TV Studio Done!

Hello, This week we had our Television show and I think that it went really well! I think from doing this whole experience I have learned that I really love TV studio work and I think its where I want to go in the future, I do understand though how hard it will be to try and crack into the media industry!

I was a presenter and the interview with Ambrose went really well I think, there were hardly any mistakes and I wasn't really that nervous, especially having James presenting with me!

Here is a picture of our set:

 

 

I think it looks pretty cool!

 

 

This week in Applied Media Research we continued our research and Molly has started producing a Prezi very basically. Also we have looked at our questionnaire results and are looking to comprise them into graphs. I also have an idea that we could hold focus groups or record some interview's with people using different platforms for apps and games.

 

 

So far this module is quite challenging but I understand its meaning and why it is here, I think personally I don't enjoy it as much as the other modules but it is interesting finding out how people download apps and their views on such things.

 

 

In Beyond the Camera this week we were given a tutorial on After Effects. I'm finding this interactive media stuff pretty hard, I don't think I'm cut out for it to be honest but I don't mind giving it a go!



Progress

Applied Media Research

 

 

This week was just a continuation of Onteca question and how we were going to answer it. This project so far has been a slight challenge because Ive been finding it very hard to try and find an approach that is useful, this is why again I like the idea of the task! My task was to get Futuretainment out of the Library but unfortunately it wasn't there so i guess I failed! I have read the book before so I was able to give some knowledge and understanding to it.

 

We decided that we wanted to create a questionnaire for the class to find out if they buy apps, if they don't, and if they don't why don't they. Also we decided that we would like to interview three people. Someone that uses Android, someone that uses Blackberry App World and someone that uses Itunes App Store, The reason behind this is to find out how many people are willing to buy apps from each one of these and how many aren't, to find out trends.

 

 

TV Studio Production

 

 

This week we met up with Ambrose Reynolds and his business partner Liz to discuss the show and the sorts of questions that we are going to ask him next week! This was a very useful meeting and I feel that we made so much progress, more progress than we ever have previously in this module. Ambrose is a great person to interview because he has so much to say and as one of the presenters of the show I am extremely looking forward to talking to him!

 

On a finishing note this week was a bit crazy because we had a meeting regarding the continuation of the course and as a course rep I obviously had quite a lot of involvement in this meeting and felt that it was useful. I hope to have more of these because a lot of people within my year and others on this course are worried about its future!

The Decision

Applied Media Research

This week we arrived in class and decided on which question we would like to approach. After quite a lot of thinking I decided that the question I would most like to do would be the Onteca question. I think that with this question first of all it interests me quite a lot and second of all there is a lot of opportunity to research this question. As a reminder this question was:

What new models are there for selling media? When people download so much media freely, what are people willing to pay for and how? What are and what can we learn from the best monetization mechanics for Freemium games on mobile?

We were then given half an hour to give Sarah time to randomise and select the groups. I liked the idea that we weren't given the choice to pick our groups because I like working with new people and socialising with the whole class. This was also interesting because with these random groups I might find someone I work really well with and can work with in the future. Once we were put into groups we got together and started to discuss what we could do.

I was put into a group with Molly and Sam. I'd worked with Sam before but not Molly. We discussed initially what we could do with this question and gave each other a task to do for next week. I think because we had just started this project, giving each one of us a task each for next week was a really good idea because at this stage we wouldn't be able to give a constructed answer so starting off with he ball small tasks would get the ball rolling!

TV Studio Production

 

 

At this stage of our TV studio production module we were meeting up regularly and trying to decide over who we wanted. This week we came to a decision! We decided we wanted  Ambrose Reynolds from Urban Strawberry Lunch to be the guest on our show. We tried to get into contact with him and couldn't yet so we will keep trying throughout this week. We had a group meeting this week again and discussed all of the aspects of the show. This included set, shots, costumes, lighting and content. It is really useful to have meetings on a regular basis, because the nature of this project requires a lot of involvement and attention. I really like the group I'm working with as well because everyone works well together and no one is being lazy!



Nine Lives Media

This week we had Mike Welch, who was representing his wife who unfortunately couldnt make it to the presentation! He told us a bit about Nine Lives Media and what they do. After some discussion and a presentation Mike set us the last question in our project:

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? (I would anticipate answers such as the London Olympics/Paralympics & Embarrassing Bodies).

Straight away I liked this question because I thought that there was a lot of things that would be interesting to research regarding multi-platform programmes. After he set us the question Sarah gave us time to think about what question we would like to do and then told us that next week we will be deciding on which question we would like!

