NEWS Project Evaluation

This project has been interesting, having studied news programming in college I was'nt entering blindly in, however I have learned an awful lot about working with different people and with different team members.

during production we had some issues with sound as has been the case in past projects, the response is the same in this instance, have backups of backups. on our shoots we used as many forms of sound capture equipment as possible thus the vast majority of the time we had some usable sound for each shot. a general increase in sound recording competence may be required on my part.

we also had issues with camera balance and handheld shots. my ability to hold the camera perfectly still has deteriorated over the summer and if i had noticed by way of practicing out of shoot time i may have decided to use the tripod more often, allowing for far more usable shots. this is something I just need further experience with in general and my ability will improve enough to use my preferred methodologies once again.

in general I have enjoyed and found this group project stimulating in unexpected ways, navigating a new kind of team dynamic has been eye-opening and has improved my general team related sills immensely.

I believe that I still need to improve in relation to blogging as I still try and develop ideas based upon empirical experience to inform my decision process and my evidence in regard to blogging for project evidence. this is definitely something I must improve upon for the next project.

NEWS - The Edit

in this short post I will describe some of the issues we as a group faced as Laura edited the package, as I only actioned this from a tangental perspective(at the time i was working on the graphics to be integrated at the end of the edit.), this overview will be brief and only the issues that I noticed in particular.

the method that Laura used to edit the project was to edit each element of the package before integrating them together, then integrating the package and the live together with the studio footage.

this method mirrors how a real news broadcast is created, with the individual production teams producing their packages and lives before its editorially cut together throughout the studio live.

Rough Cut
our rough cut had some large faults according to our feedback, according to Helen it lacked a single vision, something I think Laura has fixed for the fine cut. basically we had issues integrating the interviews and story into a coherent whole.

Fine Cut
the fine cut appears to be very well integrated, package, studio and live integrating tightly. again as I've only been tangentially related to this part of the process,(I was creating the Final versions of the graphics and ident), I can only speculate that Laura has definitely made improvements over the Rough cut.

NEWS - review of feedback on rough cut

in this short post, I will outline some of the things I've been asked to change in the context of our team's group project, in particular, my primary individual contribution of the graphics and ident. But I will also talk about how my experience of working in this team has been.

the primary issue in relation to my contribution was in style of the graphics, it was commented that they appeared anachronistic in a negative way, in particular, that they all looked very '80's ' I actioned a fix for this issue immediately. unfortunately I never did find music that fit.

in a wider sense, the feedback made me realise somewhat better how our team has functioned in my eyes, something that has helped the team dynamic somewhat as i now know how we're working, as i didn't before.

I also realised that I hadn't had a clear understanding of the project from a story perspective, I had understood from a conceptual and in a context, just not actually how we were going to connect all the pieces into a coherent story, I hadn't felt the need to interfere in laura's work regarding that, and I think that speaks well of my teammates. Upon reflection, we were compartmentalized in a way that allowed us to work in parallel and in synchronicity and i think this team dynamic has interesting and unique due to this.

NEWS - Pitches

As I wasn't sure whether the 25 word pitch was for just one of the two consepts (one being the initial idea, and the second being the group project), I have decided to dedicate a short post to both possible eventualities.


Initial Idea

Underground News Britain

A web-based news service for Britains counterculture, focusing on event news, anarchal politics, and current events. the target audience is those people who live on the fringes of society.


Group Project

Health Heroes

a health and charity based web news service. focusing on health, donation and health charity news. designed as a useful tool to broadcast improvements in healthcare and donations to charities,

NEWS - Branding experimentation.

BRANDING

in this post I will outline my work regarding the branding and possible visual elements of the group's news piece, this post is a composite of several text documents I used to brainstorm away from the group along with notes I have taken when in talks with the group.

INTITIAL NOTES:

I have been experimenting with different colour schemes and brand styles for the various possible stories in our group, these are representative and appropriate for the various focuses of our stories and are to represent basic features of the possible platforms. examples are in the form of channel idents.

I've chosen static channel ident's as a start point because they traditionally inform the rest of the brand identity.

initially, I will outline some core features of the channel's identities.

