Fiction Adaptation Unit- Style of Film.

Right at the beginning of my creative process for my fiction adaptation film, I said that I wanted to create my film using a series of photographs which would then be manipulated through photoshop and have sound effects added to them which in turn would be used to create my movie.
Since a plot I have been toying with involves the main character with PTSD (inspired by Wilfred Owen's real life affliction) remembering his time in a war-torn environment, I wanted a flashback sequence.
In my own head when I remember events that happened in the past, I don't recall moving images, and instead recall "snapshots" of key points in said events. As such, the idea that this character remembers events that happened through photographs makes sense to me.
It also allows me to be creative with my editing. I do not have the budget or know-how to produce Hollywood-esque special effects with explosions and epic landscapes, but with Photographs and access to Adobe Photoshop, those things won't be needed.
Using photographs in this way also allows me to control how fast certain events happen. For example, if I want to instill a sense of confusion or panic in the viewer, I can use a lot of photographs in a short amount of time, or if I want to create a sense of calm or rest, I could use just a few camera shots.

I had some difficulty at the start of my project in finding pre-existing pieces of film that have the same kind of film-technique used, and so I found it difficult to find something to compare my work to. However, in my recent attempt to find a similar film, I came across a short student film on Youtube called "Memories."



The film is about a guy who feels guilt for having his passenger die due to his unsafe driving. However, the story isn't important to me. The fact it was filmed using still images as opposed to moving ones however- is.
The purpose of me watching and posting this film is to see if I would be able to make my own kind of film using this style, and with the right shots and editing, I believe I can. I made sure to note that when the creator of this film wants to show that there is panic or a lot of action, they increase the amount of shots used. And towards, the end when there is sudden realization or a moment of calm or thought, a single shot is used.
This is something I hope to emulate in my own work.

Digital News Production: Who inspired my Appearance in the Live Piece?

Appearance both in terms of the set and the clothing the presenters wear in news is very important, and this is something I took into careful consideration when deciding what clothes to wear for my Live Piece to Camera in Canterbury.
The first thing I considered was our News Network's colour scheme. We had previously chosen a blue and white colour scheme (for reasons discussed in an earlier blog) and so logic dictated to me that it might be an idea for me to wear something that was one of those two colours. This would allow watches to subconsciously associate me with ARMA News, as ARMA's studio and graphics were both white and blue.
Since I wasn't in a studio and was instead appearing in Canterbury (where the surroundings might not have contained the colours associated with our network) it was important we incorporated these colours in another way, and this would be through my clothing.
I chose a blue V-neck shirt and blue jeans for this shoot. The reason for this was that our network's style was that of a very informal, laid back news outlet, and as such, a "suit and tie" style of clothing for the presenter simply didn't fit.
An existing television personality that inspired my style of clothing was Matthew Wright, presenter of the TV show; "the Wright Stuff", where current events are discussed;

As you can see, although Matthew often wears suit jackets and blazers, he often incorporates shirts that give him a very casual style, which is something I was originally trying to emulate. At the time of filming however, I decided to drop the blazer completely, as it seemed quite out of place in the filming location of Canterbury High Street.
From this experience I have learnt the importance of clothing and branding when it comes to presenting. If the person presenting looks too formal, they can come across as quite upper-class and unrelatable for most members of the public. Conversely, somebody that looks "too casual" can often come across as quite mis-informed, and unworthy of presenting important news.
Since the news I delivered wasn't extremely hard-hitting news though, a more casual approach seemed to fit and made our news piece a little better than if I had been formally dressed.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Investigating Inspirational Directors

For my Fiction Adaptation Film and my adaptation of "Anthem for a Doomed Youth", I have decided to investigate the works of Stanley Kubrick, a director who I admire greatly because of his unique and interesting approach to movie-making.

Director, Stanley Kubrick

Some classic Kubrick movies I have enjoyed thoroughly are "The Shining" (an adaptation of Stephen Kings classic novel which I am coincidentally studying for the theory side of this unit) "Full Metal Jacket" and "2001, a Space Oddessey." All of these films feature a sense of surrealism in some aspects, and have extremely interesting landscape shots and strange plot-points that have often left people scratching their heads.
An interview I found on Youtube has Kubrick explain his childhood and how he entered the world of film through his interest in Photography:



I found this interview to be very informative. It's worth noticing that this interview was created before any of the films I mentioned were even in Kubrick's mind, and I found it interesting to hear from the man prior to him creating arguably some of the greatest films of all time.

Something I wish to emulate from Kubrick in my film is his creative use of longshots. In particular for one shot I have an idea to create where the camera pans from a landscape shot of a character walking up a hill upwards to reveal a destroyed city-scape.

My shot idea to appear at one point in my film. The camera pans from frame 1 to Frame 2 revealing the destroyed city.

This kind of interesting long-shot is used in a lot of Kubrick's films, most notably A Space Odyssey and The Shining. Although I do not have the Hollywood Budget that Kubrick had, the style of film I wish to create (a sound piece using photos) will allow me to create the destroyed city-scape using photoshop.

The interview with Kubrick taught me how difficult it sounds to get into the film industry, and how difficult it can be to get recognition for our films, but with his successes in directing it all seems worth it.

Digital News Production Unit- ARMA News Rough Cut

Today Andrei uploaded the rough cut of our news broadcast for this blog, and also so we could all see where we are at in this project so far.
You can see it here:



I am personally very happy with the way it is looking so far, and the blue and white branding we chose really fits in. it is beginning to look like a real news report, and I believe this is mainly down to the quality of our presenting, as well as the news package we have used to create the introduction and transitions.

One thing I would suggest is that the sound levels need cleaning up, as there is some inconsistency with the way one scene sounds to the next in terms of quality and volume. However, I understand this is just a rough cut and I am excited to see where this will take us.

Digital News Production Unit- Creating our Online Presence

Today our group decided to create and solidify ARMA News online presence by creating various social network accounts and becoming active on said accounts. This is something that many news corporations do in order to get their news out to the public in as many different ways as possible.
With the evolution of online social media, news reporting has becoming quicker and easier, and with the creation and distribution of mobile phones and data plans and internet access wherever we may be, news reporting has become almost instantaneous. As such, it is important for these news corporations to be able to spread news at any time of the day and from anywhere.

We decided to follow this trend and created our own Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. This should allow us to spread our news online effectively as well as add smaller stories which although may not be broadcast worthy, have enough strength as a story to warrant a short article on one of those social networking accounts.

Of course, when it comes to creating an online presence, it is important to take branding into account so that there is a consistent appeal for our product throughout all our social networking account. Therefore, I picked up Adobe Photoshop and created some banners and profile pictures for each of our accounts.
Here is a screenshot of me creating a banner:

I made sure to keep in with the colour scheme we had chosen for our network, and incorporated the globe from our news intros into the banner.

