Production Diary Week 1

On the 19th of October, we got put into groups for Dave's assignment, to come up with a news package. We have just found out, for Ricardo's assignment, it ties in with Dave's assignment. Ricardo's is a live multi cam news broadcast, whilst using Daves VT as part of the live news show. The news show must have, a presenter, a guest and a VT. My group consisted of me, Mikael, Luke and Imogen, we have come up with the idea of alcohol and smoking awareness. The subject of our news package has to tie in with the college, so we decided to focus on students who drink or smoke or even both. We had to research about alcohol and smoking. We searched things like how bad smoking really is, is second hand smoke worse than actually smoking and many more facts. We found our information from http://smokefree.nhs.uk/advice-and-information/faqs/
When we researched alcohol and its affects, we discovered that there was a lot of information we could use in our news package, so it would be more beneficial if we narrowed it down to one of either the smoking or alcohol, but if we were to narrow it down, we would find it easier and more informative if we used alcohol instead of smoking as a lot more students drink alcohol than students who smoke. There was a lot of useful information on http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts

Drink & Smoke Awareness News Package

Group 2 consists of Me, Luke, Imogen and Mikael and we are looking at drinking and the affects of alcohol on students.

There are loads of different aspects that we can look into, such as the financial side of it, How much people spend? The health side of it, such as Do people know how many calories are in what they are drinking? I've found out off the drink awareness page http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/calories-in-alcohol that in a pint of Lager it has the same amount of calories as a burger, and that a glass of wine has the same amount of calories as a slice of cake.

We also found out that the government advises men to drink 3-4 units a day which works out to be 1 and a half pints of 4% beer and females should drink 2-3 units a day which is around a 175ml glass of wine, we found this off the drink awareness page as well. http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/alcohol-facts-and-information/what-is-alcohol
We found a video on Alcohol awareness that will help us a lot as it shows us how alcohol news packages are set up and the structure of the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpdVxVESflc

We also found some stats off the same website that indicates that around 33,000 people die every year off alcohol relation. Where as between 2007 and 2008 around 30,000 people was sent to hospital with alcohol poisoning. http://www.drinkaware.co.uk/facts/effects-of-alcohol-2

We are also looking at smoking awareness too, at how much students spend a week on smoking? How often they smoke? What made them start smoking? And are they intending to quit?

I found that there are around 6 billion people on this earth, and there is around 1 billion smokers, so that makes 1 in 6 people on this planet are smokers. Smoking has been proven to produce cancer in the pancreas, kidnet, bladder and cervix. I got this information from http://smokingadvice.info/smoking-advice/smoking-facts.php 

I've also found out that smoking during pregnancy increases the chances of a miscarriage. Around 10 million cigarettes a minute are sold, which makes it around 15 billion a day and most smokers start under the age of 25. http://smokingadvice.info/smoking-advice/smoking-facts.php
Possible questions:
Do you drink or smoke? (cut away)
When did you first start? (cut away)
What was the reason for starting? (cut aways)
How long have you been doing this? (cut aways)
how often do you drink/smoke?  (cut aways)
How much do you spend weekly on this? (cut aways)
Are you aware of the risks? (cut aways)
Are you planning on quitting? (cut aways)
Structure:
Opening scene can be a cut away of someone lighting a cigarette, whilst the reporter introduces the subject. Have snipits of people being interviewed about smoking/drinking then a cut away to people walking in/out a local pub.
snipit of a two shot between reporter and student being interviewed. outward zoom from a pub/bar sign to a student.
Reporter talking about the issues of smoking/drinking (health issues, costs etc)
close up of a pint, then have someone pick it up and start drinking whilst 4-5 second zoom out to a long shot.

First filming & editing.

This is my first attempt at editing and was my first real part in filming... Other than filming on my phone! I didn't realise how precise filming had to be. After we finished filming, me Matty and Fred played our recordings to Peter, that's when we realised how much we've missed out! Firstly, we didn't get enough GV (cut aways) we only did one cut away per person, where I've now realised that when editing, you need plenty of different cut aways to help once you've edited your piece you can use the cu aways so the final piece doesn't look rough and unprofessional by constant cutting to different parts and not fitting in well with other clips!
Another mistake I made was that my person I interviewed (Fred) was too low in the shot, where as his head should be at the top of the shot. This is another thing I didn't think would be a problem, but how wrong i was.
Another thing I messed up on was that we didn't shoot in 4:3 safe, so if this was published on tv and someone didn't have a widescreen tv it would most likely cut some of the scene! I also didn't pay much attention to white balance so when i play back what i've shot, you can tell instantly that its a bit dark.
I got told that my interviewee was too close to the wall, you can see his shadow and that I should have moved him away a bit.
We watched other peoples interviews today in class and now that i've seen everyone else's, it kind of puts mine to shame at how much better theirs looks compared to mine. I suppose that it is only my first go at filming and editing, I can't get any worse than this!

Production Diary Week 10

We have now broke up for Christmas, we have at this point finished our editing, which means we have finished the VT for the live shoot. During the festive holiday break, I have started the 1500 word essay and by this point finished roughly 1000 words. We went back to University on the 4th of January. We have decided to sort out our presenter, camera operators, sound technician, guests and the presenters script. So me Mikael, Imogen and Luke decided to have Matty Jump as our presenter, he is comfortable performing this role and seems confident about the task. We have chosen our camera operators to be, Jack, Fred and Ashley, mainly because these have a good background of using cameras and would be beneficial if we had someone on camera that knew what they were doing and felt confident about it. Our live guests are going to be Erin and Abid, this is because we want two different looks on drinking on the live show, as Erin drinks but Abid doesn't. Lastly, our sound technician is going to be Nabeel, this is because Nabeel has a lot of experience when it comes to the sound side of things.