Underground
Brown/grey/rust/red/hard/grungy/street/underground/subvirsive/muted colours/traditional fonts/old fonts/dirty not clean/angry/ defaced/vandalised angled, hard corners.

these themes/ideas are informed by both intrinsic knowledge and an understanding of the nature of punk and the British counterculture. generally speaking a dilapidated, vandalised aesthetic is a staple of this world. they're also informed by the visual style of Vice News, who decided to use an almost grafiti-like logo and conversational style in line with modern street speak.

Transport
moterway sign blue/pictograms/British rail yellow/ grey/blue, super clean, rounded corners and angles/maidstone/professional/news ticker/traffic info.

transport visual design is brutalist, and modernist in nature.  Crisp, clear imagery with heavy use of pictograms provide a striking and bold aesthetic that has to be immediately recognizable to be fit for purpose, these features inform the ideas above, possibly borrowing features from well known transport brands such as motorway signage and, the now defunct British Rail visual style. utilising a primarily authoritative tone.

children's charity
white/pastel blue and pink/ soft/curved/clean/modern,clean fonts/ arial/ arial narrow.

informed by way of a general theme, health related organisations often use pastel blues and pinks to soften their image as health worries are often a stress point for individuals, the colours promote positivity and softness, in combination a duty of care. this is informed by a generalized analysis of such organisations' logo and branding designs. a comparably light voice with a calm, slightly happy tone,slightly less authority.

Animal Charity
White/dark blue/green/farm colours/ basic fonts/rounded curves/dogs/caring/clean/cutting edge.

these design ideas were mostly informed by the nature of animal welfare charities and farm branding designs, blues and greens dominate the farming industry. the ont should be conversational and caring to reflect the subject matter.

CONT:

as a team we chose to follow a series of stories relating to charities and donations, during a planning meeting i came up with a "Heartbeat" monitor idea, this was informed by its thematic relevance. however, a name was not finalized until a week or so later, below are some concept sketches and examples of the final branding designs.

the name came out of a general planning meeting, Health heroes was then added to my initial designs and the logo was approved upon exhibition within the group.

when producing the website, the team decided to darken the shade of the design, this was due to how washed out it looked in relation to the white background on the website.



initial logo design

graphics initial design

website designed by team member, note different shades and layout

redesigned logo, note differing layout, fonts and colours


I agreed to produce the visual effects and branding for the project once asked, I believe this may have been because of my heavy use of after effects last year along with my extensive general knowledge of the program, having used it semi-regularly for the last four years.
working off my logo design, I intend to use the theme of a heart monitor for the logo, with three beeps timed to indicate a countdown to the start of the show, each beep will express a feature f the logo, the two lines individually and then the text before fading into the studio.

the watermark and graphics will wipe into existence and exist as a separate layer to the footage below them,

the graphics perform an extremely important part in the news package, providing important information such as contributor names, and sometimes headlines as seen in the 'news tickers' that flow across the bottom of the screen.

the first piece I designed was a basic form of the channel ident, a very short graphic sequence that includes the channel logo and often clips, initially I just provided the final seconds of this section, the logo reveal, however, this was merely a starting point for the sequence.

the channel indent part of the graphics has now been expanded to perform better as a channel indent in general, utilizing a series of clip sections before cutting into the actual indent

designed as a part of an intro sequence

Modifications in response to rough cut feedback.

Our tutor pointed out that the logo looks far too 'eighties' and not current enough, , this feedback required a change in design which I have actioned, making the logo and VFX less angular, and more current.




the animations have however remained similar, see final production for a better look at the graphics.

NEWS - History P3 - Web news

following the widespread adoption of the internet almost all forms of media have moved online, television news being one of them, the internet as a medium allows for news programming to become further diversified and specialised, below are some examples:

TFL
Transport for London runs a youtube channel that produces(among other things), news packages. this is a fantastic example of the depth of specialisation and focus news programming can have in the internet age, an excellent example piece of programming from TFL's channel is rendered below:

This is a fantastic example of the diversification of news codes and codices, its short from, investigative style, the fact its presenting information that is in the public interest points more towards a news-style package rather than a short doc. In my opinion its almost a return to the previously mentioned Newsreel style of news reporting, small, self contained newscasts that are as short and follow the same codices as television news packages.

t

NEWS - History P2 -- Modern News Broadcasting.

