The website I made for my group’s Net TV.
Category: 161MC
5th March 2013 – Today I finally got to experience what it was like to be in a TV studio and I was not disappointed. At first I was worried that I wouldn’t get the hand of any equipment in the studio just because of what I previously knew about television production and just the volume of wires involved in the process was mind boggling. As the session progressed I gradually became confident about being in the TV studio and using the equipment in there. My group was giving the task to create a TV program that incorporated Spontaneity, which I felt might be trouble compared to what other groups were tasked with.
19th March 2013 – We chose our roles today and I have to say I am disappointed that I didn’t get the role I wanted, but I’m going to stay optimistic and try to be the best Researcher I can be. I really wanted to be a Camera operator but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Sigh.
3rd May 2013 – FINALLY. After feeling sidelined and not really inputting at all in my role as researcher I was thrown a bone and the director asked me to be on Camera three due to the fact that the previous camera operator for that camera wasn’t showing up for important sessions and obviously you need to have a camera operator for all cameras. This change has prompted me to get involved with the production, I feel apart of the team now so that’s good. Usually when I came into the studio I would sit around not doing anything at all because of what my role meant, not anymore!
9th May 2013 – Unfortunately our TV studio session was marred by absences and our presenter injured herself the night before so we had to struggle with a member of the team who had no experience of presenting and she did quite considering she never practiced presenting at all so hats off to her. But, that’s not her role so in terms of personal development it was pointless and with the live recording session so close it was imperative to have everyone in their roles. Another issue was one of our runners showed up late to the session and we actually needed more than one runner as the amount of things that needed doing was just growing. She was late because she overslept after being on a night out, to be honest I was going to go out that night too but after getting my role changed to something where I’m actually needed in studio I decided against it. The runner then said she does “Nothing” in the studio session so wasn’t too fussed about the sessions, which I can sympathize with because up until a week ago I felt the same and just get involved in anything. My morale was low. In the less sought after roles in the TV studio you can really feel sidelined and unimportant if you are not kept busy which will result in you switching off and not really being bothered, so I understand.
13th May 2013 – The last session before the live session and it dawned on me that there is no room for mistakes during the live sessions, we do get three chances to record a program, but that isn’t the point, every take should be better than the last. I have settled into my new role very well and I am doing the best I can. The amount of run-throughs we did was limited because of how long it took for us to set everything up. We all said that it should take us thirty minutes to set up everything but it took us almost an hour. This wasn’t good as the live session would only last two hours so on that basis we would only have one hour to record our twelve minute program three times, tight squeeze. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
14th May 2013 – We are live! Yesterday we all agreed to arrive at Uni at 12pm and meet in the basement to go over the run-through and iron out any issues we might have with the show. We just talked about our VT’s made sure we had them and happy with them, talked about the setting up process. Our floor manager came up with the notion that all those stationed in the gallery stay in the gallery and set up their allocated equipment ready for recording and all those stationed in studio and runners stay in the studio stay in there and help set up the set as we will need more people to build the set. This was very clever as yesterday one of the reasons it took so long for us to set up the studio was because people kept going back and forth between the gallery and studio. 3pm-5pm. For two hours I was focused on producing a twelve-minute program. We got in the studio and a instantly discovered a problem with the focus of my camera. For long-shots it wouldn’t focus but for close-ups it would focus. I thought I fixed this problem but I didn’t, as I harshly found out during a live recording when the camera wouldn’t focus. That meant for the live performance I had to resort to a close-up of the main performer, which was disappointing, as I wanted to cut to different angles. Overall I think the recording went great, I‘m very happy with end product minus a few minor glitches, but for our first time doing something of that magnitude the final product was tremendous.
