25/11/2016
Today was our first day of filming. We went to Gifted and Blessed to meet Ian and Angeline, who were already there. Me & Kane filmed inside Gifted and Blessed, getting lots of cutaways while Ian and Angeline were busy, while Taylor & Rhys captured footage outside and along the high-street for establishing shots.
Once Ian was free, we got an interview with him. I set up the main camera with Kane, who also asked questions in the interview. Since the main camera was a static shot, Kane covered it while questioning Ian and I covered a different angle on the DSLR camera. We got 20 minutes of footage for this interview alone, which meant we had plenty of footage to use in the edit. The content of the interview was very good too. Ian started speaking to Debbie at one point, at which I started to film Debbie, which would have been a nice shot to cut back and forth from, but Debbie asked not to be in the film, so it can't be used.
Next, Bernie arrived so we got an interview with her. Her interview was shorter as she had less time before she was busy, however her answers to the questions were very interesting and offered a slightly different look at Spiritualism compared to Ian. This interview lasted 10 minutes. We also got an interview with Angeline. We asked her what it was like to spend time with psychics all day for her job and she gave some interesting insights.
2/12/2016
Filming was cancelled, hoping to reschedule for another day.
6/1/17
This was the first day filming again after multiple cancellations due to illness.
I was unable to make the shoot on this day due to prior commitments. However, I tried to be as involved as I could be without being there. I suggested ideas to the rest of the team and made sure I was aware of the plan for the day.
Kane, Rhys & Taylor went to Gifted and Blessed and met with Ian, Bernie & Angeline. Ian had offered to give Taylor a reading so we could witness one first hand and film it. A two camera set-up was used to film the reading, which went on for almost an hour. After the reading was filmed and the team headed back home from the shoot, Taylor filmed everyone in the car talking about their thoughts after seeing the reading.
9/1/17
This was the first day of editing the documentary. I started by going through the footage that I hadn't seen due to not being at the shoot. I edited together the reading, which is a significant part of the documentary however it took up a lot of the 10 minute limit. I also started editing the introduction. I still need to make a start on editing the interviews with Ian & Bernie.
10/1/17
28 November 2016
24 November 2016
Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - Task 2
Social Media
In the build up to the 2016 US Election, twitter has been one of the most popular platforms for the candidates to share their views. It’s used as much as it is because it is so accessible. It makes it very easy to for the candidates to get their messages across to their audience directly. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have each been incredibly active on Twitter, sometimes interacting with each other which has led to things getting heated at times, even to the extent of being classed as a ‘Twitter War’.
In one example, when Obama endorsed Clinton, Trump tweeted, “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama-but nobody else does!”, to which Clinton quickly responded: “Delete your account”. Trump responded again with “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”
Other twitter users quickly got involved; the most popular response was from a user being “Fuck you both. Stop arguing on Twitter. I'm scared for either one of you to run this country.”. This was only one of the many tweets in response to their interaction with each other. The responses ranged from very negative to very positive for both sides of the argument.
Other twitter users quickly got involved; the most popular response was from a user being “Fuck you both. Stop arguing on Twitter. I'm scared for either one of you to run this country.”. This was only one of the many tweets in response to their interaction with each other. The responses ranged from very negative to very positive for both sides of the argument.
Out of the three tweets, Hillary’s got the most retweets and likes. It actually went viral with 556,456 retweets, a significant amount of retweets more than her usual, which usually range from around 100,000 to 150,000. While the responses to both of Trump’s tweets stayed serious and mostly political, because to the viral status Hillary’s tweet got it reached a much wider audience who were not political and was responded to with a lot unpolitical tweets, many of the responses even coming in Gif form:
Many people believed this Twitter interaction seemed unprofessional however this wasn’t the only time the two used social media in this way. There were many other occasions where both Trump and Clinton tweeted badly about each other. Trump even coined the hashtag #CrookedHillary and often used it in his tweets when speaking of Clinton. This presidential election was like no other because the amount of aggressive back and forth the two candidates would have on Twitter. While it may seem unprofessional to many people, it’s actually very smart from both sides. The use of Twitter not only broadens the candidates audience/following, it accesses a younger generation who might not usually pay attention to politics.
