Friday, 7 June 2013

Unit 65; Reflective Learning Log

04/06/2013

Started report late because of my exam

05/06/2013

Finished report in class time in mrs merrick lesson 


Tuesday, 4 June 2013

Unit 65; Web Animation Task A

Uses of web animation

Banner Adverts

Banner adverts is a form of advertising on the world wide web by an ad server, The purpose of banner adverts is to attract traffic to a website by linking the website of the advertiser. every time the banner advert is clicked on the website which hosted the banner advert receives money for every user who go's on to the banner advert which would most likely linked to a different website.

Heres a perfect example this example consists of Yahoo hosting a banner advert from the mobile phone network orange
Animated interface elements
The perfect example for the usage of animated interface elements are android smartphones or I-Phones,
the menus used on the phone or the buttons that can be found on a website where when you hover over them they will either have a drop down menu or be high lighted when the curser is above them.

examples of interface elements
Sliders, slider gives users control of elements in an application, for example adjusting; font size, speed and rotation of objects.



Icons, Creating an icon you have the choice of deciding whether to have a up state and depressed state, which can be customised by drawing icon images.




Promotion
Promotion is a method of making people aware of a product or organisation such as a business and to increase sales and public awareness. a primary example is a midwest animation promotion society which are trying to promote the development of anime and manga as a valid art form to north america and to get people to learn about eastern culture and traditions.

It could also be used in the gaming industry, it can be a form of promotional advertisement and can be best found in MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) games, specially in anime styled games.


Instructions


The definition of instructions is the act, practice or profession of instructing. The use of this in web animation is normally instructional websites such as the knotting industry there are plenty of knot websites which use web animations to support the purpose of there websites which makes the user interact by pausing at a specific step whilst they try and keep up with the animation.
The example as you can see is an ongoing animation which doesn't allow you to pause which can be quiet inconvenient when trying to keep up with the animation.

overall i feel these type of animations are beneficial for the users as it supports them when trying to achieve something it would be much more helpful if the user is able to 'pause' at certain stages of the animations because this would help the interaction between the user and website.

history of animation

hand drawn (cel)

Cel is short for celluloid, which is a transparent sheet where objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation, The use of cels has been practically abandoned in major productions. disney studios stopped using cels in 1990 when CAPS (computer animation production system) replaced this element in their animation process.
Cels was used to create the Disney's 'snow white and the seven dwarfs' in 1937


Flick Books

A flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next when turned rapidly it looks like the pictures are animated by simulation motion or some other change. there normally used for illustrated children books but could be also geared up towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings.





Graphical information file format (gif)


The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image  format that was introduced by compuserve in1987 and is being used widely in the World Wide Web because of its wide support and portability.


Animation


Optical illusion of motion

An optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a perception that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source




Claymation



Wednesday, 15 May 2013

Evaluation of 3 sites!

Skysports

Sky sports website is a website which informs the audience on the latest news and views from different sports, from football, cricket, volleyball and many more. The main reason why sky sports are above there competitors is manly because of the input into their website to attract there target audience with the usage of good digital graphics to gain and keep the audiences attention.


The skysports website overall i feel is well presented and is constructed in an organised way with the place meant of all the digital graphics which helps the user interaction with the website, the usage of navigation menu and rollover buttons togeather as one when you hover over the options the option would stand out from the others with the text of the option 'stand out' which helps the user realise they are on a specific option.

The logo fits perfectly as its in a suitable place for a logo, the logo consists of big bold white writing with 1 part of the logo having a dark blue background with the 2nd part having a red background giving the logo a cutting edge it also fits with the background of the website as its a blue same colour of  a section of the logo so it bends in.

The downside of the website is that it doest an animation because its too compact so it wouldn't fit on the website, the addition of the animations would've helped to gan and keep the attention of the audience.

BBC Sport

The purpose of BBC Sport is actually the same as Skysports website which is to inform the audience on the latest news and views from different sports, from football, cricket, volleyball and many more. The main reason why sky sports are above there competitors is manly because of the input into their website to attract there target audience with the usage of good digital graphics to gain and keep the audiences attention.

