Youtube Research

YouTube has flourished in its relatively short period of time and has come far from the original dating website it was designing for, it is the third most visited website, falling behind Facebook and Google. Collectively it is estimated it has three billion hits a day and forty eight hours of videos every two minutes.

A popular channel that i like to watch is Inside Gaming (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaDFEed7JBxC2lnP5I2AktQ) What makes this channel popular is down to a couple of areas. These are:

• The Presenters
• The Content
• Production Value

The presenters are all male and are interested in similar content to me, this makes them instantly identifiable and interesting, by sharing interests with their audience the audience is more likely to take an interest in what they have to say and do. Because the cast is all male the humor is definitely male orientated, woman may still find it amusing and interesting but a male fan base is more likely to respond to the videos. In the mix of presenters, all of them have their own attributes, for example, one is sporty, one is considered cool, one is considered geeky and so on, this allows a wider audience to get involved, widening the fan base instead of being for a select few.

The content is games primarily. They play games and have a webcam set up so you can watch along and join in the humor, they interact with their audience by having Q&A videos from viewers, they play drinking games while playing games, Podcast and so on, this wide variety keeps things fresh allowing their audience to engage repeatedly without being bored and unsubscribing. One major selling point for me and i can imagine most people who watch YouTube videos, because the presenters express their own opinions and ideas they become more reliable and trustworthy source of information, not becoming a corporate member who has to watch what he says on TV. at least true for most YouTube vlogs. One huge advantage for the channel is its content, the games industry is by far the biggest media platform, surpassing TV, film and music, this means that a potential larger audience will watch but do also open the door to competition.

Production Value is fairly good. Camera quality is good and edits are concise, mainly due to the fact the company behind the videos are a production company within the games industry so have to budgets, knowledge and skill to create regular content to a high standard. In some episodes they bring in basic Photoshop and after effect skills to add to the humor, however, despite having a low quality, in the context of the joke it enhances it and makes it even funnier.

As for a future, i cant imagine the channel will last forever, but I do think it will be around for quite a while longer, as long as new games come out and they can keep ideas fresh by doing new things or bringing new faces into the show.

Ethical policy on TV

To consider the ethical policies of shows such as ‘The Great Sperm Crisis’ and Embarrassing Illnesses we have to first look at the intentions of the show and what they want to accomplish by airing. Both shows are looking to inform and help educate people but they both go completely different ways.

If we look at embarrassing illnesses, people are allowed and expected to come to the clinic to see the doctors to get help and show viewers at home they shouldn’t be embarrassed and show that other people do suffer the same illnesses, this educates and helps viewers at home with problems. Although in recent series it has become more of an entertainment show, viewers having the attitude ‘Better them then me’ it still informs on current illness agenda. As of lately they have also been spreading safe sex and how to check ourselves to help spot early signs of STDs, something that is becoming more apparent in society. Most notably the presenters are qualified trained doctors who do refer patients onto specialists if need be.

on the other end of the scale, the great sperm crisis is a show of going around asking men to donate sperm and be souly for entertainment purposes, although it does have an underlying help for the viewers, i.e. sperm donning so infertile couples can conceive. The presenter is a comedian, which can be good as it allows people to connect using humor, but does take away from its professionalism.

Ethically the great sperm crisis is more likely to cause upset in households and result in complaints as it isn’t clearly seen as helping, where as embarrassing illnesses is.

Resources:

BBC EDITORIAL GUIDELINES – CONSENT 

BBC EDITORIAL GUIDELINES – HARM AND OFFENCE

C4 Producer’s Handbook – HARM AND OFFENCE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007hc2y

http://www.channel4embarrassingillnesses.com/

Novel Extract

Inspiration: “One day he got there about three o’clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders.”

Girl Reading a Letter

Inspirational picture we based our film on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

Tv Show Analysis

Hook:

There are various reasons why people watch a league of their own, these include the presenters, guests and the challenges they do at the end of each show, however if you brake it down to the most basic reasoning, people watch it because it’s amusing, The show is well structured and being accompanied by popular celebrities it draws its audience back each week.

