Digital News Unit: Critical Reflection

Broadstairs Food Festival Reflection


Overall I think this piece was decent; it falls a little due to our reporter talking rather quickly and the framing of our interview with Jo being side on as opposed to a more angled one. I made the mistake of, whilst Mike was running about getting cutaways, not recording audio with the shots resulting in me having to find royalty-free sound effects online to overlay said cutaways.

The framing of the rest of the shots were great: Mike was on camera and made sure things looked as good as possible.

I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the piece though as we had to film this on very short notice: the 2nd week into our course in fact.



Folkestone Triennial Reflection


This piece, I feel, is the stronger of the two: with a more cleaner look to it. There wasn't a rush in having to produce it as we had plenty of time to plan ahead. The reporter did a very good job in speaking her lines and we got through the day pretty quickly. I was on camera for this one and I feel I did a good job but there are a couple of over-exposure issues. The sound is better too and the graphics really help bring the piece up to a more professional standard.



Overall Unit Reflection

One thing I've learned is that making news is tough. We've had several weeks to make two pieces whilst in reality the reporters have a few hours. I'm very impressed on how quickly the professionals do it!

Everyone did their parts well and each contributed to the projects: everyone had a creative control which allowed some good ideas to be proposed and eventually carried out.

Digital News Unit: Making the Teaser and other adjustments

Making the teaser was pretty straightforward, my plan was to make the clips move onto the screen and off again in time with the voice-over we recorded.

After the title intro the word 'Kentertainment' shrinks...

...to the bottom left of the screen to make way for...

...video of the food festival as the teaser speaks.

After a few seconds the clip moves to the left out of frame...

...so the next clips about the Triennial can come in.

I think the teaser looks good and adds a bit of production vale to the whole project. The Logo at the bottom keeps the brand established and adds to the whole news aesthetic.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production - Green Screen

Mike put the raw footage we shot on the green screen through After Effects and this was the finished product:

I like it a lot: I think the logo is a nice touch and Jasmin is placed in a good position: instead of being central she is slightly off to the right where a natural focus point is.

There is a slight bit of pixellation on her left shoulder and left side of her head but this doesn't ruin the whole product.

There is an issue with the sound as you can hear a hoover in the background. I attempted to reduce it with the audio equaliser in Final Cut Pro but this distort Jasmin's voice making it sound like she was talking into a cup and making a dullish noise.

When we were recording the presenter pieces we couldn't hear it which might have been because the hoover was on and was drowning out the audio we were listening to resulting in us not picking it up.

Overall I think the green screen was successful; fits in with the brand and isn't too formal.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production - Teaser

The brief states that we need a presenter-led teaser:

We have contacted Jasmin beforehand about this a week ago but have got no response; meaning we need to ask someone to do it for us.

Me and Sophie were in so I wrote a quick script for the teaser literally just teasing the story to keep the attention of the audience and we asked Hannah (as she was in) if she would be willing to provide the voice which would fit in with our project as our presenter and reporters are all female.

The Folkestone teaser was a little harder to write: we wanted to put "And the Folkestone art festival receives a surprise contribution" but this was already in the presenter lead-in to the Folkestone piece so we couldn't use it.

Hannah obliged and we used the Sony EX1 with a shotgun mic and dead cat which I had brought back in from filming my fiction adaptation to record the audio which took less than 5 minutes.

We recorded all 4 of the Folkestone lines to allow options when we go to show Mike and Aimee but all that's left to do is make the visuals for the teaser and the project should be finished.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production - Edit

With Cecily's voice-overs now added into the film; I focussed on the finished presenter pieces that Mike worked on in After Effects:

The green screen shot.

The green screen looks good, despite a slight pixellation on the right side of Jasmin's head the rest looks fine, it has depth and looks real enough. Mike told me he blurred the background a little to create a depth-of-field look.

I like how the logo is in sight to give the set some branding and give it a more official aesthetic.

