Week three plan & reflection

Friday 19th

Todays lesson was cut short because Nick was in London so we had nobody to take the second half of the lesson. This meant we only had one and a half hours of lesson. Barney used the first 45 minutes of the lesson to talk to us about Media in the online age and Viral music videos.

He showed us videos like Lady Gaga's 'Telephone', the modern day equivilant of the leading popstars music video epic (it's 9 minutes long).





After we had watched a few videos and disscussed them etc Barney let us have the rest of the lesson to work on our articles, correct feedback ect, or in my case finally make some headway on writing mine!

Thursday 18th

Today we were unable to use our normal classroom again due to the other class needing it. This was a bit of a problem because we couldn't even access the internet in the first lesson meening we were unable to make any direct progress on the project, so intead we discussed how things were going, gave feedback to each other and planned what it was we needed to do next.

In the second lesson we were able to have use of a computer room, this meant we could access our emails and articles to make some more progress on the project.

David Gauntlett has finally replied to my email so i was able to read through the reply and plan what i was going to write.

Davids reply wasn't AS usefull as Simon Panruckers, but still very usefull, here is the email he sent me;


Hi Sam

Thanks for the email. I have answered the questions which were relevant – see below – and deleted the other ones (e.g. I wasn’t making videos before the internet, so I can’t comment on that) … which means it ends up being only 4 questions long. Hope this is ok. You can send me a couple of follow-up questions if you want.

Would you be able to send me a copy of the newspaper when you’ve done it, please? It would be nice to see it.
(David Gauntlett, School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster, Northwick Park, Harrow HA1 3TP)

Good luck with the project.

Many thanks

David


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David Gauntlett - http://www.theory.org.uk/david Professor of Media and Communications, School of Media, Arts and Design, University of Westminster d.gauntlett@westminster.ac.uk
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Did you make videos for an audience when you were at college or university?

No. Back then, around the start of the 1990s, it was reasonably hard to get hold of video cameras etc – although I might have been able to borrow one – but in any case there wasn’t much point making videos because you couldn’t show them to anyone. Well, you could show them to people you knew, if you could force them to sit down while you popped a tape into the VCR. But otherwise getting an audience was almost impossible – unless you happened to own a TV station.

How long have you been making videos?

Only for the past two or three years. I realised that YouTube would give me a good platform to share ideas and presentations with others.

How has the internet changed your current career?

I’ve been making the Theory.org.uk website – a site about media studies – since 1997, which is 13 years ago now. This made a substantial difference to me as it got my work and ideas noticed. I didn’t start doing it because of any particular hope of professional reward – in fact the internet was a kind of minority interest at the time, and colleagues perhaps wondered what I was doing wasting my time on the internet. But of course the internet turned out to be at the heart of media and communications today (as I predicted!).

How would you describe what you actually do?

I’m a professor at University of Westminster, so I teach and I do research studies and write about them, and write books which are often connected to those studies, in some way, but are about ‘bigger’ ideas. The internet is another way of spreading information about this work, and making arguments in a public forum.

Wednesday 17th (not in college)

Wednesday i am in cardiff all day and unable to work

Email from Simon Panrucker

This is the email Simon Panrucker sent to me


Hi Sam,

Thanks for your email - I'm very flattered to be asked! Here are some answers to your questions:

Did you make videos for an audience when you were at college?

When I was at college I made mostly silly songs. I uploaded these to a rubbish free angelfire website account, and they became pretty popular on the net. The website is still up!

If you're curious you can check it out here:

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme3/grubnuts/

The songs are kind of in bad taste, so be warned.

I made a couple of videos around this time, but only one was successful. If you search in google for "Atari Geeks" you should be able to find it, as it spread all over the web!

Did you make productions for an audience just after college e.g. at university?

While I was in my first year of University, I became aware of Vimeo. It was in its infancy back then, and was more of a place for people to post videos from their digital cameras, for their friends to see, or for people across the world to share moving snapshots of their lives. I started posting small clips, mostly with a sense of humour, and started connecting with people on that site. As the website grew, the type of videos I made changed and I started posting more short sketch style videos.