introduction
continuing on from my previous post upon the history of the news broadcast, this pice looks at modern news journalism in its intricacy and the rise of the standard style of news broadcasting.

the rise of modern news

modern news broadcasting developed from a mixture of the early Live television news and Newsreels, the prepackaged newsreel format slotted into the live braudcasts as the stye developed, coming into its own in the early nineties.

hard/soft format
British news broadcasts then began to use a hard/soft/hard format to order their packages, using hard-hitting stories early and in the middle of the broadcast, often ending upon a soft story so as to not overly frighten the audience. As news broadcasting became more sensationalist, this format became standardised,. this was likely due to the 'hard format' stores slightly scaring and/or shocking the audiance.

American news is even further sensationalised when compared to the relatively speaking reserved British broadcasts.  american news media is also often heavily biased towards one political party, FOX news and CNN are good examples of this as they each lean in opposition to each other.

over the years since the 'standard' news format developed these tw channels have over sensationalized their broadcasts to the point that american news media appears to be a pastiche of the British equivalent. compare FOX News' broadcast, and the BBC broadcasts regarding  the ebola infection.


FOX News reporting:

Fox news uses deliberately alarmist language, it rarely visualises ts story and doesn't especially write to the screen, preferring to present images almost as if in conversation, it overblows Ebola's dangers and doesn't present the myriad ways in which those involved are identifying and minimising risk.

BBC news reporting:

This braudcast asks the question "is ebola a global emergency?, it then expresses all the risks and safety precautions applied in detail, deliberately calmly and factually, this method helps to avoid panic rather than inciting it.

the reason these examples are important is to show the variances in the format, modern news broadcasts share a format but not a tone, or a style. every news broadcaster has its own variance on the theme.

News as a genre is varied and complex, in my next post I have examined a singular news broadcast so as to gpo into detail about the codes and conventions of news broadcasting.

NEWS - History P1 - Newsreels.

intro

as a part of the NEWS unit I will be having a short look into the history and development of the news format of programme, Television news, like documentary developed from the newsreels of the early 20th century, as a precursor to modern news programming, newsreels are crucial to note in the development of the modern television news package.

early newsreels

the earliest newsreels predate audio recording, however even in these early times, some of the standards of modern news are already visible, images are only used to progress the story, with cuts to titles to enunciate the images, an early form of writing to images.

The next development in the genre is the adoption of sound, this pathe newsreel expresses the power of atomics i the mid 20th century, this newsreel was created during the initial years of atomic development,  note the better use of images and sound, the use of dramatic music sets the tone, this newsreel sits on the border between documentary and news, its short form like a news package however its also dramatised like many documentaries.

it was around the time of the above newsreel that the BBC started broadcasting, and thus the first television news programmes were invented, often using newsreel cameras on location. the editing is clunker than the earlier newsreels, this may be because of the relatively new technology, editing without cutting the film may have been difficult. this shows an early example of the use of a news anchor and studio.

the next example further blurs the line between documentary and newsreel, this example is a short newsreel by the rand corporation, look at life. I'm using this as an example because the rand corporation makes the best use of colour film in their newsreels, something that television news at the time couldn't do, Rand would also sometimes use some of the earliest examples of 'Vox pops', and thus is relevant to the development of modern news programming.

the next section will be upon the later years of the development of the modern news style, it will cover modern news and the methods by which it keeps the viewer entertained, informed and educated.

NEWS - Review of shoots

NEWS - Review of Shoots

in this post I will review the shoots and my thoughts/feelings upon them.

TESCO

the Tesco shoot in Sittingbourne, in the end was smaller than i had originally expected, we weren't allowed to really shoot in the store itself, focusing primarily upon the meeting room where we were based for the shoot. we shot the interview first and then shot a couple of set-up shots in a little used part of the store to set up the two interviewees.

in my opinion the shot went really well, thankfully the location was close to the railway station as during this shoot it was my responsibility to look after the camera equipment.

Kent Sheds

the kent sheds shoot was in gravesend a fair distance from the railway station, around the back of a cafe on the promenade, Gravesend is a willowy town and the views from the promenade of the huge power station have stayed with me. the shoot itself was fairly standard excepting for its location, that being a low-headroom workshop space, we didn't shoot much more at Kent sheds than the interview, however this shoot has stayed with me due to the bleak beauty of the location.

