The inspiration for my idea has come from 2 stories that are very close to home. Back home when i was around 12, a friend of mines brother was befriended by an older gang of people. He has learning difficulties including autism and wasn't able to understand that these peoples intentions were not very nice. They often would encourage him into situations where he would end up either being beaten up by them or on occasions be 'nice' to him and encourage him to drink alcohol or get into trouble or face the consequences. As he was in college it was very difficult for his parents to stop most of this happening as they would encourage him to skive off with them and the teachers at the college weren't the most helpful. One day they took him to the beach and forced him to sniff lighter fluid. He suffered a seizure and the gang panicked and left him on the beach, alone. Although someone found him and he managed to survive, the damage to his brain was so severe that he has been left unable to feed himself amongst other things and doesn't have a great quality of life. The gang responsible haven't been punished due to lack of evidence.
Another story is that of a family members child who is regularly bullied and has switched schools to escape it but the gang have waited outside his new school for him to beat him up. He has recently been befriended by this group and they have encouraged him to skive school and get into trouble also and due to his previous run ins with them he is scared to disobey them.
These stories of bullying have had a profound impact on me and i wanted to tell a similar story and show the effect these types of actions can have on people.
stay safe,
Helen
Wednesday, 8 October 2014
Digital News: Anchor Presenter
I have a friend who is a Youtube Vlogger and has over 18,000 views on youtube. She is starting to build a fairly solid fan base up and i thought it would be a good idea to potentially use her as the anchor for our show. I approached her and asked if she would be willing to which she agreed and then it was time to see if Danny and Chris liked what she could do. I showed them a few of her youtube videos which are about various topics and they agreed that she is very comfortable in front of camera and gets her personality across well. All going well we will be using her as our anchor for our show or maybe as a roving reporter depending what the best fit is.
Here is one of her youtube videos:
Stay safe,
Helen
Here is one of her youtube videos:
Stay safe,
Helen
Tuesday, 7 October 2014
Fiction adaption: Characters
I have made a character outline for my 2 main charaters and the other extra's needed. I will send this to Hazlitt youth theatre to see if they have anyone who fits the bill.
Here is the outline:
I will also be posting casting calls for adult actors who have the ability to play down to a teenage age in terms of looks.
Stay safe,
Helen
Here is the outline:
I will also be posting casting calls for adult actors who have the ability to play down to a teenage age in terms of looks.
Stay safe,
Helen
Digital News: News Package Workshop
Today we were given the task by Rachel Royce to create a news package about a global news story. Due to the story being ongoing and of a sensitive nature i will not be talking about the story we were given. However i found the lesson to be particularly challenging. We split up into our groups so i was working with Danny and Chris. After lunch i googled the story and read an article from the guardian newspaper about it and found out a lot more about the case, i then began making notes about the story so that i knew the key facts and important things to do with it. This helped me to get a better understanding and also helped when setting up interviews and 'deciding who to interview'. The parts of this part of the task i found challenging were figuring out how we were going to cover the story and what new and interesting angle could we bring to it. After speaking with Helen she asked us to think more about the location we were in for the story and what could we use about this location to make it a bit more personal to the public. This helped us to begin our PTC and find a interesting way of using the location and tell the story.
The next part of the task was to interview 2 people about the story, the first interview was easy to think of as they were a family member so Danny stepped in to play this role. The 2nd proved more difficult and the only person we could think of was a lawyer as we weren't sure who else aside from a made up expert we could use. The interview with Danny was tough as he had to remember a lot of facts and ad lib them into a normal conversation as if he was telling the story himself. He managed to do a very convincing performance as also get some key facts in whilst giving some emotion to make it believable.
Chris was in charge of camera and sound for this shoot so we just used a clip mic so that he wouldn't have to hold a boom as well. We alternated the clip mic to the person that was talking or in a 2 person shot we used the person who was talking first and have them stand close together. Obviously in a normal situation we would have a clip mic on the reporter and a boom over the 2nd person to get the sound coverage and make it equal level.
Overall i feel I've learnt a lot about how a reporter works and the kind of script involved from facts, it also helps me to prepare for interviews as sometimes the answers people give aren't enough so you need to draw more out of them and reword the question slightly to encourage a certain answer that they may have mentioned in a previous take but not this time around. This is a problem we had with Roy Dyer in Hero Hounds and was a useful tool. I feel i understand how quickly you need to set up and also what jobs people can be doing in the group or be in charge of. Assigning these roles helps save time.
Stay safe,
Helen
The next part of the task was to interview 2 people about the story, the first interview was easy to think of as they were a family member so Danny stepped in to play this role. The 2nd proved more difficult and the only person we could think of was a lawyer as we weren't sure who else aside from a made up expert we could use. The interview with Danny was tough as he had to remember a lot of facts and ad lib them into a normal conversation as if he was telling the story himself. He managed to do a very convincing performance as also get some key facts in whilst giving some emotion to make it believable.
