Digital Media Cultures

Over the last week or so I have been writing my essay which is about ‘How Digital Technologies have democratized the media industry’. To put it in a nice way I’m just glad its over and done with, before I started it I was dreading it. But now thats done I can start to look forward to completing my over deadlines that have to be done before christmas and then finally start to look forward to the christmas holidays and the new year. 

Applied Media Research

So in our last session we were asked to think about having a focus group to help develop our research, we had to think about what information and results we wanted to get back from the focus group. Myself, Phoebe and Michael decided that in our focus group we would get a couple of students to take part and let them play on certain apps on iPads, laptops, iPods etc. The apps we would use would be ones that people use while watching TV game shows for example ‘The Million Pound Drop’. We also decided that once the students had a go at the apps, that we would ask them some questions. Some questions that I think we should use are;

• Did you enjoy the apps you played on?
• If you could get the apps and all features for free would you download a certain app?
• Would you pay for any of the apps on your own device?
• Would you play any of the TV shows apps, while watching the program live on TV?
• If you could get any of these apps on the red button would you use/play them?

I thought all of the questions could be answered with Yes or No, to make it quick and simple for the students taking part in the focus group. I thought instead of getting them to answer with circling Yes or No, we could have two boxes that are like ballot boxes with Yes and No on. The students would place the questions into the box to answer the question, I just thought doing it this way would be more fun and quirky instead of being boring. Plus while the students are playing on the apps, we will be making notes on how they are reacting to the games and to see what they are getting from them. I just cant wait to see how our focus group goes.

Beyond The Camera

So formally our teaching sessions have finished for this semester, as we have our deadline  for our story video for 10th December my group decided we would come in for our session.  Also because we changed our idea last week we had to make sure we collected all the audio clips and images that we will be placing into our clip, to help tell the story. Phoebe made sure all the clips were saved correctly so that they would play when we add them into the sequence, she also downloaded some videos that would also be placed in the sequence. I collected a number of different images that would go with the story being told in the audio clips. Ceri started to edit a few images in after effects, so that when we place all the images into the sequence we kind of know what we are doing. We are going to pick a day to make a start of adding everything in the sequence, as a group we have decided to just focus on our essay as the deadline is fast approaching. I’m just glad that the deadline for this assignment is the week after so that we can just get on with it and spend as much time as we want on it. 

Digital Media Cultures

So we had our last digital media cultures lecture, of this semester! I can’t believe 11 weeks have just flew over so fast, it feels like just yesterday we started our second year of uni. So in our last lecture we discussed: The music industry in the digital age, we spoke about the digitization of the industry, how everything is part of the download culture. When discussing the digitization of the industry we spoke about, years ago when people would buy vinyls to listen to music. To which they moved onto cassette tapes and then onto compact discs. And now people just small memory sticks to store and hold their songs. Also how people know that downloading is illegal but stick to download music anyway, because they don’t want to spend money on one song. After a short lecture we then moved onto looking over the module points that we had crossed over the last couple of weeks. And finally essay guidelines to follow, when write our 2000 word essay. Myself and a couple of friends decided that at lunch we would go over to the library and look for some books that will help us with our essay, I picked three;

Democratization and The Media

Media and Democracy

The Internet and The Mass Media

In our essay we have to have a minimum of five references, and has I have only three books, I am going to look at some websites such as The Guardian and also some e-journals. Which will make up the rest of my references. I am just looking forward to completing the essay and then handing it in!

Applied Media Research

In the last couple of lectures we have spoken about issues that had come up at our course meeting. But also about the online artefacts we have to do for this module, we have been given a choice between a report or to keep the original idea of an online presentation. Personally I would like to stick to the original idea!! After a small discussion we had a small break, while on our break we made some questionnaire to be given out which we did. The questionnaire consisted of questions about apps and what people do while watching T.V e.g go on Facebook, Twitter. We also discussed what we have done and also what were going to do over the next couple of weeks. Before the next session we all got an email saying that we had been given a set time to come in and discuss what research we had done. So before our meeting I decided I would go through our questionnaire results so that when we come to create our presentation we could but graphs on, to show the results more clearly. While in the meeting we discussed what each group, who are doing our question have found out and ideas of what they will be doing next. Each person from each group said that it would be a great idea to have a focus group with some people playing on some T.V show apps, to see how they act while playing on the apps and also to see what they get from the app. 

