Day 5: at my Work Experience

Today i spent the whole day in my own AVID suite, i experimented with all sorts of fades and effects you can achieve on Avid.
I also searched some more music, and once i found what i liked, i made sure it was copyrighted before i ingested it into my edits.
I learnt all the short cuts on the keyboard and i learnt how to fade the music at the end.

Overall today was a great success, i also digitised another load of tapes that were sent in, it just came so easily that i felt i had been doing it for ages.

EVALUATION

My experience has definitely benefited me, i feel more at one with our contemporary media technology and i most certainly can bring back all of my knowledge to the group in more ways then one...like with editing, importance of copyright, music ingesting, tape ingesting, digitizing, different equipments jobs and importance and also more advanced things such as digibetas and betas.

Pilot focus group

Focus Groups:

This involves a small group of our target audience being analysed with the aim to produce data on the specific topic of our new TV soap that being with help on story lines and characters. They will be asked to express their opinions of elements of the soap which could affect them in some way. It allows the viewers to express what they feel is in need of improvement, after this our group can decide on whether or not these judgements are strong enough before we make a change.

We will be asking around 5-8 people aged 16-25 to be a part of the focus group, they will each be given an outline of our pitch and treatment. We will also have a few quesions discussed by the group in order to help us recieve the correct information we need to reach our best potential.

Day 4: At My Work Experience

Today I digitised a few programmes that had just come in, I was also introduced to the producers and directors of a recent programme being aired, they ran through there responsibilities and pros and cons to their work.

I spoke to an Editor of the programme, he showed me some more affects that can be used on an AVID, and so I carried on editing my practice piece.

Written Storyboard for Trailer

We have drawn our storyboard for part of our first episode (names of characters still to be decided). It will go as follows:

Scene 1

• Girl 1 in kitchen eating breakfast. She gets a text saying 'Are you in today? x'

• Her mum appears in the doorway saying 'hurry up or you are going to be late'

• Girl 1 walks out and slams the front door whilst her mum is still talking

• Girl 1 walking down the road

Scene 2

• Girlfriend and boyfriend walking down the street together talking

• close up of the girlfriend looking uneasy whilst the boyfriend is still talking to her

• close up of the boyfriend looking down at his girlfriend with a smile on his face

Scene 3

• Boy 1 cooking his breakfast, his phone rings

• He talks on the phone saying 'yeah I'm going to be late again'

Scene 4

• Girl 1 smoking in the street

• A group of girls walk past her, they say hi, one asks girl 1 for a cigarette

• She passes her one

• Girls say thanks and walk on

• Close up of girl 1 smiling

Day 3: At My Work Experience

Today I began working on my practice piece I filmed last week, I digitised it first and loaded it onto an AVID, I was then taught the basics of editing on AVID and began experimenting with all sorts of effects and themes. I never completed the editing today but I am going to carry on tomorrow.

I also researched some music, and went through some copyright Cd's they had in the office, I have selected 3-4 tracks i like and I am going extracts specific sections from each track I like and attach them along with the video to create emotion and a real affect on the audience.

EVALUATION

Today i can almost be certain that today's skills I've learnt will benefit my group, the opportunity to edit on such a powerful and expensive programme was amazing, i learnt shortcuts and all sorts of technique. i feel i could definitely use this to my advantage during the editing stage of our coursework.

Final draft of Treatment

Our soap opera will have a mixture of short and long term storylines which will all run concurrently with each other. This will allow the audience to get to know the variety of characters. Some of the less important storylines will be short term, only lasting for the period of one episode. The long-term storylines will run for perhaps two episodes with the effects of it lasting for the episodes to come. This will allow the audience to possibly connect to the characters that are having similar life events to them and may possible use the way the characters react to it to influence the way they deal with their own problems.

The characters in our soap are going to be mainly teenagers of both genders. We also hope to include the families of the teenagers and some of the teachers working at the school. The characters we are hoping to focus on include a “gossip”, a “dodgy geezer” who supplies drugs to others, a group who have parties and do not focus on school, “geeks” who focus on school work, “lower class” people who may be considered “chavs”, good-looking males who all the girls fancy and a mysterious new character who is known as an outcast to the others as they are new to the setting. They will be new only at the start but will not completely fit in as all the groups have already been formed between the characters that have been together for a longer period of time. This “new” character will be picked on and included into groups for particular reasons and then will be shut out. The main characters in the soap will change as the storyline does, one story will evolve around one group/character whilst in a different week it will change.