It can be proven that the use of attacking the opposing candidate over social media is a successful publicity tactic as some of the most popular tweets from both Trump and Hillary have been the tweets aimed at each other, as shown by the earlier examples. The use of “Delete your account” by Hillary is a very common term used by the younger, more social media focused generation which allowed her to access that part of her audience, whereas if she was to tweet about political issues, there would be a significantly smaller amount of response to it.
Jon Keegan wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal which live-updates a comparison of Trump and Clinton’s twitter profiles. Below is a graph from the article, showing the amount of followers both Trump and Clinton have gained since announcing their candidacy.
Many people believed this Twitter interaction seemed unprofessional however this wasn’t the only time the two used social media in this way. There were many other occasions where both Trump and Clinton tweeted badly about each other. Trump even coined the hashtag #CrookedHillary and often used it in his tweets when speaking of Clinton. This presidential election was like no other because the amount of aggressive back and forth the two candidates would have on Twitter. While it may seem unprofessional to many people, it’s actually very smart from both sides. The use of Twitter not only broadens the candidates audience/following, it accesses a younger generation who might not usually pay attention to politics.
It can be proven that the use of attacking the opposing candidate over social media is a successful publicity tactic as some of the most popular tweets from both Trump and Hillary have been the tweets aimed at each other, as shown by the earlier examples. The use of “Delete your account” by Hillary is a very common term used by the younger, more social media focused generation which allowed her to access that part of her audience, whereas if she was to tweet about political issues, there would be a significantly smaller amount of response to it.
Jon Keegan wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal which live-updates a comparison of Trump and Clinton’s twitter profiles. Below is a graph from the article, showing the amount of followers both Trump and Clinton have gained since announcing their candidacy.
As shown, Trump has gained over 6 million more followers on Twitter than Clinton has over the same amount of time. Clinton actually announced her candidacy months before Trump did but had a much slower gain of followers compared to Trump’s sudden rise in Twitter fame. It is obvious from simply looking through Trump’s Twitter profile that he is the most controversial, or at least most brutally honest, out of himself and Clinton. This would suggest the controversy in his tweets gained more attention than anything else that was being said by any other presidential candidate. By using Twitter in this way, Trump managed to frequently catch the attention of even the least politically involved Twitter users.
21 November 2016
Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - research
"I like it because I can get also my point of view out there, and my point of view is very important to a lot of people that are looking at me," Trump said
General Statistics:
- The internet has 3.17 billion users
- There are 2.3 billion active social media users
- 91% of retail brands use 2 or more social media channels
- Internet users have an average of 5.54 social media accounts
- Social media users have risen by 176 million in the last year
- 1 million new active mobile social users are added every day. That’s 12 each second
- Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp handle 60 billion messages a day
- Social Media Users:
- 4Chan: 11 million users
- Airbnb: 50 million users
- Facebook: 1.71 billion users
- Flickr: 112 million users
- Google+: 300 million users
- Instagram: 400 million users
- LinkedIn: 450 million users
- MySpace: 50.6 million users
- Periscope: 10 million users
- Pinterest: 100 million users
- Reddit: 36 million accounts
- Snapchat: 100 million users
- Twitter: 320 million users
- Wechat: 1.12 billion users
- Weibo: 600 million users
- WhatsApp: 900 million users
- Youtube: Over 1 billion users
- 500 million people visit Twitter each month without logging in
- There is a total of 1.3 billion accounts, but only 320 million are active
- Of those, 44% made an account and left before ever sending a Tweet
- The average Twitter user has 208 followers
- But 391 million accounts have no followers at all
- There are 500 million Tweets sent each day. That’s 6,000 Tweets every second
- Twitter’s top 5 markets (countries) account for 50% of all Tweets
- It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day to go from the first Tweet to the billionth
- 65.8% of US companies with 100+ employees use Twitter for marketing
- 77% of Twitter users feel more positive about a brand when their Tweet has been replied to
Unit 6: Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products - Task 1
Task 1:
Understand how media producers define audiences for their products
Quantitative audience research
Quantitative research is when a company gathers information in large amounts, A way of doing this might be by collection information via surveys of different types of groups. Different kinds of surveys may be mail surveys, telephone surveys, internet surveys and face to face public surveys.
