Process of editing, Part 1

Hey it's Jasmine, apologies for not blogging for a while, I've been working on the title sequence for a week now just dialling in coordinates which is quite a long process as I can't copy and paste coordinate from other clips I've edited to the right shape and size. So I will just show you what I've been up to since.

This is the screen I decided to work on first before I had edited a clip in to the shape.

This is the result after editing a separate piece of footage to fit.

The coordinates I had planned to use on all
the screens for the specific shape. 

So as I had already edited a clip into the perfect shape, by doing a trial and error of just testing out different coordinates til I got the right ones for all 16 points, I had achieved the perfect coordinates that had to be consistent for the screen I was working on.

As I couldn't find a way to open both the coordinates for the previously edited clip and the current one I had to edit, I had to find an easier way of doing it than trying to remember 32 numbers (2 numbers for the 16 points) or jumping back and forth each time, making it easier to remember but longer to do. Eventually I decided to print screen the coordinates that I wanted to incorporate for the unedited clip from the one I had already finished transforming.

As I saved the print screened coordinates as a image, I opened it up whilst I was editing on each clip I wanted to edit into the shape. This way was the easiest way I found to do it as I could still see the coordinates from one clip, yet edit another.

Along with making sure the effect of the 'Sixteen-Point Garbage Matte' was to stay consistent, I had to make sure the shape, size and slight rotation remained the same in each clip.

As you can imagine, the rendering of this project took a while each time, considering how much footage and  editing we were fitting into a 26 second opening title sequence. So it was hard to get time to play it back, but I am hopeful the end result will go beyond my group's expectation as at the beginning of the editing process we were struggling but now I certainly feel like we're progressing.

#J.A

Summary of News Package

In our News package we will be focusing on Smoking and the effects they have on the body and also for people around including family effects. We will be doing many things to insure our news package is as professional and satisfying to the audience with advice that will help them. 

What we will do to accomplish this?

To accomplish our aims in this task we will be doing a list of things to ensure that what we are doing is relevant. This list is shown below:

• We will interview a NHS doctor which helps smokers to stop smoking and we will ask him a set of questions on health which will give the viewers a wider knowledge on the effects smoking has on the body.
• We will also interview some families which have been effected by their sons or daughters smoking and find out what effects it has on the families, both positive and negative.
• We will also represent some of the information through statistics in different graphs and charts which will give our news package the edge we are looking for. 
• We will also include a variety of VOX POPS which will give the viewers a much wider range of thoughts on smoking due to asking many different people on why they smoke and if they would like to stop. 
• We will also include voice over and filler shots to ensure the professionalism of our news package this will also give us the edge due to people being able to understand more whilst they both look and listen to the news package.

By Akin Aydin

Facts and Statistics Research

Adults:

There is currently an estimate of 10 million adults who smoke cigarettes in the UK, which is a sixth of Great Britain's total population. 21% of these are men and 20% of these are also women. Amongst Women smoking is at the highest peak between 20-24 year olds, in comparison to men smoking is at the highest level between the ages of 25-34 year olds.

However 22% of women and 28% of men are now ex-smokers and still many smokers are now fighting the urge and willing to stop.

Roughly half of casual everyday smokers will suffer from death eventually due to their irresistible addiction. Every year over 100,000 smokers die in the UK from cigarettes because of the smoking related diseases, such as throat cancer, lung cancer and so on.

Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds which put the body under great risk of illnesses

Young People:

2/3 of smokers start before the age of 18, in the UK around 150,000 smokers are children aged between 11-15 and are regular smokers. Remember it is always ILLEGAL to sell cigarettes to anyone under the age of 18.

In England 20% of the overall population smoke.
In Scotland 25% of the overall population smoke.
In Wales 25& of the overall population smoke.

Smoking rates in research have come out to prove that it is always higher in poor people.

Last year the government earned £10.6 billion in revenue from tobacco tax.