The characters:

On this show the main pulling point is the humour from each of the contestents but their chemistry also makes the show flow from one point to another without stopping, or braking the immersion. It is hosted by James Corden with Andrew Flintoff and Jamie Redknapp as team captains and John Bishop, Georgie Thompson, Jack Whitehall all being regular panellist, who come back week in, week out. There is also new guests every week that are well known sport starts or presenters that all help pull in new viewers, if for example the audience like that person they will be more inclined to watch. All these things combined draw regular viewers back and new viewers in.

The driver:

The show is split up into 3 different rounds each with there own type of questioning round one is were both teams have to rank three different sportspersons according to a specific criterion for example out of David Beckham, Lewis Hamilton and Tiger Woods who has the most twitter followers. The second round both teams have to answer questions from a sport person on their sport for example Howard Webb could ask what the three worst things about being a referee. The third and final round is a human clock challenge that sees one person from each team does a sporting challenge as the rest of the team answer questions relating to sport. The fact that they do something different every round keeps people watching as the comedy changing depending on what they are doing and that they leave the best round till the end as people enjoy watching people they like do challenges and fail so by leaving this to the end they are making people stay and watch to see it.

Audience Interaction:

There isn’t really much audience interaction in a league of their own, the reasoning behind this is the hook, to justify not interacting with the audience, the show has the comedic guests who are souly there to make the audience laugh and enjoy the show. There is an attempt at audience interaction at each ad interval, the first half of a clip is shown with a ‘what happens next’, which the audience is told at the return of the interval but the interaction is designed to make sure they are hooked and come back to find out.

The Branding:

The intro is fast paced and has content such as a stadium, instantly recognisable and associated with sports, which is what the show is about, so the audience knows what they are getting into. This intro instantly allows the audience to decide if they want to buy it.

The set is very basic, there is a blue side; a red side and a place in the middle were the host sits similar to the majority of quiz show. The colour scheme is appealing and is easily distinguishable, the audience knows precisely who is who. Also the colour scheme compliments each other making it easy on the eye. Using colour correction terms to get a neutral easy on the eye feel you mix red and blue depending on the starting colour, this case white. This visually appeals to the audiences. To accompany this the set has monitors that is strategically placed so the audience can see the VTs and the content the panellists draw up on their boards.

 

Skills Session Four

In order to add blend filters onto my footage in premiere pro I have to take photos or videos using extreme close up and focus changes to create blurs and lens flair effects. You can purchase filters online but to achieve the effect I really want it is best to go out and get my own.

To gather recourses I went out and took my own photos and videos. These are my recourses from the session:

Using the recourses I layer them over my footage on Premiere pro and blend them using the effects option built into the software.

This is the result:

Tv Studio Initial Ideas

After our group was made we decided on a group name and the idea we came up with was ‘Anonymoose’. this is somthing we never initially decided on but felt in the end it was light hearted, playful and original so went with it.

Before we began deciding what each of us were doing in th studio we thought about what we wanted our show to be as a group and the ideas we came up with were put onto our board, so we could collect them all up and make a decisive desision.

My personal opinionon the board would be to go with a media based news channel, informing the audience with all the latest news, rumors and gossip in the media world.

Before moving on to the final idea we had to undestand TV formats, some conventions of formats are:

•Easy to pick up and follow

•Have a unique hook – reason to watch

•Include the Audience – “Play–a-long ability”

•Have distinctive branding –music/set/theme

•Are repeatable –  again and again and again

•Have an element of competition – for drama or fun

•Have character/s –  presenter or contributors

•Can be played around the world (like Deal or No Deal – 60 countries!)

Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

For our weekly task we were given the task of researching Walter Benumin’s Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and create a tutorial video. To know his theory I looked at his back story and found the following:

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940 was a German literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, historical materialism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism. He is associated with the Frankfurt School.