At university I studied Creative Music Technology. In my second year I had the opportunity to take a module focussing on multimedia production. At this point I started making more videos with songs or music I had written, as that was the requirement.

If so, how did you get them known?

Just by being part of the community really, I've never been one to pimp myself about. I prefer to be friendly, and for people to want to tell other people about me just because they like what I'm doing.

How long have you been making videos?

I've been making videos since my parents got a home video camera when I was about 13.

How did the introduction of the internet change how you distributed your videos?

It's the only method of distribution I know, really! When I was making videos on my parents' camcorder I suppose I would just show them to my friends, but no-one really watched them. We made a couple of birthday videos for girls, and gave them those heavily compressed on a CD, but the internet became widely used as I was figuring out how to make videos and music myself, so it's really been a part of how I make and distribute things since I started.

How did the introduction of YouTube/Vimeo change your audience?

See above.

How has the internet and 'torrenting' changed your current career?

It hasn't really. I'm still very early on in my career, and I don't feel like I know what it is, or what I want it to be yet. However, for the first time in my life I am able to pay my rent through freelance work alone, video editing and composing music, and I suppose the internet is partly to thank for that. I get work through my friends, but they would have seen my stuff on the internet and thought I was someone they'd like to work with.

I do not make any money directly from my output on the internet. I have made about £100 through download sales of an album I wrote and put up for sale, but that's it.

I've been approached by a couple of advertising agencies asking me to remake a video they liked after it went viral, but so far I've declined as that's not the reason I make these videos. I make them because I think it's fun, and I like to share that fun with no ulterior motive woven in. I hate the idea of taking the joy my videos seem to bring people and abusing it by trying to sell them crap they don't need. Maybe this will change if I have kids and realise I can't feed them with just baked beans and expect them not to have serious problems!

How would you describe what you actually do?

I make silly videos and music for fun. For money I get hired to edit and compose music for videos, run workshops, and hunt vampires.

Has the way you advertise your products changed as the internet grew in popularity?

I don't really have any products to sell! I have an album up for sale which I sell via bandcamp.com. It's a pretty sweet site as it allows independent musicians to upload their music and sell it for whatever price they want. At the moment they don't even take a cut! All the money goes to the musician, less paypal transaction fees. It sure beats giving Apple more money!

Also, I don't advertise this album. This is partly because I don't like the album and I don't think it deserves promotion (I've got better stuff up my sleeves, I'm sure of it!) and partly because I figure my videos that get sent around to other people bring them to my website. I don't like this culture we're in of constant bombardment, from advertising, from people on myspace trying to get more fans by spamming them, it's all just noise! I feel like people will share stuff that they like, and if they don't share it I don't mind - I'll keep trying until I make something people do want to spontaneously share with others, without my constant self-promotion.

I hope some of this has been useful. My answers about why I make videos, and my reluctance to go with big companies or 'sell out' may well change in the future. I'm pretty conflicted and confused at the moment, trying to figure out what my principles are and all that hoo-ha. I quite like the idea of being an champion of independence, but I also have terrible business skills, so maybe I'll end up being a champion of homelessness.

Best of luck with your studies, Sam. Say hello to Barney and Tom for me!

Cheers,

Simon

Heres a screen grab of the email

Tuesday 16th

Today college is closed so we are all working from home, most people will be making changes to their articles, trying to make the improvements suggested yesterday. Simon Panrucker finally replied with a very lengthy email, which was well worth the wait, he has answered all of my questions all with pretty in depth answers. With the email i can now start to draft out the first part of my article.

I have a University interview in Cardiff tomorow and due to the length of the journey i am leaving at about 2pm today and staying over night, this meens i wont be able to do a huge amount of work on my article today or tomorow but i will just have to try my best.

Monday 15th

Today most of the class were annotating each others articles and suggesting changes to them, i was unable to do this because i STILL haven't recived a reply from Simon or David in order to write my article. because i couldn't do my article i spent the lesson doing little bits like helping Alex whilst he set the others work and researching Simon and David some more to give me an even better insight to what they're about.

