#1 Creative Process – Assessed Blog Posts…

Throughout this module I have gone through many creatively critical process to challenge and develop my work, to create the most relatable forms of media, which compare to existing forms of new media around at the moment.

To begin with, I had to build an identity for myself, and throughout the branding process I wanted to create something that was unique and would represent myself in a professional manner.

I first started by looking at existing logos, and found out what they all had in common and what set themselves aside from the others. I found that the main element that set themselves aside where their fonts. In the first couple of weeks, Mez showed us a table of logos, which only consisted of one letter from the logo. Just by seeing one letter of the company’s logo I could associate most of the logos to their brands. Such as the M in McDonald’s. Therefore it made me realise that the key thing that set themselves aside were the fonts that had been used.

This then got me thinking that I had to create something different, something unique. However I also found it important that it related to the profession of media. Therefore I experiment with a style on Photoshop. This style consisted of me cutting certain letters from existing magazine/newspaper’s and fitting them together, almost like what you would see on a generic ransom note in films. (Hopefully less sinister looking).

After playing around for a while, I compiled five letters and slotted them together to make my name. Although it looked a little rough around the edges, I really liked they idea and decided to peruse this style.

After deciding on a name to brand myself with, “DMB Media”, the DMB standing for my initials I tried this process again with these letters.  Once I had done this I was really happy with the way it looked, this would now be the very basic form of my logo.

When I began branding my social media with this logo, such as my WordPress account. I found that to use it successfully I would have to use my logo in a banner form. To fill the empty space behind the letters i decided to use pictures behind the text, however I wanted these pictures to be personal to myself, once again to reflect my professionalism. To do this I used existing photography work I had produced as the base, which once I had put the whole thing together, came together quite well.

Throughout the module I feel that the process that took the most development was creating the website for out television shows.

Once again I found that I had to brand, however this time, it wasn’t to reflect my personal work, but to reflect a television show that our group had created. Throughout the process of creating the actual programme, our group decided that the colour scheme would be red and black and I created a logo to go with this theme accordingly. Therefore the colour scheme red and black and the theme of magic would have to follow through onto my website.

Once I had set up a base template for the site everything seemed to fit together quite well. I had produced a basic website that had all the relevant pages, many of which I had taken inspiration from on existing television show websites such as “This Morning”.

However once I had looked over what I had already produced from an audience point of view, I found that the layout looked quite amateurish and empty.

When doing my A levels I was told a piece advice that I remembered when looking over my work. This advice being, “don’t leave empty gaps where necessary”. I looked over my work and realised there were an endless amount of empty gaps. Therefore I changed all of my pages around and made it more tight and full. Once I had done this I saw a massive difference and realised that just by doing this simple task, it instantly looked more professional. By going through this creative process I found myself more proud of what I had accomplished and glad I didn’t produce my website in just a week. I was glad I had spent over a month getting it perfect for what I wanted to produce.

When producing the actual television show, I found that I may have had too much creative input at times. Although I was only the vision mixer I found myself over whelmed with ideas for things such as set design, VT’s and the use of shots in the programme. The reason I say I think I may have had too much creative input was that I got so carried away and excited that a member of our group felt that I was trying to take their role off of them. Once I had been told this I realised that at the end of the day, that is their job. However I still wanted my ideas to be heard, so I went about it in a more suggestive and subtle manor, which came across a lot better, and in the end, my ideas were mostly used. Therefore if I was to redo anything involving my creative process it would be that when working in a large group, I would remember that everyone else has ideas, and that sometimes all I can do is suggest mine.

Overall im really happy with the way I have gone about developing my work in this module and I feel that this is probably the module that I have done the most development with my thoughts, ideas and process’s and by doing this, I feel that I have hopefully produced my best work.

#2 Media Forms – Assessed Blog Post’s…

The element of this module that I have found the most interesting is the word that has been used consistently throughout, “Transmedia”. The term “Transmedia” and its definition was at the start of the module a whole new topic I had never been informed of before. I find it silly now to say that I had “never been informed of it before”, seeing as I take part in many social media tools and other new medias everyday. I just find it strange how blissfully unaware I had been to the fact that these tools can have such a large impact on a business, person or lifestyle. I think that I enjoyed this module over any other this year because it was intellectually stimulating and really interested me.

The use of Transmedia storytelling is a new and exciting way to retell stories in new ways, by the means of social media. Recently people have often produced new videos by recycling existing pieces. For example turning a news report into a song. Although it sounds like a very basic idea, the creator has not had to leave their house to acquire this footage and sometimes the new footage can get more views than they original.

