This is a screen shot of my first edit for the factual programme.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Shooting Diary
Day 1:
On Day 1 We filmed our EMA documentary and managed to film all of it on this day. We also, took photos of people holding up pictures with their opinon on. This will be our version of vox poxs as we'll ask the question in footage and then, show pictures of student answers.
Day 2:
On Day 2 we finished off our filming for EMA and then, moved onto filming our activity documentary. For our documentary we filmed outdoor activities and we also, filmed some interviews with students.
Day 3:
On Day 3, we continued to film the activities, in the morning we went to the gym to film some shots. We also, interviewed some of the experts who run activitiy clubs. During this session we also, went back to class and tweaked the pre-production work.
Day 4:
Today, we shot some more footage and we went back to the editing suites to check our footage and put it back onto our hard drives ready for editing next week.
Conclusion:
I have enjoyed filming with Matt and Jodie. They were great fun to work with and were very organised in completing work and were also, helpful in sorting out the shots which we needed for our coursework. I felt that we focussed well as a team.
Monday, 6 June 2011
Half Term Review
Half Term Review
On our first meeting, we decided to mix Matts and Jodies idea together to make a developed idea for our factual programme. The factual Idea was EMA around the college and how it has an effect on students. We felt that EMA is a important subject to talk about because a lot of people rely on it and it will be taken away in the next college term year. We allocated jobs to each other and fairly did it, so that everyone would do the same amount of work. I have been allocated to do the storyboard and I have already completed the storyboard and drawn a clear structure of our idea.
For our second idea, we decided to mix Jodies and Matts idea together to make a developed idea of their version of ideas. The idea was based upon activities around the college. We will interview students and teachers around the college about their opinons on their views about activities for our factual documentary. For this idea we have decided that I will do the script and part of the proposal.
Overall, I thought this was a successful meeting because we accomplished all we needed to and decided which ideas to do and which tasks to appoint to each other.
On our first meeting, we decided to mix Matts and Jodies idea together to make a developed idea for our factual programme. The factual Idea was EMA around the college and how it has an effect on students. We felt that EMA is a important subject to talk about because a lot of people rely on it and it will be taken away in the next college term year. We allocated jobs to each other and fairly did it, so that everyone would do the same amount of work. I have been allocated to do the storyboard and I have already completed the storyboard and drawn a clear structure of our idea.
For our second idea, we decided to mix Jodies and Matts idea together to make a developed idea of their version of ideas. The idea was based upon activities around the college. We will interview students and teachers around the college about their opinons on their views about activities for our factual documentary. For this idea we have decided that I will do the script and part of the proposal.
Overall, I thought this was a successful meeting because we accomplished all we needed to and decided which ideas to do and which tasks to appoint to each other.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
SCRAPBOOK (History Of Editing Techniques)
In this report, I will be explaining the structure of a factual programme and the main features
Below is my version of how a documentary should be constructed below:
Introduction à Background à examples of footage à Community Interviews à Vox Pox’s à Expert Interviews à Summary
Documentaries were first made in the 1900’s which was a long time ago. Documentaries in the 1900’s were very basic, the footage was in black and white and only lasted for a minute. Also, there wasn’t any synchronised sound in the footage only sound tracks played in the background. The first synchronised sound was in 1928. The Major Hollywood films & documentaries were the first to have synchronised sound. From this point, film industry grew bigger and bigger. The special effect technology developed further and further until 1950’s the early colour was introduced. From 1950’s to today film industry has grown dramatically. The special effects are incredible and the amount of new elements which is included in documentaries. The first type of editing for a factual programme was linear editing which was developed in the 1960’s. This editing technique was a practical method by hand. In this method, they would use a big sewing machines. This machine was called steam beck. The purpose of this machine would help to feed the film tape to the editor, so he can cut out tape and stick it on top of other tape to form an edit.