When creating this banner, I took inspiration from some of the BBC News promotional images, such as this one:

Of course, I made sure to keep with our colour scheme and include our news name. Once this banner was completed, it was assigned in different variants to all our social networking accounts. you can see them in action here:

The ARMA News Youtube banner which includes links to other social networking accounts.

Our ARMA News Twitter Page

On each of our social networking accounts, we also made sure to upload some of our production shots to give our viewers something extra. They can see our greenscreen set up, which is an incentive for them to follow our social networking accounts. 

You can visit our accounts at these links:

https://www.youtube.com/user/armanewstv

https://twitter.com/news_arma

https://www.facebook.com/NewsARMA?fref=ts

Personally I am very happy with the way our social networking accounts are looking physically. I feel that our branding in terms of logo and colour scheme are very strong, and I also believe we have taken the right steps into becoming a legitimate online news entity.

If I could change one thing about where we are at so far, I perhaps would have created the online social networks a little earlier into the project so that we could have uploaded more material to drum up hype for our eventual news launch.

Digital News Production Unit- Troll Story Update

After a recent video conference and a meeting with Helen, we became aware that although we have found an interesting subject in our trolling story, we don't really have a particular angle for our package. This would cause the film we produce to be boring, and mostly fact based without any real argument or story.
Something that was suggested was that we could possibly run some kind of "top 10" ways that people could stay safe and avoid trolling and bullying online. This would work perfectly for a package segment. I couldn't really imagine it working for a live piece, but a package with graphics intertwined in there and possibly some creative camera shots of perhaps a person in a darkened room at a computer screen portraying a troll could look outstanding.

At university, Roxanne messaged me, Andy and Andrei through our facebook messenger group and sent us a picture of a poster she had found at the university. Here is the poster:

This poster came in very useful, as it contains some of the universities contact details which we could use to gather these "top 10 ways to stay safe" for our news segment. We emailed the people listed on this poster and told them about our project and what kind of information we are after.
I made sure to tell them through the email what course I was on, and specifically that we were looking for ways to avoid trolling and bullying ONLINE, not in real life.
The email I sent is here:

I made sure to try and be as clear and concise as possible in the email and made sure to leave a reply email address that we could be contacted by.
I also made sure to notify my group about what I had done so that they knew not to bombard the contacts with emails all saying the same thing. The next step will be to await a reply from these contacts and then begin constructing our top 10 list ready for our film package.

We have also begun to prep Andy as the reporter for this segment, as the University of Kent,which we contacted previously to assist us with this project has been quite slow when it comes to contacting us, and thus we have had to move forward without them.
This is perfectly fine though, as Andy is well prepared for this task, and has quite a large amount of experience in fron tof a camera by now and is very confident in delivering information to a camera.

The main thing I have learnt from this experience so far is that a lot of what happens in constructing and pulling off a project has to do with using your time wisely. Trying to do everything all at once causes us to become confused and stressed, and trying to spread ourselves too thin causes us to miss some deadlines and lose interest. it is important that we hit that "sweet spot" in terms of timing with our next projects.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Investigating Terms

Today I decided to investigate the meaning of some of the terms that appear in "Anthem for a Doomed Youth" that I am still quite unfamiliar with and confused about. At a previous date, I went through the poem and underlined some of the terms I was having trouble with so that I could investigate them at a later date. Here are the things I underlined:

As you can see, since then I have actually found out the meaning to the terms I was having trouble with. I found out the meaning by doing simple google searches, inputting such searches as "What is a pall" and "What is a pallor".
Once I was comfortable with the results I found, and I was sure that the results returned were the correct descriptions for the terms I was searching for, I wrote them down next to the terms on the poem sheet so that I have them handy at all times.

I noticed that the terms I was having trouble with understanding are all terms which aren't often used these days anymore. I believe this is simply a sign of the times, and had I been alive in or around 1917 (the time the poem was written) I probably would have understood what most of these words meant. However, since I live in a post-modern society where our language has changed considerably, it is understandable that not many people would know what these words mean.

Nonetheless, I am now aware of the meaning and can continue to draft my story for "Anthem for a Doomed Youth" with relative ease.

Digital News Production Unit- Change of Story and Research

After a discussion with Helen about the state of our project, and specifically about the "Dog Story" we wanted to run, it was suggested that we find another story instead, as the dog story contrasted too much with the U2 story we had already developed and begun filming. Also this dog story didn't fit in with our technology branding too much, and as a result the best decision was the scarp the idea and find something else to report on.
After some research, we became aware of a story that was currently developing in the media involving the McCann's. (Story Here)

The story basically involves a woman called Brenda Leyland who reportedly bombarded the McCann family with accusations about their daughter Madeline's disappearance via Twitter, and had recently been found dead in her hotel room. Although the actual content of this story didn't really spur any ideas, it did generate a discussion in terms of what an "internet troll" actually was, and that in turn gave us the idea to possibly run a story on internet trolling.
The reasoning behind this was mainly because of the technology branding out news network has been given, and the fact this relates nicely with a troll story, as technology is the main tool of choice for internet trolls to do what they do.
Internet Troll Definition HERE.

We knew we couldn't simply run a story on what an internet troll was, as many people are aware what they are already, and we would be limited with what content we could provide in terms of interviews and case studies that would be inserted into our report. As a result, we decided to investigate further into trolling, and find out if there was any current developments on the subject besides the McCann story.
As it goes, we actually did discover something.

In this article HERE, it is discussed that internet trolls may face up to 2 years imprisonment based on new laws that are being brought in. This is a topic that could be discussed through a package piece, and is something we are very interested in running on our news network.
We are currently in the process of collecting potential case studies, and scripting the package segment, but in the meantime we have been uploading any information on this story we come across to a group google drive document, seen here:

Internet Trolling Story

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Researching for Essay

Today I took a walk up to Rochester UCA to take a look at some of the books they have there in the library that may come in handy for my Fiction Adaptation Essay. I took a look at the reading list provided in the unit handbook, but I also found it useful to deviate from that list slightly so that I could explore more television theories and such that I think would be worthy of a mention in my essay.

The first book I came across was "Popular Television Drama Critical Perspectives" by Jonathan Bignall. I found this book exceedingly useful when it came to finding out exactly what makes a quality television programme. "Quality" is a very subjective term, and this book gives a very good definition of this fact- which I may reference and quote in my essay.
The book also identifies the more practical sides of what makes a "quality" television program, including the budget of the production, the actors used in said television program and the skills of the production crew.
I am personally very glad that I chose to investigate this book, as when it came to researching what could make a quality television program, I hadn't fully taken into account the crew and budget side of the programs, and had instead focused mainly on the way the stories within said television program had been told. The facts shown in this book however have given me more subjects to talk about in my essay, and also a new angle in which I may approach some of the subjects I already intended to discuss.

