 hour news, access to the top stories of the day
-Mainly includes breaking news items as they are the most engaging and accessible;                                       breaking news stories often have numerous updates through the day so this item fits in                                    perfectly with rolling news shows
-Unlikely to feature any soft news but likely to feature celebrities if they are relevant to the                               story
Example; Again mainly from the BBC and Sky such as BBC News 24 and Sky News Live.

4 - Entertainment/Magazine
-Looking at mainly lighthearted news
-Would sometimes crossover to main headliners but would look at a different aspect/talk to someone with a different perspective.
-Usually presented by 2 people on a sofa, quite informal and causal
-Normally a daily programme

Example; there are a lot of different examples of this type of programme across a lot of the different broadcasters, you've got ITVs This Morning which is a mid morning programme that follows the news on a more lighter side, if there was a major news story running they would talk about it but from a different perspective, for example in the Manchester Bombings earlier in the year, This Morning interviewed a parent of a child who died in the attacks, thus talking more about the tragic loss that the attack caused rather than focusing on the terrorist attacks themselves like the normal news programmes would.

TV NEWS; SOURCING STORIES AND STORY TYPES (LECTURE)

Sources and Contacts

A broadcast journalist relies on a wide range of sources and contacts in the never ending search for 'new news'. The best journalists go and find the stories themselves rather than sitting there and waiting for something. For example, search through UGC or going out and talking to people can help a journalist find the story for themselves. Fisherman (1997) called 'beats' - 'patrolling' much like a police officer on recognised chains of information to supply potential stories with 'News Values', a story has to be exciting and new; though its still news it can still very much so be treated like a drama in the sense that it is still being made to be watched by a viewer. Where to find stories

Primary Sources      - Your own direct contacts

                                - Original sources direct from source material e.g. archive material 

                                - Public Appeals

                                - Press Releases/Stats/Official Statements

Secondary Sources - Stringers (freelancers)

                                - Other platforms/media

Developing Your Story

-Copious research needs to be matched with copious note taking, be organised and ensure you keep your contacts and relevant information somewhere you can easily access it. 

-Whenever you are delivering information, ensure you attribute the information to reliable sources - simply saying 'allegedly/apparently' is not enough without saying WHERE the information is from

Setting up Your Story

-Just as with the documentary unit, the proof of your journalistic skills is the you try to set your story up to shoot it

-By the time you set it up you should be clear about:

                   -what your story is

                   -who is in your story

                   -where it is

                   -when it is to be shot

                   -how you will tell ti

                   -why you are making the story

Following Up Leads

-the contacts you make in the early stages of research should lead you to the final elements which you will include in your news story

-Inevitably there will be decisions made on the basis of availability, location, cost etc, but bear in mind thesis decisions frame your story for the audience - be sure you are including elements which are a fair and reasonable representation of the facts and stay OBJECTIVE

Television News Story Forms

-5 basic types: 1 - Readers - a short story which the presenter reds out with no video to accompany or any other screen graphics. 2 - OOVs - stories which the presenter reads which also includes video material i.e. the voice over is performed by the presenter live whilst the video plays for all or part of it, adds variety of pace to the newscaster. 3 - OOV/SOT - combination of OOV and SOT - sound on tape, good for varying pace of the programme and allows a more in depth news report, but not as in depth as a full news package. 4 - News package - full formed self contained news pieces, unlike OOVs the news presenter is not involved in the story itself but rather in introducing and wrapping up the story, the reporter takes the lead up on the story. 

                      

TV NEWS; WORKSHOP

We were given a news article entitled 'Rare butterflies booming after conservation boost'; detailing how as part of a conversation project by the National Trust, the population of  a rare butterfly species has now increased dramatically since the start of the project in 1992.

Angle; With the help of the National Trust, rare species of butterflies have now dramatically increased in population.

PRESENTER SCRIPT

Butterfly Boost

Presenter:
Hello and welcome to Nature One. Today’s story discusses the dramatic increase in the population of rare species of butterflies and this is all thanks to the National Trust and their ‘habitat specialist’.  Did you know, that the scarcer butterfly has declined in population, by 25% within the last 25 years, whereas, in comparison the Adonis Blue butterfly has increased by an equally huge 13% with thanks to the National Trust and their work.

Today we are joined with a ranger from the National One who has seen first hand, the success of the conservation projects. Hi Natasha, (she replies)

Q - So, roughly how long has this work been going on?