A great example of Transmedia storytelling is the video we were shown in lecture about the birth of Jesus, and the nativity story. This video is a great example as it uses most of the popular social networking sites on the internet to tell a story that has been told a million times in a whole new and entertaining way.

Another example is the guardian advert. Once again they have taken a story that has been told many times and produced a whole new version of “The Three Little Pigs”, although it is a different style to the previous as it involves a lot more actual footage in it, it still has the same effect, that a story can be told via a variety of online tools.

The interesting element about these types of storytelling is that once they are finished they can be shared and promoted by endless amounts of social media for free. Often large companies produce films and don’t put any money into paying for advertising, because they’re video is good enough to get promoted on its own.

A great example of this is Kony 2012, due to creating a great video, which did involve certain elements of Transmedia Storytelling it seemed to be an over night hit, in the space of 72 hours the video got 55 million views and they didn’t have to pay a penny for advertising. If a company were to pay for an advertising campaign that would reach 55 million people it would cost millions upon millions of pounds/dollars, but yet they achieved this by word of mouth via social networking sites. The idea of people being able to advertise for free via online medias is a very modern and exciting concept, which is defiantly something that will only grow.

When producing my own piece of Transmedia storytelling I took inspiration from all the videos I had viewed and used a wide range of social medias and websites and screen captured them to produce a modern version of Cinderella. This task was a completely new concept for me, but found it really new and exiting.

 

#3 Professional Development – Assessed Blog Posts…

The combination of social media and branding is a great way, (if done correctly) to promote yourself in the business world, specifically in the media industry.

When Adam Swords came in to our lecture to discuss how he has branded himself it was really interesting to actually meet someone who carries around a brand identity in the world of work, and has been successful with it.

There are endless forms of social media that came be used to promote yourself and your business, and since the start of the year I have been using these social medias in a way that promotes my work more.

To begin with, although I consider my Facebook as the most personal social media I am involved in. I have still put my logo as my cover photo on my profile and often post links to work I have produced. The way I look at it is, if my friends don’t like my work, then nobody will. However if they do, then often they share my videos and overall I get more views, therefore they are more likely to be looked at by more important people who would potentially hire me.

Before this module began, I had a twitter account, but never used it. Since then I am now on my 300^th tweet. I feel it’s a great way to share your work and opinions, but more importantly it’s a great way to network. A lot of well known people/business people us twitter as a type of scouting process, to find out who has talents that they want to use.

I also have a Flickr, WordPress, vimeo, Youtube and Instagram account. All of which I have added my branding too. By adding my branding, if someone was to look at more than one of my social medias they would see a consistency and would be able to associate my brand with my work, and by doing that makes yourself look more professional, but more importantly, more hirable!

I have recently begun to use Instagram and I have really become addicted to it. Instagram is a great way for me to share my photography work on a social media that is just a simple social media just for pictures. Although Flickr already exists I find the layout not very nice to use, but also the great things with Instagram is that it is only a mobile app, so everyone always has it at their fingertips. The way I use Instagram is like a virtual portfolio where people from all around the world can see my work.

Overall by branding myself on various social medias I have upped my game greatly. My aim before university again next year is to produce a professional website promoting my work. In the future I plan to brand everything just like Adam Swords does, with his portfolio, business cards etc. Personally I think by branding myself it puts me that step further in the industry to be recognised as a professional.

#4 Evaluation – Assessed Blog Posts…

Overall this has been my favourite module of the whole year. It was also the first module that I found intellectually stimulating, purely because it wasn’t really a topic that I had every came across before.

I think my favourite and the hardest part of the module was producing the re-telling of a fairytale. Although it took me around twelve hours to produce, I was really proud with the outcome, probably because I had never produced something like that before.

I specifically liked how we had to produce a website about our television programme. The reason I liked that these two were related, was that we had all become so passionate about our TV programme, and we had all this extra content that we could actually put somewhere.

However one thing I did realise when producing the television programme was how hard it is to get a following via social media. For a month every member of our group was promoting our pages, however the following ended up at under a hundred people. Also when we were asking for people to send us their videos in, I posted on endless amounts of magic forums and only got one response.

My least favourite part of the module was creating the recycled media piece. Although I understood the relevance of the task and how it ties in with modern day viral videos, I just personally found it really hard to come up with a new piece of work, from other pieces of work I am so familiar with.

If I was to do anything again over this module it would have been to put myself forward for a more important role when producing the Television programme.  I feel that I had so many ideas for the show and that I have quite good organization skills that I would have been able to put a lot into the role.
Im most proud about my fairytale piece and feel that it is the most unique piece of work I have ever produced.

