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.