I helped Alex by setting up the newspapers email account and adding all the contacts we needed on it etc.

the email address is 'MediaMeNewspaper@googlemail.com'

Week two plan & reflection

Friday 12th

In the first lesson of today, Barney helped us understand how to link our articles to the exam more and help us be able to write them to make them more accesible for the reader.

this is a photo of the work on the board in class.



as you can see in the picture there are 5 titles, each title with 6 catagorys underneath, we ordered the 6 catagorys in order of relevance. We then had a class discussion about weather we all agreed with how each person had ordered the catagorys to their article ideas.

Advertising

I could see Alex was clearly being loaded with a lot of work, and everyone seemed to only really be paying attention to their own work. i knew Alex was yet to find time to look for companies to contact, requesting money towards the costs of our project (£500 to pay for printing the newspapers). I offered my assistance to Alex for this because i am good at contacting companies and i am very persuasive. i also found this part of the project the most interesting because it's fun but also important to search think of possibilities, contact them, negotiate with them and be able to get somthing important out of it at the end.

We need £500 to cover the entire cost of printing, we originally considerd having 2 adverts per page and charging £20 for each advert, but quickly disregarded this idea as it would have gotten very complicated. So we decided to narrow it down to between 2 and 5 adverts, one of which would be a front page banner and would be charged at around £200 - £300 and the others would be on the back and center pages at about £100 each. this would get us more than we need, but we figured too much is better than too little and these prices were not un-reasonable.

We started off finding companies/organisations by thinking of as many as we could that would potentially be interested, the list looked like this:

1) Media Magazine
2) The Junction
3) Picture House
4) OCR
5) Skill Set
6) Star Radio
7) Heart FM
8) Long Road
9) Haydens Dads Graphic design business

Alex and I then picked out the weakest ones, comanies that were not related to media or education. the ones we got rid of straight away were:

1. Skill Set (because we already had a large grant from them for our last project)
2. Star radio
3. Heart FM
4. Haydens Dad

This left us with:

1. Media Magazine
2. The Junction
3. Picture House
4. OCR
5. Long Road

It then also occoured to us that prospective universitys like Bournemouth and Lincoln may have an interest in funding us becuase the paper will be going to students in the middle of making their university choices and if they find the paper usefull and see Bournmouth or Lincolns Logos the students may become interested in looking at these unis with the potential of applying.

With this in mind we added them to our list, the list now looks like this

1. Media Magazine
2. The Junction
3. Picture House
4. OCR
5. Long Road
6. Bournemouth University
7. Lincoln University

We decided to stick with this list, it consisted of more organisations than we were looking for, but as i said before, to many is better than too few !

Thursday 11th

Today we didn't do much work on the Xtended project because we recived our results and spent 3/4s of the day discusing them with nick. When we got working, most of the class continued writing their articles for the paper, however i am still currently waiting for a reply from Simon Panrucker and David Gauntlett, the two practitioners i am writing charecter profiles on. because i was unable to write my article i spent the rest of the lesson brain storming possible new articles and genrally helped my team with theirs.

Wednesday 10th (not in college)

I was unable to attend college today because i was ill, although it seems i didn't miss anything improtant because our regular room was unavailable so the class didn't have acces to our laptops or the internet.

Day Five, 9/3/10

Dave came in again today, to give a more indepth talk about the processes of producing and publishing a news paper or magazine.

the first thing he said to us, is a key rule when it comes to the content, and a question that should be asked for every single article. that question is " Do we need this in our product". More specifically this meens, is the article interesting, does it serve a perpose, will it reach our intended audience. if any of these come out as a no or a maybe then that meens the article needs to be improved or even removed totally.

To make sure your article sucessfully checks 'yes' to all of the above questions, the writer needs to have a fairly indepth knowledge of the subject, or at the very least, come across as if they do.

Dave broke down the key to writing an interesting article;

Research

Wikipedia is always a good start and provides basic knowledge on pretty much anything you may need to know.

Use the title's of people you know, for example 'Pete Fraser, Chief Examiner'. It makes the article and what goes into it much more impressive and professional to a reader.