After adding her lead-ins and the send-off I added in the strap-lines:

There were 5 in total for Jamsin, Jo, Cecily, Chetna and Sheryll. The paint effects look great and really fit in with our brand. Mike did these in After Effects: removing the paint from the paper in the video and then enlarging them before overlaying the text and exporting them to give to me.

With these now in the timeline I set out to polish off the film: firstly working on the audio and making sure it was audible but not blowing out or sounding sharp. I found that I had to raise the new Cecily voice-overs slightly through an audio enhancer in Final Cut Pro as they were a little too quiet and equalise the presenter pieces due to a vacuum cleaner being used outside the room we filmed in. 

Unfortunately I couldn't remove the vacuum completely without drastically distorting Jasmin's voice so I had to reduce it slightly and leave it at that.

Next I added in end credits; they're not long but it gives a closure to the film and adds more aesthetics in terms of professionalism. 

The font also lends itself to our brand and styling, not looking corporate and instead looking friendly and light: also keeping in with our brand.

I feel the edit is coming along very well: there's virtually nothing else left to do other than get music and record a presenter-led teaser for what will be coming up on the show.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production - Re-recordings

Last sunday myself, Mike and Aimee met up with our Broadstairs Food Festival reporter, Cecily, to re-record her lines so we could have a slower pace.

This didn't take too long to record: only 3/4 takes and we were done.

Listening back to them they definitely sound better and easier to keep up with. I added these to the edit and raised the audio as they were quieter in comparison to the rest of the film.

Raised to 12dB from the default 0dB.

The slower recordings also extended the duration of the O.B piece to just over the brief-requirement of 2 minutes.

Next up: adding in the green screen and strap-lines.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production: The Intro Finished

Mike used After Effects to create and animate our introduction using the Jackson Pollock style we did earlier.




I think it looks good; the text is clear to read and the paint style is visible inside the text. I feel it fits the brand pretty well.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production: Editing the Food Festival

I turned my attention back to the Broadstairs Food Festival edit.

It was tricky trying to focus on the edit as we plan to re-record the voice-over bits for Cecily: leaving not much else to do.

The main problem was putting cutaways in to get some space between the voiceover so it's not a constant stream of voice in the report. The cutaways we did have didn't have audio so I had to find some royalty-free sound effects online to use.

The 2 audio tracks in the middle are royalty-free sounds.

The issue with adding cutaways though is that the more I add: the less of a live broadcast the piece becomes; instead looking more like a news package or documentary film.

But with not much else to add in there's few options, plus the running time is a little under 1 minute 40 seconds meaning we're coming up short on the required time.

With the draft deadline tomorrow I'm going to have to make do with what we have ready and hope the re-recordings improve the overall project as well as adding time onto it.

Digital News Unit: Production - Presenter Pieces

Yesterday we had Jasmin come in to do the presenter's dialogue for our news channel.

Setting up the green screen; the lighting and the camera didn't take long.

View from the presenter's seat.

The crew view.

We decided to move a table from the corner of the classroom over to the presenter's chair as it was much larger than the tables attached to the seats and looked a little more professional. 

Since the camera was about 8-10 feet from the presenter's chair we placed Aimee's Mac with the script opened on one of the chair-desks and zoomed in on the document so only one box of dialogue was visible at any one time.

Jasmin arrived a little after 12pm and we briefed her on what would be happening.

We attached a shotgun mic to the PMW and I stood next to Jasmin and pointed the mic at her, I was able to get very close, right in the frame in fact, as I could be removed in editing due to the green screen. 

We filmed all lines with Jasmin seated before moving the table and chair away and getting her to re-do all of the lines whilst standing up: giving us the freedom of choosing which one would look better.

It took around about 30 - 40 minutes to film it all.

At the start she was a little off: stumbling over the lines and possibly a tad nervous but she managed to get into a stride after a short while and give all of the lines without a problem.

