TV Show Filming!

All the anticipation and planning had been building up to one day: Wednesday 28th November 2012. This was the day that we were going to film the interview and demo for our show, 'The Beautiful Sport'. 

The day before, our group went in to set up for the show. We wanted it to look feminine but also sleek, so men wouldn't switch off because it looked too 'girly'. We wanted it also to look bright and happy to promote a positive image of sport and make people feel almost energised watching it. Whilst helping to make all the decisions of the set, it made me realise that the image of the show is just as important as the content because if the show looks rubbish to the viewer, they will be more likely to switch over. I was really proud of the finished product because it looked like a professional studio and looked great on camera.
Here is a photo of what our studio looked like:

I then went home and wrote the camera script that the director was going to use to direct us on the cameras. I found it hard at first but once I got into it it wasn't so bad. I'm really happy that I had the opportunity to do this because it allowed me to have an insight into another area of the TV industry. Looking back at it, I don't think directing is for me because I found it really difficult to work out what the cameras would look best filming at that specific time

When it came to the actual filming of the show, I was feeling pretty nervous as I'd never done anything like this before but thankfully we had a few practice runs. When we all felt confident enough we went straight ahead and filmed 2 versions of the real thing. It went amazingly well and I was really proud of all of our group. I loved being floor manager, ensuring the studio was safe and cuing the presenter and guest on and is definitely something I would love to do again. This was my favourite thing I have done on the course so far and made me realise that I would love to do this as a job.

Applied Media Research Detailed Research - Hollyoaks

Over the past few weeks, the other members in the group (Jodie and Emma) and I have done some research on some of the most popular multiplatform shows. The two that I did research on were Hollyoaks and X Factor. I chose to do these because as they are two of my favourite programmes I already knew quite a lot about the multiplatform aspects of them both. Also I knew that extra research on these two shows wouldn't feel like work as I would enjoy it and I always think if you enjoy work then it will be much better done. 

Hollyoaks
Hollyoaks, a soap aimed at young adults, has always strived to be innovative within the issues it focuses on and in the way the show is created. This is also shown in the way it has became a major player within multiplatform programming. I feel that this is a clever idea as the audience the show is aimed at, are more likely to interact online with a particular TV programme. Also as Hollyoaks is on every day except for the weekend, I think that it is vital that there are areas of the show that viewers can interact with over the weekend so they can maintain a high level of interest. 

As soon as you enter the official Hollyoaks site (http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/index.html ) you can instantly see that it is fully interactive, embracing the idea that users can register to join the site, with a section at the top titled, 'Stuff happening now' which is a live feed of what other users are 'liking' and commenting on within the site. 

As you scroll down there is a comment box in which members are invited to come and write down their views of the show at the moment, sparking conversation with other uses on the message board. The fact that this on the first page is good because I think it instantly shows that Hollyoaks are a show that welcome the audience to get involved and participate.

There are also links to their official Facebook and Twitter so fans can get gossip and news about the show before others. The Facebook has over 1.5million likes and the Twitter has over 150,000 followers showing that social networking and TV is now linked strongly than ever before. These networks are vital for shows to thrive as it is imperative that fans are kept interested and given the exclusive access they feel they deserve. This also allows for fans to tell the programme creators exactly what they think about the show and this can have an impact on how the show continues with characters and storylines. 

There is a blog on the site that gives away spoilers about that weeks upcoming storylines so fans that are interested can go and get some hints about what will come up -  something that me, personally as a fan, love to do. 

Hollyoaks also really care about what the fans want, and their ideas and suggestions. They recently asked for fans suggestions of a name for a character's baby and the executive producer, Bryan Kirkwood, went ahead and chose someone's winning answer. This is really encouraging for the future of multi platform programming as it shows that viewers can impact the programme by participating in decisions made about the character. 

In 2012, Hollyoaks created the fictional mini-site 'DocYou' which played a central role in the storyline of character, Esther, being online bullied, showing viewers just how it can affect a person's life. Fans were able to visit the actual DocYou site and see how the characters were interacting with eachother, and bullying Esther so they felt like they were actually in the story, making the characters seem like real people. However, Hollyoaks also added a variety of backstage videos showing the actors who played the characters involved with this site, talking about how bad cyber bulling is and how it can be stopped. This acts as a vital support system for fans who were going through the same thing and gave them confidence to get help. There was also a link to the official Hollyoaks DocYou Facebook site which fans could 'like' and talk about the issues with other fans.

There is also a page that shows the playlists from each episode and allows you to instantly download these playlists from iTunes allowing fans to also have a little piece of Hollyoaks on their music players!