The next book I found was "Television Drama: Theories and Identities" by Sue Thornham. I have heard a lot of my fellow students are finding a lot of useful information in this book, and I was no exception. This books makes an excellent attempt at making purpose of television easy to understand. And what it all seems to basically boil down to is story-telling.
Whether it's news, drama, horror or even children's TV, the aim of every television program is to tell a story, with a beginning, middle and end.

The third and final book I checked out was "Masculinity and Popular Television" by Rebecca Feasey. I came across this book purely by coincidence as I was looking at Television Drama: Theories and Identities. Although it doesn't clearly define what makes a successful adaptation at all, it does raise an interesting point about Masculinity in television programs.
In my essay, I plan on using "The Shining" book by Stephen King, the television series and briefly mention the Shining film too, and this allows me to explain that in the adaptation, Jack Torrence's masculinity is challenged at the start of the book AND film and television series, as he is told he isn't fit for the job he has applied for, but has to swallow his pride, despite wanting to lash out verbally.
Although I doubt I will be delving into this theory too much in my essay, it is still an interesting point to note.

Digital News Production Unit- Recording the Anchor's Segments

Today Andy, Andrei and Roxanne filmed our anchor using a green screen. Before the anchor arrived however, they made sure to film a test shot to ensure that everything was working correctly. This would allow them to see what the shot looked like, as well as foresee any potential problems that may arise with sound or visual anomalies caused by the lighting etc.

Here are the production stills that were taken today too:

The room layout

Digital News Production Unit- Updating the script for Anchor

Today while Andrei, Andy and Roxanne were at the studios preparing to film our anchor; Ren Ball, I decided to update the anchor's lines on the script that we have all been working on.
I did this by watching already existing news reports and seeing exactly how the news anchor signs off their program, and what kind of information is given at the end. I noticed that a lot of news anchors give a news website that more information can be found on, but since we are already an internet based news network, we can't really do that.
Instead, I updated the script to have Ren make the viewer's aware that they can subscribe to the ARMA News youtube channel in order to get more technology news.

Script for Digital News

Of course, this script is still in development in terms of the Package segment, as we are still trying to get a reporter for this story, and we are also still adding the final touches to our research. All in all, I am feeling confident with the state of our script though and I am very happy with the way it is turning out.

Something I have learnt from todays experience is that it is important to always be prepared, especially when someone from the outside of the project is coming in to fulfill a particular role. If I hadn't been available to update the script, Andy, Andrei and Roxanne would have been rushing round to accommodate an incomplete script, and our anchor may have even had to improvise some lines.
This could have been disastrous, but I believe we handled it well.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Stephen King's Connection with Alcohol

Whilst reading my copy of the "Shining", I noticed that Stephen King seems to mention Jack Torrence's and other characters affiliations with alcohol an awful lot. As someone who has had a connection with "problem drinking" (drinking to solve a problem or put ones self at ease to escape a problem) I noticed that the ways in which King describes Jack's usage of alcohol and the quantity in which the substance is mentioned and the amount of characters that seem to have been in some way associated with it in the book seem to point towards the Author having an interest or association with it also. As a result, purely out of my own interest I decided to briefly check out Stephen King's history with Alcohol to see if he had any problems with it in the past, and to my surprise, he did.

I found this article here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1178151/Stephen-Kings-Real-Horror-Story-How-novelists-addiction-drink-drugs-nearly-killed-him.html
which reveals that Stephen King had a massive drugs and alcohol binge in the 80s (the same time The Shining was written) and as such, it is understandable and not too hard to envision that alcohol, drugs and their effects would play a part in his stories and be attributed to some of the character's Stephen King creates, in this case, Jack Torrence and Delbert Grady, who both have problems with alcohol and both end up attempting to kill their families (successfully in Grady's case.)

Although in my essay for this unit I will not spend a massive amount of time on this subject, as it doesn't really answer the question I have chosen so much, it is an interesting little point of investigation and something I may briefly reference.
I may also mention that this plot point was left out in Stanley Kubrick's rendition of The Shining, which may have been the reason King was unhappy with that version. King also has a massive part in the development of the teleplay for the mini-series, where the alcoholism side of Jack Torrence's character was once again brought back.

Also, I found this rather comical review of the shining television series, which also makes some valid points on some of the ways the series has been adapted differently from the 1980 film version. The Nostalgia Critic does a good job of making these different ways of adaptation quite clear, and although I doubt highly I will use any information from his review in my essay, I found it to be no doubt an interesting watch.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Developing my film's story.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I had been toying with the storyline of my fiction adaptation film. I previously had the idea to focus on the idea of two people on different sides of a war helping each other out and showing some humanity, but I found this was mostly due to the fact that I didn't really have a budget to create spectacular explosions and such that a proper Hollywood war film would.

Also, I wasn't 100% comfortable with the idea of this story and as such, I have decided to create a sound piece film made up with a series of photographs which I will photoshop and add sound effects to in order to tell a story. I am struggling to find examples of what I mean by this, but I will continue my investigation into this and possibly create a very short test film to showcase the style of film I want to make.

A couple of storyline ideas I am toying with is:

• Having the story revolve around one character suffering from Post-traumatic stress disorder after a time at war, and trying to adapt to everyday life again, while battling their illness. They will suffer "attacks" throughout the film, from such things as loud noises and unsettling imagery.
  I hope to create a very unsettling film if I choose this storyline, filming and editing it in such a way that the viewer feels uncomfortable and somewhat on edge, much like the character in the film will be feeling.
• The second storyline is simply a character who happens to be at war and is experiencing all the horrors of war, such as death, explosions, starvation from lack of food and just general unpleasentness.

I am thinking of going with the first story idea, as the second actually seems very generic, and I don't particularly want my film to be a generic war film. However, if I were to film it with vast landscape shots, dark imagery and incorporate this with appropriate sound effects, I should be able to make the film visually interesting enough that viewer's would still enjoy it.

Digital News Production Unit- Call Sheet for Canterbury Shoot

Here is the call sheet for the shoot me and Andrei went to yesterday in Canterbury to film my live piece to camera.

Call Sheet 2

Digital News Production Unit- Rough Cut for Live Piece

Yesterday Andrei and myself went to Canterbury to collect the rest of the footage needed to complete our Live piece. This would feature me performing a piece to camera which would be used to introduce the Vox pops and also sign off my report which would lead back to the studios where an anchor would introduce the next package segment.
Here is the rough cut:

We chose to film on a Sunday as we believed that Canterbury would be less busy and therefore the filming process would be a lot simpler for us. However, we found that it was in fact very busy and thus I kept getting distracted by passer-bys that would walk into shot, causing me to lose track of where I was with the script and would be forced to do a re-take.