Onteca

This week Jon Wetherall from Onteca (http://onteca.com/) came in to set us our 2nd question for the research module. I thought that Jon was a really cool guy and had a lot to say. His background is mostly in developing games so pretty much the whole presentation was based around this. I enjoyed the presentation because I've never really had a talk on game development so it was a new experience for me. It made me realise how fierce the competition is in the gaming industry.

It seems almost unfair after Jon explained, that so many people seem to demand free apps in the smart phone app world. People will happily pay for food or takeaway but then become judgemental when asked to pay 69p for an app, it doesn't make sense to me, although I myself admit I am guilty of it. My worry is that what if I buy an app and then don't like the app, at least when I buy a burger from Burger King I know I'm going to like it. Maybe its just the risk of spending money on something that you don't know much about.

After Jon's talk he set us our question which is displayed below.

I think this whole idea is really interesting and is a potential question I might be in favour of! The whole talk interested me as well as the question!

Qualitive Research

Hello!

In toady's Applied Media Research class we were taught about qualitive research, which I from the start preferred over Quantitive. I think this is because I generally like talking with people face to face when wanting to find out information and I find it easy to chat to someone and qualitive research relies on this, depending on what kind of qualitive research you carry out.

We got into our research groups and were given the opportunity to come up with a type of qualitive research to carry out on another group. The question we had to consider was the same as the quantitive which was "How would you promote a degree to a potential student". We decided on a Diary entry. I thought that this was a useful way of finding out information about the stages of someones journey to university and gave us a good insight on peoples thoughts. We got some feedback off the other group and found out that maybe our idea was a bit vague and all of the answers were similar. In the future I think we would try and come up with another method of qaulitive research that required more participant involvement.

In our TV Studio production module we recorded our paper airplane show. This was a really good experience and gave our group a feel of what we will be doing in the future with our final show. I really enjoy presenting, theres a good adrenaline feel towards it, I like being put under pressure I guess. Its definitely something I would love to continue doing but I do realise how hard it is to break into that section of the industry! I think that I could be slightly more funny on camera though. Anyway I'll see how it goes!

Bye!

The Digital Fiction Factory

This week Ian Wareing from the Digital Fiction Factory came in to set us our first question! He was a really nice guy and gave a great presentation which took up the most part of an hour.

Digital Fiction Factory are a company that work with the BBC and Channel 4 to try and make new programmes that are convergent. The programs that they create take place on more than one platform. This encourages people not to just watch their programs but to go online to find out more about the program or take part in online games. I think that this is a very forward thinking way of thinking with media and is very interesting for the consumer. If I was watching a program and at the end of the episode it told me to go online to unlock further into that episode I would definitely go online!

Peter Salmon who is the Director of BBC North has been very complimentary of The Digital Fiction Factory and has said "The Digital Fiction Factory [is] a completely new kind of development and production centre.”

One of the examples of this that Ian talked about was The Well.

Ian then went on to talk about different examples of this idea on a mixture of different platforms, I have linked these below:

TV Radio and Film

http://www.youtube.com/britaininaday
https://www.themillionpounddrop.com/

Online

http://www.exquisiteforest.com/
http://bear71.nfb.ca/#/bear71

Mobile/Tablet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw
http://www.carolinesmailes.co.uk/books/99-reasons-why

Social Media

http://www.takethislollipop.com/
http://www.b-reel.com/digital/projects/inside/

Live Events

http://www.idhideyou.com/trailer.html
http://www.e4.com/hollyoaks/blog/wretch32invasion/

After Ian showing us these examples it became apparent to me how open and potential this idea actually is. I looked at all of the examples and all of them drew me in and had me looking around. I think there is a clear future in this multi-platform idea.

Ian then finished off his presentation by setting us his question:

"The Internet, Social Media and other open systems have allowed for user generated content (UGC), crowd-sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in Digital Media. But how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences, without treading on the toes of the author?"

My first thought about this question was confusion! It is quite a hard question to get your head around I think, but after some thought I can see where maybe I would start to base my research, it will involved talking to a broad range of people I believe.

But we will see how it goes!

The Beginng...of Second Year!

Second Year has arrived! The first week I came back to Liverpool was quite hectic moving into a new house and everything but once I was settled and started arriving back to my new modules I settled in very well. This year The Module that I will concentrate the blog on is Applied Media Research.

There isn't much to say about the first class that we had in this module as it was just an introduction and Sarah told us everything that we will be doing this year. This class was more about getting into the new building and preparing for the year!