Research Walt Disney & BBC
BBC was one of the first radio manufactures to open in 1922, they were licensed by the government to entertain British people on the radio. They also, funded the BBC which was paid for by television licenses . In 1926, the company had many general strikes and this caused the it to almost dissolve. They broke away from the other institutes inside the company and were given a royal charter to help them get back on track. The BBC radio stations became well known widely in the 1930’s for producing music and drama. During World War 2 the BBC had many intermissions because it was in the top five targets to be bombed. The only time when their headquarters nearly got bombed was by a 500Ib bomb which exploded outside their front door.
The BBC Television centre opened in Shepherds Bush in West London in 1960. This was the next big thing after radio. Television became very popular to watch sport etc. Shortly after the television centre opened in west London, in 1964 the BBC 2 channel opened. Near the end of the 1960’s colour came to television and this was very exciting for people who had only seen television in black and white. This was the core of BBC television, the two main channels and early colour.
In the 1970s the Open University started which helped to increase the number of programmes on the BBC channel. Some other great television programmes started in the 1970s: Fawlty towers, Antiques road show, Top Gear and Not the Nine O’clock News.
BBC started to get some other competitive channels against them. Some of these channels were channel 4 and some radio commercial channels. However, they fought back the competition in the late 1990’s with a big expansion policy. Internet was a whole brand of new way of media and the BBC invested in a few websites to advertise their media. Also they launched Children’s TV services which was CBeebies and CBBC, a cultural network, BBC four and also, many new digital radio stations were introduced. This was the biggest expansion in BBC history.
The BBC corporation is managed by BBC trust which is a board of governors who over see the company and make the choices within the company. The BBC trust is funded by government taxes and through licenses which everyone pays in the country. BBC has never purchased developed companies they have always expanded by decision made by the royal charter.
Overall, the BBC is like a slowly developing county which provides television to the UK. BBC aren’t owned by anyone, a cooperation or a company.
Walt Disney
Since Disney has so many accomplishments I’m going to talk about the first ten years of Walt Disney and the present past ten years. Walt Disney started in 1922 in North America. The company started off with $15,000 from local investors but, within a year the company was bankrupt. However, the following year Walt Disney got a contract with the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. There contract was to produce ‘Alice Comedy’ films about a girl in an animated world, they produced 55 films in this series, it took four years to produce all these films. This was very successful for the company because this was the key starting point for them. In 1927, Disney started producing ‘Oswald the Lucky films for Universal Pictures, 26 films are produced in just over a year. In 1928, unfortunely The Disney Studio lost it's contract to produce the ‘Oswald the Lucky Rabbit’ films. However, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks develop the Mickey Mouse character. Mickey Mouse is probably the most well known Walt Disney character. The first Mickey Mouse film was first show in the Colony Theatre in New York. This was first cartoon to be designed with a soundtrack. This was a great success for the Walt Disney company. Another Great Success of Walt Disney was in 1930 where the New York Mirror Newspaper publishes the first Mickey Mouse comic strip. Moving on from the 20th Century to the 21st Century a lot has happened.
In 2004, Disney has released many animated films to the theatre. Some of these films are ‘Home on the Range’ and ‘The Incredibles ’. These two films were really popular and seen as a good family film. In 2005 Walt Disney releases a few films, ‘Chicken little’ was ne of them. After 50 years after the opening of Disneyland, they have an anniversary celebrating its re-dedication ceremony. In Hong Kong, Disney land opens which is the first Disneyland to open in Asia. In 2006, Walt Disney releases another three films which are ‘The Shaggy Dog, The Wild and Cars. In 2007, two more films are released which are ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’ and ‘Ratatouille’.
Walt Disney owns a lot of companies; Buena Vista, Touchstone, Walt Disney, Hollywood Pictures, Caravan Pictures, Miramax Films, ABC.com, Oscar.com, Mr. Showbiz, Hollywood Records, Lyric Street Records, Mammoth Records.
Skills Profile
The skills which I know, which will help me with the upcoming two units are; factual documentaries and understanding the media industry. The skills I already have which will help me to accomplish these tasks are having a good knowledge of editing software, good communication skills to help me cooperate with my group. Other skills that I have which will help me with these tasks is good indepednence. This will help me to find my own indivisual research and complete the tasks without any assistance.