This was the first time I have ever performed a live piece, and it was incredibly difficult trying to follow a script word for word with so many distractions. In the past I have had much experience with performing short pieces to a camera, and I find those kinds of performances easy to do, as it is only small chunks of text at a time that I must memorize, but I have a new-found respect for those who have the ability to remember so much information and deliver it with so much going on around them.

In future live pieces, I think it may be wise for me to not follow the script word for word, but instead memorize the key points of the story I am delivering. In this case, the key points were;

• Free gifts sound appealing.
• The gifts are forced upon you without consent.
• U2's album "songs of innocence" has been put on people's phones without their knowledge.
• People are upset by this.
• Lead into Vox Pops.

I believe in this future this will be a much simpler way for me to perform a live piece with such a large script, and it may help me to sound less robotic when delivering lines.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Researching Wilfred Owen's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I discovered that Wilfred Owen wrote the poem I am adapting "Anthem for a Doomed Youth" whilst he was in hospital being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or "Shellshock" which was caused by his experiences at war.
To get a clearer idea of what Owen may have been experiencing and feeling at the time he wrote the poem in hospital, I have decided to research PTSD a little further so that I might get a deeper understanding of what it exactly is.
I began my search by simply checking out Web MD online so that I could find out the symptoms. I used this site here.
There is a lot of useful information here, which explains how PTSD happens, how it changes the biology of the human brain and how it could affect someone from their day to day lives. It seems to be a very strange disorder, causing the inflicted person to live in a constant state of remembering a particular traumatic event.
I may explore this possibility of a character "remembering" a certain event in my film adaptation,

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Investigating Stephen King and The Shining.

Something I noticed about the copy of the Shining that I purchased was that before the actual novel, like in most books there was a section written by the author. I immediately decided to grab a notepad and pen, as this is something written by Stephen King himself, explaining his thought process in the creation of the Shining.
Although this isn't something I will focus on heavily in my essay- you can never have too much research and information on subjects like this, and I'm sure this will come in useful when comparing the novel to the film and television series.

The introduction in which King explains the creation of the Jack Torrence character, and why he decided to develop him in a particular way.

Whilst I was researching some Shining stuff at the Maidstone studios, I also discovered that another student, Sam Mckeown had also chosen The Shining as his source of investigation for this essay. Therefore I think it may be useful for me and Sam to possibly exchange some notes, and make each other aware of possible study areas in order to improve both our essays.
Of course, it will be important to make our essays as different as possible, and avoid plagiarizing each others work at all costs.

Also, I have made a brief video blog showing how I plan to compare the novel of The Shining with the Television Series:

Digital News Production Unit- Preparing to Film the Piece to Camera.

Recently we have had to make a few changes to our previous plans. Originally, we planned to run our U2 album download story as a package piece, and have our Live story about a series of savage dog attacks on cats that have happened throughout the local area of Strood.
However, we recently pitched these two ideas to our course tutor and it was suggested that we drop the dog story as it didn't really seem to fit in with the U2 story we wanted to run. As mentioned in a previous blog, we have pretty much branded ourselves as "tech news" and so it is actually quite understandable that we may confuse some of our viewers what with our stories being very contrasting and different to each other.
We do not currently have another story set in stone, but we are interested in investigating a new story we have discovered about a series of photographic leaks of the popular app "SnapChat." These photographs have been hacked and released by a group of people, which much like the iCloud leak story I spoke about in a previous blog, is a massive invasion of privacy.
Some information about this story can be found here.

Although running this story would be fitting with our tech-branding, there is a problem, as this story has already been covered very heavily by major news corps throughout the media, and so there isn't anything really new for us to bring to the table. Anything we create, no matter how extravagant has already been done by the major news networks, and as such, it may be more desirable for us to try and find a more niche' story that is quite unheard of. This would not only attract potential new viewers, but also show them a story that they are less likely to have heard of, and then they are therefore more likely to stick around and want to watch the news we are reporting.

Another last minute change we have made to the structure of our news piece, is that we have made the U2 story our Live piece rather than a package. The reasoning behind this is that the stories we have been checking out to replace our dog stories would be much more suitable as packages, whereas the U2 story could always be performed as a live, with a sort of sub-package inside which contains the Vox-pop videos we collected previously.

As myself and Andrei are returning to Canterbury tomorrow to record my piece to camera (this will complete all the footage we need in order to create the Live Piece) we have taken it upon ourselves to severely overhaul our Live Piece script over the past couple of days.
The new script can be seen here;

U2 Story Live Script

We found that the previous incarnation of the script had a very formal style of wording, which whilst it gives all the necessary information that is needed- sounds very robotic and cold. I therefore decided to take it upon myself to take the script that has previously been written by Roxanne, and reword it myself to fit my particular style of speaking and presenting. Since I am the presenter for this particular Live Piece, I also made sure to actually speak the words as I wrote them, and continuously go back and read the sentences out loud to make sure they sounded correct.

Once we were happy with the way the script was written, myself and Andrei timed how long it took me to actually read my parts, and created a short estimate of how long the script was. Then we could add things or removes things as necessary to fit the 2:30 time limit this live piece has been set.

Digital News Production Unit- Collecting Social Media Opinions

Today while the script was being edited by Andrei in preparation for out shoot of my scenes for the U2 story this Sunday, I have decided to collect some opinions from social media users to find out exactly what their opinions on the free U2 album would be. I did this by basically searching twitter using the hashtag- "U2".
It is important to remain impartial with opinions when broadcasting news so as not to sway the viewer one way or another, and so I decided to find a mixture of both positive and negative posts which have been made by the online community.

Here are the opinions I collected, which I then added to a word document and uploaded to our Google Docs account for future reference, and also so Roxanne, Andy and Andrei can view them and add to them if need be:

u 2 Comments

As you can see, there were a lot of negative comments towards the album posted via twitter, a lot of them mocking U2 and Bono for the decision to have the album put on people's phones without their permission. Of course, I also made an effort to find comments defending the decision also.

A lot of these comments were buried amongst the negative ones however, and the ones I did find were far and few between. As such, I decided to actually visit U2s official website and check their comments section. I believed that any fans of U2 that were willing to defend the band or praise them for their work would probably choose to do so through the band's official website. I was correct in assuming this, as I found that the band's website was full of people praising their work and thanking the band for releasing the album for free.