The image below is of The Million Pound Drop app which we are thinking of using.

Beyond The Camera

Over the last couple of sessions we have some tutorials for using different effects, for which we might use on our story video, but in the first session it didn’t work out as the computer crashed half way through the session! But my group decided we would get recordings for our next session. In the second session we decided we would slightly change our idea for the story. We decided that we would interview people and see what they thought of christmas, and what it means to them. We have uploaded some recordings so next session all we have to do is to put the sound recording into a sequence and then add images to it. I’m looking forward for the finished product to see what it will look and sound like! Don't worry I will post the video once it's completed on here so you can check it out. 

T.V Studio Production

As a group we decided we would go to the Everton Red Triangle boxing club to meet the female boxer, who we thought we would be interviewing in our t.v show. When we met the boxer she said she would find out if she could get the time off work. Before we met the boxer I thought she would of said she could just do it straight away, but it didn’t so we had to start thinking of a back up plan. In the next session of T.V Studio Production we had an Avid workshop, to refresh our minds and to make sure we know how to edit our T.V shows once we have filmed it. After a couple of tasks on Avid we all got a little bored as we knew what we were doing! So myself and my group decided to do our script, while doing the script we decided to get in touch with the LJMU boxing club because we still hadn’t heard from Kayleigh the female boxer. Before we knew it we had two lads saying they would do it, the lads who said they would do it was Stephen and Ricky. Once we had completed our script we sent it around our production group and also Josh our co-presenter. 

In the last two sessions for our T.V show production we had to build our set, decorating the flats that we would use and also to test out the furniture we would be using on the day of the interview. Once the set was built it felt like the pressure had slightly gone, which made me look forward to actually filming on the friday morning. It was just my luck that on the friday morning that I woke up late and had to get a taxi to uni, otherwise I would of been late, I just got in on time THANK GOD! Plus I was slightly nervous but once I had met the guests and had a couple of rehearsals, I felt much better. Once we had started recording I realised how fast the last couple of weeks had flew over, but I was still glad the show was over and done with. I’m just looking forward to seeing the finished product. Check out the pictures of our set below!!!!

Digital Media Cultures

The two previous lectures for this module have been about the audience and the circuit of culture. In the lecture about the audience we discussed the affects the audience have on T.V shows & stories. Also how some are now seen as fans of certain show, and how they can sometimes control what happens in shows in their favour! This lecture was only short as we had a trip over the library to learn how to use a new tool called discover, which will help to find online journals and ebooks. Which would help when writing our essay. The second lecture was about the circuit of culture, a contextual report of the sony walkman as away of understanding Apple. The lecture focused on the walkman and how they grew, with this information we then used it to focus on Apple and how they grew. We also looked how Apple have advertise their products over the years. After the presentation we then watched a BBC 2 documentary about Steve Jobs, I really enjoyed watching the documentary and was a little disappointed when we had to stop it because we ran out of time. Later that night I decided to search YouTube to see if I could watch it, I found it and watched the last of the documentary. Check out the the video below to watch the documentary.

Applied Media Research

The areas that we covered in this module are;

• Designing and Utilising Quantitative Research Methods
• Designing and Utilising Qualitative Research Methods

In the first two session of the module, we all got into group of four and five. In the first session we were given a question to answer using quantitative and qualitative research, the question given to us was how to “Market a degree to potential students”. Once we had the question we had to create a questionnaire to find out ways, students would like to be informed about university degrees. And also the problems they may face to becoming a student e.g. money, location. 