I feel I learnt a little more about lighting: practice makes perfect and working out the best possible angles to point the lights. Some bodging was also done in the form of placing the Mac below the PMW lens as a makeshift auto-cue.

Overall I think it went very well; the green screen shouldn't be an issue, the set up and lighting was fine and the lines well-delivered. 

Digital News Unit: Post-Production: Editing Part 2

After Sophie edited the Bansky news package I was given it to add in some extra things and see if any other edits were needed. In an earlier post I mentioned that we may struggle to hit 2 minutes due to not getting an interview but thankfully that issue never arose and we surpassed 2 minutes instead (2 minutes 8 seconds at time of posting).


One of our segments involves an image of the Folkestone harbour area to so we can show where certain bits of regeneration are happening. I looked at the effects section to see if there was a highlight effect so I could make the areas more visible. There was so I added this in for the first regeneration project: a garden area.

I tried to do it for the second area but I had an issue with the colour of the shot: it would make it twice as dark for every extra spotlight effect I added in.

Noticeably darker. 

I couldn't reduce the darkness without making the spotlight weaker and harder to see so to get round this I cut the original shot into 3 separate ones at the point the reporter mentioned the next regen project and gave each one its own spotlight effect: this got rid of the darkness issue but meant each spotlight only lasted as long as the cut down clip was.

On the timeline you can see the clips have been cut shorter.

The third spotlight.

I watched through and felt the spotlights were disappearing too quickly so I saved a single frame of the first two and then overlaid them on top of the segment. I then trimmed the clips so only a small portion of the single frame was left: this allowed the other spotlights to be seen. So it’s basically 3 images overlaying each other and trimmed so all of the spotlights can be seen.

These are the two screenshots after trimming their size.

Screenshots now added over the original clip.

And done: now the first two spotlights stay for the remainder of the segment.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production: Presenting the Edits

We showed Helen the rough cuts for our Food Festival footage and the Banksy news package footage. Below are the comments made:

Food Festival:

- The reporter speaks too quickly. It's hard to keep up.
- There needs to be some breathing room between reports.
- The final clip "With lots going on over the next 3 days its sure to be a great year so come on down, tuck in and see what Britains got to offer.. I’m Cecily Snowball signing out, back to the studio." could be shortened to just the tag.


Banksy News Package:

- There are a lot of PTCs .
- The shots were good though.

Our plan of action is to contact Cecily and ask her if she can re-record her voice-over lines. With that done I can add them in to the Food festival edit.

Digital News Unit: Production - The News Package Shoot

On Wednesday we went to Folkestone to film our news package about the Banksy piece and the Triennial being held in the town.

Below is the final script.

Banksy Script Proper

The portion highlighted in red was something we were unsure about whether or not to keep but we recorded it anyway just incase we needed it.

We met Sheryll at around 11am in front of where the Banksy piece was set up; myself and Mike set up the camera and sound whilst Aimee and Sophie got Sheryll settled and aware of what we we'd be filming today and was handed the printed script.

We got through most of her pieces to camera in about an hour to an hour-and-a-half and by half 2 - 3 'o' clock we had finished her speaking parts. So she left to head back and we stayed to get shots of Dwelling by Krijn De Koning.

I felt the day went very well: Sheryll was great and professional and remembered her lines perfectly with only a short amount of rehearsal. The shots we did get were good and kept to the rule of thirds: sound wasn't an issue either.

One particular shot I'm proud of is the walkie-talkie with Sheryll walking beside the harbour: aside from slight overexposure and a too-abrupt stop by the camera when Sheryll comes to a stop (my fault as I was camera operator for the day) I think it's one of the best shots of the shoot, if not the whole project thus far. Sophie was on the boom 10 feet away walking with Sheryll and Mike was beside me acting as the pull-focus whilst I panned and zoomed so it was quite an elaborate process for a 15 second shot. But it was fun.