 We probably won't use all of the comments and opinions listed in this document, but it helps to have a selection to choose from. Also, the username of some of these users and locations etc will probably be censored for their privacy, and in the actual news broadcast, they will be introduced in ways such as "One user had this to say..." as opposed to using their name or screen-name.
These comments will probably appear in the film as a graphic onscreen, along with a voiceover reading the comment.

Digital News Production Unit- Creating the ARMA News YouTube Channel

I have recently begun to create the YouTube channel for this unit. On this Youtube channel, we will upload all of the videos we create for this unit, including everything from the workshops we attend. I have taken it upon myself to send the username and password for this channel to all the members of ARMA, so that any of us can log in at any point and respond to comment posted on our videos and even upload new videos and content.
Here is a screenshot of our channel as it is right now, with no customisation in place.

Obviously when we have decided on what logo we want use for our network, the logo will be updated to show this, and when we start uploading videos to this channel, it will look a lot more active with content.
The idea behind us using Youtube to showcase our network was the fact that youtube is integrated into almost all mobile devices these days, and it is also one of the most popular video sharing sites on the web. This will allow us to have lots of exposure for our videos, and will allow a much larger audience to view our work.

One of the very brief ways I customised the YouTube channel was to add a description of the channel. The description I added reads:


"Welcome to the official ARMA News YouTube channel.
Covering stories to do with advancing technology, security breaches, your rights and everything in between, ARMA has you covered when it comes to learning about an ever-changing technological horizon.
Stay tuned!"

I am hoping that this description would be enough to let any passing visitors to our page know exactly what we're about and possibly keep them interested enough to watch our videos or even subscribe to the channel.

Digital News Production Unit- Vox Pop Transcripts.

Recently our Producer; Roxanne was given the footage we collected of the Canterbury Vox Pops to transcribe them. She did this very quickly and then uploaded the document to our Google Docs account. Below is a screenshot of the document. I didn't want to upload it to my blog, as I didn't really have any part in the creation of the transcription.
Instead you can view the transcription on Roxanne Meats blog here.

Since Roxanne wasn't sure who was who as I interviewed so many people, she inserted pictures of the people that were talking for convenience sake.
The reason it is so important to create transcripts for projects and interviews is because it allows us to simply view the videos written down on a page as opposed to having to physically view each video again and again. We can simply pick and choose the most important parts of the interview rather than having to watch each interview and watching a lot of irrelevant material.

Something we agreed on doing the next time we have to create a Vox Pop transcript was to ask the interviewees their name on camera, so that we wouldn't have to screenshot the people in the future.

Digital News Production Unit- Adobe After Effects Workshop

Recently I attended a workshop on Adobe After Effects. I enjoyed this, as although I am familiar with Adobe Creative Suite and Photoshop, I have no idea how to use Adobe After Effects. It is paramount that I become familiar with this program however, because this news unit will have heavy use of it with the creation of graphics and animations for the scanlines and news introduction.

I experimented with simple animations, such as making my name appear on the screen and then move off of the screen, basic things that I had no idea how to perform before. I found this to be a very useful experience in learning the basics of After Effects, but I didn't want my studies in the program to end there.
I found that there is a wealth of videos on Youtube with extensive tutorials on After Effects and so in my spare time I will be checking these out so that I can get a better understanding of the way this program works.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Reading the Shining Book

I have recently received my copy of Stephen King's "The Shining" through the post. I will be reading this throughout the course of my investigations so that I can get an idea about what the film and television series were adapted from. Here is a photograph of the book:

The book in its delivery box.

The book is over 500 pages long so it will probably take me quite a while to read. I believe I will be able to efficiently read it and take all the information in though as long as I make use of my spare time, and time I spend on the bus travelling to and from uni etc.

It also helps that I am an avid reader anyway and so reading this story and taking in all the details shouldn't be too hard for me.

Digital News Production Unit- Investigating ways of speaking.

In preparation for my piece to camera, I have decided to do a small amount of investigation into certain ways of speaking. Andrei pointed me in the direction of a person from Ancient Rome called "Cicero" who revolutionized the way Latin was spoken and written.
As a poet and politician, Cicero had a lot of experience speaking publically, and was apparently very good at being able to get his points across with pinpoint clarity. This is something I would like to be able to do in my live piece to camera, and so some background reading on Cicero and his work would most definitely not go amiss here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Choosing an essay question and Investigating "The Shining" Television Series.

I have recently decided to choose question 1/3 to answer for my Fiction Adaptation essay. This question is:
Discuss the view that "with a successful adaptation the original work is transformed into something new and different, although retaining many traces of what it was formerly" with reference to at least one text adapted for broadcast on television.
The reason I have chosen this question to answer is it gives me a lot of opportunity when it comes to the content I can have in my essay. For example, the statement which is made in the question is something that is subjective, and therefore I can investigate and find adaptations that are to the contrary of that statement.
I could find an adaptation that has been successful despite being very similar to it's original writings. Basically, I could argue with the statement.
I am confident in choosing this question, as it seems to be very much a discussion question as opposed to choosing a particular viewpoint and defending it. Therefore, I believe I will use "The Shining" (discussed in a previous blog) to both argue and defend this statement.

In regards to "The Shining", I noticed that the question I have chosen shows that the adaptation I choose must have been adapted for television. Despite the 1980s Shining movie was something I previously suggested in my blog, I have since decided to also investigate whether or not a television adaptation has been made. And I have found that there is indeed one.

After a quick google search, I came across an IMDB page for a 1997 television series based on the Shining book by Stephen King.

I was surprised to find that on the IMDB page, this particular adaptation of the shining has received quite a low rating (6.1/10), whilst Stanley Kubrick's 1980s adaptation has a rating of 8.5/10.
A good point I could bring up in my essay is that despite the television adaptation having a good 17 years of technological advances and potential story development, it isn't seen as being as good as the movie version, or indeed the book.
Some areas I could investigate are:

• Is the Shining better received as a movie than a television series?
• What made the movie better?
• Does the movie or the series follow Stephen King's book closer?
• Which does Stephen King himself prefer out of the movie and series?
• How different are the series and movie to the book?

I am currently awaiting my copy of the Shining book to arrive in the mail, but in the meantime I have the DVD of the Shining and I can find the series online probably. I will continue my research into these pieces of film while I wait for the book to arrive.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Deciding on an essay subject.

I have been giving the book and film I want to discuss in my Fiction Adaptation essay some thought this weekend, as I have been at home in Nottingham, and have had some time to unwind. I re-watched a film called "The Shining" directed by Stanley Kubrick, when I suddenly decided to research the movie and find out if it was adapted from a novel.
After a quick google search, I found that it indeed was adapted from a book called "The Shining" which was written and published in 1977 by Stephen King. I also found that a television series based on the story was created too. I have since ordered the book, and have brought the Shining DVD back to University with me to study.
I am a massive fan of the work of Stanley Kubrick, and I am also a big fan of horror films and horror stories in general, so I am very happy that my personal interest has become useful for this unit.