Within groups we made a questionnaire that consisted of a number of questions about university life and potential degrees. After each group had made a questionnaire we learnt that in the next lecture everybody within our class would be filling each questionnaire. This meant that we would find out the results about what appealed to the student. Also after they completed the questionnaire they would leave comment on how they found filling the questionnaire in. 

After everybody had filled in each others questionnaires, each group got their completed questionnaires back. With comments on how we could of improved the questionnaire e.g. needed more detail to questions. We were then asked to collected all the information back and created a graph showing the percentage of people who answered which question. We decided our questionnaire could only be answered with YES or NO. Which made it easier to calculate the percentage of people. After we collected all the information up each group had to present our findings, personal I thought that each group found something different in their results. 

We also had to create an activity that people could do and also so that we could see a detail answer to a certain question. Our groups idea was to have a ladder and a couple of boxes with university names on them. Students would then place their first choice place university onto the ladder. The Image below shows the results we got back, the top would be most favourite university and the one on the bottom would be least favourite university. After receiving the results we were shocked as Liverpool came in 3rd, even though the students who took part in the exercise are at a university in Liverpool. Qualitative research allowed people to just take part, instead of coming up with different universities people found the exercise easy to do.

Over the next couple of lectures we had people come in to speak about their jobs and the companies they work for and also to set us a question. So that we could research information to answer the questions set. The first guest lecture would be Ian from the ‘Digital Fiction Factory’. Ian began to explain who he was and the job that he does and also information about what the company does and who they work with e.g. Conker Media, Channel 4. He also showed us examples of the work they have either took part in or made themselves. Once discussing about the company and their work, he then set us the question the ‘Digital Fiction Factory’ had come up with. I found the lecture interesting but was looking forward to find out the other questions.

Digital Fiction Factory - The internet, social media and other open systems have allowed for user generated content (UGC), crowd-sourcing and other forms of audience participation to prevail in digital media. But how do we translate these features into storytelling experiences, without treading on the toes of the author? 

Our second guest lecturer was Jon Wetherall from ‘Onteca’ the company makes apps for small companies and also for Apple and Androids. Jon discussed the company he works for and also the background in video games and how successful they become over the years. But also how people using apps on phones don’t want to spend money on apps, people think if they pay 99p for an app they have been robbed. But you can’t just give away stuff! Jon then set us the question ‘Onteca’ had set for us. Personally I didn’t realise how many people only download free apps, nobody actually thinks about how much an app costs to make and launch. 

Onteca - What new models are there for selling media? When people download so much media freely, what are people willing to pay for and how? What are and what can we learn from the best monetization mechanics for Freemium games on mobile?

Our third and final guest lecturer was Mike Lewis from ‘Nine Lives Media’. Nine Lives Media is an independent television production company based in Manchester. They make documentaries, current affairs and drama documentaries for all the major UK broadcasters and for American channels. Examples of broadcasters are; BBC, ITV 1, Channel 4, Channel 5, BBC Three, CBBC, BIO Channel. Mike discussed about a Dispatches program called ‘Do You Know Your Partner’s Past? He explained that alongside the program that there was an app that would send viewers information about the things getting addressed in the program. After discussing about programs that have multi platforms, Mike set us the question ‘9 Lives Media’ came up with. I really enjoyed this lecture and at the end of this lecture I had already realised I wanted to answer this question. 

Nine Lives Media - Which are the three most successful ever examples of cross platform television programming, how did viewers participate and most importantly, what did they gain from the experience? ( I would anticipate answers such as the London Olympics/Paralympics & Embarrassing Bodies) 

I was glad to find in the next lecture I would be answering the question, I wanted to which was the Nine Lives Media question! I was also placed in a group with friends so I knew we would work well. As a group we started to do research for the question, the research consisted of finding information about types of apps people use over multi platform programs e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Game Apps. Also we did some research on the red button and websites. Plus we also did a rough draft of a questionnaire, which we took to a meeting with Sarah. In the meeting Sarah explained what other types of research we need to do for the question and that we need to add a lot more questions, onto the questionnaire and to ask a range of people to answer the questionnaire. And also to maybe to get an app for people to test out. 