Chris was in charge of camera and sound for this shoot so we just used a clip mic so that he wouldn't have to hold a boom as well. We alternated the clip mic to the person that was talking or in a 2 person shot we used the person who was talking first and have them stand close together. Obviously in a normal situation we would have a clip mic on the reporter and a boom over the 2nd person to get the sound coverage and make it equal level.
Overall i feel I've learnt a lot about how a reporter works and the kind of script involved from facts, it also helps me to prepare for interviews as sometimes the answers people give aren't enough so you need to draw more out of them and reword the question slightly to encourage a certain answer that they may have mentioned in a previous take but not this time around. This is a problem we had with Roy Dyer in Hero Hounds and was a useful tool. I feel i understand how quickly you need to set up and also what jobs people can be doing in the group or be in charge of. Assigning these roles helps save time.
Stay safe,
Helen
Monday, 6 October 2014
Digital News: Sports News & Youtube Research
When we were originally coming up with the idea that we wanted a sports specific news channel i wasn't sure if there was something like this on youtube already, Especially that is geared towards a 16 - 25 year old market. However i came across VICE Sports which is a branch of the VICE Media Youtube Channels. VICE News, Another branch of this group, markets itself as "an international news channel created by and for a connected generation. Our documentaries and original news series bring you an unvarnished look at some of the most important events of our time, and shine a light on underreported stories around the globe". The sports branch markets itself as "a piece of web real estate dedicated to the game beyond the game, where the unbridled passion of the true fan shines through, for better or for worse. Headlined by original video content and distinct voices, VICE Sports shines a light on the endless array of characters both inside and outside of the game that tend to inspire such undeniable, and at times, unreasonable devotion. More often than not, the compelling stories and rich experiences that sit in the sports sidecar tend to eclipse the sport itself. We're here to celebrate that."
VICE News has 970,127 and was created Novemeber 2013 subscribers while the sports channel has 298,688 subscribers and was created May 2014. The channel has recently been chosen along with 2 othe popular youtube channels by YouTube, who are paying to run TV, print and billboard ads in the UK for the three channels, as well as running online ads on its own and other websites. Vice Media recently secured a $500m investment from Silicon Valley firm Technology Crossover Ventures and US cable broadcaster A+E Networks, which valued the company at more than $2.5bn.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/25/youtube-vice-news-zoella-slow-mo-guys
I am very interested in their style of videos so will be posting a few that i found interesting below and then discussing and comparing to our style.
This was the first video posted by the channel, It has some features that would defiantly fit in with our market however i think that most of the episodes are more documentary or package style. Similar to our channel it also bring to the forefront sports than don't get the same recognition that mainstream ones do but i feel our channel will be more relaxed in its style and like a friend talking to another friend - similar to how a lot of vlogs work on youtube.
In this video they send an ex olympic boxer as their 'reporter' to a Baseball event and film as he chats informally to players and managers, despite the fact he has no clue who is who. I like this relaxed style a lot more however there is no real story here. They haven't utilised the 'celebrity' they got in the right way and although the video is funny in parts it isn't something that flows well. I think it would work better if he was interviewing boxers and promoters and possibly talking about the future in the sport and this is something that i would suggest for our group if we were to create something like this. I do however like the way they are able to portray the celebrity as one of the people and show him unable to hit a baseball. It makes the package more relatable and possibly a feature we could use in our news - young british people tend to enjoy a failure rather than a success.
Here is a video from Today's episode of Vice News Daily:
Although this news is obviously important i don't find that its aimed at someone like me, i don't enjoy watching the news and its not spoken in a way that engages me with the story. I think this is one of the reasons we as a group decided against world news or stories like this as, typically, its covered in a certain way and this doesn't bring anything different to the news. I like the idea of brining something different out of stories and hopefully with a clear branch with the sports channel this will work well.
Sky sports news is a dedicated news channel on digital TV. It is the leading sports-dedicated news channel on television, with a sizeable, predominantly male, audience of all ages tuning for programming slots such as Evening Report and Good Morning Sports Fans. is a table of the rough being figures:
The onscreen graphics are an important feature of this news channel as it helps to let viewers know what is happening in various sports in a very brief outline incase they have missed the feature on the channel. Often each of these rolling news graphics are repeated by the presenter throughout the timeslot and also up to the minute 'breaking news' features heavily. It also live and goes to reporters interviewing managers and players at the last minute especially on deadline day.
Looking at these channels i think we will be able to look at the styles and use this to create something different and successful that our target audience will enjoy.