The book version of "The Shining", released in 1977 by Stephen King.

The DVD version of "The Shining", a movie released in 1980.

As I researched online, I also found that Stephen King has been quoted as being unhappy with Kubrick's adaptation of his story as it "ignored key plot points" from his book. This intrigued me, and I believe it may be a point worth bringing up in whichever essay question I choose, that the director of the adapted book has to not only try and please the fans of the story, but also the stories original creator.

Digital News Production Unit- Travelling to Canterbury, collecting Vox Pops.

Today ARMA traveled to Canterbury to collect some interviews from the general public for our U2 Album story. Originally, we said we were going to film this story at a place called Tottenham Court Road in London. However, due to our inexperience working with cameras so far away from home, and due to London's quite high crime-rate, we decided it would be better for all of us to film at Canterbury High Street instead, as it is somewhere we are familiar with, and somewhere we would feel safe.
We at my flat in Chatham at 10am, as it was the most convenient place for everyone to meet, and once we had all arrived, we made sure to do a kit-check to make sure we had everything we needed before taking Andrei's car to Canterbury.The journey there was around 40 minutes to an hour long, which was plenty of time for me to familiarize myself with the questions I would be asking the public about the album.

When we reached our destination, we decided to split our group up, with me and Andrei setting up the camera equipment in a local McDonalds, whilst Andy and Roxanne went about trying to find a suitable place for us to film. This proved to be a very difficult thing to do, as even once we had set up the camera equipment, we had a few problems with choosing a nice, quiet yet active environment for us to film at.

Something that we also made sure to do was speak to some Canterbury security guards to make sure that we would be allowed to film in this area. Originally we asked to film at a place called Fremlin Walk, as it is owned privately. However, we did not receive a response until very late in the day, and there were some strict conditions applied by the owners of Fremlin Walk, such was wanting to know exactly what our project was about, what we would film and where, and for how long.

One of Andy's location test shots.

We eventually found our perfect spot, which showed a lot of people using the busy high-street, but was still quiet enough for us to be able to collect the footage we need and have suitable sound levels without interference from passer-bys.

Journeying around Canterbury to find a place with suitable sound levels. (A plane was overhead in this area, which affected the sound quality somewhat.)

The next step we took was for Roxanne (our producer) to collect members of the public that would be interested in being interviewed for our news story. This proved to be actually quite difficult, as every time Roxanne would approach someone, they would immediately assume she was trying to sell them something, or get them to sign up to some service they didn't want, and they would immediately shut down and move on. We found that a lot of the time, Andrei approaching people whilst holding the camera equipment was a much safer bet as it was something people are not used to, and so we would immediately grab their attention.

Andrei operating the camera equipment.

Once Roxanne and Andrei had managed to get a hold of people that would be interested in appearing on camera, they would then get them to sign a declaration (permission slip) which would basically allow us to use their image in our project without fear of being sued.

The Vox pop collecting part of this project went off without a hitch, and altogether we managed to get around 7-8 vox pops of people with varying opinions of the U2 album being on their phone. My job at this point was to basically run through a list of questions I had for the public, and hold the microphone which would collect their answers. We decided to have the camera's mic running, as well as get me to hold a hand-held mic. This way we have more than 1 form of audio, and it's always better to have more sound sources to choose from.

Me collecting the Vox Pop interviews from members of the public while Andrei records.

Once we had collected these Vox Pops, we returned home.

Returning to Chatham from Canterbury

The next step for me to take is to return home to Nottingham for the weekend, and collect the necessary attire for me to be a presentable reporter for when we return to Canterbury and capture my actual report. Once this is done, we can go back to Canterbury, collect the footage we need there, and then I can begin the editing process of this unit and start to put everything together for this U2 story. I am very much looking forward to it, and I found today to be a valuable and exciting experience.

Digital News Production Unit- ARMA Video Conference 2

Today we had our second ARMA video conference to discuss what point we are at with our research and development of the stories we want for our news network, as well as to discuss the actual creation of the network itself.

A lot of the things we talked about were just to confirm some details (such as the branding we want our network to have) as well as to clear up some confusion about what certain jobs people had. For example, I was under the impression that my job was to be the actual news anchor reporting from a studio, when in fact our Producer Roxanne had listed me as a reporter for the U2 album story, as I seemed to be very interested in the story.

This made perfect sense, as I do have a personal interest in technology stories, and personally I do not think I have the attitude or look that would allow me to be a news anchor. I believe my skill set gears me more towards that of a field reporter, and so I am still very happy with the position I have been given.

Something that was quite briefly mentioned in the conference which I am taking very seriously is the way the reporters (including myself) look and are dressed- what their style is. Obviously I have quite long, messy hair at the moment, which I intend to get cut and styled somewhat before I actually appear on camera. I also gave the way I dress some deep thought.
The words "Smart Casual" were used to describe the way the rest of the ARMA guys wanted the reporters and anchor to dress, and so I decided to do a quick google search to find out exactly what this means. I know what smart casual means, but if I have an image to work off, I cam prepare myself and gather the correct clothing for the shoot.

Digital News Production Unit- Suggesting Edits to the Script and Corrections

Today I have taken it upon myself to view the script we have all been working on for this Digital News Production Unit and update it to correct any grammar mistakes and readability problems it may have. I have also learnt how to use Google Docs "Suggest Edit" feature, which allows me to add my changes to the script without undoing anything that the other members of ARMA have done.
This will allow me to add the changes I think need to be made, and then the other members of the group can either agree or disagree with my changes.

Myself in the process of editing the script adding my changes which can be accepted or rejected by the other members of ARMA.

Some of the changes I am making to the script are to include information for a story we have recently agreed to run on our network (The story of the wild dogs in Strood) and also deleting some of the more out-dated information (such as it still containing some references to a body found in the river Medway- a story we originally wanted to run but decided not to due to information and time constraints.)
The speech bubbles that appear to the right of the script contain the changes I have made to the script, and members of the group can accept or reject my changes by clicking the tick or cross icons in eac speech bubble.

The script is actually beginning to look semi-complete and I estimate that it will be completed by the end of this week, bar any sudden problems arising.

Digital News Production Unit- Researching our Live Story Idea.

Although we are very happy with our Package story idea for our news report, we have been having some debate over what story we should run for our Live piece. Originally, we had wanted to run a story about a body being found in the river Medway, but since it is an ongoing case, and we wouldn't really have much access to the areas we would need to film in, we have instead decided to run a story that is not only more relevant, but easier to research and collect footage for.