Overall i feel that the website is quite boring as the presentation of the website is just simple and not an attractive website so therefore it struggles to catch as well as keep the attention of the audience. The logo in the top left of the website is really dull and boring as its just a black and white 'BBC' is just simple.

The navigation matches my opinion of the whole website which is just simple and plain as you hover over one of the options it underlines the current option you are hovering over in white. The web banner of the website is just a plain yellow strip at the top of the page this goes along with the colour scheme of the website. The only uniques side of this website I've fount is an ongoing presentation advertising the live cricket between cricket and new zealand which shows different live pictures and texts.


Give Me Football

Give me football is a website which informs people about the latest news, scores, fixtures its really informative as well as creative it also gets the audience involved more as it allows them to write there own articles and if its good enough they would be published on  the website.


The logo is big and bold which makes it attractive, it makes it even more attractive when its in front of a green web bannerwhich makes the logo stand out when in front of it. there is a small presentation at the top of the web page which consists of the latest main headlines it has the headline in big, bold white
writing with a picture related to it behind.

The navigation bar isn't the best as its just simple and quite boring because when you hover over the
option it highlights the whole option and changes the colour of the font which is just simple. you can tell the website is article based as below the presentation theres a list of articles about football underneath.

The big downside of the website i personally feel that it doesn't contain enough features which would make the website more better with the user interface as it'll keep and gain the attention of the audience. 

Tuesday, 12 March 2013

Factual Radio Production Techniques Reflective Learning Log

project brief
Our project brief is to create a 60 minute factual radio program for the school  which will not just be aimed at students and teacher but also parents, the factual radio program has to be related to school and the interest of our target audience, it will be split up in 8 sections with each one  of us being responsible of our own section which should last 6 minutes and 30 seconds.

Ed Stagg

My personal experience with Ed is interesting because i expected a boring, dull person who talks a bit too much, but it turned out the totally opposite he taught us a lot about the whole radio industry as well as tips for our project brief for example;

  • silence is very important when doing a show, because it draws the attention of the audience so for example when they her nothing it makes them come closer to the radio with them thinking whats going on? etc.
  • 'The gear change' technique is also a handy tip to draw the audience attention closer , this consists of different voice levels for example you are talking at a normal level than you suddenly increase the level of your voice rejuvenates the audience attention

Strengths and weaknesses

Before this project i felt that my weaknesses would by far overhaul my strengths in this specific project as i have minimum amount of experience in radio, my biggest weakness was how to actually convey a section of the program myself for it to appeal to the audience, i felt that my strength in radio was the way to speak to the audience as a presenter as i thought i was very good at tweaking my voice to suit topics etc.

'Blue Spoke'

'Blue spoke' is the name of our radio station, we came up with this name with the usage of the word 'blue' because its related to 'bluecoat' people will know that its related to blue coat with the usage of 'blue' and the usage of the word 'spoke' gives the impression that its for the audience  to voice there opinions, debates etc.

Mission Statement
'our aim is to make a professional up-to-date and exciting program that appeals to students, teachers and parents. It will be informative and interesting incorporating our tastes as well as the views and opinions of others.'
We came up with this statement because it is what we want to strive for at the end of the project by trying to make it 'professional up-to-date and exciting' as well as 'informative, and interesting incorporating our tastes...'

Initial thoughts
initial thoughts on my section of the radio program is that i can see it fit in with ease into the whole program as there's a guaranteed a lot of interest in my specific topic which is mainly 'sports in bluecoat'

13/03/2013

Today we created our questionnaire as a group so we could find out what the interests of our target audience are so we included questions based around;
  • Age-range
  • Types of radio stations they listen to
  • The timings at which they listen
  • What they do whilst listening  
  • Types of news they'll like to hear
After we did tid this we handed the questionnaires out we did as much as we could and varied it from different ages, genders etc. we also took a few home to give to our parents.

our next task was to prepare a pich for ed stagg related to our brief, detailing our proposal and my treatment of the 7.5 minutes of the 60 minutes magazine programme. From this we discussed my idea of my section which was 'sports within bluecoat' and how we could put it across to our target audience whilst attaining the same level of interest from the audience from the beginning to the end. i got positive feedback from ed as he was pleased with my idea but my problem was the conveying of my ideas, he told me to think of possible questions to ask in the interviews etc.