Week two in this module we started to look at quantative research which I found relatively interesting. We were told to get into groups and create a questionnaire to hand out to the class on 'How to promote a university degree to potential students'. I really like the idea of working in a group as i like the aspect of teamwork and working with people that sometimes you may not work with!

I understand quantative research and its effects on research. With quantitive research I found that you can gather a lot of information in a very short period of time. The idea is not to detail questions too much but rather to ask the right questions in the right order. Our questionnaire I thought was quite good although some people thought that it was slightly vague. We used a rating system from 1-5, 1 being the lowest mark and 5 being the highest.

Sarah talked us through the main points of quantitive through her PowerPoint and showed us a number of diagrams like the one below:

 

 



I believe I have a good understanding of quantative research and I can see its advantages and disadvantages. Personally I like qualitive research more as I like to be able to chat to someone on a one to one basis, but I'm sure that I will use quantitive research as part of the research for my final question!

The End

So this will most likely be my last blog but I've really enjoyed updating my work through here this year, its something I didn't think I'd ever do and now I understand why people like to blog! Just to make sure I have linked everything for you to see I will link all of my projects for Contemporary Media Issues below!


Objects - http://prezi.com/n4yeqznhy3py/objects/


Futuretainment Wiki - http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/%27Futuretainment%27+M.Walsh+%282010%29


Screen School Olympics - http://prezi.com/f26-qxadjpvb/liverpool-screen-school-olympics/

Location Google Maps Project - http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&mid=1335207155

Global Warming Wiki - http://contemporarymediaissues.wetpaint.com/page/Global+Warming+Across+Social+Media+Platforms

And there are numerous links on the fake profile project a few blog posts back! Thank you for reading my blog if you have and I hope you enjoyed it!

Josh Out.

Chapter 18

Hello all! Its quite weird now because its coming towards the end of this continuous assignment and I'm sort of wondering whether to just keep it going or leave it. I know that at the start of the year the lecturers said that it is a good idea to keep a blog throughout your career to showcase your work in one way so I'm swaying more towards the keeping it going side of things at the minute!


On Monday we came in and we were editing the rough cuts of our Factual piece. We had footage that we filmed over the weekend so we came in and edited it and also we put credits in as well. On Thursday we went to the performing arts centre where the performance was being held and we interviewed 3 different girls and also filmed some of the drama piece. On Saturday we filmed the Animal Rights Activists in town and got an interview with one of their members so its all looking quite good with that project at the minute. All we have to do now is go in on Monday and edit the rest of the footage in and we will have another finished piece!

In Tuesdays class we have been doing much the same as last week just furthering the Museum Project and structuring it for the presentation.

In Wednesdays Contemporary Media Issues Class we presented our fake character profiles to the class and we got a positive reaction with Jonny Winter! I don't know whether I'm going to keep going with Jonny Winter anymore but it was very fun anyway! Its definitely my favourite project that we've been given this year because pretending to be a completely different person than yourself is not only really fun but also really interesting! I have a few things to show you in regards to Jonny Winter and they are all shown below!

Jonny Winter on St Patricks Day - St EVIL Patrick

Here is the most recent video that Jonny Winter has made:

In Digital Media Tools the deadline for the website is next week so I'm really trying to get a move on with it and hopefully Ill have it done for next Wednesday!

That is all for now speak soon!

Josh Out.

Chapter 17

Hello everyone!

On Monday me and my production group decided to film instead of going into university so we travelled into town and took numerous shots of McDonald's and Flannels. Like I said before our short factual piece is on Animal Cruelty and we now have two interviewees which is really good! We're going to film our first interview on Friday so I will update on this next week!

In Tuesdays lesson I met up with Rio in class and we organised a ten minute slot (which turned into 20!) with our tutors to further the discussion of our idea for the Museum Project. We started to produce documents for the project

In Wednesdays class we created our fictional character Jonny Winter! Basically his story is that he is from Florida but has fled to England because he thinks the Government are trying to find him. He believes the Government have created a new breed of dog that can spy and speak and he thinks the government has found out he has knowledge of this and are now looking for him. As you can see we are having a lot of fun with this! We have a Youtube page, Facebook profile, Soundcloud profile and also a Twitter page acting as Jonny and here are all four of the links below:

Facebook - Jonny Winter Facebook

Twitter - @jonnywhisper

Soundcloud - Jonny Winter

Youtube - Jonny Winter

Here is a Soundcloud clip from Jonny Winter:

The Conspiracy

After Wednesdays Contemporary Media Issues lesson I stayed on with a few other classmates and we started our website, I have now eventually designed my homepage and ill show it to you below:

That's all for now!