I would like to improve my developing ideas to make sure that they work well in the future because in the past in previous tasks the idea hasn't worked so well and this has reflected badly on my grade. To prevent this from happening I will verify my ideas with my clients and make sure my group is happy with the decision made with the idea.
Overall, I am fairly confident that I will achieve good work in these assignments and accomplish in making a good factual documentry. I will be wary of decisions made in my group because as a group we need to make sure the decisions we're making are good choices which will have a good outcome for our final product.
I haven't used a film camera before and also I haven't used any editing software like adobe effects or premiere. However, I can pick up software quite quickly and I will be able to use it without any problems. I think I'll be confident enough to use a camera without any problems. When I come to making deicions in my group and will be confident as my communication skills are quite good.
My Group are easy to work with and we can openly discuss what ideas we want to do. Some of the skills we noticed we had as a group were we are using our time effectively. We didn't leave anyone out we made sure they were involved and we motivated members of the group and negotiated a suggestion for our final idea, as we had a few issues which we solved. The skills which we need to work on is to bringing up issues at the right time, so we can solve them more quickly, so it doesn't slow down our production scedhule.
I would like to improve my developing ideas to make sure that they work well in the future because in the past in previous tasks the idea hasn't worked so well and this has reflected badly on my grade. To prevent this from happening I will verify my ideas with my clients and make sure my group is happy with the decision made with the idea.
Overall, I am fairly confident that I will achieve good work in these assignments and accomplish in making a good factual documentry. I will be wary of decisions made in my group because as a group we need to make sure the decisions we're making are good choices which will have a good outcome for our final product.
I haven't used a film camera before and also I haven't used any editing software like adobe effects or premiere. However, I can pick up software quite quickly and I will be able to use it without any problems. I think I'll be confident enough to use a camera without any problems. When I come to making deicions in my group and will be confident as my communication skills are quite good.
My Group are easy to work with and we can openly discuss what ideas we want to do. Some of the skills we noticed we had as a group were we are using our time effectively. We didn't leave anyone out we made sure they were involved and we motivated members of the group and negotiated a suggestion for our final idea, as we had a few issues which we solved. The skills which we need to work on is to bringing up issues at the right time, so we can solve them more quickly, so it doesn't slow down our production scedhule.
Monday, 16 May 2011
Investigating Into TV Factual Programmes Research
I have just come back from the Easter Holidays and we now we have been set two to do in 10 weeks. The first Unit is Factual / Social / Editing programmes and the second unit is 'Understanding the media industry'. For the first Unit, I have to do an investigation about the issues of the media. Here is a part of it so far:
Also, in this unit, I have learnt the history about documentaries and different types editing which occurred during the 20th century. Watching some old documentaries off Harry you-tube channel, gave me a lot of inspiration on how to create a realistic documentary.
The next unit which I've also been completing was 'understanding the media industry'. In the first task I have completed, I have to research about two of the big media giants. I choose Walt Disney and BBC. I found this really interesting to do because it showed me how a company can expand quickly in a century.
The next task which I have been set to do is to reach some of the laws and the regulators which stop sectors from the media from breaking the law.
As a film maker, when you make a film documentary, you have to incorporate lots of rules in order to make sure the target audience doesn’t get offended and that the documentary is not biased in any way. It is difficult to be totally unbiased when making a documentary, because there will always be risk that you will be influenced by your own views on the subject and you will never be completely sure whether you are being too one sided. Usually a media company has guidelines to help the media staff make sure their programs are fair and not biased. For example, BBC has guidelines for factual programmes.
Here are the first three guideline rules;
- The BBC must serve the nation as a whole. This means recognising the differing tastes, views and perspectives in millions of house holds.