A - So the National Trust has been working on this issue of the decline in rare butterfly species for a good few decades, weve specifically been working at increasing this number of butterflies on farmlands since 1992, we are trying to get the numbers back to that of 1976.

Q - So, explain to us the work that you are doing?

A - So us at the National Trust have set up a lot of conservation projects in the hope to dramatically increase the population of rare butterfly species, in order to monitor this we have used results from the UK Butterfly monitoring Scheme to compare the numbers at our sites in comparison to those lands that are under other ownership. By producing some specialist habitats to house these butterflies we have successfully grown the numbers of specific rare species.  

Q - What do you think is one of the most important factors in this project?

A - Well aside from the main issue of the decline in butterfly population, i think it’s really important and extremely helpful within this conservation project that we have a wide range of local farmers and Rangers, as well as people like myself from the National Trust, all working together to achieve one common goal.

Q - From the reports, you’ve been very successful in achieving this. What’s the next step?

A - From now on, we are hoping to boost the number of farmland butterflies even further across our 200 000 acres of farmed landed, were pledging to improve butterfly habitats on land in our care with the hope of boosting the ranges of rarer butterfly species such as the mentioned Ble Adonis.  

Thank you for joining us Natasha, unfortunately that's all we have got time for today on Nature One. Next week, we look at more animal stories.  

TV NEWS; IDEAS DEVELOPMENT

After sitting down as a group and going through all of our ideas, as well as having a workshop with Jo Clark, we sifted through and decided on one idea that we would all work on and research. This idea focuses on young peo
ple and looks at their understanding of finance. The idea first came from the thought that within schools, young people are not in any way taught about taxes or credit or in fact anything to do with adult financing.

Part of the weblink emailed to me by 'Money Service Advice'

Myself and Laura found a number of different people we could call; this was mainly to try and get a better overview of this in terms of the actual issue; we want to try and find out how debt and credit is a problem for young people and as it is such a sensitive issue for some people it isn the easiest topic to find true to life facts/issues online. Firstly, we called up the 'Money Service Website', a free service by which people can call up and ask for advice surrounding issues with money. The person i spoke to took my email and gave me a link to their main page around this topic, which led me to some useful information explaining the different ways young people can get in to debt. Furthermore Laura contacted the Citizens Advice service who though couldn't give us any information themselves, they gave us an email for a charity entitled "Step Change" who specialise in this topic and are hopefully able to provide us with some statistics. We have contacted them and are currently awaiting a reply. Lastly, Jo found for us another charity that are locally based who offer debt free advice, unfortunately they do not have a phone number but a contact form, so we have sent that off and are again hoping for a reply; as this is a locally based charity we think this may be a good contact for an expert interview for the news piece itself. 

Charity that we hope to interview

Other research that i found include a guardian news article and some other news pieces that focus on a similar topic. The main example that i found from the internet was from the Citizens Advice website; it tells the story of a young boy Scooby, who accidentally went £1 into an un-arranged overdraft and ending up building up a £600 charge because of it. This to us just demonstrates firstly how easy it is for young people to fall into debt, and secondly how uneducated we as a generation are in terms of money/bills/charged and all things financing.

Katie and Aimee created this brief overview of what our idea will consist of -

Finance channel based upon young people and their understanding of money. 

Live Package
¥Who? University students
¥Where? University
¥Why? Talk to the students about credit and debt- what sort of “financial solutions” they have i.e. overdraft 

Pre-recorded package
¥Who? Joel Blundell (?) 
¥Where? In front of green screen? Sitting at desk? 
GVs- people walking into a bank? Websites- bank/ signing up to accounts/ online banking
Graphics- logos of different banks, news ticker, intro for the news channel
¥Why? Introducing the subject, facts and figures 

Website
¥Channel title
¥Tag line (pitch line) 
¥Information about what our websites about 
¥Upcoming videos

Think about- theme colours, imagery (i.e logo), intro- can include audio and visual effects

To include in script- “back to the studio”, “next time”, “let’s visit ---- at -----”, 

Note- photos and behind the scenes 

Phone calls made to Money advice- emailing stuff through, c.a.b- told to call charity Stepchange- no outcome.

TV NEWS; INITIAL IDEAS

We were arranged into group of fours for the project, because the project itself is a very short one, we begun straight away by brainstorming some different ideas that we could do. For example our first brainstorming ideas included halloween and student life. We decided to all come up with one idea each that we can all look to develop, that way we can each decide on the best one and also have a few back ups should we run into any issues with the once that we choose.