What this module has taught me is that by using online tools and social medias you can create a large amount of new content or even get a silly video of a cat screaming going viral. I think that by introducing us to branding, if we go about it correctly it will be a great tool to further our professional careers.

My Finished Website…

After completing the website im really happy with the end result. Going through the creative process has been a successful one. Although Ive constantly changed what I had produced I now have a finished product that I can be proud of, and feel that it could be seen as a professional site.

Overall I really enjoyed making the website and hopefully the hard work is reflected in how well the site content is relatable and how the site itself flows.

http://www.wix.com/davidbird92/magicnettv1

Getting The Audience Involved In My Website…

In a previous post I have discussed how we planned to get the audience involved with our programme. We wanted them to send us in videos of themselves performing magic tricks, and if we had a good enough turn out, we would use these videos for the countdown on the show. Unfortunately although I posted on endless amounts of magic forums and websites, we didn’t get a response. However a number of our crew members (including myself), sent in our videos, hopefully to get the ball rolling. By the time serious rehearsals had started for the show, we hadn’t got a response, therefore we used video clips found on Youtube and featured them in our show.

However as the time grew closer, all my endless forum posting had payed off! We received a tweet from a young magician called “Steve Bishop” aka “The Magic SB” who sent us one on his magic tricks, I then messaged him asking for permition to feature his videos on our websites and he graciously said yes. Therefore although all our efforts didn’t make a great turnout, we still had outside audience participation!!

This is when I started creating the Get Involved & Videos section of my website.

Ill discuss the Get Involved Part of the website first. The reason I am discussing this part first is because initially the “Get Involved” page and the “Videos” page were the same page.

Above is my original “Get Involved” page which features both details of how to get involved and examples of other videos sent to us. At first I thought this page was great, however as the rest of my site progressed I felt that the audience interactivity information should be more in depth and should have more focus.

Therefore I separated the pages and created the “Get Involved” section, which would primarily be the main focus for our audience participation, as it would have all the details of how to get involved with the show.

I am really proud of this page as it does everything it needs to, its informative, its magical and it fills all the space on the page. Once again the twitter feed widget features, although some people may think using this widget on more than one page is a bit too much, I just felt like it was a key element to our show and a great visual to get our audience motivated.

This then takes me on to the new page, the “Videos” section. I found that the way the videos had featured on the original idea felt lazy, unattractive and amateur. Therefore I had a look at the Wix features and found a “Video Playlist” option, which allowed the page to feature a number of videos in an organized and constructed manner. It may look like a simple page, but in fact it was probably the hardest page to construct.

The reason for this was that all the files had to be on Youtube, and seeing as all the content was spread across various peoples Youtube channels, it made them very hard to locate on the search feature on Wix.

Therefore I took it upon myself to acquire all the videos from various people’s channels and upload them onto one “MagicNetTV” channel.  Sorting this channel out too around a day to do, but it allowed all of our group members to easily access the videos for their websites.

Overall I think the changes that I have made to these pages make a massive difference to the flow of the website, hopefully so the audience have a clear indication of what information they can take from where.

Creating The Homepage…

After planning out what my homepage would look like I decided this would be the most important step in creation. Therefore following the plan I began to create the page. Now ive created my homepage I feel more at ease because this will now be the basic template for all my other pages.

By this I mean the background, which I am going to use. I decided to use this background because its simple but yet elegant and it fits into the theme of my page well. However there Is not black in the background image im using, so I have decided to turn the area around the page black. This is because it fits in well with the colour scheme, but also makes the rest of the page stand out and look quite professional. Initially the border was white but I asked a couple of peers what they thought of it and the majority of them told me to change it to black. I think this is because the white seemed out of place, but also because my text was white it just looked a little too much.

Annoyingly when creating my website I forgot to screen capture pages that I changed to show on my blog the difference between the two designs. So I will just have to discuss it.

Below is an image of my finished homepage. As you can see the I have used a countdown timer on my site, which before we had filmed our show, was counting down the days until the show aired. The reason I haven’t removed this is because I feel that it would be a great addition for future episodes, so that our audience know how long they have to wait until another exiting edition of MagicNetTV will be aired. Below this is a Twitter widget which allows the viewers to see all of the shows recent Tweets acting as a “News” element on the page. I think this is a really good widget to use and it doesn’t just allow the audience to straight away be involved with the interactive part of our show, but it also fills them in on what’s been going on infront and behind the camera.