This module has had its ups and downs. The first half of this module was very good, I felt it enhanced my interactive media skills somewhat and overall this module has opened my mind up to many different ways I can produce media, what platform to put them on and how to position the media I have produced. I especially like the idea of the Mash-Up task; re-using media already available to us to tell another story is not only creative but challenging too. This helped me improve my research skills as I had to source different but specific clips from the internet to make the mash-up make sense which I think worked pretty well in the end. Editing it all together was a very long process, as I had to pay attention to detail otherwise it wouldn’t make sense and it would just fall apart. I also enjoyed creating a personal online identity and a logo for myself although I do think I am going to change my logo that task helped me think about how I brand myself online to give a better view of my thoughts and develop a style as to how I produce media to help me stand out from the crowd. Task three was the interactive part of this module that really opened my eyes up to the use of Internet tools to produce media, not just recording sound or film. This method of re-telling a fairytale was fun to make on social media platforms as my group and I created the different social network accounts and actually had to think and, tweet and update statuses in the fashion our character would thus giving them life, we had to become them. We tweeted and posted things on Facebook that would actually affect them if they actually did have Twitter.
The T.V. studio part of this module seemed exciting to me because I would be learning about how television programs are made and then make one ourselves using professional standard equipment! This experience was vital and will definitely aid me in the future if I ever decide to do Television production or even on work experience at a television studio. But, after not getting a role I preferred I kind of lost all excitement because I felt my role, Researcher was a role that didn’t require any input as others were basically already doing my role for me, so I didn’t get involved as much as I would liked to. In the second week from the actual recording I did get put on Camera three which I enjoyed very much, I felt important to the show whereas I didn’t before and I did feel I did well in this role. On hindsight I wish I had chose to be apart of the VT team, that way I could film and edit VT’s and stay involved in how the end product looked. Lectures in the T.V. studio part of this module also didn’t help as I found the lectures from Karen boring and dull so I didn’t really learn much from them, I had re-read of the lecture material to get a better understanding. The website designing made me think about what actually goes into any website I visit on a daily basis and what that website does to keep me on it for hours and how social media is integrated into that website to make it easier to access. In addition, how social media can be utilized by magazine television programs like TopGear to keep their audience involved via daily updates of what they can expect on future shows.
Overall this module has definitely opened my media brain up to different ways to produce media and the many different tools out there. It also opened my eyes up to the finer detail of catering to your audience that you know you have, this means making media to suit their needs and gratifications.
I think that social media is an integral part of my personal and professional development. Social media connects people so easily through a lot of different types of networks such as Sport, Entertainment or Political networks. People can join up to social networks and find people who have the same interests and thoughts as themselves. With relation to producing media, social media is a great platform to put my work on and to get my work out into the open world as the Internet is a vast place and everyone uses the Internet whether it is for personal or professional use or both.
Social media can also affect my work in the sense of it affecting how I decide to produce media. You can find out many ways to produce media just from what you see on Twitter or Facebook because of how easy information is shared. I could see something and decide to do my own take on that for example, The Cinnamon Challenge had millions of people trying to swallow cinnamon as challenge, they would record it and upload it to YouTube, Facebook etc. for fun, for something to do or to just garner a large internet following. Vlogger’s are another example of this or aspiring rappers/singers who want to be recognized doing covers of mainstream songs to be noticed.
Creating a professional ID has and will continue to up my game as I continue to go through a phase of self-branding to position myself in the world of media so when people click on my Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress or YouTube accounts they know they can expect me and my ‘brand’ of produced media products, having some sort of professional online identity is very important to me and I think it’s importance will grow as we progress through this digital age.
The world of media is a vast and interesting industry. The media, in one way or another via different mediums affects everybody whether the medium is Television, film or radio. I think those three mediums are seen as the traditional three mediums if you will. Those three mediums have been around the longest and are undoubtedly the most dominate. Print based media such as magazines and newspapers are also booming industries and are very accessible as your common newspaper/magazine would cost less than £5 and available in every major supermarket.