- They have to be served through a very diverse range of programme
- The makers of objective factual programmes need to be most scrupulous
Being biased, particularly when dealing with a sensitive subject, can earn you a bad reputation and can result in legal action by those parties that feel that they, or their subject areas, have been either misrepresented, or treated unfairly. It can also weaken your original argument, because people will assume that you are being biased.
When gathering information as a film maker, you have to be really careful about how you go about this and which sources you use. This relates to the privacy laws that protect people in and outside the United Kingdom. For example, to use information about another person, you usually have to ask their permission.
The accuracy of information that you provide as a film maker is vital because it is the foundation on which your argument is based. Quite rightly, inaccuracy in film making is heavily criticised and can, again, end up with legal proceedings if people feel that they have been misrepresented, or that you have harmed them, or their reputations, by providing false information.
I’ll be looking at three words which cause many issues in the media industry. These words are bias, accuracy and privacy. There are many factors that could prevent these words from becoming issues in the media but, film makers choose not to take note of them. Some of the ways that Media companies have tried to stop staff from causing harm and breaking the law are by having lots of rules and policies, but they always seem to be broken for one reason or another.
One of these words which are often used against the media is that they are biased. In the oxford dictionary, the definition of bias means ‘’inclination, or prejudice for, or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair’’. This means that basically one person, or group, is intending to be unfair against another person, or group. An example of where I have seen this in the media is a programme on BBC 4 radio. This programme was called ‘The Cannabis Trade’. Below is a snippet of why I believe it was biased;
“Now, this is important: The complaint was not that the programme should have presented the case for legalisation, that was made utterly clear, simply that the reason for the growth in organised crime is well understood as being a result of the prohibition regime and that by not drawing attention to this essential fact the programme presented a distorted view of the true situation.”
This shows that the programme failed to include all the relevant information when presenting their argument, or case against the legalisation of cannabis. This shows that the programme is biased because it is leaning heavily to one side of the argument. To pick this up from a documentary is quite unusual, compared to other biased stories, because the structure behind documentaries normally helps them to present opposing arguments and this helps them to at least appear to be unbiased.
Another example of bias in the media is propaganda. Propaganda is a rather extreme demonstration of bias. An example of how effective propaganda could be was during World War 2, where it was used a lot by both sides. The Americans used propaganda to persuade the American civilians that they should to go to war against Japan. Evidence to support this is from the Journal of Advertising where, regarding the number of recruiting posters used during the war, they said that ‘’Almost 200,000 different designs were printed during the war.’’ This shows that the US government recognised that the use of visual and creative mediums (in this case posters) was a way of helping US citizens towards a certain political goal, in this case going to war.
The next term which causes many issues in the media industry is ‘Privacy’. There is a limit how far media companies can go to obtain information. Many media companies do anything just to get a valid source of information, standing outside buildings for hours, or using various computer techniques to gain information. One common method which is used today and is illegal is Phone Hacking. Phone hacking is a way of gaining information from a conversation, without those involved in the conversation being aware that they are being listened to. This is an extreme method of obtaining information because you’re invading someone’s privacy unnecessarily. You can only use someone else’s information if they give you permission to do so. The media can usually get away with this because they are protected by the liberal law which says’’ Issue #1 – Truth: The law says they can defame you and get away with it if the story is true. Truth is an almost perfect defence in a libel suit. How do you prove something is true? How many witnesses does it take what kind of evidence? There are no rigid rules. Truth is what a jury will believe.’’ This shows that because of the liberal law, it’s hard to sue media newspaper companies. However, if you have a good lawyer and strong evidence you can win. One case recently in the news was about phone hacking by the ‘News of the World.’ Here is an extract;
“Rupert Murdoch's News International has issued a public apology to eight victims of phone hacking, including the actor Sienna Miller and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell and admitted for the first time that the practice was rife at the News of the World.” This case is very much in the favour of the ‘victims’ and against the ‘News of the World’ because of the strong evidence presented by a number of witnesses.