Qualitative audience research
Qualitative research is gathered to get a target audience's range of behaviour and perceptions. This research is usually done with smaller groups of people. Unlike quantitative research, which is statistical, qualitative research is are more descriptive of the audience. Some ways of gathering qualitative research are individual interviews or group discussions.
Understand how media producers define audiences for their products
Quantitative audience research
Quantitative research is when a company gathers information in large amounts, A way of doing this might be by collection information via surveys of different types of groups. Different kinds of surveys may be mail surveys, telephone surveys, internet surveys and face to face public surveys.
Qualitative audience research
Audience classifications
Audience classification is the recognising of demographics in an audience. Demographics are the characteristics of the audience. These can be factors such as Gender, Age, Sexuality, Religion, Income, Socio Economic status etc.
Audience classification is the recognising of demographics in an audience. Demographics are the characteristics of the audience. These can be factors such as Gender, Age, Sexuality, Religion, Income, Socio Economic status etc.
2 November 2016
Unit 62: Digital Video Production for Interactive Media - Task 1
Purposes Of Digital Video
River Tees Rediscovered have requested we make a short film which will promote the projects which run along the River Tees, hoping to increase awareness and increase visitor numbers. In this task, I will present examples of Digital Video and how it is used so River Tees Rediscovered can use similar methods with their project.
Starting with the same kind of digital media we aim to create, Short films. Currently, one of the best platforms for short films is Vimeo. Founded in 2004, Vimeo is a video sharing website in which users can upload and share their own creations. Unlike other video sharing websites, Vimeo is primarily used by aspiring filmmakers and the website itself promotes that, sharing 'Staff Pick's of the best short or experimental films every few days, as seen in the screenshot below which shows Vimeo's home page:
In this example of Digital Media, the media (short films) is very accessible to the people using the site with 'the best' short films being presented in a very prominent banner at the top of the page. The banner shows a series of 5 short films that Vimeo recommend you watch. The colours are very bright and draw attention to the banner since the rest of the website background is plain white.
This is the sort of digital media that could help River Tees Rediscovered on their own website, having a banner at the top of their site showing the short film we create. This would instantly catch the attention of the audience, drawing them in to watch it before they do anything else.
Advertisements are also shown before the majority of videos. They are usually 30 seconds and can often be skipped however the shortness of these videos means they should aim to grab the attention of the viewer in a very short time.
Promotional material could be a very helpful digital media method for River Tees Rediscovered as they could advertise the short film and their other projects through YouTube and other websites which allow advertisement
User Generated Content - YouTube
YouTube is also the biggest and most used website worldwide for use created content. Anyone can create a video and upload it for the world to see. Too put the scale of YouTube in perspective, in the 10 years it has been running there have bee approximately 816,417,600 hours of footage uploaded to the site. Because anybody can upload a video, the types of video can range from an official film trailer by a professional companies verified YouTube channel to a lyric video to a song which somebody decided to make in their spare time. There is a such a variation of content on the site. The home page of the site is set out to show a mixture of all the kinds of videos from different creators. The videos on the home page are often the videos which have received the most attention i.e. most views, best like/dislike ratio etc.
Since anybody, anywhere can watch videos someone has uploaded, many random, second thought videos people upload have actually gone viral and sometimes led to the uploader receiving internet fame, even if just for a short time. However, many professionally made videos, intended to go viral also have received massive attention on the internet. Viewers are able to share the videos they watch on sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This makes YouTube the perfect platform to upload a video to be shared on other sites, possibly in hope of it going viral.
A codec is a software used to compress or decompress a file. Some codecs can work on all platforms. However certain codecs only work on specific platforms. For example, some codecs work only on PC and would not work when the file the codec compressed/decompressed was used on a Mac.
