Media Blog

Internship at Pinewood Studios!

So I’ve not updated this blog in a while, but I felt this was a good place to talk about this.

So obviously since leaving Chesterfield College earlier this year, I’ve moved onto university, to St.Marys University College to be specific. Since I started in September a lot of things have changed. For the first time I’m living on my own, I’m renting a room out of an elderly womans house, I’m over 150 miles away from from home and I have realised I am terrible at budgeting.

But that’s not why I’m on this blog. Obviously, the title gives it away somewhat, but that’s not the only thing that’s happened outside of university life. Last month I got involved with the second Irish Film Festival London, in fact, I somehow managed to get into the position of their photographer after I originally applied to be a volunteer. It was a fantastic experience as I met lots of wonderful people and saw some incredible films. It’s such a shame the Irish film industry doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves. If anybody ever gets a chance, I recommend having a look at the films Jump and Good Vibrations, both such amazing films.

Whilst I was there, I got to meet quite a few directors, producers, writers, film makers etc and managed to have a chat and get a few tips off of them, as well as swap a few email addresses which will always come in useful if I ever need any help with anything or have any questions. I’ve also signed up with a few extras companies and have managed to get a couple of replies to be an extra, although unfortunately I have been unable to attend them.

Finally, over the past week I have been offered an internship at Pinewood Studios at their Teddington Studios, working within the locations department as well as being offered an invitation to a networking evening including people from within other departments of Pinewood, but also other film makers from around London and Surrey. I’ve managed to get both confirmed and I start my six week internship on the 16th of January. I’ve managed to arrange it to fit around my uni lectures too, so everything should work out perfectly.

The thing I’m most excited for though is the fact that even though it’s unpaid, I’m getting some real work experience. I’m still a bit dazed that I’ve managed to get the place, but I’m determined to do my best whilst I have the opportunity. I’m hoping that if I do well enough they’ll let me come back at another date.

Aside from that, I’ve loved uni life so far. I’ve made some awesome friends and I’ve been able to do some awesome things for free with said awesome friends. We’ve been to the BFI, we’ve seen TV recordings, The Natural History Museum has to be one of the best days out I’ve ever had and there are so many more interesting things to do, I’ll be amazed if I manage to get them all done by the time I leave uni.

But that pretty much sums up the last three months. Now I’m visiting home before I’m off to Bristol for Christmas. I hope everybody else is having a good time post Chesterfield college too!

The Purpose and Nature of Ident design

mediablogthingy:

An ident is something that is frequently used between TV shows and during ad breaks as a means of both displaying information about their channel / programmes whilst also announcing their independence from other channels whilst sometimes still letting us know it’s run by the same company. For example Film 4 idents are unique from all other channels run by 4, but like the idents for Channel 4 and E4, they all contain the number 4 somewhere to show that whilst they are all different, they are part of a collection of channels.

Idents are not as simple as just showing your audience ‘This is who we are’, it also speaks on behalf of the channel itself. Say for example you view a Sky Sports ident. Whilst it does tell you ‘You’re watching Sky Sports’, the ident itself tells you so much more than that. Take away the only line of that voice over and you can still tell exactly what the channel shows, who it’s aimed at and what channel you’re watching (even though it doesn’t tell you the exact channel on the voice over, it still tells you you’re watching sky.) We know from showing clips of rugby, football, golf and horse riding immediately that this channel is dedicated to sports and therefore mostly aimed towards men, probably from around 14-65, given the sports shown will require some sort of understanding of the games. The fast paced music followed by the heart beat shows it’s intensity and that by watching this channel, you’ll also feel the intensity shown on the players faces. Whilst it isn’t directly participating with the viewer, it still gives them plenty of information about what they’re watching. At the end of the ident, it then shows the Sky Sports logo in the same font as Sky’s general logo, therefore we know it’s part of a group of channels and it’s part of the Sky company as a whole.

Where as if we compare it to another E4 ident we can already see that this channel is built for entertainment. What does the ident tell us about the content of the programmes? Nothing. What does it say about the target audience? Almost nothing, other than it’s probably aimed at teenagers and people in their 20’s. Not all idents are used to communicate tonnes of information like the sky sports one. Although not shown on this ident, the viewers of E4 are encouraged to make their own idents and submit them online to be played between programmes. The viewer interaction and brief attempt at humour means that instead of an information led ident, this is instead an entertainment led ident.

Usually, companies will create a group of idents for particular channels with a reoccurring theme, like the Channel 4 idents above, but for one particular channel. For example BBC 1 has a collection of idents (links to a few: 1, 2, 3 and 4). They all contain the same theme of ending with a circle with the BBC 1 logo inside. Depending on the time of day each is shown will reflect the audience that they want to be watching the programmes at that time. If you look at 1 (The Dr.Who Christmas ident), this is clearly aimed a younger, more family orientated audience. However if we look at 3 (The hippos swimming in a circle) this is less bright and colourful but still entertaining. It’s aimed for an older audience and as it’s meant to be less humorous than the E4 idents, we know there’s a slightly more serious programme coming up than there would be on that channel. 