To the left of this is a slideshow of a large number of pictures taken during the shows rehearsals. The reason I decided to make this so dominant on the homepage is because “a picture says a thousand words”, therefore the audience will have a sense of involvement when they see who and what makes up the show. The key photo in this slideshow though is the Logo, it is the first photo, which is seen and is used repetitively throughout the slideshow. The logo is a very important visual for the viewers to see first, because they will then associate the logo with the website and the programme, which gives it a sense of BRANDING.

Below all these elements are three boxes which provide links to other sections of the website. Although I have more pages on the website than these three boxes, there are always specific sections which are more prominent on other television programme websites such as the One Show and This Morning. As you can see by the picture, there are two pages, which are highlighted on the homepage, to provide the viewer with easy navigation to the pages they are most likely going to want to view. Also you may notice by the screen grab, that this Mornings Twitter feed is also on the homepage now. When I first planned my homepage, This morning did not feature their feed on the homepage, however it is quite a prominent edition to the page, so im glad I have incorporate our twitter feed in my homepage.

At the very bottom of my website you will see the “Contact Us” link. Initially I wanted this at the top of my page with all the other navigation buttons, but due to space constrictions I have had to put it at the bottom. Although I was slightly annoyed at this at first, I have noticed that many websites put this link on the bottom of their webpages, and actually a lot of people associate this page to be located at the bottom of most homepages. So in retrospect I don’t mind this being at the bottom so much.

The element that is the most different from my initial homepage layout is the Twitter Feed. This is because before, instead of the feed there was text telling the audience what’s going to be coming up on the show (similar to the one on the This Morning page). The main reason I decided to change it was because it was leaving me with a lot of empty space and one thing that I had noticed when looking at other sites is that there is never empty space on a website. This is because it just looks amateur and unprofessional.

Overall I am really happy with my finished homepage and I will make a conscious effort in my other pages to not leave empty space and to follow the same design theme.

The TV Recording…

On the day of recording everyone’s nerves seemed quite high, especially mine. Although I wasn’t so much concerned about how the programme would run (because weve rehearsed so much) I was more apprehensive about having technical difficulties such as the programme not recording or something. When setting up the equipment it became apparent that my apprehensions had come true. For the past three weeks we have been putting our programmes twitter address at the bottom of the screen when the presenters mentioned it. However when setting up for some reason the Chroma key function on the vision mixer wasn’t working. I’d like to think that this wasn’t because I didn’t know what I was doing as our Lecturer Ross also tried to get it to work and failed. After speaking with Karen, she told me that the technical difficulties would not affect my/the group’s mark, so I felt slightly more at ease.

While setting up, the cameramen and the floor manager were left to their own devices to set up the talkback system. Therefore this was my chance to help out with setting up the set.

The set consisted of four wooden flats, which we spread apart and covered, in white sheets, in gaps we hung black sheets and afterwards stapled playing cards to the backdrop. Delissa and Wura were in charge of the set, but because I had helped them to set it up in previous rehearsals, I took it upon myself to help them this time. While putting the sheets up I grew slightly annoyed at the rest of the group as they just sat around not really helping, but occasionally giving the odd piece of advice about the sheets being creased. Although it was slightly annoying it wasn’t the end of the world and we set up the set in probably our best time. However if certain members of the group had helped that were just sitting round I think we would have had time for more run throughs.

Personally I felt the set looked really good and give credit to Delissa and Wura for that. Delissa had spent time at home producing A2 playing cards to put on the set and I also brought in a pack of jumbo playing cards to be used on the board, I think it really illustrated to the audience what the show was about.

Once we had finished the set I then returned to my post In the gallery and set up the VT’s for Josh and Stacey, after checking that they were coming through okay I waited for the group to be ready to start recording. It took us around 50 minutes to set up the set/equipment which personally I believe could have been done quicker.

We then started recording and only got a short way through the first take because of errors. I think this was just down to everyone’s nerves, especially the poor presenters! On the second take everything was going perfectly, the presenters were confident, the camera men were in the right places at the right time, but just as we got to the end of a perfect run through, our magician messed up his trick, dropping the “secret magic” part of the trick on the floor for the audience to see. This was quite gutting, as apart from this, the take was really good.

We then continued to do one more take, which we finished, however the presenters timings and confidence weren’t as good as the previous one. However there was also one other error in this take, and that was that for 2 seconds a camera can be seen in shot. As the vision mixer I spotted the camera straight away in recording, and seeing as the director hadn’t noticed it, I took it upon myself to cut to another shot, although the camera can be seen for a short space of time, I don’t think it will affect our programme too much.  Unfortunately this was all the takes we had time for, and although I was confident that we had two takes to choose from, they both had their issues.