Stay safe,
Helen
VICE News has 970,127 and was created Novemeber 2013 subscribers while the sports channel has 298,688 subscribers and was created May 2014. The channel has recently been chosen along with 2 othe popular youtube channels by YouTube, who are paying to run TV, print and billboard ads in the UK for the three channels, as well as running online ads on its own and other websites. Vice Media recently secured a $500m investment from Silicon Valley firm Technology Crossover Ventures and US cable broadcaster A+E Networks, which valued the company at more than $2.5bn.
I am very interested in their style of videos so will be posting a few that i found interesting below and then discussing and comparing to our style.
This was the first video posted by the channel, It has some features that would defiantly fit in with our market however i think that most of the episodes are more documentary or package style. Similar to our channel it also bring to the forefront sports than don't get the same recognition that mainstream ones do but i feel our channel will be more relaxed in its style and like a friend talking to another friend - similar to how a lot of vlogs work on youtube.
In this video they send an ex olympic boxer as their 'reporter' to a Baseball event and film as he chats informally to players and managers, despite the fact he has no clue who is who. I like this relaxed style a lot more however there is no real story here. They haven't utilised the 'celebrity' they got in the right way and although the video is funny in parts it isn't something that flows well. I think it would work better if he was interviewing boxers and promoters and possibly talking about the future in the sport and this is something that i would suggest for our group if we were to create something like this. I do however like the way they are able to portray the celebrity as one of the people and show him unable to hit a baseball. It makes the package more relatable and possibly a feature we could use in our news - young british people tend to enjoy a failure rather than a success.
Here is a video from Today's episode of Vice News Daily:
Although this news is obviously important i don't find that its aimed at someone like me, i don't enjoy watching the news and its not spoken in a way that engages me with the story. I think this is one of the reasons we as a group decided against world news or stories like this as, typically, its covered in a certain way and this doesn't bring anything different to the news. I like the idea of brining something different out of stories and hopefully with a clear branch with the sports channel this will work well.
Sky sports news is a dedicated news channel on digital TV. It is the leading sports-dedicated news channel on television, with a sizeable, predominantly male, audience of all ages tuning for programming slots such as Evening Report and Good Morning Sports Fans. is a table of the rough being figures:
As you can see from the table Sky Sports News garners average audience figures ranging from 1,000 during breakfast, daytime and late peak, and up to 900,000 viewers during daytime. The cost per spot can vary from between a minimum of around £10 and a maximum of approximately £8,000 per 30 second broadcast. There is also a heavy focus on male sports although they do have women presenters. This leads to a heavy male bias in viewers.
Here is an example of a typical sky sports feature:
The onscreen graphics are an important feature of this news channel as it helps to let viewers know what is happening in various sports in a very brief outline incase they have missed the feature on the channel. Often each of these rolling news graphics are repeated by the presenter throughout the timeslot and also up to the minute 'breaking news' features heavily. It also live and goes to reporters interviewing managers and players at the last minute especially on deadline day.
Looking at these channels i think we will be able to look at the styles and use this to create something different and successful that our target audience will enjoy.
Stay safe,
Helen
Sunday, 5 October 2014
Fiction Adaption: Contacting local Youth theatres
As i will be looking to cast teenagers for my film i decided to get in contact with some local youth theatres to see if they would be interested in possibly collaborating with me and auditioning some of their members for the roles in the film. I Emailed the Kent Youth Theatre & Hazlitt Youth Theatre and will wait for their response:
stay safe,
Helen
stay safe,
Helen
Digital News: Branding Research
Most tv channels have a clear brand and often a colour associated with that brand. For example the bbc one is associated with red, sky is associated with blue, e4 is associated with purple, bbc 3 is associated with pink... they also have a very clear style and fomat that is fluid throughout all their idents. I wanted to do some research into what colours and fonts and things appeal to our age group.
Here are a few colour charts with their meanings that i have found useful:
Here are a few colour charts with their meanings that i have found useful:
I also found a very intresting article from the huffington post about the psychology of logo's which featured the above picture:
I like the idea that multicolour represents diversity, this could be something we could work with as we are hoping to appeal to all sports fans so picking a specific colour could affect someones view of the channel for example - i support manchester city football team who's colour is sky blue and their rival is manchester unites known for their red and this affects my decisions such as choosing the colour of my scooter or when decorating my house as i wouldn't be caught dead in red.
Here are some pictures i found useful when looking at fonts:
These pictures have been useful in looking at what brands have used, most like a very clear professional style - anything too quirky instantly looks tacky and can be difficult to market to collaborators and something of quality. I think it is easy to try and create something original but this could mean looking less professional.
Stay safe,
Helen
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