However, over the past thirty years with the invention of the World Wide Web in in the 1990s the Media industry has changed and you could argue it has become more accessible. Digital media has come about and grown, there are now many different platforms to produce and share media. This growth in digital media has seen Television and Radio in particular decline in popularity. The social media phenomenon which has come in the form of many social networking websites from ranging from MySpace to Twitter providing its signed up users with a free service where they can access all sorts of media free of charge at anytime, anywhere as long as they have a internet connection, which is easy to acquire.
Social media has changed the way we use media. We are much more opinionated and will feel no two ways about voicing these opinions on our social networking accounts. They allow us to be free without the worry of persecution as these networks are vast it is easy to slot yourself into a group/type of person who also shares the same opinions as you. To produce media that is recognized and respected a person will start by releasing it on their social networking website rather than putting on a memory stick or CD at a fee the same media product can be shared on Facebook or Twitter and be seen by more people than handing out CDs at a shopping mall where a person can ignore you. With social networking the information is placed in front of you, if something engages the user then he/she will go on to find out more about it.
We always log onto Facebook or Twitter or any other social networking website to get updated on our friends lives our too simply update ourselves with the latest gossip, fashion, entertainment or sports news. That’s the thing social networks are just one big platform where we tailor our own accounts to have access to what we want, every other medium is integrated. Television programs, radio programs, musicians, film directors, films, actors and actresses all use social networking to promote themselves and various things they are involved in as well as updates on things personal to them rather than just producing flyers and trailers, social media has become the cheapest and most effective way to advertise media products especially with the invention of apps, it’s like our phones have been turned into advertising machines and with the choice to filter out what we don’t want to know about online the companies Twitter’s/Facebook’s we do chose to subscribe to will keep advertising new products to us with spending big money on advertising. Look at Facebook, because of the big advertising tool it is, having 1.11 billion active users as of March 2013 it is worth over $1bn US dollars and held its initial public offering on 18th May, 2012 on the NASDAQ stock exchange at $38 a share. Social networking has clearly not just changed the face of media but it has changed the face of business too.
To summarise, what makes social media such a powerful tool in media is that on one single account a user can have FREE access to ALL main mediums, live updates and it can all be located on portable devices such as mobile phones and tablet because of the introduction of apps. From the media producers point of view it provides a big platform for them to place their work at a click of a button and it will still be on the same page, there for all. They can easily garner feedback via comments or messages on the product all for free too.
When I started designing my website I made a conscious decision to use slightly less ‘heavy’ colour’s like red due to my shows topic of fashion. I also wanted to give the website a ‘breath of fresh air’ look which explains the opacity of the header and several boxes on different pages. The colours in our programs logo are what eventually informed my colour scheme for the website. I chose to stay with the colours light blue, light green and white as they compliment each other and they are the colours present in the logo for our program. These colours not only look together but also are soft and welcoming to the user and slow grows on them, the colour scheme is easy on the eyes and not too in loud and in your face.
With a lot of magazine programs websites like Topgear and Loose Women they have the latest things of importance on their home page, things they think that will make the user want to delve deeper into their website. I have decided to follow this model with four items that I think the user would want to click on and find more about thus enticing to browse other parts of the website that haven’t been advertised like so. Social networking is also a big part of the common magazine programs website to garner audience interaction and keep them involved so I have made sure that the Facebook, Twitter and WordPress icons are available and seen on every page at the top and the bottom and the page. The Facebook and Twitter icons are linked the Net TV’s Facebook and Twitter pages whereas the WordPress icon is linked to my blog. I also added a live Twitter feed, which can be seen on every page so the user is also connected to Net TV live.
I had to keep the navigation bar’s colour scheme similar to that of the pages on the website so I chose it to have a slightly darker blue and fully solid, not opaque because it would simply blend into the background. I chose to have the font black and when a mouse is hovered over a page on the navigation bar it changes to a slightly darker green than the shade I chose which shows you which page you are currently viewing on the navigation bar. The font style I chose compliments the colours of the website colour scheme as it is smoothly joint up and is again easy on the eyes.
