Construction

20th January

Creation of my scripts

After many drafts and improvements of my script, we finally decided on the following pieces:

IN THE STUDIO: Anchor (Megan): *serious monotone voice* Ambulance members and police officers rushed to a school in Birmingham today, after a suspected racial attack on a teacher by a student at the school. The student was allegedly reported to have been roaming the corridors with a large kitchen knife waiting for the teacher, who has been named locally as ‘Mr Trance’. Police have said that the suspect struck him down, stabbing him three times in the process. Mr Trance was rushed to a local hospital where he remains in a critical condition. Our reporter, Sarah Brookes, is at the school. Sarah, this is a pretty appalling story, is there any more information that you can add?

ON LOCATION OUTSIDE SCHOOL: Sarah (me): *Strong authoritative tone* Yes Alice, appalling scenes reported today that no young person or adult should be subjected to (establishing shot of the school). Speaking to one student, who wishes not to be named, they described what they saw as ‘life changingly memorable for all of the wrong reasons.’ Here at Archbishop Ilsley in Acocks Green Birmingham, Marvel Trance, who we believe to be the victim, has been left in a critical condition after allegedly being stabbed repeatedly by one of his students who cannot be named for legal reasons. The student was supposedly agitated by Mr Trance’s response to a seemingly minor offence; he received a detention by Mr Trance for homework he had not completed. Other students comment upon how the male student was ‘distressed’ and ‘on edge’ throughout the day. According to others, the detention given by Marvel Trance was the tipping point.

Officers say the boy may need a psychiatric examination as much of what he has said since is ‘out of context’ and borders on disturbed. Many of the teachers and pupils at the school feel distressed and anxious about the situation; even the headmaster described the event to be ‘unpredictable’. Pupils are predicted to return back to school as normal the day after tomorrow where they will resume their education. Many of the parents are apprehensive about sending their children back to the school following the incident. This school will have to try hard to shake off the shocking events that have occurred here

ON LOCATION INSIDE SCHOOL Police Officer (Niall): Today, we have witnessed a truly cruel act, the consequences of which have left a 35 year old teacher in a critical condition. We have arrested a suspect for this knife crime and we have detained no other suspects in this case. The name of the suspect cannot be named for legal reasons; however I think many people here know who that person is. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep concern to parents in schools not just in Birmingham but the whole of the United Kingdom. Please keep a close eye on your children, monitor who they befriend, spend their time with, what they watch and what they play. You can never be ready for unplanned attacks such as this one but it is better to reduce that risk than to rule it out completely. On behalf of the victim Marvel Trance, the Trance family thank everyone for their kind words but now wish to have some privacy at this extremely difficult time.

VOICE OVER (me): In West Midlands schools, there has been an increase in pupils carrying knifes. Last year, 11 weapon were detained from students in secondary schools across the Midlands. 
Contrasting to this, in the past year knife crimes overall have in fact lowered from 17.5% to 11%. It was just unfortunate that Mr Trance was part of that percentage, all of us from WMN wish him a speedy recovery. Now, over to Chloe Phillips for a lighter story.

Voice over Chloe (Chloe):*establishing shot of Sainsburys* After a long year of building and a strong competition between supermarkets, Sainsburys in Harborne is finally open. £300 million was spent on this project which has created over 200 jobs. There have been mixed opinions among the locals as to whether or not this superstore will be a welcome addition to Harborne's high street, as it threatens many other local businesses. 
NEW LOCATION Presenter (Chloe):

ON LOCATION Voxpot 1 (Georgia): I thought that in order to keep this part as authentic as possible, I will just give each actor of the voxpot either a positive or negative viewpoint regarding the development of Sainsburys. Georgia will have the negative point.

ON LOCATION Voxpot 2 (Dominic): Dominic will have the positive viewpoint 

ON LOCATION Presenter (Chloe):  So thats what the locals had to say, but what do you think? Message us on Twitter, Facebook or via email. Back to the studio.

IN THE STUDIO Anchor (Megan)-  And now its for your local weather report. Here's Fox Daish.    

WEATHER PRESENTER (Fox)- So here is tonight's weather. A quick update for you. First of all, we'd like to say thank you so much for this photo, sent in from Brenda in Small Heath, Birmingham. Unfortunately, this is not going to be the weather that we're going to be seeing this evening. There is a storm which will be passing over  which has come from parts of Europe, and we will be getting the tail end of that tonight. It's going to be windy, it's going to be wet and it's going to be loud. Please make sure that you keep your pets indoors and get cosy under your duvets. Hopefully, by the morning that should of passed and we'll be back tomorrow to give you an update. Thank you and goodnight.             

1st February

Recording of my TV News Package-

Today we began with our filming for our main task. We concentrated on the filming of the anchor in the news studio for our introduction to our short news package and also the very ending. We set up the news room in the school's drama hut; however the drama hut has black walls therefore we used a white backdrop in order to create the news studio.  

You can also see the soft box lighting kit that we used.  The reason we did this was so that the backdrop was heavily lit in order to reduce overexposure. We placed this kit at the anchors right hand side and directly in front of her.  We did this in order to minimize the glare onto the anchor and to also not make it not uncomfortable for her eye sight, so that she could look in straight ahead direction, towards the camera. Also, it prevented the glare reflection onto the screen which we used as our background, making it look more realistic and clear for the audience at home to make out what the images, instead of struggling to view them.