Hollyoaks has been completely revolutionary in storylines involving fans participation, such as running a competition allowing 10 fans to attend a secret Wretch32 gig and being asked to film it, which would then appear in the actual televised episode of Hollyoaks. This is groundbreaking and why I am such a fan of the show, it's brilliant to see them use new digital media to their and the fans advantage and makes me excited to see what they will do next

Digital Artefact Planning

Our next task that we had to do for 'Beyond the Camera' was, in groups of 2, to create a digital artefact which would be a combination of images, video clips and sound. We were to make this on After Effects and try our best to source most of our own images and sound. I was excited to get stuck in because I was excited to learn more about After Effects and I knew that we could go as crazy as we wanted with this and do anything at all because I prefer to not have strict limitations on what I do. 

After an extremely helpful After Effects tutorial I felt lots more comfortable using the software and was amazed to learn about Rostrum Camera Techniques. This is when an image is panned across and zoomed in/out to show the viewer more of an image. It can be used to help tell a story and this is an element which fascinated me and I definitely wanted to explore this more in my artefact. 

Me and my group member, Elicia, came up with an idea of a walk in the park gone wrong, with an innocent person being followed and a scary ending. We know that we want to create an atmosphere with the sound and play around with it as we had never got the chance to work with such an emphasis on sound before. 

Over the next few weeks we plan to go out and capture our own images and sound because we want to project to be as much ours as possible. I am really happy about this as we haven't had as much chance yet this year to go out and shoot our own material for a university project.

Wish us luck!

TV Studio Final Planning

We are getting closer and closer to the filming of our TV show so I thought I would update you with all that has been going on and our final show and guest idea!

After compiling all of our ideas together we went with Dave's idea of female boxer, Natasha Jonas. She was in this year's Olympics, being one of the first female boxers ever to compete in the Olympics. We were really excited about getting her on the show as she would be a fascinating interview as she could tell us all about the Olympics and talk about female boxing which is an extremely topical and controversial issue at the moment. Dave managed to get her to agree by contacting her through the gym that she trained in. However unfortunately, she suddenly stopped contact with us and we had 2 options. We could either keep going with the contact in the hope that she would eventually reply or give up and find someone else. We decided to go with the latter as we didn't want to be left there on the day without the guest. This opened my eyes up to the unpredictability of TV and people can just let you down so it is vital that you always have a back up option. Thankfully we did. We still wanted to stick with a sporting guest we managed to find another local boxer called Dexter. He was getting ready for his big sporting comeback so he would have a lot to talk about relating to that. We could also bring up the contraversial issue of female boxing too so we were happy with this decision. 

When deciding on the concept of the show we felt it was vital to do something completely new that had never been seen before. The brief stated that we needed a quirky and unusual concept and we wanted to follow this to the full degree. We thought about what type of shows that there is a gap in the market for and what type of people would be at home watching lunchtime shows. We knew that a lot of women are housewives and stay at home mum, however there are also a lot of men who don't really have anything to watch at lunchtime apart from 'Loose Women'. We combined the idea of our sporting guest and a show which is suitable for both sexes and came up with the innovative idea of a sports show that is aimed at women but men can also enjoy - think 'Soccer AM' meets 'Loose Women'. I was really proud of this idea because it was something completely new and definitely fitted the brief. 

Initial Research

After getting put into groups relating to our chosen questions, we set about creating a plan on how we would answer the question, deciding our methods of research and what TV shows we would look into. 

Our question was: "Which are the three most successful ever examples of cross platform television programming, how did viewers participate and most importantly, what did they gain from the experience?"

We broke the question down into 3 areas as we felt like this would make the question more manageable and we could easily plan our next steps. 

The 3 areas were:

1) What are the 3 most successful ever examples of cross platform TV programming

                    Using the research which we would gather, we will be able to answer this, going off people's reviews, statistics about usage and articles about the multi platform shows and industry. We will begin by looking at a range of programmes and then narrow these down the 3 we feel are the more successful.

2) How did viewers participate in the multiplatform programming?

                    We will gain the answer to this by having a focus group in which will we get participants to play the corresponding apps to the shows that we have chosen and see how they take part in it. We will also ask people about this in the questionnaire that we will send to people. 

3) What did they gain from the experience of multiplatform programming?

                    Our focus group task will find out what participants gained from their experience of it. We will also try and research some statistics and data about what people tended to get from multiplatform programmes to show some wider evidence. 