A downside to the day was that again, we filmed some PTC's with the intention of using them as cutaways if we had too many: meaning that there will be background noise if they are used as voice-overs. Also we didn't get the interview the script mentions, meaning we may struggle in hitting the 2 minute mark.

Digital News Unit: Post-Production: Editing the Food Festival Footage

Originally our plan today was to film our in-studio presenter pieces with Jasmin but unfortunately she didn't get back to us in time.

This left us with a free day so I took to finishing the script for our Banksy news package and working on editing the footage we shot at the Broadstairs Food Festival.

I placed what clips we had in the order the script has it as. 

After doing so I had an idea of overlaying the voice-over mentioning the demonstration with Chetna Makan with a shot of the demonstration and then the shot of the interview: which the voice-over would then transition into by dropping the volume and increasing the interview's.

I've seen this method before in news but it's usually reserved for packages; which was an issue as this report was an O.B. I thought it would add a little something interesting visually as opposed to shot-ptc-shot-ptc etc. 

One issue with the voice-over parts was that we filmed them inside the festival; it would make much more sense to record them inside a car or a quiet environment with virtually no background noise. A voice-over shouldn't have any background noise.
Another issue is that some of the voice-over sections are split: take for example the section about the volunteers:

This was meant to be done in one take, instead it was done as two separate clips meaning that when it comes to placing the voice-over into the project, the background noise is going to be different; breaking any continuity that the piece has.

Despite these issues I have put together a basic cut using the footage we have but this is a strong lesson to learn and should hopefully not happen again.

Digital News Unit: Pre-Production: Presenter and Reporter

After we declined Sean's help we contacted the university again to see if any other students would be interested for the roles of presenter and reporter.

The university got back to us saying two more students were willing to help: Sheryll Goddard and Jasmin Sahota.

Aimen know that the role had now been filled. However; we decided that we were going to use a reporter for the Banksy piece as that would look and sound a whole lot better than the presenter doing it on top of hosting the show.

Before notifying them that they had got the roles we looked at showreels that they sent to us after requesting for them.

First is Sheryll's piece:



I feel she spoke well and clear and actually projected a slight personality into the dialogue instead of just sounding monotonous and like she was reading from a script. Plus she seemed very comfortable speaking aloud to the camera.

Next is a link to a project Jasmin presented:

http://www.centreforjournalism.co.uk/blogs/year-2-tv-news-day-5-december-2013

In the video it's clear she's reading from an auto-cue and she seems to fluff the odd line here and there and also sounds a little wooden. Compared to Sheryll she doesn't quite stand up.

We agreed with choosing Sheryll to be our presenter and reporter for our Banksy piece.
However; after a discussion amongst ourselves we decided that we should use a reporter for the Banksy piece as that would look, and sound, a whole lot better than the presenter doing it on top of hosting the show. I pictured it would be weird seeing the presenter do the lead in for the news package then suddenly hearing them again as they reported the story.

This meant we now had a role that needed to be filled: so with Jasmin available we've chosen her to be the presenter and move Sheryll to the role of reporter as she's better suited for it. Aimee asked her whether she'd be able to come to Folkestone with us to report the Banksy story and she said yes.

We also notified Jasmin about the presenter and that we'd need her for Tuesday 21st.
Everything seems set: all that's required is the Banksy script to be finished.

Digital News Unit: Pre-Production - Green Screen

 On Friday we got Fergus to teach us setting up the green screen and how to light it up.

We're choosing to use the Baseroom as it's a small enough space to film in and set up a smaller green screen as opposed to setting up a massive one when we won't be using that much of it. 

Myself and Fergus set up the green screen and we all moved the chars back so there was adequate space.

Next Fergus opened the blinds as he said natural light doesn't leave harsh shadow as it's everywhere and is of course the most natural of light. 