The idea that i came up with first of all is the idea of christmas and how early all of the stores and websites get ready/advertise for it. I came up with this idea because i remembered when i worked in a department store and in August i was tasked with putting out some christmas cards onto the shelf, this was my first experience of realising how early stores now sell christmas gifts and cards, and how this can put pressure on lots of people to be prepared and spend their money for christmas. I looked into this issue more and found a news article titles "Halloween in August? Christmas in October? The retail trend that is here to stay" - it was then that i realised how much of a wider issue this is, how up and down the country and most likely the world, that businesses capitalise on the event of christmas far earlier than ever before. As most would agree it definitely isn't a case of the 'twelve days of christmas' anymore.


I think this idea is good because theres many avenues by which we can explore, for example we could look at the financial stress that christmas puts on to people, the pressure to get the best presents as well be ready and prepared for when the shops start selling for the festive season. Contextually we can date this back to 1952, when the very first 'Black Friday' was announced in the USA before becoming the global event that we know today. Though normally held in the end of November so not as early in comparison to other sales and christmas events others may do, however this i think is still a very big example of the chaos and stress that christmas can create.

I thought that it would be quite important within this early research stage to look at how spending for the christmas period has increased, for example £5.6 billion was spent within the UK on advertising in the run up to the event in 2016, this however generates a huge revenue in sales profit.

Furthermore, there is a few people we would be able to talk to/interview for this topic and i have narrowed it down to two different certain types of people. The first being a shop owner or manager, who could contextualize the topic for us and give us an insight into shoppers buying habits around the festive period. An example i have found is a shop called 'The Nutcracker'; a chain of shops that are christmas based all year round, hopefully we would be able to gain access to talk to a manager or worker of one of these stores and talk to them about their store. Secondly i think it would be good to talk to a normal shopper; ask them about their shopping experiences and how the pressures of the early christmas advertising from retailers affects them.

TV NEWS: UNIT BRIEFING

Digital News Unit Briefing

- This unit will build on the experiences from the first year, key skills that we will take forward include - Sourcing stories and storytelling (narrative)
             - Sourcing Contributors
             - Sourcing Locations
             - Scripting/Writing to pictures
             - Interviewing
             - Sequencing and Actuality
             - SWEFF
             - Good Coverage (GVs)
             - Good Sound (atoms, correct mic, control background and noise etc)
             - Factual Accuracy/Fair Dealing/Impartiality & balance
             - Team Work and Communication
             - Time management and Organisation Skills
             - Interpret information and find good news angles - disseminating info thereafter

- New Skills that we will take from this unit include;
             - Reporting - on screen/directing talent
             - Fast turn-around (6 weeks to submission inc this week) - get story & access quickly
             - Online platform development/branding/concept
             - Studio presentation/News anchoring (green screen possibilities)
             - Sourcing talent - IE reporters/presenters

We are challenged to develop your own original online news channel and produce content for that channel, find a brand which will fit a particular audience and provide content for the audience - niche content rather than mixed. We will all be assessed individually on both submitted work and blog work. Design your own branded digital online news channel via website such as YouTube, Vimeo etc.

Submission Date - 26th October 



           

DOCUMENTARY; PROJECT EVALUATION

After a month of pre production and another of filming and post production, our documentary, Digital Detox, is finally fully edited and finished, and it is now time to reflect on the things that went well, the things that didn't go as well, and finally the things that I have learnt from the project. Firstly, the one thing that was really different to this project, in comparison to the other 2 projects we have completed in our first year, is that it was fully cooperative group project, meaning that all of the decision making had to be made as a collective, everything had to be considered through 4 different opinions and this was something we hadn't yet experienced. Overall with this i think that we handled it quite well, between the four of us we managed to in a way divide up the roles in order to suit where our strengths lied. Myself and Laura had a lot of involvement within the pre production and other organisational work such as contacting potential characters and locations, whereas Katie and Aimee more worked on the actual production side of things such as actually filming and special effects. In terms of the actual editing we had a good experimental process by which we connected a mac to a TV  and would all edit together suggesting our own ideas and testing what worked and what didn't. Group work worked well for us because we were coherently organised and all knew what we were doing within the documentary, and that is why i think this is one of the biggest strengths within our project. 