14/03/2013

Today in Mr. Collins lesson we were told to start putting our ideas togeather on a word document, i created a grid which had 7 sections each lasting a minute, 'detail' section which had what would be included in each sections, my introduction started off with the questionning of the audienc with a rhetorical question, thats the part i got up to the 'introduction' because i was stuck on what to add to it.

15/03/2013


Today we continued with the work from the yesterday but today we had the addition of the preparation for the interviews with the conveying of questions we were told to think about the ' 5 w's' who, what where and when and why' these questions will be asked to teachers and students.

18/03/2013

Today we carried on with the detailed planning of our script for our whole section, today we were meant to start the recording of the interviews but because ed stagg is giving us a 'workshop' on 'interviews' this has to be arranged after the workshop as it would make sense to have more knowledge when interviewing a person in getting the results you want.

19/03/2013


Today we had our 'interview workshop' with Ed Stagg this was very beneficial as it helps us to be more effective in our interview, he taught us many things such as thorough planning of the interview by doing a brain storm of words which you can expand on, on the spot off the top of your head which in the end you can see how they link with each other as well as trying to get something extra out of them so for example a personal experience the person may have that they have to overcome to become where they are at the moment. The 'style' of the interview is very important as it helps to make the interview more unique compared to others for example interviewing a footballer whilst there is a training session going on in the background this gives the feel to the viewer that the i took the person out of his/her own training session to do the interview this gives it a sporty style to it.

20/03/2013

Today we started with our production of our radio podcast, we planned our production schedule to support us to be organised in our production of our radio podcast, the biggest problem i had was getting in contact with the people i wanted to interview, i had a meeting with Mr cook regarding the gifted and talented students within Bluecoat Academy he sent me a list of names who do different sport at professional level this gave me a clearer idea on the type of questions i will ask, i got in contact with the students by creating a letter and making sure that it was sent to there lesson as well as sending them an e-mail.

21/03/2013

Today i carried on with the interviews of students and teachers, i asked them all the same questions because i wanted to see what response i would get back, i could see it come along as a 'poll' in the radio podcast which can be converted into a debate, i had a reply from a student named; maya bell who was willing to do the interview so i replied to her e-mail and informed her on where and when.

22/03/2013

Today i had my first interview of a gifted and talented students, it was planned to do the interview during her form time i agreed but her form tutor didnt allow me to interview her as she had 'act of worship' so we reorganised to have it done at break time and i asked a teacher if we was allowed to use this room for 5 minutes and they agreed, my personal opinion is that the interview was very beneficial as i got the information i needed from the following interview.

25/03/2013

i got two more gifted and talented students interviewed, one was 'offrande' the second was 'malika' it was a very informal interview as they were telling me how they got to the stage they were and how they got to that stage etc. My next stage is to put the recordings together as well as the input of my part of the radio, get that recorded which is scheduled for tomorrow morning.


26/03/2013

Today we continued with our recording, i continued to record my part of the radio i also edited my script to fit my audience as it didn't seem to suit in he beginning. I carried on with the recording of my 'debate' by going out during lesson time looking for students to answer a specific question whether they are for or against as well as giving an explanation to support the answer.

27/03/2013

Today was the deadline of the production for our radio, i did my last set of recording today in the 1st period and 3rd period as i had a 'free study period' which was beneficial for me as i used it productively for my task. I also had my meeting with ed stagg to give me my feedback on the recordings i did and overall it was positive he gave me advice on certain things to pick up on which would help me to make it more creative by doing specific different methods one of them was just to split up the interviews and take out the specific parts which would help to make the radio more 'colourful'.

-adobe dont support specific files which audacity does.

28/03/2013

Yesterday i had my 'meeting' with ed stagg to review my recordings, the strengths of my recordings was by far the interview with one of the gifted and talented students because i got that 'extra' content from it and there was quite a lot of material which i can edit which would help to increase the interactivity between the audience and presenter.
The weakness of my recordings was probably the creative side as i struggled to get a creative side to my recordings but never the less this could be changed with the editing software.
My action plan will be to mainly try and editing the materials i have conveyed to put a creative edge to the material for example stopping the interview at a certain point which will want the audience to pay attention more and wait for the rest of the interview whilst we move on to a different section.