Find experts in the area you are reporting. This is important for fresh and up-to-date information.

Angle

Look at other articles of a similar topic.

Come up with a fresh angle for the article that you're writing.

Tone (Think of the variety of articles you can have in your piece)

News

Opinion pieces

Features

Interviews

Advertorial (These look like articles, but are funded by third-party clients and promote the product in question. They are adverts.)

Day Four, 8/3/10

My whole group were here today. In the first lesson of the day, we started with another steering group meeting, to discuss the new ideas we had come up with. The three group leaders (Myself, Loz and Philippa) spoke to our groups and wrote down the ideas each of them had come up with for possible articles and took the ideas back to the meeting. once we were all back we disscussed each idea in resonable detail, and then decided which were the best for the newspaper.

After the meeting, Alex and I continued researching possible companies to advertise in our paper to in return get money to pay for the project. Today we refined our list to more appropriate businesses, ones with either media or educational links.

Week one plan & reflection

Day Three, friday 5/3/10

Today Ash was able to be in college, how ever Matt L had a film studies trip so was not, Tim was in as usual and Alie joined our team because the rest of hers were away. Nick asked us to produce 2 reports in the class Red Team took one and Gold took the other (Blue were away). i was needed in a steering group meeting with Loz and the quality control group so i asked Tim, Ash and Alie to do the report.





In the meeting we discussed what article ideas our groups had come up with and sorted out the good ones. We then decided very roughly how to organise them into a flat plan so we know how much room we have and how many more articles we have to think of.


After this, Alex and I looked into who would potentially be interested in taking out an advert in our paper, we need to put adverts in to raise enough money to cover the costs of printing the paper.

the companies we came up with are;

1. Media Magazine
2. The Junction
3. Picture House
4. OCR
5. Skill Set
6. Star Radio
7. Heart FM
8. Long Road
9. Haydens Dads Graphic design business

Gold Team

So far my team have been really good, Tim and Matt are both realy good workers and listen to what i ask them to do. Ash hasn't been in for this project yet so im unable to comment on how well he has worked, i was able to speak to him tonight on Facebook and update him on the project and ask him to start thinking about possible content.

Day Two, 04/03/10

Todays lesson we started trying to brain storm our ideas for content. To do this, Nick handed out pads of paper and we had to all write down ideas on the peices of paper and stick them to the bord, once we had a bord full of ideas we went through and got rid of the innapropriate ones and the un-useable ones like Nick charecter profile and a 'Dear Mike' section. these are either pointless becuse we are only producing one issue or a ridiculous idea.

I think this task helped us all realise how much we have to do and helped bring it all into perspective, although i still think people are all pretty confused with where to start and how to go about things. my self included. I would be able to be a better leader if i knew what was going on, but i think things will settle down better soon.

Day One in our teams and start of the project

In college today (02/03/10) we had the first lesson on the Xtended project, and my first lesson incharge of Gold team. It was fairly hectic becuase nobody really knows what their doing at the moment so there was just alot of confusion and people trying to get organised. Alex was getting in contact with our client, Jenny Graham (editor of Media Magazine). Kirk, Mike and Tara were trying to get things started in a working meeting, dishing out instructions to the 3 production teams and the three production leaders (Me, Phillipa and Loz) were trying to give instructions whilst doing our own work as well. I set Matt and Tim to write out a list of possible things to go into the paper, articles, activitys etc. Loz, Phillipa and i had a small meeting to disguss what each team was doing, Red team were looking into designing the layout and look of the paper and Blue team were researching.

Towards the end of the lesson Dave (Media teacher) who has experience working for publishers, spoke to us about the template of how a publishers works, he explained how each role is performed, how to lay out the production and make sure everyone was working from the same copy of work.

this talk really helped me understand what it was we needed to do.

at the end of the lesson i set Matt and Tim some work to do for tommorow, i asked Tim to write an article about a game weve been playing using wikipidiea and asked Matt to create a crossword reating to media in the online age.