The screen is behind the anchors chair, therefore creating the affect that Megan was in a real news studio with professional features, that included on screen graphics and images of the West Midlands. We chose to have the table as that is part of my colour palette, as seen on my TV news logo and title sequence. The white background was pinned around the news anchor, to ensure that the background of our recording would remain all one colour and that none of the surrounding black walls of the drama studio would be on show. 

In addition, we chose the drama hut as our location for our news studio as it is a room which is no longer in use. It was beneficial to us that this drama studio includes built in lighting and an open space in which we had plenty of room to fit in all of the equipment as well as set up our studio. It was also helpful that the drama studios windows are covered with dark black blinds; this ensured that no natural lighting from outside would interfere with our lighting in the studio. 

In the picture above, you can see how me and my peer have begun our filming for our TV news in the studio. I am just finishing writing our script up on the board, which is directly ahead of Megan (the anchor), so that she can read the script while looking into the direction of Camera 1, which was just in front of the script. This will make Megan appear professional when welcoming the audience to our TV news programme as she will be making eye contact with the viewers, compared to if the script was in her hands, then she would keep looking down at it, consequently losing the audience attention. 

Here is a news anchor from the BBC News compared to Megan, our news anchor. You can see the similarities between the two. A table, laptop and glass of water can be seen in both. We chose to include these props as they act like the finishing touches and make our TV News report seems authentic. 

3rd February

Creation of my title sequence-

Here is CoralX8.

Adding a theme tune to my title sequence: I picked my chosen opening theme tune off Youtube after looking at a wide variety of them. To get this onto Coral, I copied the link of the theme tune.

From there, I used Youtube downloader to download my chosen theme tune as an mp3.

I inserted that music into coral by clicking on File>Insert Media to Timeline>Insert Audio

As you can see, the audio is now placed into Coral. 

I then inserted a range of images and short clips from my location Visit into Coral via the same way as I did for the my background theme music. However, instead of clicking on Insert Audio and clicked on Insert Image/Insert Video. 

Once I had my chosen clips and images in Coral, I decided to add some transitions to the media, which would allow it sweep into each indiviual piece. This way, it didn't just look like images and videos place together. 

6th February

My final title sequence

6th February- 

Filming my soft story news-

Compared to the hard story, I was behind the camera and not in front of it. I filmed from a variety of different angels to make my TV News story look as authentic and professional as possible. 

For a voxpot, the member of the public doesn't look straight into the camera as this is off the cuff, representing that. This is a less formal clip, of that compared to the presenter. The member of the public is more focused of answering the presenters question, rather than directing their speech to the audience at home in a professional manner.

When it came to filming Chloe as the news presenter, we thought it was best that she looked at the camera, she is directly addressing the audience. The frame of Chloe change from a long shot, and as she walks to the camera, to a mid shot. 

22nd February

Construction of my TV News package on Coral X8-

Opening up CoralX8, I imported my chosen clip of Megan as the news anchor. I chose this specific clip as I felt it was the most professional clip out of the few that we recorded. Megan speaks clearly and looks in to the direction of the camera, therefore the audience at home.

Moving from the news studio to then top story, I included a video of an establishing shot of the location of the story. This would allow for the audience to get a feel of the story and sense of location. 

In addition, I moved the video of myself presenting to the audio compartment on Coral, here you can see the audio as purple). This allowed me to include a voice over in my hard story, on top of the establishing shot. 

I then imported the clips of myself being on the on location news presenter. I converged clips together by cropping out parts of the individual clips where I made a mistake, this way it would ensure that there was no errors in what I had said. By converging the clips together, it makes it seem that these clip are just one straight clip.

I created name supers for all the relevant people that featured in my TV News package. I done this by creating a plain green background in Microsoft Powerpoint. From there, I created my ideal name super using shapes and text, and also my TV News logo. 

I then saved that page as a JPG and imported it to CoralX8.

I put the image in the media slot and clicked on 'options'. I right clicked the image and put it to 'fit to screen'.' I then clicked on the box 'Mask and Chroma Key', and that it how I achieved my name supers. 

I added on screen graphics to my news report which included some stats and figures. I achieved this my clicking on Text. From there I added all the data which would benefit the audience from knowing. I think clicked on Text Background. I made the background a blue gradient. This is because the blue is part of my colour palette, which should be kept constant throughout my TV News package in order to give the brand establishment. 

I added a transition of Shuffle to allow the change of myself to the on screen graphics. As you can see I then changed the colour of the font to black to make it more readable and clear for the audience at home to read it. 

Final Local TV News Programme-

1st March

Creation of my Radio Advert-

Opening up Coral, I right click, click on Insert Audio>To Voice Track

I have located the radio advert that Connor had produced. There was a slight mistake in the recording, therefore I imported it again, and cropped out the mistake, continuing on with the advert. 

I also imported in my theme tune music tot he radio advert, via the same way as the speech, but just clicking To Music Track

After listening to the radio advert with the theme tune, I felt that the theme tune overpowered Connor speaking. To overcome this, I right clicked the music track and clicked on Open Option Panels

In the image above, it shows that I have changed the Music to 20 from 100. After listening to it again, it sounded much better, but I felt that the beats of the music was just in the wrong places. In order to make it sound more flowing, I downloaded the theme tune again, and converged the 2 together; fitting in the beats along with Connor speaking.

Here is my final Radio Advert.