Conclusion:

Smoking causes around 86% of people to die from severe lung cancer and heart disease. People who smoke between 1-14 cigarettes a day have eight times the risk of dying compared from normal people.
So the advice is not to smoke or to be around others which do, due to second hand smoking also having the risk of getting lung cancer and other forms of diseases, So... STOP SMOKINGGGGGGGG!

For those who wish to stop smoking, you can seek medical help from charities such as the BHF (British Heart Foundation) and also NHS which isn't a charity (awkward)... *wind blows*

Health:

Staying healthy and keeping fit is an essential part of life and is very important to survive, regular physical activity can prevent and reduce the risk of the human body from becoming ill and facing coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes and mental problems.

Adults should aim to complete 150hrs of exercise in a week. It is recommended that children over the age of 5 should engage with physical sport and exercise for at least 1hr.

Physical activity is currently low in the UK, only 40% of men and 28% of women have met the minimum requirements of keeping active.

In Scotland 72% of women and 59% of men are not active enough and have resulted in CHD (coronary heart disease) more than obesity.

this clearly shows that staying in one spot and not moving around is unhealthy for you and affects you in a very bad way, therefore staying active, going to the gym and eating a healthy balanced diet all go towards your own benefit.

In Wales the average inactivity is said to be one of the highest in the UK as 36% of men and 22% of women meet the minimum levels.

Physical activity seems to go down a decline with age, as you grow older you tend to exercise less and become lazy and less bothered about caring for your body. In England only 17% of men and 13% of women aged 65-74 are physically active.

Physical inactivity is one of the most common causes of death and severe illnesses in developed countries, this is said to be responsible for an estimate of 22-23% pointing to CHD, 16-17% for colon cancer, 15% towards diabetes, 12-13% for strokes and 11% for breast cancer.

A 10% increase with participating and getting involved with physical activity, as well as combined with a better diet could  help to avoid 300 premature deaths.

Not exercising and failing to keep active can result in many dangerous consequences from:

• Obesity = reduces life expectancy by 9 years
• High blood pressure = kidney failure
• Chronic heart disease = strokes

This should be a warning reminding people to become active and maintain that to give yourself a better quality of life.

Financial Problems

Financial problems is something a lot of people will face in their lifetime, it is very important to know how to manage your money and to make sure you don't fall into this crisis.

In order to do this you must ensure your money goes to priority factors such as paying for gas, electricity, mortgage, rent and water bills, if this is not the action your taking now, it will affect you sooner or later down the line in the long term.

Debt is a very stressful and disturbing problem, many people go into a state where they like to believe their not involved in the situation and try to ignore letters and phone calls from the government demanding for money, this only makes it worse as the government will have to take legal actions which can therefore result in being kicked out and losing your home.

People who are experiancing financial problems can seek professional help.

These are the agencies that can provide help:

• National debtline
• Debt support trust
• Tax aid
• Credit action

S.M

Title Sequence Music Anaylsis

Different types of news opening sequences have different types of music to their opening. News brands such as BBC News, ITV News, Sky News, CNN News, etc, have their own type of music which can be identified by the audience when heard. 

The first news brand music for their opening sequence I am going to analyse is the BBC. The BBC have a very unique and intense music this is probably due to the BBC being aimed at the older audience. The BBC have made their title sequence music in a way which is also easy to remember by the audience and is also catchy. Below is the music of the opening sequence of BBC: 

The second news brand opening sequence music I will analyse is ITV. The ITV music for their opening sequence is also very intense with the heavy bass and the trumpets making it a very tense and attention seeking music. This is a benefit because it will awaken the viewers and also catch different viewers attention. This music is also aimed for adults but also the older youth which are in their 20s. This opening sequence music isn't as widely known as the BBC's but some viewers may identify it. Below is a video of youtube showing you the opening sequence music for the evening news for ITV:

The third news brand's opening sequence music I will analyse is Sky News. Sky News has a very unique and different opening sequence music to the other news packages. Sky News music is much more smoother than ITV and BBC news however it still has the intensity which a news opening sequence should have. Below is the video of the theme music for Sky News:

By Akin Aydin

Editing Solution!