However there were only windows on one side leaving a shadow on the unexposed side, this resulted in Fergus closing the blinds and using the lights in the room. Luckily the lights were quite natural in themselves: giving off a white a very light-blue shade. This meant half the work was already done: the lights had evenly lit the green screen which is a key thing you have to make sure of otherwise you end up with different shades of green and that makes keying it out harder. I chose to sit down and pretend to be the presenter for the sake of getting the framing and lighting right.

All that was left was to get some even lighting across my face. Fergus said that to simply aim the tungsten light at me would leave very harsh shadows on the areas the light didn't hit and also make my face far too bright. This meant we needed to dissipate the light to make it softer. We could reflect it off of a reflector or use a filter. 

Fergus chose both. Since the tungsten light was giving off yellow we needed to cancel it out so he stuck a Dichroic daylight filter on it to make it a nice white and more natural light.

Filter was still on the light when the photo was taken.

Fergus then tilted the tungsten light, also known as a redhead, to face the ceiling: the white tiles reflected the light back down onto me and dissipated it to some extent allowing a softer light to hit me.

Fergus left us to get used to the setup and we filmed a test with me pretending to present.

It was a good test as I learnt how best to light someone up using reflections and filters. I also learned about Dichroic filters are very useful and how to set up a green screen. All of this, to me, was valuable information as someone who wants to be a director: it can help me to set up a scene easier knowing how I can light up a person in different ways.

Digital News Unit: Pre-Production - The Presenter

We received a response from a student at The University of Kent who was interested in being our presenter/anchorman.

He supplied us with a link to his website which features a showreel.

http://www.seanprevil.com




I felt he spoke well and clearly but the downside was that he is Canadian: and our channel is Kent-based. It may be off-putting for our audience, also there was no real emotion or charisma when he presented. Our channel doesn't contain heavy stories so a serious tone would be odd to hear.

With this in mind Aimee contacted him to let him know that we would not be using him in our piece, he responded positively.

Digital News Unit: Production - The Intro

Today we decided to make one of our ideas for the intro: a Jackson Pollock-style video by flicking different coloured paints onto a sheet of paper.

A Jackson Pollock work.

Mike brought over his tripod and Canon and set it up on two tables that we had pushed together.

We bought some paints, brushes, pens and a pad of A3 paper and tried out the Pollock style with pens. The plan was to set the Canon to take a photo every 2 seconds to make a time-lapse.

Mike removed the card and imported the photos into his Mac and ran it through Final Cut Pro (00:00 - 00:03). We then did the pen method a second time (00:04 - 00:09). Next we used paints (00:10 - 00:18):

We then tried with dabbing our fingers into the paint and pressing them onto the page (00:20 - 00:31). Finally we decided to do the paint one again as the first time we did it we missed a corner of the page and it looked slightly odd. Afterwards Mike went to remove the card and realised he hadn't actually put it back in after importing the last set of photos so we re-done the paint flicking method (00:33 - 00:43).

Overall I feel the final paint-flicking method was the best out of them all, not only did it look pretty but it also captured the most of our brand and fitted in with our Banksy story.

Below is the video combining all of the attempts.

Digital News Unit: Pre-Production and Production - A Busy Week 4

Thursday was uneventful in terms of pre-production, Aimee attempted to call Jo again but she was unavailable.

With the festival starting the next day we were getting a little worried whether or not we would actually get permission to film there. Thankfully in the evening Aimee was contacted by Jo saying that we were allowed to film and we planned our departure time.

Not long after we were contacted by the reporter we had lined up saying she could help us. At last everything was ready.

On Friday, we picked up our reporter and began the hour-long drive down to Broadstairs. Upon arriving we waited for Mike to get there with the camera equipment. So we met up with Jo and introduced ourselves; afterwards we had a walk around and started to sight locations for where to do the pieces to camera and what cutaways we could get. Mike called and said he'd arrived so we made our way back to the entrance. On our way out we were told to not come in with the camera yet as Nigel Farage, the leader of the UKIP party was outside with a camera crew.