15/04/2013-26/04/2013

Today was the start of the 'editing' process of our radio production, i started off by looking back at the feedback i received from ed stagg when we had a meeting to reflect the footage i captured, i started by uploading all the relevant footage on the timeline in the correct order.

The following day i carried on with the uploading of the recordings but with the addition of recording extra footage which i was advised to do as i needed to do split up my interviews aswell as news bulletin and cut it down a lot as the footage i have is too long which means i will need to trim large amounts of my footage.

I got feedback from both Mrs. Merrick and ed stagg on the current stage of my radio production as well as explaining my plan for the rest of the radio production, my main feedback was to start off with the best interview which was with 'offrande zanzala' who plays football for derby county because of the length of it take the best answeres from the questions asked and start off at the begining of the radio production with a answered question than to move to a different part of the radio podcast.

The main problem i came across whilst i was putting my radio podcast together was the different levels of voice as i either recorded in different places or the recording device i used wasn't close enough to the person etc. Lucky enough the software we are using helps this specific problem by changing volume levels so its at the correct level.

I continued with the radio production, i came to a new problem which was the length of my radio podcast, it was too long at the time until the end of the day when i trimmed it down to the more important parts within the radio but it was still over the seven minutes thirty seconds limit to overcome this problem i trimmed the interview with offrande zanzala right down to the important bits which helped me in the end to meet the target limit of length.

The last day i inserted my jingles and stingers, i inserted both jingles stingers which are related to sports i got the background instrumental of the England anthem which i feel it fits perfect as its a sporty theme. i also added a clip of a crowd cheering which thanks the students who took part in the interviews.

Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Working for the BBC: Codes and Conventions.


What is the BBC? BBC stands for 'British Broadcasting Corporation' and is a public service broadcasting corporation. Its main responsibility is to provide impartial public service in the United Kingdom. The main finance resource for the BBC is the tax of everyone above 18 who are working in the united kingdom.

When working for the BBC it is important to understand the codes and conventions of the BBC, specially with the radio side of BBC, your probably thinking what are codes and conventions? well codes and conventions are the rules which govern how you write or shoot a media piece.

Accuracy
So just to help your understanding of the codes and conventions of the BBC, i will give you an example of one of the codes and conventions for the BBC is; accuracy, for example one of the genres in BBC radio is politics this can relate to accuracy in the sense that if there was a debate going on about the idea of 17 year old paying for tax, the statistics and facts should of course be accurate because if the stats given were false the audience would lose trust in the  radio station that's why it is important to make sure that information given out is true and not false.

'Accuracy means not only getting the objectively verifiable ‘facts’ right – names, places, dates of birth, quotes, the results of sporting fixtures – but accurately reporting opinions expressed by those who you report.'1   
so for example when the presenter quoting a different person the presenter has to make sure he says the quote correctly and doesn't miss out a word so that it is raw and actually seems like it was from a different source.


Opinion
Opinion is really simple easy to explain as its simply the audience or guests etc on the radio station having an opinion on a topic which could be part of a debate where both sides have there own opinions on the topic whether its for and against. This gives the opportunity for the audience to actually feel that they are involved in the programme, by interacting with the presenter putting there opinion on the show. 

Balance
Balance within the radio industry is pretty simple, balance means 'An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady' 8. in terms of radio keeping the balance in a debate so its equal and not biased, for example there should be equal amount of points for the argument aswell as against the argument.

Bias
bias, bias is being 'Prejudice in favour of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way where you be unfair' 2.for example a discussion on a programme where a group of people are being biased in an opinion where they don't think about the other side of the topic this is being biased. ' Bias is thought to manifest itself in various ways; in stories which are ‘one-sided’, in material which is incomplete, and in reportage which ignores entire events and/or alternative viewpoints.1'

impartiality

impartiality is 'an inclination to weigh both views or opinions equally3' it is not the same as balance, neutrality or objectivity but it contains the element of all three.its all about providing a range of view so for example a BBC journalist would have to seek out and weigh up both sides of the arguments on a specific issue without being biased.