Dropdown menus were useful to me as the shortened the length of the navigation bar so I added two dropdown menus where they were needed and the pages include on them are subpages. Giving the main pages broad names which suggest anything could be on them such as ‘Net TV: The Show’ left the option of dropdown menus open because fitting everything about the show on one page would be difficult and I think it would be an overload of information to the user. On the ‘Contact Us’ page I chose to add a Google Maps app to show the exact location of where Net TV is situated.
I was set an assignment to create a ‘mash-up’ of different clips all meshed together to create a story/topic, we had to use work that we had previously created in Term 1. My group and I decided to base the project around slaps in the British soap opera Eastenders.
Layered Entertainment
“Semiotics is the study of cultural signs and symbols”
This is my cover photo. The denotation of the cover photo is Arsenal F.C.’s Emirates Stadium, their home ground. I have always supported Arsenal, due to the fact they are one of the closest football teams to my house in London and I also like the way they play football. This cover photo connotates that I might be involved with Arsenal in some sort of way, maybe I work there or I support them. It could even suggest that I’m into architecture because the architects who designed the stadium are a well-known firm formerly named HOK Sports, now known as Populous have designed loads of different sports stadiums Wembley stadium. This cover photo could suggest a football fan but also could suggest that I’m looking to become a professional footballer and that I’m already affiliated with Arsenal F.C. on a football players level.
The above image shows the musicians pages that I have liked, they are as follows: The Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, Nas, Jay-Z and Dr. Dre. They are a few of my favorite rappers to listen to so on the surface someone would think that’s the only reason why I have liked their pages. But, me liking their pages could also connotate me respecting their separate business acumen as they all (minus Notorious B.I.G.) run their own businesses, most notable at the moment is probably Dr. Dre’s ‘Beats by Dre’ headphone line. This could lead me to interact with people who are interested in the world of business and not only those who listen to music.
The image above denotates my ‘likes’ on Facebook. A few movies I have liked are as follows: ‘Gladiator’, ‘Reservoir Dogs’, Pulp Fiction, ‘American Gangster’ and ‘Shank’. All of these films are generically action/crime films and all are American films except ‘Shank’. The image above connotates that I could possibly be interested in the world of media combined with previous image of the different musicians pages I liked. Two of the films I liked were Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and ‘Pulp Fiction’. This could suggest Quentin Tarantino is one of my favorite filmmakers in the Film industry. Another connotation is that I could be interested in acting, due to the plethora of well-known actors in these films, such as Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Russell Crowe and Tim Roth.
This is my twitter profile page, I use Twitter way more than Facebook as a means to meet new people and discuss general topics such as politics, music, economics and sports. My cover denotates a Burger King Whopper burger. It’s a random photo and chose to put it there because I couldn’t think of anything else I wanted to put there, it suggests that I don’t really take myself seriously on twitter and also that I enjoy fast food very much.
My logo and overall online identity
I decided on the name ‘Layered Entertainment’ because it represents my online identity, I don’t just tweet/blog/make statuses about one particular topic/common interest and I don’t use it for one particular reason e.g. to only keep in contact with people, I use social networking websites to meet new people who might have share the same interests me. ‘Layered Entertainment’ is me saying, I am layered, there are different sides to me, like there would be different side to my company, such as producing different media texts for different uses and gratifications. When I was thinking about the design of the logo I wanted something colourful so that it can be easily remembered and I also wanted it to have a distinct feature, something different from the usual camera and text on other media companies logo’s to help it stand out even more. First I chose to base my logo on an Onion because it is layered, but it just was feasible and I couldn’t get the right colour out of the image I selected. Then I chose a ‘Layer cake’, because of my love for food I guess, relating back to my online identity and also because it has layers. I made the layers on the cake different colours to further make the image stand out.
Welcome 