Among Benjamin’s major works as a literary critic are essays on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Charles Baudelaire, and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu.

His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, who developed a theater notable for its Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarization, alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism.

Influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–87), Benjamin coined the term “auratic perception”, denoting the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth. Scholars often cite Benjamin’s most famous works, especially the essays “The Task of the Translator” (1923) and “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936).

Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis.

• Witte, Bernd (1991). Walter Benjamin: An Intellectual Biography (English translation). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. page 9
  
• p. 170, “The Reconciliation of Myth: Benjamin’s Homage to Bachofen”. Mali, Joseph. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 60, No. 1. (January 1999) pp. 165–87

After finding out who he was I looked into his theory and what it signified, the book I read to gather my information was Illuminations by Philip Toynbee. The following information allowed me and my group to produce this quick tuturial which informs the audience who Walter Benumin was and what his theory is in a nutshell so they can go and research and make their own understanding.

 

Radio Treatment

TITLE: Prime Time Radio

Premise: interactive light hearted new show, informing the target demographic of current affairs but letting them decide what they think is the false story and discussing with each other via Twitter/Facebook and other social networks.

Target Audience/ Proposed timeslot and station: The target audience for my show is a 25-35 male demographic. This is because the age groups are more likely to find the news interesting but enjoy the playful, light hearted approach. Because nothing like this has been done the audience would find its original approach new and interesting.

The Time slot would be prime time, hence the name, between 5-6pm during rush hour, the show would appeal to drivers with its informative light hearted content.

Format: The genre is a highbred news chat show. I haven’t seen a radio show that gives the audience multiple stories, where one is fake and it’s up to them to decide before being informed before the end of the show.

Pace, Style and Mood: The listeners will tune in for the light hearted news stories they can interact with, the stories will be related to the local area, some unknown to the audience so they learn something but don’t feel its all negative. The presenters will have a steady pace, giving their own opinions but driving the conversation/show forward.

Audience Participation: Being an original idea the audience would listen in and get involved with the guessing of which story is fake, they could do this locally by talking to their friends at th time, whoever they are in the car with or if the radio is on in the house they can debate with others in the house. But on a broader scale they can interact online via Twitter and Facebook, debating with other locals and even the presenters could join in, reading out people’s tweets and messages, maybe replying to do two things. Build the discussion and show the audience recognition for their involvement.

Radio Proposal

What type of radio program do you want to make?	For my radio program I want to make an interactive light hearted new show, informing my demographic of current affairs but letting them decide what they think is the false story and discussing with each other via Twitter/Facebook and other social networks.
What facts/stories is your radio idea based on?	My Radio show is based of UFO activity in the city and surrounding area. And all the events that relate. i.e. unexplained noises, crop circles, people going missing etc.
What is new or interesting about your idea?	I haven’t seen a radio show that gives the audience multiple stories, where one is fake and its up to them to decide before being informed before the end of the show.
Who is the target audience? Where would this idea play? How would you get the audience interested in this idea?	The target audience for my show is a 25-35 male demographic. This is because the age group are more likely to find the news interesting but enjoy the playful, light hearted approach. Because nothing like this has been done the audience would find its original approach new and interesting.
Why do you want to make this?	I want to make the show because it is an original idea that hasn’t been done and I want to see how it affects the audience and how they take it. My radio show is an original local radio show that explores different local stories that the audience may not know even existed and feed them the news as well as false stories that they have to decide and debate with friends or online via Twitter and Facebook before being informed at the end of the show so the audience isn’t mislead false information.

My radio show is an original local radio show that explores different local stories that the audience may not know even existed and feed them the news as well as false stories that they have to decide and debate with friends or online via Twitter and Facebook before being informed at the end of the show so the audience isn’t mislead false information.

What do you need to move your project forward?

In order to move my project forward I would need regular access to the radio studio, although before any of the recording I would need to have a research team, finding new content regularly so the show stays up to date, interesting and appealing to the audience every time.