Our soap opera will be based in a school setting, including the classrooms, library, staff room and the playground. We will also include the homes of the characters and their local areas. The homes will be used so the audience can get an insight into the lives of the characters and the homes may also be used to hold parties. We will have a meeting place where all the characters go; this may possibly be a café. We may also include the park as many teenagers hang around in the park.

Our target audience is going to be teenagers and young adults of both genders as our characters are mainly of this age group too. By having teenagers as our target audience and as the main characters, we hope the audience will be able to connect with the characters and possibly relate their own lives to the characters. We also hope that our soap will appeal to an older group of people and that they will be attracted to the issues we will be dealing with.

As our soap is aimed at teenagers and we will have moral and educational content.
Our media product will follow the expected and unexpected elements of a soap opera. It will include all the necessary conventions of a soap opera such as narrative enigmas, a sense of realism, concurrent storylines, social representations, and a central meeting point and will deal with real life issues. Each episode will end with a big cliff-hanger and the storylines can sometimes end with smaller cliff-hangers. We will also challenge everyday conventions of soaps by having events such as a lesbian wedding, a teacher getting in trouble instead of a student and a person not fitting into a tight community.

We decided on the name I.V for our soap. This will stand for Independent Variable. We believe this fits into the nature of our soap as the definition of an independent variable is a variable that gets manipulated in order for the outcome to be different each time. The lives of the characters will get manipulated by other characters and by social factors in order for outcomes of the soap to be interesting and to keep audiences watching.


Group Effort: Written by Natalie Michael with contributions from Thegla Savvides and Elena Christodoulou

Minutes For Our Fourth Group Meeting

Discussing our Tv guide cover

Thursday 22nd October 2009

Start time: 2:10pm

People present: Natalie Michael, Thegla Savvides and Natalie Nicolaides

• We began by drawing out a draft of how we want our cover to look.
  We planned where we wanted everything to be placed and how we wanted out title. We decided we wanted out title to be in the top left corner and we wanted it to be placed inside a TV.
• We then discussed possible titles for our cover. These included:
  -Teleh
  -Just TV
  -TV Rush
  -Ultimate TV
  -TV Revealed
  -TV World
  -Big Mouth

Finish time: 2:40

Day 2: At My Work Experience

Today has been more of a tutorial lesson, i was shown all of the equipment and explained how each one works, which kind of productions would use which and why, this was very beneficial because it helped me understand the budgetting side to production as well as learning all the technical equipment.





I was also shown CD printing, and had a run through of what to check before you print and also about playing back the DVDs before you send the off to clients, a bad disc doesnt look proffesionl and isnt good for the company if its sent out.

EVALUATION:

Today i learnt more of the financial side of media, this can be beneficial to our group to understand thealmost 'behind the scenes' of media, and to remember theres always more than we may see.

Day 1: At My Work Experience

My day started off with being taught 'Digitising' , i was ingesting tapes and i also learnt how to make a digibeta copy (dub), using a DW500P Machine.
I was introduced to professional editors and a few camera men. I asked loads of questions about editing and I as shown how to use an AVID, i was taught how to cut and use effects such as fading in and out, using this i helped edit something for Disney channel, adding fades and cutting out bits they didn't want.

(Digital Betacam) -->

I also got the chance to have a look at different cameras, which ranged hugely in size but similarly close in quality- shows the rapid increase in technology and equipment.

EVALUATION:
Overall today i definitely learnt alot and feel i could bring alot of this information Ive learnt back to my Alevel media and hopefully benefit the rest of my group as well.

My Individual Practice: Filming, Camera shots and Movements

Yesterday (Sunday 25th October) with the Camera i was borrowed by the Production company North One, My two brothers and I went out for a practice filming session where they ran through the basics of how to film, zoom, focus etc with me.
I decided that as i was working for a week at North One that i should film some clips and edit them on AVID with the professionals, they said they are happy to help, and so we went on to film a few shots.