It was clear from this that the research we were going to do were:

• A focus group with some examples of apps of television shows that were multi platform to see what participants gained from it and how people actually went about in participating in it
• A questionnaire to be created that asked about peoples' viewing habits and experiences of multiplatform programming
• Research a number of shows to start with, and then choose 3 successful shows to go in depth about and use these shows as the answer to our presentation. 

The shows we decided to initially look at were:

• Hollyoaks
• X Factor
• Embarrassing Bodies
• Britain's Got Talent
• Big Brother
• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire
• Million Pound Drop

We are now going to go away and research a few of these shows each so we can meet back up and decide on the 3 most successful ones. 

I found this planning day very productive because we managed to take a question that initially seemed more complex and then break it down into a more simple, step by step process of research and answers. I am excited to get stuck into research because I find the idea of multi platform programming really interesting and some of these shows are my favourite ones so research won't feel like much work! 

TV Studio

The past few weeks have all been go go go, especially within this TV Studio module so let me catch you up with what has been going on!

Groups and choosing our roles
The first thing that happened was that we were put into groups. I was put into a group with Tasha, Ashleigh, Dave and Rio which I was really happy with as we all get on really well so I know that we will work effectively together as a team. We then had to all choose the roles of a TV studio team that we wanted. The roles up for grabs were: Producer, Floor Manager, Presenter, Director and Set Designer. I knew that I definitely didn't want to be director or set designer as I'm not always the best at having a creative eye with camera angles or what looks good on screen. I wouldn't have minded being the role of Presenter because I feel confident in front of the camera however I preferred to try something different and 2 members of the group wanted that role. I decided that I definitely wanted to be either the Producer or the Floor Manager as these are job positions that I am considering as my future positions in my career. I successfully ended up being Floor Manager which I'm really excited about as I can get practice of the job and see if it's something I fancy doing again in the future. 

Camera Workshop
We had our first camera workshop with our lecturers, Trevor and Alex, who showed us how to use the brand new cameras and gallery. I was very nervous to do this as using these cameras were completely new to me but the lecturers made us all feel at ease and once we started to use them, I became comfortable using them. Having a go at the gallery was enjoyable however I realised just how much stress and pressure real directors have on live studio shows as they have to choose the right cameras at the right time otherwise you end up with bad shots. After this session I felt more confident using the cameras for our live shoot but I will appreciate more practice. 

Paper Planes
As one of the major parts of the show we have to produce is a demonstration with the guest, we had a mini task of planning and filming a short demo for kids TV about how to make a paper plane. We had to write a script, design the set and then have the presenter present whilst 3 of us were on cameras and the director was in the gallery instructing us what to do on cameras. Unfortunately I was struck down with tonsillitis so couldn't come into uni for the filming of our Paper Planes piece. However because I still wanted to play a major part in the production, I wrote the script for the show. I found it enjoyable writing the script as I thought it was exciting planning exactly what the presenter will say and how the show will go. This is definitely something I want to do more of. We got positive feedback from our piece and I was really proud of my group for how amazing our mini show looked! I was happy that we had this task because it made us realise about some key things that may seem small to us but actually made a big difference on camera. For example, it was crucial to look how every shot is framed, especially on close ups as often presenter's hands would get in the way of the paper plane so it was hard to see what the instruction was. Also it is important that the presenter isn't wearing any noisy jewellery that interferes with the mic. Overall this task was extremely helpful because it opened our eyes to the fact that we need to be aware and plan everything because there isn't room for mistakes on live TV. 

Cross Shooting
As another practice exercise we did with the cameras was practice cross shooting. Cross shooting is often used on chatshows when there is an interviewer interviewing a guest. There are 3 cameras with the middle camera focused on both the interviewer and guest. Then the other 2 cameras are focused on just one of them, with each camera focused on the other person. I found it really interesting to learn how to do this because I've spent years watching this technique being done on lots of different shows so it was great to finally learn how it is all done. With this knowledge I feel that it will definitely help make our shows look more professional.

Initial Ideas
After our first group meeting in which we created a list of over 40 ideas for guests, from fashion designers, to dancers, to circus performers, we decided to go away and research an idea each properly, contacting the prospective guest and seeing if they would be up for appearing on the show. For us, we decided that we wanted to find our guest first, and as long as they were an interesting person, the show concept could be created around them. The idea that I went and researched was the idea of having a comedian on the show as I thought this would ensure that our show would be entertaining. As Liverpool has a big comedy community I knew that there were lots of people who I could talk to about appearing on the show. I went down to a local comedy night and asked around the comedians to see if they would be up for coming on the show and received an overwhelmingly positive response. It's great to know that if we go with this idea that we would be able to choose an ideal guest from those who volunteered.