All of these different elements of an ident let the audience know and understand the channel a little bit better whilst showing them something they’ll remember and associate with the channel itself. Each serve their purpose and are incredibly useful for both the auidence and channel themselves for both promotion and recognition.

Edit: When looking at an ident one of the things you have to consider is the density of information within the piece. This is how much information is being provided e.g. the E4 adverts try to tell a story, however idents that say show you clips from TV shows tell you about their programming and why you should watch it. Within the 10-15 second there is a huge difference between the two. The amount of information shown on screen vs the amount of time taken to show it is known as  Space and Time. To get the information across at the right pace for your channel, you may take more time to show it than for one that can do it at a faster speed / less information. The tempo is important as it needs to fit the pace of the channel as well as the information the target audience can absorb and has to be able to keep them entertained at the same time.

Audience responses

mediablogthingy:

The way audiences responded to Figh Club varied greatly from people accepting the films with open arms to others rejecting the film completely and regarding it as pointless and unessicarily violent, claiming it would cause copy cat behaviour like A clockwork Orange had in previous years.

In some ways, the people who took the oppositional reading to the film weren’t entirely incorrect about thier critisims and concerns. A fan base was created steadily amoung those who had a participatory response to the film, creating their own Fight Clubs across the US such as in Texas, California, Washington, New Jersey and Alaska. However, these were minimal and the copycat behaviour never became majorly popular.

There were two other cases which are reported to have links to the film but have never been proved. The first was by a teen named Luke Helder who planted pipe bombs inside mail boxes trying to create a ‘smily pattern’ across the states of the US, similar to that of a scene in Fight Club where a smily face is shown on a vandalized building, however it has never been proved that this was what he was trying to achieve. The second case a 17 year old who’d try to create his own ‘Fight Club’. He was arrested as a suspected bomber outisde of starbucks as the police claimed he was ‘creating project mayhem’ although again, it’s never been proven.

Those who did have a preffered reading to the film praised it instead, claiming it did not infact promote violence but instead was a ‘thought provoking’ and ‘exciting’ film about ‘the male psyche’. Even though a lot of the negative remarks did a lot of harm, mixed in with praise the topic of Fight Club soon became popular through word of mouth with more and more people going out of their way to veiw it. Even if the responses by critics were not what the film makers had hoped for, this set off a seperate reaction which in turn made the film popular and encouraged the fan culture that has grown today. In some ways it just goes to show that not all bad press is actually that bad.

Edit: When I watched Fight Club for the first time, I was at a friends house and this film had been built up and built up to me for weeks from various people so I finally decided I should watch it. I think I was a little dissapointed because it wasn’t quite how I imagined it to be from what had been said, but I still thought it was a good film.

It wasn’t until I watched it a second time that I understood it completely. I mean the first time I watched it I understood the plot. However the second time I watched it through a few months later I suddenly understood why Tyler Durden flashed up in the opening few scenes.

I think the original reading I was an active audience member as I already had ideas of what this film was about and had been told to look for certain things, so that is exactly what I did. After I’d watched it a few times, I think I was heading towards a negotiated response as to begin with, I just accepted the film as it was, after I began to question it; Why show Tyler there? Why make Bob’s character so exaggerated? And most of all, why not unlike the book (which I haven’t read but know of) give the narrator a name?

Today me and Phil have really gotten along with the editing process (with special thanks to Frazer), however we are struggeling big time without a thiurd person here today as we still need to finish finding music, work on the graphics, continueediting and get the voiceover written and added to the documentary.

As it is, it looks like it may be difficult to finish this on time, however we plan to keep trying our best to get this done by next Tuesday.

So far we’ve managed to get go for a Recce, get some filler footage and some photos for our own personal records. Through doing this we’ve actually got more of a solid idea of what we want to film, couple with the fact that we’ve had an hour and a half long casual chat with Peter Fletcher, the manager of Graves Park farm who has given us a better idea of the questions we should ask and additional information that we need to collect before filming properly.

Peter also recommended a volunteer for us to interview (Isabelle) who has given us permission to chat with her and follow her around the farm. Thanks to talking to her, Peter and Simon, our group has decided to change our idea so that instead of targeting Channel Four viewers, we will now aim at a CBBC level. To do this we are aiming to get an educational expert (I need to ask a teacher at a local primary school) and we’re going to focus a lot of the documentary onto the life cycle of animals.

Peter talks to primary aged children about this regularly and the teacher I am aiming to ask is someone whose class I volunteer in regularly. Last year she hatched chicks from eggs within the classroom and taught the life cycle of hens herself. Her insight would be incredibly useful not just onscreen, but off screen too to help us perfect reaching our target audience.

This week (week commencing 27^th Feb) we hope to create a fixed filming and editing schedule, secure all interviews and finish up any remaining paperwork. I personally think our biggest challenge right now is to make sure we get our target audience right and do not undermine the children or create something that will just go straight over their heads.