(Sony DSR-PD150) -->

• We used the sound and sun to our advantage, taking close shots of blowing leaves and shadow shots against the sun to create effect.


• We filmed basic shots of me walking in different directions, as if i was looking for something.


• An idea that came to mind was to do a voice over of thoughts and music.


• Slight problem we found was with the camera mic, it was very powerful and due to the weather being windy it picked it up more then we would of liked, however it did in some cases add effect so they equal each other out.


• I filmed some shots of road signs and i also had the idea to film me walking with the camera and turning around to look at houses, i thought this would add to the realism, helping viewers see what the character (me) could see.


• I also liked the idea of keeping in the sound of my footsteps, i felt this really built up tension and really helped in creating an atmosphere of suspense as well.

EVALUATION

From even the slightest bit of experience i have gained i have definitly began to feel alot more confident when faced with new technology. I love the way things have developed over time and so rapidly aswell. I am positive that any form of knowledge and understanding i gain, will be beneficial for my group too, i can teach them things that ive learnt helping them to progress as much as i can.

Minutes for our third group meeting

Discussing locations and the Treatment

Thursday 8th October 2009

Start time: 2:10pm

People present: Natalie Michael, Elena Christodoulou, Thegla Savvides and Natalie Nicolaides

• We began by discussing what types of locations we would need for the specific moments we want to film for our trailer.
• We decided upon a school which led to us needing corridors and a classroom.
• A bedroom
• A central meeting point which we then decided we wanted to be a cafe.
• We then discussed the advantages and disadvantages of these locations
• Included in the advantages were; a school is easily accessible for us to film in as we have access to classrooms and corridors and included in the disadvantages was whether we would be able to film in a cafe and we then discussed that we would have to get permission from a cafe owner before filming there.
• To overcome the cafe problem we decided that we could create a cafe in one of our gardens and get people to pose as a waitress and customers.
• We then went through our treatment together as a group and discussed what we could include in each section.
• We also went through the tasks we had set each other from our previous meeting and gave new ones to each other.
• We discussed having to complete location recce forms, risk assessments, production schedules, shooting schedules and scripts and any booking forms for equipment and rooms

Finish time: 2:50

Group Effort. Written by Natalie Michael

Analysis of Home and Away Website

Analysing Websites - What? Why?

As a group we have decided to analyse the websites of the soaps we have been researching, including; Hollyoaks, Emmerdale, Home & Away, and Corination Street. This research, we believe, will help us decide what is acceptable of a conventional soap website and what we will include in our own. Colour schemes, features and amounts of pictures and text were taken into consideration throughout our research.



http://au.tv.yahoo.com/home-and-away/


The official Home And Away website is on the Yahoo TV website. Theres options for fans to catch up on missed episodes, see trailers, read spoilers and have the chance to see behind the scenes footage.

Its special features let you comment on forums, read newsletters, characters personal blogs and see episode galleries. Also after every aired episode the website is updated and new imformation is given, featuring new pictures, news and gossip everyday.

Theres also options to watch and read the characters being interviewed, joining the fan club and also the music used in the episodes.

EVALUATION

• I Definitely will take some of the links and features they have into account.
• Like a Gallery and the ability to catch up on missed episodes i think is benefited from.
• I also think trailers and spoilers are a brilliant idea to have, ensuring fans regularly sign on to the website to see what's up next.

Evaluation of Websites/What we have Learned:

What my group has learned from researching websites is that the features we allow our audience to have is very important. We must make our theme match the personality of our audience and provide what they would need to acomplish their desired task. Research from all of these soaps' websites has allowed us to see what they have in common but what they offer individualy. Our aim is to cater to all the needs of our users by taking on board what we have found and put it into our own website.

Progress Of Our Group Ideas

So far we are comfortably into our coursework process and have come up with numerous ideas, and through discussion and analysis of different soap operas, we have been able to elaborate on all of these ideas, all having our own individual input.
Ethnic groups, sterotypes, middleclass Vs Lower class, are just a few of the ideas that have crossed our minds.

Some of the ideas I thought of, for example Echoing thoughts, another group member added the idea of a heartbeat sound and another group member mentioned her being locked in her bedroom; We work well as a group taking in everyones ideas and moulding them to suit everyones liking.