As Akin and I previously pointed out our issues with editing our Opening Title sequence, I have spent time testing out a few things and have figured out how to acheive the ideal result.

At first we put a seperate clip on the footage we had of picaddilly circus and resized it a box which would fit estimately in the screens we wanted to take up. However there was a problem with trying to fit it perfectly in the screens in terms of shaping the edges as all sides of the box stayed straight and there was no easy way of bending them to fit perfectly.

After testing out as much effects that seemed could be useful, nothing worked well enough to satisfy what we wanted. Eventually I came across an effect under the 'keying' category that was called 'Sixteen-point garbage matte' that allowed the clip to have 16 vertexes/points at the edges of the clip that we could move/adjust to make the clip into our ideal shape.

In the edit effects section there were 16 coordinate points in which I had to change to make the right shaping for the clip. This gave us the opportunity to create the bent/curved edges that we originally wanted. Although this did take some time to make it perfect, it was worth it.

Now all we need to do is apply the same effect and coordinates for the 16 points for the clips we want to fit in the same shape. Also we can use the effect to transform clips into perfect shapes for the other screens.

#J.A

Analyisis Of News Websites

This goes to all our CLN fans out there, in today's media class session I will be researching and analysing some news websites, specifically BBC, Sky and ITV to keep a consistent theme with our news logo package and news title sequence package.

starting of with the BBC website:

Here as you can see on the BBC website you can see immediately it is well arranged with an effective white background colour that helps to make everything else stand out, with a useful technique of navigational buttons that transfer you left and right to big topics currently in the media, the BBC logo is well established on the top left corner giving their mark on the public, and the current time and date that updates automatically, in addition a bonus of having a real time clock, furthermore displaying a 5day weather forecast with a search tab at the top right corner being able to search anything within the website that you struggle to find normally, along the top of the page is a row of hyperlinks to different pages within the news sector such as the general news, sport news and weather news plus being able to access the iplayer for any shows or news you missed out to catch up on.

This is the bottom section of the BBC news website which simply demonstrates the most popluar watched shows on the BBC, as well as also choosing to display the most popluar listened and read.

You also get live coverage of whats on the BBC in terms of tv shows and radio sessions with their timings displayed. Lastly on the bottom right of the BBC news website under the "Explore" heading their is a list of different pages you can access from A-Z.

I will now move onto the sky news website and their design and layout.

Here as you can see on the Sky news website it is also well organised with the Sky news logo right at the top centre of the page giving their image, similar to the BBC news website with the date displayed on the top right corner, however no time or visual clock, nevertheless sky have a feature on their website that allows people to watch sky news live on the top left corner, and also a row of numerous tabs and links running along the top of the page starting with the home page, news in the UK, world news, US news, business, politics, technology, weather news and entertainment. Unusual enough Sky also have a news page on their website called "strange news" which is unique as other news websites do not have this page.

From this you can see Sky have a very wide range of news genres, something for everyone.

At the bottom half of the Sky news website their is a video timeline showing videos taking place around the world, watch live sky news, and also the last 3 minute catch up for a news bulletin, with more top stories of news related information and a function known as "trending" which im assuming is another word for popular, major stories from 1-9

Lastly I will take you through ITV's news website.

Here as you can see in comparison to the BBC and Sky news website the ITV news website come across to be more simple and plain whereas BBC and Sky are more in detail, despite that, ITV does have the logo on the top left corner with the links of different pages running acorss the top of the page and also a search bar on the top right corner.

The main aspect that gets drawn to my attention on the ITV news website is the top news section at the top with thumbnails and a note under each picture breifly describing what each topic is about, in addition ITV have a very unique and effective feature on the website as it shows live news streams being updated 24/7.

In conclusion the best news website in terms of how much information is provided and how well the website has been structured and its appearance in the following order has got to be BBC, Sky and then ITV.