Josh Out

Chapter 16

Hey Everyone!

In Mondays class we came in and we decided to create our factual piece on Animal Activists within Liverpool. We chose this because we feel that there is a lot of information to give about this subject and also it seems very accessible for us because we have some contacts that we are able to interview hopefully! In the next week we are going to start filming in the town centre and also there is a group of 3rd year students that are doing a drama piece on animal cruelty in LJMU and we have been on contact with them so we are going to go and film their dress rehearsal for the show and also interview one of the actors.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I was off because unfortunately I had tonsillitis but I believe that in Tuesday we continued our museum project and started to develop our prototype section of the project.

In Fridays class we had a lecture on Alfred Hitchcock and then we watched the film "The Birds". Personally because of its age I thought that the visual effects were quite funny but the film was good anyway. Here is a trailer for the movie:

Josh Out.

Chapter 15

Hello all!

In Mondays class we had a Lighting tutorial which I found very useful. Trevor explained to us how to use the lights and where to place them. After this we then got into our production groups and discussed each others treatments. After a bit of discussion with Camilla and also within ourselves we came to a vague conclusion that Drew's Animal Rights idea might be the most feasible but we are going to finalise this next week!

In Tuesdays class unfortunately I was the only person there from my museum project group because of sickness but I wasn't really too stuck for things to do. We had to form a 5 minute presentation of our idea and progression with it. I didn't mind doing it by myself and everyone got feedback in the form of post-it notes in an envelope. I found this really useful actually because it gave me an insight on what people think we should do to progress the project even further or elements of it that aren't actually that appealing.

On Wednesday, I was actually sick so I wasn't able to make it in to class but from what I've been told we have started a Twitter account with some sort of program called Weavr so I'm looking forward to seeing what this involves. Apparently an online robot updates your Twitter for you!

Josh Out.

Chapter 14

Hello everyone! This week in Mondays class we finished off editing our personal profile and to be honest I don't think it ended up as well as we would of liked it to, this was down to our organisation. I think because of this we have learned that organisation is very important when it comes to production and we will remember this in the future.

On Tuesday in Creativity and Concept we furthered our museum project and eventually Rio and I came up with an initial Idea, I will update the next blog with this idea and its progression.

On Wednesday in Contemporary Media Issues we finished off our Wiki project which was actually quite successful in the end. I had to update the Wiki with a 300 word thread on Global Warming on Social Networking and Democracy. I found it quite interesting to look into this. Here is a link to our Wiki on Global Warming :

WIKI

In the second class on Wednesday we had a Dreamweaver Workshop that Ian took. I found that Dreamweaver isn't too hard but it will take some getting use to!

In Fridays class we had a lecture on Shane Meadows and then we watched the film "Dead Man's Shoes" directed by Shane Meadows. I found this movie quite moving and really serious, and although I personally don't like British made movies because of the seriousness of them normally, I really enjoyed this one and thought that it seems to be quite underrated! Here is the trailer for Dead Man's Shoes":

Josh Out.

Chapter 13

Hello there! So this week on Monday we went in and finished off any editing of the 'Its Liverpool' competition and burned it onto a DVD. We just about got finished in time and handed it in, once I get a copy of the video I will post it in my blog :)


On Tuesday in creativity and concept we spent the lesson having a discussion with our fellow team members about our museum project. Me and Rio were the only ones in so we made a start and I think we progressed quite far. Initially we jumped ahead to quick onto the ideas but then we decided to take a step back and concentrate on different types of political activists. Next week we are going to progress further and finish off this and then move onto the next stage of development with initial ideas and thoughts about the exhibit or event. Here are some pictures of our progress so far:

For next week we have to present a story that must only be one minute long and then we will have a presentation workshop which I'm actually looking forward to quite a lot.


On Wednesday in first class we experimented with Youtube and were given a small leaflet with a word on it that we had to go and search in youtube, I got Line Dancing which definitely isn't a theme I have searched on Youtube before! Here is one of the videos I came across:

After this exercise we were brought back into room and we watched a quite long video lecture by Michael Welsch about the development of social networking and its importance. Once we finished watching this video we were given the brief for our next assignment which is to get into groups and make a Wiki about a certain theme. The theme that my group got was Global Warming. We got into our groups and worked out which sub-theme we were going to write a 300 word thread about each but we decided we wouldn't make a proper start on it until next week.


In the second lesson we furthered our ideas of our own websites with regards to the layout and what we are going to put in it. I found a website that I really liked the design, colour scheme and layout of and this was the Swedish House Mafia website.