So here are some of our ideas so far:

• Echoing thoughts throughout, heart beating backtrack- her sitting on her bed, discomfort, moving, shaking, crying.
• Board- Characters pictures, sums and equations(shows lifes difficulty, struggle) closes in on character scene.
• Final image a dead body, back to girl on bed rocking, close up of face.
• Heart beat-flashing images on every beat
• From picture of girl on bed, to board to close up of her face etc.
• Mother trying to talk to her and get into her room- turning of the door handle- but she cant hear her because of the noises in her head.
• IV drip-dead body-girls face-running makeup- crying frozen with hands on ears- zoom out and Iv appears on screen with siren sounds.

By Elena Christodoulou

Minutes of our second meeting

Discussing character types, ideas for trailer and story boarding first episode.

Tuesday 6th October

Start Time: 11:06am

People Present: Elena Christodoulou, Thegla Savvides, Natalie Michael, Natalie Nicolaides

• As a group we first discussed different character types that we think would appeal to our target audiences, We began mapping out different characteristics that individually appealed to us.
• Some ideas where a posh character that doesnt look posh, bad looking characters who are very well behaved, The popular girls and the misfits.
• We discussed numerous ideas for the trailer, one of us comes up with an idea and by the end we all have had an input.
• Some of the ideas for our trailer, we've elaborated upon and decided it for the first episode, allowing us to leave numerous cliff hangers in the trailer and prolong them onto the episode.
• We asked ourselves many questions like...Is the trailer going to be a spoiler of an unrealistic scene-e.g. like at the beggining of Hollyoaks with the supernatural and flashbacks etc.
• We also set eachother targets in order for things to all be completed in time and in order, keeping us up to date.
• We discussed a few locations, and the advantages and disadvantages of these.
• Some of the ideas we came up with, where more of a challenge than others we discussed how we would work around certain problems and in some cases lack of required props, i.e. recording in a shop-copyrighting issues- and our main idea of having a clear board for characters thoughts.

Finish Time: 12:20pm

Written By Elena Christodoulou

Review of Home and Away

There are an equal amount of negative and positive reviews for Home and Away, with some mentioning its better than any British soap, and others saying there embarrassed to say they watch it. It is fair to say everyone has there own opinion and some say you do either love or hate it.


"This show is awesome it just keeps getting better and no one can doubt that. look at past story lines, psycho stalkers, killer cops, explosive weddings, hostage situations, drugs, on the run, storms, shipwrecks and much more...Have you ever had juicy and gripping plot lines like that on things like Coronation street, and Neighbours. NO. and you probably never will...Home and Away is way before its time and its one show that Channel 5 shouldnt ever let go of, i hate it when people say ozzy soaps arent as good, i cant stand neighbours the show has bad acting and story lines were as Home and Away is off the scale juicy ahead of its time storylines what more can you ask for in a soap."



"The charaters are perfect for the part they play and it is directed so well. The person that invented Home and Away should become a saint"

"its a great show to watch, focusing on everyday issues "Alot of people compare it to Neighbours, they say Home and Away has gripping sorylines and gets to the point faster, avoiding long dragging story lines.

"Utterly pitiful. Made even more hilarious by the original boast of its cast members that it was more "realistic" than Neighbours... If realistic means a town where all the inhabitants have white teeth, there's no smoking, everyone is politically correct, there's lashings of bizzare family disharmony, morality is policed by local "tough nut", there's *never* any swearing, I haven't bothered to watch this soap since 1991"

"The show does need fine-tuning. It is very, very predictable and the twists are not as good as they're made up to be. I think I will stop watching Home and Away soon"

EVALUATION

From the positive reviews to those of which are highly critical, we can take down things some audience members dislike and some audience do like, some enjoy the unrealistic story lines, some find it extremely annoying, others are just unaffected, With everybody voicing there own opinions of soaps, it is impossible for everybody to be fully satisfied, however you could try and touch upon many different aspects, making it enjoyable for many people rather then just a particular type- some unrealistic story lines, some realistic ones but then this would most probably raise criticism, so i have gathered that it is something that's unavoidable and is dealt with accordingly to keep as many people happy as possible.