Demelza

the demelza shoot went very well in my opinion, the location was picturesque allowing for a large number of GV's as well as the two interviews we had planned. the location was not easy to get t, requiring a 20 minute drive from the station to the location however this issue was mitigated by the availability of a team member's family member who provided transport to us.

we started by looking around the location with a chaperone to find two good places for our interviews, we ended up doing one in the admin offices, and the other near to the location of Demalza's sensory garden-building site. we interviewed their press officer and an assistant gardener who works i the development of the new garden.

STUDIO

our studio shoots went generally well, on our first attempt we neglected using in-camera sound, preferring a handheld Zoom field recorder, this however resulted in extremely poor sound quality.
our second attempt went particularly well, with no sound or vision isses thanks to our use of a clip radio microphone.

we lit a white wall using a mixture of tungsten and LED lighting equipment, this provided a clinical and appropriate background for our presenter, (Laura), while lighting her using a single LED light-box, this resulted in what Fergus referred to as "hollywood" lighting, the method by which you light the background and subject separately.

NEWS - article for website

this is evidence of work regarding the project website, we, as a team wrote an article each to be emplaced within the website of our channel. this is my article, rewritten from:MIND.CO.UK - PCS HIGH STRESS LEVELS

Mind Charity piece.

recent research produced by Mind seems to indicate that the stress levels of our doctors are dangerously high when compared to the wider uk workforce. in nine of ten(88%) cases PCW(primary care workers) find their life is stressful, significantly higher than the uk average of 56%.

the research was carried out in the form of a poll f over 1000 NHS workers in primary care. including GP's, practice nurses, managers and colleagues. the research also showed that work related stress was the primary cause.

Dr Maureen Baker, Chair of the RCGP, said: “The current state of general practice is pushing GPs to their limit, and these results show it is having a serious impact on their physical and mental health. It goes without saying that a service that relies on sick and fatigued GPs is not good for patient safety.

the impact of work related stress for PCW is significant, with 17% of the polled personnel saying that they had been prescribed medication for a mental health problem. with 8% having considered suicide. PCW's also admitted to using unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as smoking(8%) and drinking semi-regularly(42%).

a major problem, the poll found, was the fear of PCW's to disclose their workplace stress, one in three felt that disclosing that they are stressed would lead to being perceived as being less capable when compared to their colleagues.
Thankfully, the government has pledged to help. Following BMA lobbying a new service for GP's suffering from burnout and/or stress has been planned, wether the government follows though, or wether this service is expanded to include all PCW's could seriously improve and effect the quality of the service provided by the NHS, increasing patient safety and possibly increasing job satisfaction among PCW's.

NEWS - Green screen workshop

Green Screen workshop

We were assembled as a class in studio two to take part in a workshop regarding green screen, or Chroma-Keying, or Keying, for short. in this workshop we were given the opportunity to set up and work with two different methods, traditional green screen, and retro-reflective.

previous to this workshop I had worked with traditional blue and green screen chromakey, in one instance using traditional, non-digital methodologies, quite literally cutting the red waveform from a colour video signal using an old fashioned video mixing device. more prevalent in my experience has gbeen the use of chromakey blue, and green screens, with the colour information removed in post-production, often using a (then) plugin for premier pro and Final Cut called 'Keylight'. this experience included lighting the subject for minimal shadow.

the elements covered in  the workshop for which I had no previous experience in were binary,

A, setting up the specific equipment available from this course's store,

 and B, Retro-reflective chromakey.
in retro-reflective chromakey, instead of using a green screen, you use an especially treated screen, designed to reflect light only from certain angles, those angles being that of the camera lens.
a green-light casting, halo-shaped emitter is fitted to surround the camera lens, this produces light that is reflected by the screen, back into the lens. The  effect of specific reflection allows only the camera to pick up the green light, and with the proper application of white balance, allows the subject to be lit separately, and not be tinged green.

I prefer traditional chromakey as to my mind its less fussy about at what angle the screen is at in relation to the subject. I am also used to the workflow of traditional chromakey and this may play a part in my opinion. another downside is that you have to be careful how you light the subject using redheads, errant reflections upon the screen can be disadvantageous to the process of chromakey.