Mike met us outside and since we couldn't film inside yet I went with him to grab the camera to get some shots of the Broadstairs area that we could add to our cutaway list.

We returned and began to film the introduction and interview with Jo. Mike was on camera, I was on sound and Aimee and Sophie were co-directors/back-up sound: as in they also put on the headphones and said whether the sound was good or not.

Next we filmed the rest of the reporter's speaking parts and managed to get an interview with Chetna Makan: one of the celebrities who was doing a demonstration at the festival.

With the interviews and reporters' parts done we let Mike film a load of cutaways, he managed to quite a lot.

Thankfully the weather was lovely on the day: reaching around 22 degrees by the time we left and there was barely a cloud in the sky.

Overall I feel the day went off without a hitch, we all had our roles and knew what we were filming. The reporter was fine; she forgot the lines a few times and so we had to do a fair few re-takes. On a live broadcast this wouldn't be allowed but for what we were doing we were fine with letting her re-do her lines.
The shots we got are of a good standard and the sound is nice and clear.
I feel I've learnt a decent bit doing the shoot.
Firstly there's the time restraint: we had a good few hours to make our O.B but in a proper live scenario we wouldn't have this luxury.
Secondly, communication: if there was a problem with the technical side or if a correction needed to be made, we made it clear to everyone else.
Lastly I learnt to ignore the public: walking around with a boom pole and mic made a lot of heads turn which was an odd feeling. But I forced myself to ignore the stares and get on with the production.

Digital News Unit: Pre-Production - A Busy Week 3

After coming back from Folkestone on the Wednesday we set out to finish our script.

As this happened Aimee got 3 responses to an Email she sent out to The University of Kent asking if any of the Journalism students wanted to help us out.

Below is the finished script:

DigitalNewsScriptFood-4

The approach we took was to be friendly but not too chatty and sounding intelligent without using big fancy words, with the exception of connoisseur. So to create this we used the sentence "for those that like to enjoy some bubbly". By using the term "Bubbly" we've used a casual slang or abbreviation to refer to an item; therefore removing a sense of academic from the piece without ruining the professionalism of it.

We wanted to get some scale into the festival by using the 'over 100 stalls' which was mentioned on the website. This tells the audience that it isn't just a "group of people selling food": it's a large event with a huge crowd turning up.

Mentioning that the festival doesn't make any profit was important to us and was something we felt we had to include in the report. If the audience is aware that this isn't them throwing their money into a large company or conglomerate then they may be more willing to turn up as their money makes the next year's festival possible. They will feel directly responsible for the festival existing.

The Final box with the reporter was to create a welcoming sense to the piece, that included, and spoke directly to, the viewer. Using words like 'tuck' and 'feast' made the dialogue sound onomatopoeic despite the words not technically being forms of onomatopoeia, thus creating a more diverse and powerful-sounding piece-to-camera.
Including the stunt also involves the reporter with the festival and changing it from a person just talking about it to being a person getting involved with it. If the audience can see the reporter enjoying themselves then they will more likely be interested in it.

We wanted to get lots of shots of the festival and the stores to show the how packed and lively it was so that the audience could see that it is quite a big event.

Overall I feel the script is well written and tells a good story in terms of reporting the festival.

Digital News Unit: Pre-Production - A Busy Week 2

With our O.B story found, we now needed another story for our news package. We came across this:

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/folkestone/news/what-do-you-do-with-24309

With a Banksy artwork recently made in Kent: it's a relevant story to report on our channel as we're looking at entertainment and culture.

I went onto Google maps and looked for good locations to get shots of Folkestone: 

On that footpath seems to be a nice view of Folkestone.

I considered the idea of going up to the top of the hill and seeing what kind of view we could get.

This is the view down the opposite way to the picture above this one.

Shots of graffiti could be useful for the piece. 

Some shots of the seafront.