News Unit - Evaluation

I found this unit much different from before, it was much harder for one and I found it much more difficult to keep organised. When we did the documentary project we would have frequent meetings and a written schedule to follow. Whilst we did have meetings and talk constantly on the group chat we made I still kept losing track of what days and times we were filming, maybe next group project it would be a good idea to make a group calendar on google which we can all follow.

What Went Well - Me, George and Gavin have all worked together before, therefore rigging and de-rigging sets was quick and smooth. The graphics work well with the channel and help define its brand. We all shared responsibilities, whilst Gavin worked mainly on the edit we all had a go filming, George and Jack less so but that is simply because they were on the other side the camera. Jack filmed the live interview. Our group dynamic was great, whilst sometimes it dissolved into a case of the giggles which got annoying during filming we worked well together and when discussing ideas produced some good ones.

What to Improve on - our live footage was terrible, I think our first live broadcast being outside a busy hospital with a tight time deadline made us feel rushed, we didn't take things into account such as George being almost twice our subjects height making the framing difficult, the audio was bad as well because of being right next to the road and buses and cars driving past.

The script also could have done with some work, I think we were so keen to emulate film riot that we tried to fill it with jokes and that was to the detriment of the total project.

We had to re-shoot multiple times, things that could have been caught on the day, our organisation needed much improvement as well as filming days would fall on days where either Jack,  Gavin or me was working. 

I think the fact we had such a short deadline made it much more difficult to find, shoot and edit a story, this is great practice for the future however and whilst we made many mistakes on the way I think that is a good thing as we will learn from them and (hopefully) not make them in the future.

News Unit - Editing

Gavin has been in charge of the edit as he is the better editor of the group, George did edit the live footage however whilst I created the graphics. 

We still had regular meeting to discuss what was going good and bad in the edit, issues became apparent immediately, we found that we were trying to put too many jokes in the edit, this made it awkward and so we decided to remove a good majority of them. I had created indents to put between clips to help with the edit which you can find on my post about graphics on my blog.

ROUGH CUT.

We showed Helen the rough cut and the feedback we received was to do some work on the live interview, the audio was terrible and we cannot hear Emma's answers clearly which is not good for the audience member trying to watch the show. 

We also made a rather large error, for some reason we got it into out heads that we needed three packages rather than two, this means one of them had to be cut, which we decided to ditch top tops as it wasn't working the way we intended.

She also suggested some structure changes and moved different parts before others to help the show flow better.

Fine Cut

In the fine cut George worked more on the live footage to get better audio, we recorded a voice over for George to help explain why the hospital was so loud. adding in the music and sound effects did a lot for the edit and so did changing the structure a bit. Overall everyone is pleased with the direction the edit is taking, there are plenty of things we could have done better but we will (hopefully) learn from out mistakes.

News Unit - Promo Video

We wanted the promotional video to be short and fast paces, the idea wasn't to be a promo for 1 episode it was meant to be for an entire channel. our idea has always been a youtube channel for students and each week we would talk about different tips and news stories relevant to students.

To keep with our motif we kept the element of comedy in there and Gavin suggested having an Edgar Wright style to the video.

The idea was to simply have Jack and George to explain the idea of news grad and use whip pans to hide cuts, this gives it a fluid move through the video and keeps the pace nice and quick.

George had the idea to put a bit of contrast in the video, to start it of slowly with them all sitting bored in a lecture, Gavin then desaturated the footage in the beginning so it was black and white further adding to the dullness of the lecture. The bloopers were added in the end because they worked well in selling the characters of George, Jack and the crew they showed us as fellow students rather than unrelatable news presenters.

News Unit - Shooting

Maidstone Studios

Filming at the Studios went well today, having the extra space and the larger green screen came in very handy, as well as having the dolly. We filmed George putting together the projector and George doing a PTC for the tech reviews, we also got any outstanding footage with the green screen we needed. It went well, the only cons being controlling the sound outside of the room, this was not much of a problem however as we were using clip mics which only pick up a certain amount of sound.

Gavins House

Gavins house was more difficult to film in, this was mainly due to the cramped nature of the room, the only place for the camera man to stand was in a bricked off archway which was not very comfortable, there was also a slight echo in the audio but this wasn't apparent in the footage.

The main problem we had in filming here was that Jack found it difficult to present, this is completely understandable as he has little to no acting experience, therefore he would get lines wrong and get more and more frustrated, I found that reassuring him worked better than getting annoyed or trying to make a joke of it, either of these ways lead to either more pressure or a case of the giggles.

Lighting was also an problem but I believe we did well with what we had.

Medway Hospital

Filming here was a challenge, the first problem was that I had to finish work early to get to the set in time to film, then as soon as I arrived we went straight into the filming, there were many issues.

Visual - George was much taller than our student nurse, this lead to the framing being off completely, something we may have to do in the future is to get our interviewee to stand on a box or something, as long as their feet are not in frame it shall not be an issue.