S.M

Editing Problems

Me and Jasmine were trying to find different editing techniques in order to bend the short clips we recorded around the bend of the Piccadilly screen. We both went on separate computers with the same footage in order to find this technique which would enable us to do this. However we had an issue and couldn't find this effect and we are currently working on it in order to achieve our aim in this task of creating our opening title sequence. 

If we cannot figure the effect we use we will have to change our plan of the title sequence and implement different ideas into it. This however is our last option and hopefully we will be able to find the effect to achieve our original idea.

By Akin Aydin

Problems: Editing

Hey it's Jasmine. As the main editor, I was able to adjust things like the lighting of the video (through contrast and brightness) and using the 'time space' tool on the hours long footage that the boys captured and making it all fit into the space of 25 seconds. As all things started to fall into place, it seemed that there was one main obstacle that was finding the right way to transform and distort seperate clips to fit in the picadilly circus screens. As the process seemed almost impossible, I asked for the assistance of my team members and over two days, we have been trying to find ways in which we could fit it. Resizing and adjusting the clip to fit seemed doable but as certain screens had quite a significant bend on the top it was almost reconfirmed that the process may not be doable or may be a bit to advanced. All we knew is that the edges of the box shaped clips were going to stay straight and were not going to bend for us.

We considered the option of changing the opening sequence completely, where we would just have all the 'filler' shots and the picadilly circus shot be shown one after the other like a kind of montage of London, as afterall, we have more than enough footage. But no, we agreed that our original opening sequence idea was exactly what we were going for and what we wanted. Although this is going to excersize my existing editing skills I am trying out new effects that I have not yet worked with and it is now a case of trial and error til I find the right one that satisfy our expectations as a group. Wish us luck!

#JA

Directors commentary

Hi people, nice to see you all again, hope your enjoying our blog so far... basically i am going to upload a short clip of me taking you through our filming experience in central London, Piccadilly circus for our news title sequence and how we went about this.

Filming the Title Sequence

A few days ago me and Shahram went out into central london to film our title sequence. We captured many parts of the city which really shows the beauty of central london and due to our news name being CLN (Central London News) it was more appropriate to film central london for our title sequence. So in order to accomplish this me and Shahram filmed sites in the city such as the tower bridge, london bridge, big ben, london eye and Piccadilly circus. These places in central london will hopefully be combined when edited and put into a short clip which will show the beauty and show the significant places in central london. 

We recorded short clips of the sites of central london but when it came to Piccadilly circus we recorded for an 1hr and 10 mins this was so we captured the sunset to the evening and this transition look would give us the edge on our title sequence. The big screens in Piccadilly circus are the screens which we will edit the short clips into and also the CLN logo zooming in with a flash giving the audience a more professional view of our title sequence. 

Today me, Shahram and Jasmine are uploading the footage we recorded to the editing software.

By Akin Aydin

Planning: filming footage

Right, so today we plan to actually film our footage for our title sequence as we have cameras availible and are lucky to finally get our ideal weather for outdoor filming. Unfortunately as I am ill, I will not be able to take part in the filming process.

So Sharam and Akin are going to film the Picadilly circus scenery, this will require:

• a camera and a tripod, to keep the camera still in the same perfect spot throughout the whole of filming.
• finding the perfect angle and shot of the iconic picadilly circus screens, whilst capturing the skyline and some sort of visual of live action of movement in London (eg. public walking around, lights and traffic.)
• filming (ideally) for 6 hours from 3pm-9pm to capture the transition and transformation from day time to night.

and then they are going to take another camera to film some shots and clips of anything london based and news worthy to fufil the illusion of our news 'channel' to put in the Picadilly screens, from filler shots, footage of correspondents and vox pops/interviews. Then I can do my part and layer the footage together back at school as I am in charge with editing.

#JA

Research: News story structure and packages (BBC part 1)

(annotation/analysis originally done on powerpoint)

This news clip was quite formal with professionals, it fitted the BBC brand quite well but lacked statistics and the voice of the public is absent, which we plan to incorporate in our news package. Also the news strip is only used for subtitles for introductions, whereas we'd like to integrate 'live news' running on the strip.