Initial thoughts

My initial thoughts on the project are of fairly mixed feelings, I'm not very confident with writing tasks and the nature of a newspaper kind of worried me, but at the same time i'm looking forward to the challenge. Being appointed a team leader also scared me quite a bit, and still does.  When dealing with something i'm confident in i consider my self a strong, capable leader. But when it comes to something like this, that i'm not strong at, all my leadership skills brake down. I hope i'm able to pull through, i like a challenge so it's going to be interesting.

Project Q&A

After Nick had explained the project he asked us to all write down any questions we had, we then took it in turns to ask our questions, these are the most relevant ones asked:

• When does it go to print? - Everything has to be finished and ready to be sent off by April 1st.
  
• How new does what we talk about have to be? - Everything has to be up to date. It has to be for people our age, so there's no point talking about Napster and stuff. Try and focus on things teachers are less likely to know about. Under the radar stuff.
  
• What is the budget? - Nothing. We must raise production costs ourselves.
  
• What are the production costs? - 500 copies of full colour 12 page news is £500.
  
• Can we credit ourselves at the end? - Yeah, go nuts.
  
• Do we know anyone that might put ad's in? - Yeah, Media Magazine, The Junction, OCR.
  
• Do we choose who does what? - Yeah, you vote for who does what.
  
• Are we supplied with the information? - No, you need to source your content yourselves.
  
• What methods of distribution do we have? - Sold with Media Magazine, on the website
  
• Is there a limit to content? - No copyrighted material, no inaproppriate language. Aimed at our age.
  

Xtended Project schedule

1-5 march - defining the task, setting up blogs, allocating jobs, early research, project proposal forms.

8-12 march - research and planning, feedback from client, ongoing blogging of ALL activity.

15-19 march - draft materials and further feedback, ongoing activity blogging.

22-26 march - trial materials with year 12 and make refinements for finished product/ newspaper

19-1st april - completion of newspaper for client and printing, completion of activity log and evaluation activity.

Assignment of Job roles

In todays lesson Nick handed out a sheet with all of the role on, blank and we had go away and fill in who we thought would be best in each position.

(here is a picture of the sheet nick handed out)

Once we had all filled in a sheet we handed them back to nick and he collated the information and assigned to roles.

• Liaison = Alex
• Evidence = Tara
• Reflection = Mike
• Schedule =  Kirk

Red Team

• Loz (Leader)
• Hayden
• Matt H
• Dave

Blue Team

• Phillipa (Leader)
• James
• Alie
• Joe

Gold Team

• Me (Leader)
• Tim
• Matt L
• Ash

Nick colated the information from our sheets to get the leaders and QC team and then the 3 leaders (Me, Loz and Phillipa) sat together and worked out what the most productive teams would be. We wrote down who was available:

• Tim
• Matt L
• Matt H
• Hayden
• Alie
• Ash
• James
• Joe
• Dave

We then decided out of those who were the least reliable with attendance, because we didn't want to put all the unreliable people in one group as there would often be nobody from that group in lesson and we would end up with big chunks missing from the paper.

The people that turn up the least are: 

• Joe
• Ash
• Dave
• Hayden

with this in mind we put one of each in a team and Hayden and Dave together because they are slightly more reliable and we had to put two in one group. the rest of the teams we just tried to spread abilities and working styles out.

Introduction to the Xtended project

The Xtended project is our next project were doing for the diploma. For the project we are producing one issue of a news paper style revision guide for students taking the media A2 exam on Media in the online age.

We will be producing the news paper in a class, the class will be divided into 4 groups of 4. The 4 groups are Blue team, Red team, Gold team and Quality control group. The Quality control group is made up of: 

1. The 'Liaison' who is the person that will speak to the client.
   
2. The Schedule manager who will keep everyone on track and remind them what they need to do.
   
3. The Reflection manager whos job will be to keep an eye on everyones blogs and advise them of how to improve them.
   
4. The Evidence manager who will gather eveidence and make sure everyone has relevant evidence on their blogs.
   

Each of the three colour teams (Blue, Gold and Red) have 3 workers and a leader, the leaders job will be to talk to the quality control group and take the points and needs of the paper to the 3 workers to get things produced.