Audio - We were right next to a busy road, the sound of traffic was constant and people were walking past us laughing loudly. This is something we have very little control over but as Helen said we could have said something before the live along the lines of "Medway a bustling hospital" this would have explained the noise to the audience and perhaps given a bit of authenticity to our interview

George's House

Filming here we had a similar problem to what we had in Gavin's house, the size of the house did not lend itself well to a film crew, we also had the problem of other people being home which made things slightly more cramped but they were more than happy to wait for takes to be completed. We also underestimated to amount of places suitable for filming in the home, lighting was a difficulty as the only ones we had was mine and they are not the best.

News Unit - BBC Research

The BBC was found almost a century ago and is the oldest broadcasting organisation in the world, it employs over 20 thousand people and covers many formats such as Television, Radio, Online and Broadcast News.



The BBC is a massive organisation and has a tremendous influence, the majority of the nations news comes from the BBC which gives it a lot of responsibility to tell the truth and keep the news unbiased.

The fact that the BBC has such a large budget however means it has a much larger reach and capability for filming news stories, this can come in handy when a story can be a few hundred miles away, a smaller company would not be able to cover it but the BBC can.

I like how the BBC has mobile teams who go and film news stories, this would be a great thing to emulate as the crew would be very small likely only two people, the level of organisation and planning needed would be astronomical but working in a small group would allow greater filming when filming.

The BBC is very formal in its delivery and doesn't attempt humour, this clean formal style works well for the channel as it is meant to be seen as respectable and credible. This style is very different from film riot, but their target audiences are vastly different.

Whereas Film Riot uses humour to keep viewers interested, the BBC doesn't need to do that as they are providing a much higher standard of news than a youtube channel would be able to provide on a daily basis.

What I would like to take from the BBC is the formal nature and the small news package crews they have, i believe it would be much easier to film with a smaller crew than with a large one.

News Unit - Website

We discussed what we would need to put into our website, Gavin took responsibility for the creation of the main site and I handled the graphics.

Gavin used wix.com to create the website as it is free and relatively simple to use, we agreed that it would be a good idea to use the same colour scheme for our graphics and logo, which is mainly a gold and blue colour, we also thought it would be a good idea to add some of the little characters i created for the channel title.

The downside to wix is that we do not own the domain name however in the event that we did make News Grad a permanent thing it would be a simple matter to pay for the domain name www.NewsGrad.com

Gavin designed four pages for the site which are Home, Meet the team, About and University Survival. The contact page itself is also on the About page.

https://groberts129.wixsite.com/newsgrad - Website

News Project - 25 Word Pitch

We had to create a 25 word pitch to describe our channel to a producer or a investor. Our channel is aimed at students and we are aiming to keep them informed of top stories regarding education and anything relevant to students. We also want to give tips and suggestions on how to make uni life as cheap and fun as possible by showing DIY gadgets and cheap products to help or improve their lives.

"Student life isn't cheap but here at News Grad we can show you how to save money and live the lifestyle you crave, with insightful news"

This pitch suits our channel perfectly, it highlights who we are and what we do, I do feel like the news part could be highlighted more but it works great as it is. 

News Project - Changes to Script

Top Tips


After speaking to Helen she gave us some feedback about how the tips we had were quite obvious and many people would already know this or have heard them before. She suggested we try to do something new and after contacting the Student Union and getting their opinion we settled on tips about moving away from home.

The tips we chose are as follows

1 - Unpack yourself - it'll let you acclimate to your new home
2 - Join a Club - helps you get to know people and be social
3 - Decorate your room - making it more homely and yours
4 - Have a doorstop - Allow people to come in to chat
5 - keep in touch with friends and family back home - just in case you get homesick.

Script V2

The script needed some changing with the new tips, we tried to keep things short and snappy with small pieces of humor throughout to help keep the pace.

News Unit - Script

Our target audience for the project is students, therefore we tried to tailor the script to what we think students would like, we settled on a slightly informal with some comedic aspects thrown in, we wanted the show to be something people enjoyed watching not just for the stories we cover but for the format in which we presented it, we based our channel on film riots essence as it was something all four of us enjoyed.

We wanted there to be relevant and relatable material in there as well so we talked about what we all have in common which mainly was large amounts of debt and stress. We wanted to factor this into the scripts

Script Version 1

Gavin got ahold of a UCAS survey on what students spend the most on, we used this to tailor our top tips, these were: Mobile Phone Contracts, Food Shopping, Eating Out, Travel and we were going to talk about getting discounts with uni days.

We discussed having a PTC to introduce the budget gadgets but we felt it didnt work as well as it read, George suggested having a fake graduation photoshoot and suddenly he would throw off the hat and gown to do small PTC instead.

Next up George will review the gadgets, namely the bluetooth speaker, since it was waterproof George suggested having a shot of him leaning out the shower with it in his hand wearing a shower cap and having a rubber duck in the background. We all thought this would be a fun idea and add some humour to the show.

