Google Friday (Sound Narrative)

Instead of doing a visual narrative, I thought how to express my talents as best as I can. My greatest experience is sound, so with all the sound effects I have in my folder, I thought about making just a sound narrative styled story. Where you can hear a war at first to set its place and then a little personal story around the middle where some sort of solider is found a spot and is trying to assassinate some who inflicted pain in his life (where we hear children laughing / playing) he then fires a bullet which we assume that he killed his target. While he gets up, there is a heavy sound coming towards his way and suddenly realises its a tank. Without hesitation, the unknown protagonist begins to run and thus ends with a cliff hanger ‘War never changes’.

Here is the link to my final outcome: (wear headphones, close your eyes and try to imagine what the scene would look like!)

http://youtu.be/_l3QJ3ML690

Here is a example of my Audition work on ‘War never changes’.

 

The Social Sponge Guest Permission

TV Module Reflection and Evaluation

Throughout this module, I have gained a lot of experience from being in a part of a TV studio simulation. I enjoyed the being in a part of a big team where everyone has roles to do something for the TV show. It gives everyone a sense of importance towards the show, from turning up on time to doing your job properly. Although I prefer be a sound director because of my past experience, becoming a presenter was tricky for me because I am dyslexic so I had to revise the script to know exactly what to say or improvise quite similar to the text. I always thought the studio had the hardest job but when it comes down to being a presenter and one mistake, you start all over again but it’s not even just the presenter who make mistakes, in my experience, the director, floor manager, camera operator, auto-cue kept making simple mistakes that we all pay for. At the outcome of the TV show, I noticed the visuals were quite messy at parts where if someone was talking, the camera would not be on them and I personally feel it was rushed because of the two hours we had. If everyone treated like it was a rehearsal, it would be fine because it seemed everyone was under pressure trying to get the best take. However, in terms of the content, setting and how everything was put together, I was impressed. Because I was fascinated by the idea of ‘ToiletTalk’ and even sitting on the toilet, reading from a toilet roll all fits perfectly to the title, in terms of props and ideology, I think that was our strongest part in the outcome because I have never seen anyone do that before in a show and creates a strong originality.

My Professional Development.

During this year, I have created my professional development. I started from Facebook to create a homepage for all my work plus to interact with the viewers to show my channel is active. I would post a new video I make to Facebook and hoping for it be liked and shared amongst the viewer’s page, so it can spread out rapidly and become more noticed. YouTube is a great way for small productions to be known, but you will need to be unique in a way. I am usually on YouTube looking at many videos from very popular to ones that people never heard of. What I noticed from the popular videos is professionalism, I subscribed to a famous YouTuber called ‘RocketJump’ also known as ‘Freddiew’ who posts at least 6 videos or such within a month, each of their videos are so professional in terms of camera work, sound quality, amazing CGI and also self-promotion. They have links to FaceBook, Twitter, Google plus and even their own website. I checked out their website and they have blogs, podcasts, every show they made and even a shop where people can buy their merchandise. How this relates to me is because I want to be part of that professional experience from starting low to becoming famous on YouTube and known. But also as well as dreaming for this experience, there are many other like myself who wants to have that same experience. It is always a game to see whose production is better in terms of every aspect in media production. My most number in views on YouTube was around a 1000 because how you title your videos and tag them in the genre aspects. Although my profile is still low, I need to produce outstanding work in order for me to advertise myself and become noticed like Freddiew.

RocketJump: https://www.youtube.com/user/freddiew/featured

TV Transmedia.

From our TV show, making a website where the audience can interact and watch online episodes from The Social Sponge is great way to get viewer into the updates. Such as, we always keep mentioning our Twitter page and that is the beginning to the Transmedia, for example from our Twitter page, we may post a picture up where I was wearing a ridicules hat and posing awakedly people may notice and comment on them and share it on Facebook with the title ‘Presenter from The Social Sponge looks funny!’. The person who shared the image will have friends who may notice and want to know ‘who is person is posing.’ They could search for our Facebook page or even on Google where they might find our official page. Then viewers can see the episodes plus casting or behind the scenes and finally will notice the twitter page where the image has come from. In my research, I searched TopGear UK and during my research I noticed a box that said ‘Get more TopGear’ which had links to Twitter, Facebook, mobile apps and a online subscription to the TopGear magazine, there is a chain of transmedia that take place because we if we want to know more about a certain subject or maybe just to follow them on a website that someone would be actively on. How it effects the media production is by changing the role in what we do. Rather than recording a show for TV, it expands it’s much more broadly to the audience by accessing online. So it’s more about getting noticed through a series of different media platforms, from magazines, to TV and the internet where we can search for ourselves and see where we are. Like if I was to put ‘The Social Sponge’ on Google, I find links towards many sites that we may be hosted on. ‘Social TV has made television a richer two-way experience with fan participation. Nielsen’s own research shows how social TV amplifies the conversation and impacts ratings. Technology has created tools that allow the user to interact and gamify content as never before (location-based, virtual goods, augmented reality, QR codes, etc). Fans’ familiarity with and desire to experience TV content across devices other than TV has exploded.The ability to efficiently create affordable, participatory storytelling vehicles that go beyond being “bonus extras” and spreading it through different circulation channels is changing the rules and creating a potential value proposition too big to ignore. As the forefather of transmedia storytelling, USC Professor Henry Jenkins, likes to say, “If it doesn’t spread, it’s dead.” (Hsia, 2011)

Hsia, L. How Transmedia Storytelling Is Changing TV. 2011 http://mashable.com/2011/11/17/transmedia-tv/

Transmedia Research from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP-zOCl5md0&list=PLm1eWXF_eJ4S6L9wiKzHRyw4iLfmxMUrQ

TV Critical Process.