Stylistically, i am really happy with how the project turned out. Obviously due to the nature of the topic we were looking at (social media) we wanted to convey this throughout. Firstly the use of the vlogs is something thats quite different tot normal documentaries and is a lot more personal; part of the reason we wanted to use vlogs is because it makes Jake, as the main character, a lot more closer to the audience, as they are watching they will feel a lot closer to Jake and almost like they are part of his journey, therefore i think stylistically the vlogs were a huge strength of our project. Also, the graphics we used all links in to this in terms of being quite modern, different and interesting to watch. 

Furthermore, a huge strength from our project i believe lies within the special effects that we used within the post production. Our documentary itself revolves around the use of social media, which is an extremely modern and new way of thinking; relevant only to the 21st century, therefore we wanted to include some of these iconographies within our project, such as the texts appearing on screen and screen recordings of Facebook and other sites. I think that using these within our project really made the overall videos flow better and gave a certain tone and direction to the piece itself. Something else that i think was really effective within our documentary, was the idea of getting more GVs on a larger scale. When we were editing, we had so many facts and other bits of voice overs that we needed some more, relevant GVs to show whilst these facts were playing. As a solution, i came up with the idea that we should go to London, a city of bright lights and advanced technology, to film some large scale city shots that were firstly relevant to our topic and secondly would give our documentary a more professional feel/look. We went on the emirates cable car to film and it proved to be really effective, Katie then used these shots to do some post production stuff, by which we wrote facts across the London skyline, paired with the voice over from Jake. 

Moreover, whilst their were many strengths and things that i am completely happy with, their are also some weaknesses that i can learn from in the future that could have perhaps made our documentary better. Firstly, as i said in previous blog posts, we really wanted to get an expert to take part in our documentary, just a short interview where our main character Jake would ask some questions about the usage of social media within teens. The reason we wanted this was to provide some background and context to the situation we were presenting on screen. We were making Jake give up social media for 4 days and we really wanted someone to answer why he was giving it up for 4 days and why it is such a big issue in our world today. Unfortunately, after we contacted many and many people, including experts within the field, psychologists and lecturers, we couldn't get someone to take part. We had some that were interested but due to time restrictions or travel restrictions they were unable to take part, and others such as lecturers couldn't help us due to it being a busy time of year. Overall i do not think this damaged our project, but i do think that had we have managed to obtain an expert who wanted to take part, the overall subject we were portraying would have maybe gained a bit more credibility. Whilst this was something that disappointed us, we overcame this issue by putting our own facts on screen, with our main character Jake, someone who as a character on screen our audience feel very comfortable with, reading them out with a voice over. This leads me on to something else i would have liked to have been better within our project. The sound of the voice overs was something i personally didn't think sounded right. I could hear a light buzzing behind Jake's voice and i just felt the overall quality wasn't really that great. We did two things to overcome this, firstly we put music on the first 3 minutes of the documentary, because that was the part by which the clips change a lot and the audio changes a lot, therefore the music helped up to overcome this issue by covering the audio gaps. This then lead us to using Jakes own recording of his music which again is something we were quite happy with because of the music originality. 

One thing i have definitely taken from this project, in terms of mainly documentary filmmaking, is the absolute importance of transcripts. At first we didn't do this straight away as we thought it would have been easier to just edit whilst watching, however after our workshop with Helen we soon found out that this was not the case. Myself and Laura wrote out the transcripts for Jakes main interview, whilst we all then transcribed the vlogs, i would say that there is 2 main reasons as to why the transcripts for us, turned out to be so important. Firstly, the way in which Jake speaks, sometimes didn't make sense, so having it all written down on paper meant we could go through each line and highlight what we wanted to keep - i.e. make it make sense. Secondly, it saved us a lot of time, it was far quicker to label the clips, look at the transcript and being able to find certain bits of dialogue that way, rather than the much more time consuming way of endlessly sitting there watching all the clips all over again to find what we want. For these reasons, that is why i would say the important of transcribing is one of the biggest things i have learnt from this project. 

In terms of what I would like to develop from this project, is probably my own personal involvement in the design of special effects and post production. I would say i am quite an organised person and so I've already enjoyed being involved in a lot of pre-production stuff such as organising potential characters/actors as well as scheduling and locations. However something i am not as great as, is the creation of special effects within the post production, Katie and Aimee are more into the post production side of things and so seeing what they have been able to do during this stage of our project does interest me and is defiantly something I would like to develop on in the future in my own projects.