Some of these Video Formats are better than others. For example, the H.264 video format is considered the new standard when compressing a video down. In comparison, H.264 is now much better for compression then MPEG-4, which was considered the standard previously. H.264 has advantages over MPEG-4 such as a smaller file size for longer recording time better and more fluent video quality and playback after the compression.
Compression can be either lossy or lossless. Lossless means that when a file is compressed, none of the information is lost. This means that you would be able to decompress the file afterwards and the file would be restored to it's original condition with all the original information. However, with lossy compression, some of the information is removed from the file. This means that if you were to decompress the file again, it would not be the same as the original as some of the information has been permanently lost. This does not mean that it is majorly noticeable to anyone looking at the photo but not all the information will have been restored.
Lossless compression is mostly used in image files whereas lossy compression is mostly used on video files because it is not entirely detectable to an audience. An example of lossless compression is the GIF image file type. An image file type that does use lossy compression is a JPEG.
1080p is now the standard in television and film but YouTube and other online video uploading sites allow much higher video quality to be used. The highest quality available now is the recently incorporated 2160p, otherwise known as 4K.
River Tees Rediscovered have requested we make a short film which will promote the projects which run along the River Tees, hoping to increase awareness and increase visitor numbers. In this task, I will present examples of Digital Video and how it is used so River Tees Rediscovered can use similar methods with their project.
Short Films - Vimeo
Starting with the same kind of digital media we aim to create, Short films. Currently, one of the best platforms for short films is Vimeo. Founded in 2004, Vimeo is a video sharing website in which users can upload and share their own creations. Unlike other video sharing websites, Vimeo is primarily used by aspiring filmmakers and the website itself promotes that, sharing 'Staff Pick's of the best short or experimental films every few days, as seen in the screenshot below which shows Vimeo's home page:
In this example of Digital Media, the media (short films) is very accessible to the people using the site with 'the best' short films being presented in a very prominent banner at the top of the page. The banner shows a series of 5 short films that Vimeo recommend you watch. The colours are very bright and draw attention to the banner since the rest of the website background is plain white.
This is the sort of digital media that could help River Tees Rediscovered on their own website, having a banner at the top of their site showing the short film we create. This would instantly catch the attention of the audience, drawing them in to watch it before they do anything else.
Promotional Material - YouTube
Another type of digital media comes in the form of promotional material or advertising. YouTube, another video sharing website similar to Vimeo, heavily advertise on their website. From the second you are on the home page, advertisements are seen before anything else however these adverts fit in well with the rest of the site as they link to videos which have been uploaded in exactly the same way any other use content will have been uploaded and is equally accessible. The home page advertisements blend in even more on Mobile Devices as they are displayed exactly the same as other videos just with an 'Ad' symbol underneath.
Another type of digital media comes in the form of promotional material or advertising. YouTube, another video sharing website similar to Vimeo, heavily advertise on their website. From the second you are on the home page, advertisements are seen before anything else however these adverts fit in well with the rest of the site as they link to videos which have been uploaded in exactly the same way any other use content will have been uploaded and is equally accessible. The home page advertisements blend in even more on Mobile Devices as they are displayed exactly the same as other videos just with an 'Ad' symbol underneath.
Advertisements are also shown before the majority of videos. They are usually 30 seconds and can often be skipped however the shortness of these videos means they should aim to grab the attention of the viewer in a very short time.
Promotional material could be a very helpful digital media method for River Tees Rediscovered as they could advertise the short film and their other projects through YouTube and other websites which allow advertisement
User Generated Content - YouTube
YouTube is also the biggest and most used website worldwide for use created content. Anyone can create a video and upload it for the world to see. Too put the scale of YouTube in perspective, in the 10 years it has been running there have bee approximately 816,417,600 hours of footage uploaded to the site. Because anybody can upload a video, the types of video can range from an official film trailer by a professional companies verified YouTube channel to a lyric video to a song which somebody decided to make in their spare time. There is a such a variation of content on the site. The home page of the site is set out to show a mixture of all the kinds of videos from different creators. The videos on the home page are often the videos which have received the most attention i.e. most views, best like/dislike ratio etc.
