NEWS UNIT: CRITICAL REFLECTION

Finding a starting point

I have to say it took me a little while to get into this unit, we begun with a news story about the BFI film festival which it turned out didn't really have a direction to make a story from. We did however still produce an edit and use it as a substitute TVPlay.



Learning from this we knew we had to go for something that would really have a good story to talk about so we wound up discovering the Maidstone film society which has lasted for so long in a cinema climate that has not particularly suited. So this was a great starting point and then we were told about the New Century Cinema in Sittingbourne which is the only cinema in Sittingbourne. These 2 stories were great stories to talk about and so our channel became FilmHouse News "Film Theatres worth visiting".

Once we got the stories we had to get the contacts so this, although it took a bit of time due to the fact that it took us a while to get to the right story and brand in the first place was a relatively easy process. This was mostly helped by the people being helpful and willing to aid us in our channel.

Developing a brand

We needed our channel to have a professional brand so I spent some time coming up with a logo which up until this week was this:

Unfortunately for this logo there were difficulties when creating an opening title sequence as we aren't quite knowledgable enough yet on After Effects. So the logo became this:

It works well and is now the brand on our Twitter, Facebook and Youtube channel.

https://twitter.com/filmhousenewsuk

https://www.facebook.com/FilmHouse-News-882190825190202/?fref=ts

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6q2sgmcdtk4OIJGEgmF7jQ

and of course our website which has all the info above as well as the news stories:

http://filmhousenews.weebly.com/

This is thanks to Lawrence and Patricia who worked on the website and social media.

Plamen worked on the Opening titles and the scripting whilst I have spent most of this week editing together the final production of the channel.

Final Day changes (tweaking things)

Last discussion and feedback was generally good. The things to work on were the opening to the package as the words there didn't quite work for the piece. So we went into the sound booth and re-recorded the sound with Lawrence after we had re-written the script from our very false opening statement. 

The new script:

Once a small town on the A2, Sittingbourne is rapidly growing in size and number. For about 30 years Sittingbourne has been left without a cinema, locals have had to travel nearly half an hour to watch the latest film releases. But now theres a new hope.

This was the main part to the changes, but there are a few little things to adjust as well like adding lower thirds and linking the pictures with sound in a more free flowing way. We managed to do this and its now looking much better in just a few hours.  

Reflecting on the whole experience it worked out very nicely in the end and I think we produced some good work with worth while stories. There are definitely areas to learn from mainly shot sizes, structuring sequences, making sure to brainstorm the script as a group so everyone has a say. These are all things to take into the next project what ever it may be.