3rd November 2015
After a range of background research and planning for my local TV news story and title sequence, I went into Birmingham City Centre to take a range of shots to use as stock footage for my title sequence. Due to a limited range of equipment at my Sixth Form, myself and 3 other students decided to work together as a group to take a range of footage for our title sequence and also to plan and prepare for our main and minor news stories for creating our own local TV news broadcast. Below is a video interview with myself and 2 other students in my group explaining what we were hoping to do whilst being in Birmingham City Centre.
To reiterate, as a group, we hope to hit all of the assessment criteria through the images and footage that we take through a range of camera angles and techniques (such as close-ups, long shots, establishing shots, mid-shots, high angles, low angles, zoom, panning, time-lapse, slow-motion, HDR etc) and by being well prepared, we will present our main task professionally and clearly using all the research we've undertaken and, thus, skills we've learnt.
To begin the day, my group and I started by taking notes; recording what we are doing throughout the day. Below are my notes from the day, including our visit to the BBC studios in Birmingham, ideas of what questions we would ask in our vox pops, ideas for our main news story (with facts and statistics) as well as just general notes to help create our title sequence and news story.
Whilst taking notes inside the top-floor room on Colmore Row (inside Colmore Plaza), we decided to practise taking shots out of the window on our Canon SLR digital cameras (which we are familiar with using from previous work at AS). Unfortunately, the weather conditions on the day were extremely foggy, which prevented us from taking shots at the quality we wished. Nevertheless, we worked around this dilemma by attempting to get the best shots as possible, and planned to get shots that are as clear as possible throughout the day with high quality.
Afterwards, my group and I set out into Birmingham city centre to start taking shots and also to create vox pops. As seen on my notepad from the day, I drafted some questions to ask people for our vox pops. The people we asked had a range of answers to our questions (which were mainly 'Do you watch Local TV News?') and the answers were varied, which is what we were hoping for. Here are some of the people we asked:
As we walked through Birmingham City Centre asking our vox pops, we began to take various shots. Here are some of our shots which adhere to the assessment objectives we set out to achieve. The shots I've selected to annotate are some that I've picked out that I would like to use in my title sequence, as I feel that they are professional and will draw in my target audience:
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| Mid-shot of the entrance of a shopping centre (Financial) |
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| Low angle long-shot of a building on Colemore Row (Financial) |
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| Urban mid-shot of general public in Birmingham |
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| Low angle of iconic Bullring building (Financial) |
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| Mid-shot of the iconic Bull from a front angle (Urban) (Ethnicity) (Youth) |
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| Long-shot three story view inside the bullring, showing ethnicity, financial, urban and youth. |
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| Long/Establishing shot of the new and iconic Grant Central Station (financial). |
As well as taking a range of angled still images, I took videos, time lapses and panning shots as I thought that movement within my title sequence would give the best effect. Below are some examples of the shots I took:
Here is my day in the city centre in pictures:
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BBC STUDIOS
Our trip to BBC Studios was incredibly informative and useful, helping me to understand how Local TV News broadcasts are produced and set out. In particular we saw the set of BBC Midlands Today and were even able to take images inside the studio. This gave me an idea of the size studios really are, and the amount of lighting and sound adjustments needed to create a professional broadcast.
The access to the studio taught me a lot about how news broadcasts are conducted; for instance, the text/script for the presenter is projected onto a screen using a mirror. The text is timed so that the presenter can present the news whilst keeping within the running time set for the programme. Whilst on our BBC tour, I learnt that the BBC Midlands Today show in particular is given a time limit, limited to 21 minutes.
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14th December 2015
After a trip to the Birmingham Christmas market, it was very difficult to film in the highly populated and congested area and it was also extremely hard to be heard on camera without the ambient sound around us being too loud. The lighting was also an issue which we encountered, as the market only seems to thrive in the evening time, which gets dark very quickly. Because of this, it was hard to get clear, professional shots on camera without our own light source. After facing all of these problems, myself and my group thought that it might be better to plan another hard news story which will be more flexible to our needs of lighting, clear sound and professional images and footage.
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