Since anybody, anywhere can watch videos someone has uploaded, many random, second thought videos people upload have actually gone viral and sometimes led to the uploader receiving internet fame, even if just for a short time. However, many professionally made videos, intended to go viral also have received massive attention on the internet. Viewers are able to share the videos they watch on sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This makes YouTube the perfect platform to upload a video to be shared on other sites, possibly in hope of it going viral.
Film Trailer - IMDb
The first thing a user will see when they open IMDb is a series of links to the latest film trailers. This is a form of promotional material but not just for the film, it also helps the site as well. When someone visits the site they instantly see trailers and feel inclined to watch them and even if they don't want to watch any of the trailers shown they will be under the impression IMDb has many other trailers to view. This will also be shown by the 'Browse more trailers' button below the 3 shown on the main page.
The first thing a user will see when they open IMDb is a series of links to the latest film trailers. This is a form of promotional material but not just for the film, it also helps the site as well. When someone visits the site they instantly see trailers and feel inclined to watch them and even if they don't want to watch any of the trailers shown they will be under the impression IMDb has many other trailers to view. This will also be shown by the 'Browse more trailers' button below the 3 shown on the main page.
Virtual Reality Tours - Google Maps
Virtual Reality Tours are a form of Digital Media in which a user can navigate around an area which has been captured by 360 degree cameras and aims to simulate actually being in that area. The most common form of VR Tours is Google Maps which allows you to explore the entire world via VR Tour or, as Google call it, Street View. On Google Maps the user drags a small orange figure onto the map, anywhere in the world, which will transition them to Street View, allowing them to explore the area without actually being there.
Virtual Reality Tours are a form of Digital Media in which a user can navigate around an area which has been captured by 360 degree cameras and aims to simulate actually being in that area. The most common form of VR Tours is Google Maps which allows you to explore the entire world via VR Tour or, as Google call it, Street View. On Google Maps the user drags a small orange figure onto the map, anywhere in the world, which will transition them to Street View, allowing them to explore the area without actually being there.
Virtual Reality Tours are also used in other ways too such as on University websites, allowing the users to explore the accommodation and other facilities without having to visit the University itself.
There are all kinds of different types of Digital and Interactive Media which use different file types/video formats. There are all kinds of Video Formats but here are some of the most common ones:
- QuickTime (H264)
- AVI
- Windows Media Video (WMV)
- MPEG-4
- FLV
- WebM
Some of these Video Formats are better than others. For example, the H.264 video format is considered the new standard when compressing a video down. In comparison, H.264 is now much better for compression then MPEG-4, which was considered the standard previously. H.264 has advantages over MPEG-4 such as a smaller file size for longer recording time better and more fluent video quality and playback after the compression.
Compression can be either lossy or lossless. Lossless means that when a file is compressed, none of the information is lost. This means that you would be able to decompress the file afterwards and the file would be restored to it's original condition with all the original information. However, with lossy compression, some of the information is removed from the file. This means that if you were to decompress the file again, it would not be the same as the original as some of the information has been permanently lost. This does not mean that it is majorly noticeable to anyone looking at the photo but not all the information will have been restored.
Lossless compression is mostly used in image files whereas lossy compression is mostly used on video files because it is not entirely detectable to an audience. An example of lossless compression is the GIF image file type. An image file type that does use lossy compression is a JPEG.
Websites such as YouTube or Vimeo accept all these different video file types. YouTube also gives recommended resolutions when uploading video files to their site:
- 2160p: 3840x2160
- 1440p: 2560x1440
- 1080p: 1920x1080
- 720p: 1280x720
- 480p: 854x480
- 360p: 640x360
- 240p: 426x240
1080p is now the standard in television and film but YouTube and other online video uploading sites allow much higher video quality to be used. The highest quality available now is the recently incorporated 2160p, otherwise known as 4K.
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