This evidence shows that the illegal behaviour, in this case phone hacking, of some newspaper companies does not go unnoticed. It’s hard to get evidence of phone hacking because there isn’t any device which can record a hacking device. Comparing these methods to the American methods around the invasion of privacy, they are a lot worse in the USA as they do it right in front of the camera. For example, Billy O’Reilly, from Fox News, doesn’t care about the emotions of people on his show. He is disrespectful in so far as he doesn’t show any respect to anyone he interviews on the show and therefore he doesn’t care about their privacy. Below is an example of how biased a news article can be:
“O’Reilly says: "the right to privacy is a basic constitutional tenet, and that is not ridiculous at all." Apparently this applies to celebrities, not people O'Reilly doesn't like.
“Jon Stewart's take this week on "The Daily Show" (see above) was a culmination of a long-standing quest on O'Reilly's part to invade the privacy of people with whom he disagrees. In typical O'Reilly cowardice, he does not do this work himself, but leaves the tacky, invasive behaviour to lesser-paid producers.
O'Reilly sent his producer to chase down and invade the privacy of Columbia Journalism Review Editor Michael Hoyt. Why? Because Hoyt wouldn't appear on O'Reilly's show.”
“Jon Stewart's take this week on "The Daily Show" (see above) was a culmination of a long-standing quest on O'Reilly's part to invade the privacy of people with whom he disagrees. In typical O'Reilly cowardice, he does not do this work himself, but leaves the tacky, invasive behaviour to lesser-paid producers.
O'Reilly sent his producer to chase down and invade the privacy of Columbia Journalism Review Editor Michael Hoyt. Why? Because Hoyt wouldn't appear on O'Reilly's show.”
This shows that there are more extreme cases of invading privacy in North America, when you are comparing this with the English Media. The next term which also, relates to the O’Reilly issues, is accuracy. Inaccuracy is a really bad habit, because if you don’t tell the truth, you’ll become a laughing stock of the media. Americans see O’Reilly’s interpretation of people’s words every day but, he always gets away with it because he expresses it as his own opinion in the media. Comparing the inaccuracy of the O’Reilly coverage stories during his daily show to the ‘UK the Guardian Newspaper’ stories it’s just as bad. Here is an example where ‘The Guardian’ publishes an inaccurate story and is untruthful. This article was about a pre-Christmas live, episode of Coronation Street being targeted by al-Qaeda which was false.
“It had that familiar Daily Star-ish ring of complete nonsense, and so it turns out, as yesterday's page 2 "correction" admits: "Further to our article about increased security at Coronation Street's studios for their live 50th anniversary episode... we would like to make clear that while cast and crew were subject to full body searches, there was no specific threat from Al-Qaeda as we reported. We apologise for the misunderstanding and are happy to set the record straight."
This shows that the media companies are just as bad as each other. A question comes that to mind is why is the media so inaccurate? It comes to my attention that they do this because they try and get as much content out of the story as possible to make bigger profits and have a higher price for their stocks. Looking into social media, here is an interpretation of James Seddon who is an online writer and editor; ‘Pragmatism and empiricism are tools of the crusty old world order. The social media expert is a master of narrativisation and the extrapolation of the anecdotal or rare event into a universal law.’ This explains that the media can take an unreliable source and information and turn it into something which is inaccurate and untruthful.
expository,
observational, interactive,
reflexive,
performative);
realism;
dramatisation;
narrativisation
Bibliography
“Almost 200,000 different designs were printed during the war”
Terrence H. Witkowski "World War II Poster Campaigns: Preaching Frugality to American Consumers." Journal of Advertising, Vol 32 No 1 Page 72
Also, in this unit, I have learnt the history about documentaries and different types editing which occurred during the 20th century. Watching some old documentaries off Harry you-tube channel, gave me a lot of inspiration on how to create a realistic documentary.
The next unit which I've also been completing was 'understanding the media industry'. In the first task I have completed, I have to research about two of the big media giants. I choose Walt Disney and BBC. I found this really interesting to do because it showed me how a company can expand quickly in a century.
The next task which I have been set to do is to reach some of the laws and the regulators which stop sectors from the media from breaking the law.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)