On Friday in class we learnt about the mind game film, which is probably my personal favourite. We had a prolonged lecture on the different types of mind game films and we watched a few clips of different movies that fall into these sub categories.

That is all for now :)

Josh Out.

Chapter 12

Hey there, last week I got more into the flow of things after coming back. On Monday we went into Media Production and finalised out idea of what we were going to submit to the "It's Liverpool" competition. We decided that we were going to do it on University Square so after this lesson throughout the week we rented out the camera equipment and on a very rainy day we filmed our small piece, including an hours worth of one shot which would soon make our time-lapse slot!
On Tuesday we learnt about Debonos six thinking hats. This consists of six different coloured hats and each colour represents a different way of thinking, here's the link:

Six Thinking Hats

For me personally I don't think that the six thinking hats technique was effective. I didn't like the way it directed to you to think in one specific way as it kind of narrowed your though process down, which I found it hard to do. I found it hard to be negative about something that I really liked for example. It was clear though that certain people in my group suited certain hats, for example Callum seem to latch on the Black (Negative thinking) hat quite quickly! This is what Creativity and Concept is about for me though, exploring loads of different ways of being creative and deciding which ones suit me and which ones don't.

Also in this class we were given some information about the Assignment which is to come up with a new exhibit or event for Museum Of Liverpool and then in March present to a panel of people consisting of our lecturers but also someone from the outside that we don't know. For the assignment we are being put into groups of three and we are given a specific group of people that we have to aim to attract to the Museum and the group that we have given is Political Activists, which I think may be quite tricky!

In Contemporary Media Issues on Wednesday we gave out presentation of our Google Maps narrative and then we received feedback on it. I personally don't think we took the right approach because I think that I didn't fully understand what we actually had to do, I hope we get an okay mark but I have to admit I was quite disappointed with myself for this one.

To aid us in creating the google maps narrative we watched a tutorial video on Youtube:

That is all for now, I will update on how the editing of the video entry went next blog entry and also any progression with the Museum project!

Josh Out.

Chapter 11

Hey!

So last week was quite a hectic week actually! On Monday I was in Media Production and we basically had to further our ideas for the It's Liverpool competition. After some discussion we decided to film University Square because we were thinking about The Docks but then we soon learned that a lot of people were also thinking about filming there!

On Tuesday I learnt about Facilitating and in groups we had to come up with certain events for the idea of an LJMU Festival. The festival idea lasted one day and we had a budget of £1000. I thought this was really fun, thinking up cool ideas that I would include at a festival. After some divergent thinking (basically writing down as many ideas as possible) we then had to whittle the ideas down to our 3 favourite. The idea was to present 3 ideas that were original and do-able.

On Wednesday we had a full day. First of all in Contemporary Media Issues we got into our narrative groups and we had to make a start on our google maps project. What we had to do was to create a fictional or non-fictional story using google maps and pin point certain locations wherever we wanted. We were given a starting point which for us was Bluecoat Gardens. From there then we picked 4 other locations and using Videos, Photos, Text and Sound we had to plan our narrative. I will update you all on the finished piece next week :)

In Digital Media Tools we got briefed on our next assignment which is to create our own website. I think I'm really going to enjoy this because It's solely my project and my design which is good as we haven't properly done anything individually yet. We then went into the computer suite and looked through various websites to see which ones had good designs. I found a number that I thought were quite inspirational and that I might base my design on, here are some links below:

Def Jam

Futuretainment

Maximuscle

Apple

By next week I hope to have a basic design for my website, which means I'll know what I want in it and how it will be laid out.

On Friday we learnt about about the development of Westerns in Film Language. I'm enjoying Friday lessons this year so far because Westerns, like I said before, has never really been my thing but now that I'm learning about it, it's pretty fun. We watched True Grit, which is a movie I've always really wanted to see but never had the chance. Some of the shots in the film are basically amazing and I would urge anyone to watch the film as it is beautiful.

Here's the trailer:

A Screen shot:

 Okay that is my update until next week!

Josh Out.

Chapter 10

Okay so Christmas is over and it was all very good, I am back now in Liverpool! I arrived back last Wednesday so i unfortunately missed 4 of my classes but I am currently getting caught up now. Last Friday In Film Language we started to learn about genre and the first genre we are looking at is Westerns.

Westerns have never been a genre that I have been interested in but I really enjoyed the movie and since I have watched a couple of Westerns

That's all for now but I will update my experiences in more detail tomorrow when I do a blog concentrating on the current week :)

Josh Out.