When we were discussing more potential ideas, a story about a group of wild dogs in the nearby area of Strood was brought up. Local news distributions such as KentOnline have been reporting this story a lot recently, with the first known report being in around June of this year after a locals cat; Coco was attacked and killed by the group of dogs.
CCTV footage of the attack:


KentOnline's report of the incident.

After some more investigation of this story however, we found that there have actually been more recent attacks on cats in the strood area. on October 2nd, KentOnline reported this story:
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway/news/second-cat-killed-by-wild-24490/
Now, although this particular report contains no new photographs, and instead contains the same video and photographs posted on the previous news articles, it does contain some new information about the dogs, as well as a very sobering eyewitness statement which reads:
"If this had been an attack on a human, a child would be dead, and an adult probably as well."

As part of our live piece, it may be worth us visiting the area where this latest attack took place so we can see exactly what may have happened, with the purpose being to inform viewers about the potential dangers of these wild dogs, and possibly some of the damage they have caused too (if it is still there.)
It may also be worth us "doorstepping" some of the local residents of these areas to see if we can find out whether or not we can get our own eyewitness interview, or possibly some vox pops, which would be extremely useful for our Live report.

Digital News Production Unit- Inside Out Viewing and Workshop

Today I and the rest of my class watched several videos as part of a workshop we took on improving our interviewing, presenting and reporting skills. We began by watching a short video in which a man explained how when reporting we must be sure to only move around a lot to different areas in the same shot if we are illustrating a change in scenery. (For example, a lush green field which is situated directly opposite a highly pollutant power plant.)
I found this film to be very useful in terms of learning how to present (as I will be the presenter for our news network in this unit) and I found it interesting to note all the little details the presenter showed during some of his broadcasts. I made sure to study the presenters tone of voice and body movements, as well as how he uses his body and certain camera shots to illustrate a point and show a sense of scale when it comes to landscape shots and showing large open spaces.

Rachel Royce (Right) speaks with an affected parent.

The next video we watched was of a recent broadcast of a BBC "Inside Out" program, in which Rachel Royce investigates the cases of several British parents who have had to escape from the country and take their children with them to avoid the social services taking them away.
The great part about this was the fact that Rachel Royce was actually our guests today who was helping operate the workshop we would do later, and so it was an opportune moment to ask her some questions and find out some information about her part in the creation of this episode of the program, as well as what it's like to present and investigate stories like this in general. One of the main questions I asked Rachel was whether or not she still gets nervous appearing on camera even with all her experiences. I asked this as I get quite nervous getting in front of the camera (despite apparently appearing calm and collected on the outside) and I was relieved to be told that she did indeed still get nervous before shooting.
This makes me feel a lot better about myself, as I was beginning to feel that broadcast journalism was something I would never be able to pursue because of my nerves, but this brief conversation with Rachel has convinced me that being nervous before a shoot is natural, and I broadcast journalism is still potentially an avenue I may wish to go down.

When we began the actual workshop this afternoon, we were presented with a script and asked to present a short studio news report, complete with links to VTs and even a weather report. Myself and Andy Cox took on the roles of presenters with other members of the class acting as director, cameraman, boom-mic operator and light operator.
I found this experience to be very beneficial in giving me a taste of what it is like in a news anchor position. Some feedback I received about my performance was that my delivery of lines and my tone was very good, but the fact that myself and Andy were quite erratic with our body language and uncoordinated with the way we were looking around the "studio" was very distracting to watch. Also, we kept looking down at our scripts.
Personally, I think we'd have done better if we'd have been given a second run, and also, the problem of us looking down at our scripts wouldn't be an issue in an actual news room, as we would be able to use Auto-Cue.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon investigating a certain case (which we cannot mention as it is an ongoing case) and collecting the information we would need to stage a news report and a "live" interview. I chose to be the field reporter interviewing Andy, with Roxanne and Andrei portraying the news anchors that would be presenting from the news room.
I found this to be a very enjoyable experience.
One of the main problems I found however was that I seemed to be trying too hard to follow a script we had written previously about the story, and as such, I would often stumble on words, or forget certain details and have to do a retake. This would not be possible in a real-life live report, and as such it has given me a much deeper insight and respect for those that can do live reports.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Interest Effect for Photographic Film Idea

Today during a conversation with Timothy Willcox (My flatmate and newest member of our 2nd year group) we brought up the subject of our Fiction Adaptation films and I explained my idea about creating my film using a series of photoshopped photographs. Tim then showed me a video which was a commercial by Sky for one of their products.

Here is the video:

The effect used in the video is actually created by capturing a photograph and separating it into several layers (background-foreground- objects etc.) and the effect it gives is that it is actually moving in slow-motion, when it isn't.
This is a possible effect I could use in my fiction adaptation film to great effect.

Digital News Production Unit- Investigating Awkward Live Interviews

On Friday of this week, we were shown a collection of interviews by various news network in which there had been some problems with the Live interviews, whether it be because of the presenter or the guests. An example of the videos we watched include Jeremy Paxman's interview with Michael Howard, in which Michael dodges a particular question about whether he threatened to overrule somebody repeatedly.
I took it upon myself afterwards to find some more examples of how interviewers manage to get information out of defensive interviewees, and how they deal with interviews when something wrong is happening. One particular interview I found was Channel 4's Jon Snow interviewing Mark Regev.


In this particular interview, Mark dodges several questions repeatedly and sometimes even gets quite aggressive in his responses to Jon Snow. I chose to study Jon's reactions to these comebacks and Mark's defensive and argumentative nature so that I could learn what best possible way there is to react in this situation for our own news network unit.

Digital News Production Unit- "Stunt Ideas"

For our package (The U2 story), our group "ARMA" has been trying to come up with some possible "stunts" we could perform during our package to prove some of the points we have raised. During an ideas lab between myself, Andy and Andrei we were discussing the idea that the U2 album may have been downloaded to Andrei's iPad without his consent. Andrei insisted that this must be impossible, as he didn't recall downloading anything, and his iPad hadn't been updated in a long time.
Lo and behold however, as Andrei checked his iTunes library, he found that he had indeed been distributed U2's "Songs of Innocence" album.

As small a detail as this may be, it did give us an idea for a possible stunt we could perform as part of our package news story though. Andrei suggested that we actually stop people in the street and ask them to check their iTunes library for this new U2 album, and record their genuine reactions when they discover that they do indeed have it.

Of course, this would make for some great footage, but there are some things we would have to consider before we do this. The areas in which we reside Chatham and Maidstone respectively are not particularly great in terms of recordability, and so the chances of us finding somebody that would okay appearing on camera, and also having an apple device with the album on would be quite rare.