#JA

Research: News title sequence

After having completed most things of our blogger checklist, I thought now would be a great time to start talking about examples of news title sequences such as the BBC, SKY and ITV and how they have used transitions to put all the pieces together to make a beautiful picture. The surroundings and setting of the title sequence they have used, Furthermore the use of the colours they have gone with as each news organisation have their own theme colours to represent them and give them their image, and also the length of their title sequence which usually is under a minute in the real world and simply from analysing these news title sequences it has inspired, influenced and motivated me to learn from the current ideas and be able to implement my own original style for our own news title sequence "CLN"

starting with BBC i will be going to analyse how their news title sequence is introduced and so on:

Here as you can see at the start of the clip you get an immediate birds eye view shot looking down at the globe with a name of a city and shapes of different countries which gradually zooms down on them.







Then the camera starts spinning on different angles of the globe giving us a 360 view with effects of white and some hints of black rotating circle lines engraved deep on the surface of the globe, which gives of fine details making it look like whirlpools, furthermore the globe at this point is really big and is covering the majority parts of the screen where its hiding the BBC logo on the bottom left which then starts to emerge in the next screen shot.

We then move onto seeing a combination of white and black spiral lines wrapped around the globe where the globe is also split into levels of swirls with the same colour as the actual BBC logo where the BBC logo then suddenly pops up from the bottom left corner shortly after the globe shrinks in size to focus the attention on the logo with the three individual letters in their own box and "NEWS" written in block capitals in white with a square background coloured in orange.

Lastly after the BBC logo has been noticed it then starts to disappear and the globe starts to rotate to another part with swirl lines going all the way from the top to the bottom and slowly fades away.

I will now move onto Sky and analyse their title sequence and how they went about it:

Here as you can see at the start you can already tell that blue is the primary colour in the sky title sequence from the different shades of blue spread around the start of the clip from the earths view from space with a white line run across the globe and the effect of the sun used as a light source from the edge of the earth.

You then start to see the sky banner appearing from the side in a diagonal slanted view with the word "sky" in black bold font on a white background and the "news" written in bold white font on a red background while still seeing the earths view in the surrounding.

Then the sky banner continues to come out and labels itself at the centre of the picture with streaks of light blue lines run across from side to side and top to bottom over the sky banner with the light still shining behind the sky banner.

After having seen the sky banner there's a rotating transition  that spins around the earth clockwise while showing us the details of the earth from space and being able to see the clouds as well as still having the swirl blue and white lines across the earth and the strong light emerging from the corner.

We then eventually get back to the starting point to the sky banner as the camera continues to spin back to it normal position, at this point the title sequence is looking at its best with the most detail on screen with the earths view in the background and the sky banner placed in the middle of it with the lights effect from the corner shining on the banner in addition to the blue and white spinning lines wrapped around the whole picture taken all in once clip.

Last but not least I will talk about the final news title sequence which belongs to ITV and their pattern in style:

Here as you can see in the beginning the first thing that's brought to our attention is the ITV logo right in the middle of the screen with the letters "ITV" belonging to themselves in black bold font on a yellow background and the word "NEWS" also left single letters are printed on white bold font however with no background and simply blended into the surrounding and also unusual is just a yellow block at the end so from

this we can tell that ITV's theme colour is yellow and a bit of white and black, we can also see at the top corner of both sides are flashing lights.

Shortly after the appearance of the ITV logo that was displayed on the screen for a few seconds it then goes to a slide transition on the left very quickly.

After the disappearance of the ITV logo we are then presented with a hallway of galleries of pictures that whatever is displayed on the cover that is the subject of the story on the news, here the transitions are very unique as it goes left and right as if your walking down past these pictures, you can see in the background that the rest of the other pictures are dark because their not the main topic in the moment so only the pictures that are displayed light up as its the

biggest headlines.