Our next gadget is LED lights, the group discussed ideas on how they could be used and we settled on having the lights in the kitchen and having a house party. Since the lights have a flash setting it would be a simple matter to make them look like strobing lights.

The DIY projector would be filmed as it was being built by George, we felt like the whole section was a bit dull and uninteresting so we tried to inject some humour into it where George would be watching a film on the projector and crying eating popcorn.

Our outro needed to direct the audience to our online social media accounts such as facebook, twitter and to subscribe to our channel on youtube.

News Unit - Location Recce's

Gavin's House - Bower Street

Gavin has a basement in the house he is living which he has set up for filming greenscreen, this is great as it means that lighting should be much easier as we are not having to fight with external lighting sources. the downside to this is the location as a bit of an echo, I do not think this will be much of a problem but to counter it we can always try to hang sheets or blankets on the walls.


Georges House - Rochester

Unforunely halls was reluctant to let us film and university accommodation, this is strange as last year they were very laid back and allowed multiple projects to film there. We were looking for a place that had a "Uni accommodation" feel to it and whilst Gavin's home could have worked it was very small and didn't have the right vibe, luckily Georges student room in Rochester had what we were looking for



Maidstone Studios
The base room has a corner that is quite comfortable and looks relaxing, we thought this would be a good place to film the tech review, we also wanted to use one of the lecture rooms to film a fake photo shoot we also wanted to film the Diy projector video as well.

Medway Maritime Hospital - Gillingham

The live interview for the student nurses needs to be filmed somewhere relevant to the subject being discussed, since our nurse actually works at Medway Maritime Hospital, there is an issue with how busy the location is however but we are hoping it will not be much of an issuee.

News Unit - Story Developments

We received some unwelcome news, Tom Falconer who was originally meant to present for us has had to drop out, this is due to the fact he has gained paid work in London, whilst this is a great opportunity and he has our blessings and no ill feelings it does mean that we had to find another presenter on rather short notice. However Jack having done our test shoots was open to the idea of being our presenter. 

We also have been getting issues with getting hold of any nurses who would be willing to speak to us on camera so we met to vote on whether or not to axe the story completely and try to find a new one, we had been putting feelers out for other ideas but not investing out full energy into them.

Our other ideas consisted mainly on the prime ministers recent decision to freeze university fees at £9,250 and raising the minimum amount of annual salary before paying pack the loan. However I had no luck in getting in touch with either Labour or the Conservative party for comment.

Jack came back with a family friend who is a second year student nurse, she also works at the location we planned to film out which works in our favour. We confirmed a date to film her which is the 16th October at 12pm.

This was a bit restrictive as myself and Gavin are working however I have been allowed to finish a few hours early.

Graphics for News Grad

I was placed in charge of creating the graphics for the show, this mainly entailed creating the title sequence and several cut away shots to use when changing scenes.

To start off with I created a mood-board to help generate ideas, going with the channel name of News Grad, a news channel aimed primarily at students currently attending university.

The main images that sprung to mind were the graduation cap and robe and the actual degree graduates receive.

I drew a few sketches to pitch my ideas to my group and we decided to use the circled designs in our logo.

Once this was decided I designed the logo in photoshop, I should ideally have used illustrator however as I would then have been able to make the image a vector image meaning it would be able to be resized with no loss of quality.

However, illustrator is not my strong point and I used photoshop instead.























This is the design I came up with for the logo, I wanted to keep the graphics simple as I am not the best graphic artist, I found in doing so things were much more manageable and the simple graphics didn't lead to problems such as pixelation and have white outlines.

I used the same colour gold on the tassle on the text to keep the colour palatte of the show, this helps build the brand as the colour scheme is a recurring part of the show 

Once I had the logo ready I began working on my idea to have the graduation caps being thrown into the air as our title sequence I used after effects built in particle systems to simulate particles being shot into the air and then tweaked the settings to make it look like the particles were thrown and then fell due to gravity. I then changed the particle texture to a proxy image whilst I was completing the logo.

This is my first test graphic.

The theory worked I still needed to work on the physics as it looks more like an explostion of hats rather than a throw.

I then added the hat behind the layer of the particle hats and had it appear when the logo was fully obscured. I used the completed logo to do this and was very pleased with the result.

This is my second Test Graphic.

After that it was simply a process of refining it, I had the hats working the way I wanted but i found the it was a bit lacking, therefore I worked on creating characters to actually throw the hats.

Mr A.Grad

Mr A.Tutor


I made these simply by using the brush tool and basic shapes and adding the graduation cap on top. I am quite proud of how they came out and their clean simple look.

I tried to have them in a row and simply move down as if the camera was tilting up to follow the hats, however with a clear white background it looked out of place, so i decided to create a background to go with it. this gives a sense of depth to the graphic.

I added this to the composition and was pleased with how it came out.

Title Sequence

Indent 1

Indent 2

Indent 3

Indent 4

Tips

Website Graphics


Channel Graphics


Live Sign

Name Tags