When we first started with the basic theme from the categories, ideas began to come to me. I first thought about a show were we can bring people to try out unusual viral videos such as the cinnamon challenge. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyk7utV_D2I) or even reacting videos where someone watches an usual clip online and the audience watches the presenters reactions such as a YouTube channel called ‘TheFineBros’ where they get famous YouTubers, elderly people, young people and kids to see their reactions. Such as this video for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynbJweTvzag they even give challenges not to react at all even which I thought would be a great idea to gather an audience. Another example I found was using ChatRoulette as a live feature where we click and get a reaction from people around the world that will be in a TV show, my idea came from Ben Folds where he performs to a live crowd that is also using ChatRoulette on stage and improvising a song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfamTmY5REw. So my theme was heading towards the ‘Weird and Wonderful’ and it would defiantly be entertaining to viewers to watch because it’s something that can make people cringe but also laugh towards the presenters or the reactions. However, towards the finalised idea, the group took some of my elements but made the theme ‘Spontaneity’. The key elements I used in the finalised idea were the viral videos and engaging into them. For example, the ‘Rubber Duck Selfie Challenge’ is a well known trend and we interpreted that trend into our own and the final outcome was very audience involved rather than presenter involved that I came up with. We keep addressing our audience to contact us through Twitter or Facebook so we can keep them engaged and also feel like we are talking towards them.

Script and Running Order.

During the script, me and O’phia Rigabie had to rehearse our script and timings before and after each VT was played. We had to change many aspects of the script to make it run smooth and fluent towards the running order, making sure it wasn’t under or over the time limit. Also some parts where improvised because of the ‘spontaneity’ theme, such as the twitter comments we gave feedback on and the interview of the guest, we had to rehearse what questions we might ask and to keep them sharp and snappy so our guest can get all the information out to the recording. RFG autocue
During the running order, the director and the producer had to note down how long our VT’s will be played till and getting permission to use the videos made by other youtuber’s so we can add in the VT. They also had to calculate each timing of our scirpt on how we speak, the VT’s played and fitting in our guest performance so we can hit under 10 minutes exactly. (275364423) Running_Order_ (1)

Print screen of permission reply : 

Here is the VT we recorded.

Rubber Duck Selfie Challenge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfavWz5tJ4&feature=youtu.be

Singing In The Shower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F9uyYnyaT8&feature=youtu.be

The Social Sponge outcome.

We finally had lots of ideas for our show that we included, we wanted to make the audience feel much more involved in this show so we added subjects like ‘Toilet Talk’ were we ask the viewers on twitter to give us a comment on a topic or suggest what the watch. Having our own VT called rubber duck selfie challenge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfavWz5tJ4&feature=youtu.be

Having props such as a toilet seat for ‘Toilet Talk’, a toilet roll were we soak up ideas suggested from the audience last week, costumes for the presenters to wear and a sponge with #TOILETTALK drawn out, to keep reminding the audience and making them feel involved.

 

Weekly Task 4.

When it comes down to what options I have available to me and the rest of the crew, I was most useful at sound director, camera operator and finally a presenter. From sound directing, I have the most experience due to my own musical experience in college where I studied music technology. I knew how the sound mixer worked, how to balance sound signal, microphones, inputs and channels and setting up a live performance into the studio. My second option is a camera operator, however, it is a lazy job for me because all I do is stand, zoom and get good shots for the visual mixer and restricts me from being creative, so its rather a safe zone for me. Finally a presenter which I had a feeling that no one would want to chose unless pressured to. I do like to act and be in front of the camera as well as behind the camera, it is very challenging for me because I am dyslexic and it is very hard to read from the autocue unless revised the script.

At the end, we had to vote. Since no one else wanted to be a second presenter, I voted my self to become the second presenter.

Through the Easter break, we all were given individual tasks to do for our TV show, I was given the task to create a soundtrack for the introduction to our title. Here is the link for my sound design + visual effects made by another member in the group. The Social Sponge

Weekly Task 3

Since our VT’s contain of recent viral videos or trends, we kept updating our newsfeed to the audience to be up to date. The recent VT videos I found where videos like ‘Epic Rap Battles of History season 3’ which are entertaining for many people who can notice the famous characters they place in each rap battle. Also it had over three million views in one day which became instantly viral with the main characters from The walking dead and Breaking bad.