Here as you can see after going through the gallery of pictures your taken to the end of the hallway which is shown to be plates or screens that your taken into that slowly start to open up like a book and reveal something.   

Finally at the end of going through the hallway and being directed into what seems to be a portal that transfers you to a new place and as you can see in this case it takes you to the news reporters desk where he begins to talk about the news and so on.







S.M

Creating the Facebook page

For the first time today I decided to do a post from home and came to a verdict to finally create a Facebook page for our news channel "CLN" in order to spread the word, increase our publicity and gain more fans, this will benefit the group as it will allow us to get more attention and inform the people to understand what were about and the kind of news we cover and broadcast, by creating a facebook page were advertising our news channel to give people the knowledge they need to know and be aware of, furthermore it will also be a bonus as were attracting a larger audience helping us go viral for a good cause and lastly if people like what they see they can share the news with their friends to tell their friends so we can all be friends and stay updated on central london news as the name suggests.

CLN Facebook Page - Like & Share                                                 S.M

Setting up a twitter page for CLN

(Twitter sign up page on a blackberry smartphone)

Hi, it's Jasmine and I am now in charge of running the CLN twitter page. As most big news sites have several social network platforms as another way of interacting with their audience, we felt we would follow and do the same by creating a twitter account for CLN.

As twitter is blocked from our school computers, I had to create an account on my phone. 

 So we decided the username should be '@CLN247'  to stand for Central London News 24/7, as twitter has a purpose of communicating on a 24 hour basis.



(Accessing the CLN twitter on my phone)



As I have my own personal twitter on my phone, I have to switch betweeen my personal account and the CLN twitter page when I need to tweet something on the page. If I am signed on to the twitter account on my phone, it will be easier for me to access on a 24 hour basis and during school time. 

#J.A







Paper based questionnaire



Here is a collection of questionnaire's I created for our news channel "CLN" to get peoples perspectives on news and their likes and dislikes about the media and any improvements they can think of to make watching news more enjoyable, the questionnaires that were made consist of 8 questions printed on plain white A4 paper, each set of questionnaire was a total of 2 sheets stapled together, in conclusion we now have a paper based questionnaire in addition to recording some peoples responses to news related questions, furthermore we kept our paper based questionaire confidential due to the data protection act for safety reasons however nevertheless our on camera questionaire interview did mention some of the candidates names.



S.M



Here is a quick glimpse of the paper based questionaire I created - not the full version





Film Planning

In today's lesson I will be talking about our filming plan and the ideas we have come up with as a group, we have established that the location for our filming is going to be set in London Piccadilly circus due to the famous landmarks the area presents that brings so many people every year around the world for its exquisite lights and the screens that are displayed on the buildings, a place welcoming everyone from all ages and races which is good as it relates back to the purpose of our news channel.

The group and i will film through the end of the day towards the start of the night so we can see the change in vision from the effects of the lights in the dark which will help to bring out the whole setting, in the process of filming we may also record other material that would benefit our filming and compliment our news channel so that once we get that over and done with, we can then decide what parts we want to keep or delete and edit it accordingly.

Furthermore I will also produce a visual interpretation of our filming planning in terms of location filming sheets and production schedules through use of pictures.

S.M

Uploading CLN Music to Youtube

Today I found the time to upload our CLN Music for our title sequence to youtube. I edited the video by putting our CLN logo on the video as the opening sequence music is playing. As you can see below are the screen shots of how I achieved this and how I uploaded this on youtube, imovie  allowed me to do many things to achieve this with different editing techniques and other features I could've used.

By Akin Aydin

CLN blogger on your mobile phone!

Today I found out that we were able to get e blogger on our mobile phones through download via app stores from BB app-world or simply change the settings on the e blogger website to be given permission to access it on our phones, this has turned out to be really good as it has made work more efficient so now the group and I can blog on the go whenever and wherever, blogging has never been easier, here is a quick preview of what the blog looks like on a handheld device.

www.centrallondonnews.blogspot.co.uk

                                                                             S.M