At the moment our group Is in a discussion as to which take to submit. Do we go with the one where the trick goes wrong, but until then is perfect? Or do we go with the average take which has no major floors? This is quite a in depth discussion taking place on our Facebook group at the moment, and Katie has set up a Poll, so people can vote on which one they think we should use. At the moment the second take seems to be winning.

Overall I think that as a group the run through went quite well and Im happy that we have two useable takes. I think I contributed well to the programme both with my job and assisting others with theirs and I am happy with what I have learnt in this process, both learning about the TV studio and how to work in such a large group.

My Role As Vision Mixer…

My role as Vision Mixer was a fun one, I really enjoyed the role and found that I adapted quite well to it. I believe I had also adapted well to the technical skills of the Mixer such as Chroma keying, however unfortunately no evidence of this is there seeing as both myself and Ross (the lecturer) couldn’t get the function working on the day of recording.

If I were to pick a fault with how I acted as a vision mixer, I would say that sometimes I changed shots without the instruction of the director. I soon learnt to control myself and by the time we recorded found myself more able to take the direction of the director.

Although VT’s were a separate job role I found myself very involved with the VT’s as I felt the two jobs were related. Also the people in charge of producing the VTs asked me to make them, as they didn’t know how too.

I would say my strongest skill doing the job was being able to stick to timings under the P.A’s instruction and produced smooth transitions between shots so the audience didn’t notice the camera shot being changed.  It was really great being involved in the gallery and being part of the team, and I felt that myself, the P.A and the director worked really well together and our communication skills were very good.

Towards the start of rehearsals I found myself in a difficult position, because when the director and Producer were making decisions about the show I found myself being part of the conversation and being quite passionate about my ideas. Our producer then told me that the choices weren’t mine to worry about. When being told this I found it quite difficult as im the type of person who likes to get stuck in and help out/give my opinion as much as I can. However I realsied that when working in a large group like this, if everyone had their opinion’s heard nothing would ever get done, therefore I realised my mistake and stuck to my job and tried to do the best job I could within my role.

If I was to do this process again I think I would put myself up for producer. Although I loved being a Vision Mixer, I am quite a passionate person and sometimes consider myself to be a leader, so eventually I would defiantly like to try this role.
Overall I loved being Vision Mixer and found that it was quite an important job as at the end of the day im pretty much editing the show live.

TV Studio Progress 5&6…

Progress in the group sessions has come leaps and bounds in the last few weeks.

Once certain elements like the script and the VT’s had been produced, it was clear that our show had more of a narrative and it was easier to have more of a professional run through.

Adnaan our producer has been doing a great job and has been dedicated to make the show succeed, by pulling together everyone’s individual skills.

The one thing our show has been lacking in previous weeks is a guest. This was a difficult dilemma, as we had to practice the interview part with an available crew member. However last week we required a local magician who appears confident and comfortable on camera. But also he adds a bit of humour to the show due to his wit.

Being the Vision mixer I feel that I have had a front row seat to see what the finished show could potentially be like, and at the moment I believe its going to be a success. The only issue we are having at the moment is that the presenters aren’t perfect at their timings yet or where they should be in the script, but I don’t believe this is an issue, as it just requires a bit of practicing.

Ive really been enjoying the role of vision mixer, but have felt at times that there are certain elements that I struggle with, such as Chroma keying titles to go at the bottom. However im not worried about this too much, because If I cant get to grips with it, then we will just have to take them out of the show. However I am going to try my hardest to master the technique.

As a whole I think our group has been working really well together, but as always there are certain people that pull their weight a lot more than others.

Personally im quite proud with my contribution to the show so far, as ive been going beyond my means and doing tasks that a vision mixer shouldn’t actually be doing. But this doesn’t bother me, as I have actually quite enjoyed producing ALL the title VT’s.

One element within our show we have had to change is that we didn’t refer to the show as “Fantasy” as much as we should have been because we were focusing more on the magic aspect, however James (the presenter) has altered the script, and the theme is mentioned a lot more now than before.

As a whole everything is all pretty much finished, it just needs to be rehearsed.  Although the one thing that hasn’t been finished yet is setting up the set, which is worrying me, as this is a crucial visual element to the show, and without it, the show will look really amateurish.

Overall I have really been enjoying the module so far and I am quite confident that we will produce a show that we can be proud of.