Access
Access is basically the 'A means of approaching or entering a place4
In terms of radio its basically the audience having access to programmes which increases the interactivity between the presenter and audience , for example in terms of radio programmes some programmes may allow the audience to phone in to share there opinions on a specific topic like BBC radio do on some of there programmes.




Privacy

Privacy is the state of being free from public interest, so for example in terms of radio, if a programme has a interview of a person based on the topic which is sensitive for example 'politics, a specific MP being interviewed over the phone who may not want his name to be mentioned will ask for this, the presenter will inform the audience of this along with a reason but the audience could claim that it is there interest that they should know the name and could be argued. 'The law in the area of privacy aims to allow individuals to take action on, and also prevent the publication of, information about their private life where there is no public interest in its publication.5'


Subjectivity

Subjectivity is the judgement of individuals based on personal impressions, feelings and opinions. so for a radio stations which purpose is to help people with how they feel emotionally this will mainly be based around subjectivity with the presenter asking the audience personal questions like there opinion on a specific topic to resolve there emotional problems. 'The individual subject is a product of class, gender, age, ethnicity and so on.' 7






Representation
Representation is a obvious yet the 1 simplest one of the codes and conventions of BBC, the meaning of representation is 'The action of speaking or acting on behalf of someone or the state of being so represented' 6. so for example in terms of radio is difficult as trying represent information to the audience could be quite tricky as they will have to try and understand through speech. it would've been easier for the audience to understand with matching visuals which would help the understanding of the audience.


This assignment is now completed!

Monday, 28 January 2013

Post-Productions Considerations

Research and write up definitions of all the key words/phrases that you must consider as part of this task.  They are the words listed in the task description. some will be important and some will not - explain what they mean, write about your need to consider them, how they relate to the industry and your project and if they are not relevant - why? If you can, give relevant examples of where they are or have been used.

Workspace- This means the actual space we have used to work in, This is quite relevant as in certain parts of the shooting as we could edit certain parts of the video from the colour to the sound editing, theres different types of editing which changes the whole workspace to suit the relevance. So for example the editing of the audio of our video as theres people speaking in the background of our video.












Timeline Window- A window used to edit videos in many different ways in a specific programme, This is very relevant otherwise we wouldn't be able to edit the video at all without the usage of a timeline window. This is the main part of the whole editing procedure where everything happens, it is very relevant as it gives the user space to work with the footage.










Toolbox Window- The toolbox window consists of different buttons or tools for visual basic controls, it consists of different tools which tweaks the video in many ways for example the razor tools allows the video to be split up on the software without the video actually be tweaked but it allows the clip to be  dragged across so it can be moved.





Effects Tab- this tab is very important for our editing of videos as we need to add effects, effects are basically a tool which could possibly change the appearance of the clip in many different ways, for example corner pin this allows the clip to be stretch from the corners of the clip. This is almost 100% guaranteed to be used in the industry for the making of movies etc, because it is highly effective.

Static and Moving titles-  Static and moving titles are probably one of the most necessary features of adobe premiere, they are titles which can appear on its own own in a separate window or on the actual clip, this is very useful for the user as if its hard for the user to understand the concept of the video, titles can be added to support the understanding of the video, static titles are the ones which don't move and stay on the screen for a fixed amount of time and the moving titles are titles which can be moved to come in from one side and exit to the other side and be customised.

3 point editing- This allows to make a fixed space on the timeline so that a clip can be added to that space, But the clip has to be trimmed before placed on the fixed space on the timeline, this is very useful as it'll help the user to stick to a specific duration of the whole video so that the clips cant be too long or short.

3 way colour corrector- This allows the visual of the video to be changed colour wise for example changing the shadow colour for a clip it'll change the shadowed part of the clip to whatever the user puts it to. it consists of three sections 'Shadow, midtones and highlights', this is very useful as it allows the user to make adjustments to the visual which is very useful to the user as it allows them to adjust there video to even more creativity.


Narrative flow-  I personally fell that the narrative flow is one of the most important things in this specific project, because if the audience dont understand the purpose of the video, the usage of a narrative flow can help get the message acrross to the audience which can be put across in different ways for example the usage of audio of someone speaking narrating the video.