Construction

12/01/16

Today I have started to plan my story for my news programme. At first, I did this alone and brainstormed ideas into my book. I knew that i definitely wanted to do a school story as it will be the environment I will be in and therefore the most accommodating for this story. I went through a rough guide ad tried to write down the picture I had painted in my head of the news story.

I later realised that I wanted my news story to be specifically on a racial attack within a school. For this,I mind-mapped with a student whom I will work with as I believe I will receive better results working as a pair than alone. Below is the A3 sheet I wrote my ideas onto, as you can see I have thought greatly about what kind of stories I can write about in my school story, I have chosen the racial stabbing as it is the most interesting and using Bob Hall's advice I believe that I should choose the most interesting story to present. I also believe that this situation is still relevant and I would love to experience what a news presenter experiences when they have to present. 

I chose to produce a negative main story as negative news is more interesting, it is easier to write about and using my research and planning skills the main stories within a real news programme is usually a negative new story and they end with a soft story or a weather report, which I will also.

18/01/16

My script moulds to Todorov's equilibrium theory. The state of equilibrium is the time before the teacher 'Marvel Trance' got stabbed. This was then disrupted by giving a detention to the student and then reulting in being stabbed by him. Recognition is obtained by police and teachers who contain the students who know he has done wrong whilst Marvel Trance is taken to hospital. The attempt to fix the disruption is the school returning back to normal, and starting to carry out 'airport like' security bringing a new equilibrium where students are back in school, and everyone accepts what has happened whilst the student is taken to prison and whilst Marvel Trance recovers in hospital. I purposely never wrote that the teacher got stabbed as I believe that is too dark and preferred the teacher instead just injured. 


Linking my news story to Propp's character theory, it is evident that the teachers who took away the student as well as the police who helped the situation are the heroes; they restore the equilibrium, they may also be seen as the helpers, or perhaps the other students who were contained within the building staying calm were the helpers as they assist the heroes. And the villain evidently was the student who stabbed the victim being Marvel Trance the teacher. These are the main characters that I can fit into my news story as there is no particular heroin, false helper or donor. 

My news story does contain Strausse's binary opposition theory- such as Marvel Trance being good and the student being the evil individual. Obviously this isn't as black and white as say Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as they show good vs bad but here we can clearly see who is the victim and who is the bad individual. 

20/01/16

I researched this on the Birmingham city Council website, a trusting piece of information, this what I will use to get the statistics in my news clip. I think it is important and relevant to my news story as I want to raise awareness of the crimes in Birmingham and the high amount of crime we do have not only in Birmingham but in Acocks Green also.

04/02/16
Today we started to shoot for our main task; the short news story. For my news story I have decided to write about a racial stabbing incident between a school pupil and one of their teachers. I have conducted this story as I believe this is a real issue that happens today, I think its important to use my surroundings to help me and evidently school is the best place to start and will possibly be my best aiding tool. I main used school DSLR cameras, however I aim to use my own DSLR camera to undertake vox pops with people outside of school to get the best 'off site look' for my story. 

 For our News set, we used four soft lighting lights to illuminate the readers face jus like we saw at the BBC. We used a white back drop for this part of the news programme as I believe I do not have the relevant experience with a green screen and I would like to keep it simple to look as professional as possible. I will use the green screen for the weather report, this way, I will get the desired professional look. I also believe that the white back drop works better for the studio setting as we used a large touch screen screen where me and my partner put a evening image of Birmingham like they have in other local TV news. 

 For the actual desk, we used school tables and black chairs. The table had a black table cloth over the top to drown out any discolour of the table making the hue and brightness look sharper on the camera. For desk accessories, we kept it minimal but necessary and used the same synergy as a local TV news such as a high quality laptop, water and paper. I believe the little touches like this make a big difference, the set didn't look plain it looked just like a news set.

This is what we used to work the spot lights, again like the BBC newsroom we used the lights to illuminate the presenter (me). By doing this, it sharpened the set and made everything lighter making it look polished like a professional local TV news programme.  

This final photo is of me and my partner. I am preparing to read the script which my partner has started to write out on the large white board. For this, she placed it beside the camera so any parts I did not memorise then I could read and it wouldn't look as though I was reading or my eyes were off the camera. For me, this was very useful and unlike the BBC who have automated readers where the camera is actually inside this, we used a more old fashioned way in a clever manner. It was successful and even though I may have had a few trials I could easily see and read the relevant information for my programme. 

8/2/16

Creating my logo

I used Photoshop to create my logo as I think it is a very good editing tool and allows me to do things that programmes such as cincopa and powerpoint cannot such as the lasso tool.

I had to build up layers on top of layers to ensure if there were any mistakes i could delete a layer instead of deleting the whole thing. This is a skill I have learnt from AS media, as this is a more complex programme it took me a little longer it create but by keeping it simple it enforces the logos 'newsworthiness' and looks professional.

I named my five minute news clip Birmingham news because I believe it is simple and sophisticated just like any other professional, real news programme it is short and simple. Also in my questionnaire this is the name that got the most votes meaning that my audience think it is the best name to use for my news clip.

Overall, I am impressed with my logo because of the house colours purple,white and black which will be prominent throughout my news programme. This creates synergy and will remind viewers that they are watching Birmingham news. I think it does look like a real news programme logo as it looks professional due to its simplicity.

16/02/16

This is how I created my title sequence by using the programme coral as you  can see to the right of the programme you can see the transitions that I had to use. It was a very daunting process as at the beginning I used just pictires, however to make a more professional title sequence I went back into Birmingham city centre and took videos of Birmingham. I did this because this is what the main news programmes such as ITV and BBC have. 

 I used a grey and black and white overlay and I layered them over the top of my videos adding my Royalty free music. I also added in fades, zooms,smear,side,swipe and other transitions to keep the viewer interested and engaged. I think this looks very professional as BBC and ITV also do this.

 As you can see above I favourited the same transitions, I did this so that it wasn't a random transition each time and every picture transition linked back to a previous transition keeping it formal and professional. I also added a white background to reiterate the colour scheme which at the end of my title sequence it allowed me to add my logo of Birmingham News.

19/02/16

I have a step by step re-collation of my news clip as I wanted to point out the specific things I have done to convey the codes and conventions of News programmes and how I have included them into my 5 minute news clip.