Andrei however suggested that a place called "Tottenham Court Road" in London would be a much more suitable recording location due to it's relation to technology and just the general pleasant layout of the area. Since it is based in London too, there are always film crews hanging around, and so the chances of us blending in and being able to collect the footage we need and leaving without any trouble is very possible.

A section of Tottenham Court Road.

Digital News Production Unit- Researching the U2 Album story.

Recently whilst the script for our news network broadcast is being written, we have taken it upon ourselves to find more possible stories we could investigate, as well as research the one story we have definitely decided to run on our network; the story of U2's newest album "Songs of Innocence" being downloaded onto many Apple users devices without their knowledge or consent. 

The cover for U2's Album; "Songs of Innocence."

We hope that this particular story- in light of the recently iCloud hacking story and recent phone hacking scandals perpetrated by such large corporate conglomerates as the "News of the World" will help raise viewer's awareness of there device security settings, as well as raise the question that if corporations can so simply have data downloaded onto a user's device, what kind of information can they take from from it without the user's permission?

Although U2's album and the fact it has been distributed in such a way has been advertised as being a "free gift" from Apple and the band, it is obvious there must be some kind of larger corporate model to this other than them doing it out of "the kindness of their own hearts" so to speak. And after some brief investigation online, I found that this could possibly be the case.

According to U2's official website, Apple's Head Tim Cook reportedly said that "Songs of Innocence" would be "the largest album release of all time."

The members of U2.

Now of course, it would indeed be the largest album release of all-time, due to the fact that it was being distributed and delivered to people's apple devices without their knowledge. This opens up many doors for both Apple and U2, as Apple can begin to claim that their products were a part of the biggest album launch of all time, and U2 can make the claim that their album had one of the biggest launches of all-time. The fact that it was a digital download- for free- without the user's permission becomes irrelevant when making that claim.

This of course opens up a whole new can of worms in the sense that we can then discuss the subject of logistical and statistical "manipulations" by corporate entities such as apple for the purpose of publicity, however, our main aim will be to simply stick with the story that many Apple user's feel that their privacy has been breached as a result of this story.

I will continue to investigate.

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Difficulties in Research

I am having a little bit of trouble when it comes to researching film-makers that have created pieces of films in the style I wish to for this unit. Unfortunately, whenever I use the obvious search terms in google such as "Sound Piece Films" "Photograph Films" or simply "Sound Pieces", the kind of film I have in my head to create isn't the same kind of films that are returned in the search results.
I know my idea to create a film using simple photographs must have been done prior to me thinking up the idea. My only choice is to continue using other search terms until I find a film or film creator that I can research.

Fiction Adaptation- Generating Ideas

I have recently taken it upon myself to begin some hardcore investigation into exactly what kind of film I want to make for my Fiction Adaptation Unit. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I wasn't 100% happy with my idea.
As I slept last night however, I had a few ideas about what kind of film I could make. I thought back to some of the previous projects I and my classmates had undertaken, and remembered the Gregory Crewdson sound-piece project that we did in our first year.
One of the major downsides to me creating a war film was the fact that I knew I wasn't very experienced using Adobe After effects, and I didn't have a hollywood film budget with lots of money for explosions and special effects. However, if my film was to consist of a series of photographs, with sound effects and photoshopped effects on it, I think I could easily accomplish this.
It would also be quite a unique film in this regard as I don't believe anybody else has thought about creating their fiction adaptation in this way.

My next step will be to investigate whether or not films like this have already been created, and by who. I will do this by first beginning my search online.

Digital News Production Unit- Practice Script with Andy.

Recently we were provided with a random press release with which to create a story and script for a news report. Below is the script myself and Andy created for this:

News Script Workshop

Fiction Adaptation Unit- Theory Discussions

Today has been a very important day in breaking ground with the theory side of my fiction adaptation unit. We have a guest teacher for this side of the project called Kath Abiker. Kath seems very knowledgeable when it comes to comparing the old and new iterations of books and films, and even knows a lot about art and music, which should be very useful for my theory studies. It will be well worth my time to pick her brain and find out every bit of information I can to ensure that my theory essay is as good as it could possibly be.

We began todays discussions by taking a look at the books we  could study to improve our knowledge of what an adaptation is and what makes a successful adaptation. I made sure to take careful note of these books, so that I could either find them at a library, or see if I could possibly find an ebook version online. Some of the suggested books were:

• Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keanelly
• How to Read a Film by James Monaco
• Decoding Advertisements by J. Williamson
• The Cinema Book by Pam Cook
• Ways of Seeing by John Berger 

I did quickly glance through a few of these books to see if I could find anything useful there and then, but unfortunately I did not have enough time to properly read them. It may be worth me finding these books and studying them extensively in the near future.

Our next discussion was about different iterations of adaptations. The one we looked at extensively was the many adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyles "Sherlock Holmes" stories. I actually didn't know there were so many versions of these stories, but after seeing the differences between all of them, I have a new-found appreciation of the work of each director that tried to make their particular adaptation as different as possible to the others and the original written version by Doyle.

A key discussion point was the differences and indeed the similarities between each version of Sherlock. For example, each version seemed to have the "crime" as the key point before introducing the Sherlock Holmes character. This was a big similarity. A difference however was how the characters were portrayed. 

For example in the version where Holmes is portrayed by Basil Rathbone, Holmes is portrayed as a very serious character, with Watson as his bumbling "Side-Kick", whilst the iteration with Robert Downey Junior and Jude Law as Holmes and Watson respectively portrays Sherlock as a more comical character and Watson as the serious one.

It is interesting to note however that Downey Junior was selected to play Holmes. This could be down to "type-casting" with Downey often portraying comedy characters such as Tony Stark in the Ironman series. 

Also, he could have been selected due to his previous association with drug use, something Holmes is suggested to be associated with also in a previous film when he says "Watson, the needle."

Basil Rathbone portraying Sherlock with Watson.

Downey Jr. portraying Holmes with Jude Law as Watson.

The final thing we discussed was how we would go about tackling each potential essay question. A lot of the things we discussed were things I already had an idea about, but we did discuss some ways of tackling them. For example:

• Find journals and online pieces that clearly define what a successful adaptation could be and start from there.
• Choose something to talk about that I truly enjoy so I won't get bored with writing about it.
• Argue with any statements the questions make in order to promote debate and discussion in the essay.

As a result of todays discussion, I am no longer worried about the theory side of this unit, and I am actually quite looking forward to finding an adaptation to write about. At the moment, I am debating whether or not to write my essay on the adaptation of "Bladerunner", as it is a story and film I have never read or watched before, mainly because I've never had an excuse to.

I have always wanted to watch it though as it comes highly suggested by many movie critics, and so I think this could possibly be what I use for this unit.