Television Studio Production

In this module we have been placed into groups to produce a pre-recorded multi-camera magazine program. As a group we have to create the content, structure and style the content and also research and produce the program. Even though within our groups we have individual roles, we all have to take part in researching content and developing ideas. 

We have had workshops in; Camera shots sizes, framing and camera movements. After the workshop we were then set an a task to create a two minute show for children to show how to make paper areoplanes. For this task we had to;

• Design the set
• Come up with camera shots
• Script

The aim of this task was to help us prepare for our actual show, so that we have an idea how things will happen and also to show us what areas we need to improve on as a group. After filming our kids show, we found out that our show was really short compared to other groups. This means that we need to develop on our script so that we stick to the brief set. 

Our idea for our final show is to interview a female boxer to see how the olympics may have affected their boxing. But also to find out why they became a boxer in the first place. The first person that came to mind was Natasha Jonas who is a local female boxer who also went to the olympics, but because a number of groups also had the same idea as us. We decided to stick to the idea of a female boxer so we researched boxing clubs that have female boxers and contacted them, they said to call into the boxing club in which we will to finalize everything for our show.

As a whole class we had workshops on TV studio script layouts and also how to script music for TV studios. We also had progress tutorials so that our tutors know we were are up to with planning our TV show. Another workshop that we had in groups was cross shooting, after being shown how to cross shoot, we were asked to come up with a interview with another student which would be recorded so that we would get use to cross shooting. Once we had our cameras in position I thought the shots worked well and would be a great way to shoot our show as the audience would feel as they are actually there in the studio. 

We have decided to call our show 'Dejeuner' which is french for lunch!

We also met the band that we would be using in our TV show called TJ & Murphy, they played a couple of songs. Once they had played we had to pick a song we would like them to play in our show, as a group we decided on a song called ‘Joe Crazy Rose’ which is about their friend. In our next session we will be having a technical requirements meeting, to discuss the things we want in our show e.g props, lighting, set etc. I am really looking forward to our final show and how its going to look. 

In our last TV production session we had a technical requirements meeting, we discussed about what we would like our show to look like and also how we want it to run. We explained in the meeting that we wanted our show to look clean and fresh! We decided to have a number of flat boards with fabric on, in the demo area we are going to have a brick effect on the boards. And on the other boards in the interview area, we would have different coloured fabrics on the boards and maybe have a rug on the floor in the interview area. For furniture we asked the manager in the Starbucks if we could use four leather chairs for our set. After coming up with our set we decided to go out and buy fabric that we needed. We have decided that one day next week we will start our script and also camera shots.

Beyond The Camera

The areas that we have covered in this module are; 

• Compositing techniques, Design and visualising
• Photoshop and Image Manipulation
• Introduction to Digital Audio and Design

Our first assignment over the last couple of week was to create a single frame composite, create a image that looks magic and illusion. When starting this assignment found it hard to come up with ideas, once I thought I had an idea I would change my mind. So I finally decided to get an image of a jungle and would place ‘Big Ben’ and the ‘Radio City tower’ into the image. As this would not happen in really life. The session after everybody had handed in their images we were asked to get into groups no more than three. Myself, Phoebe and Ceri are in a group. The task we have been given is to create a story using sound and images. One of our first ideas was to do a day in the life, which then developed into ‘A Day in the Life of a Christmas Shopper’. As everybody loves that feeling when your getting closer to christmas and you see all the decorations and hear all the christmas songs being played. We have decided to get some sound recordings online but also record our own, and the same with images.

Digital Media Cultures

Heres a brief summary of what we have been discussing and learning about in ‘Digital Media Cultures.

• Defining Digital Media Cultures
• Media Convergence
• Photography and Visual Culture
• Television in the Digital Age
• The Triumph of the format
• Introduction to Cyberculture 
• The Fragmentation of the Audience 
• Globalisation of The Media Industry

Throughout each week Keith has discussed in detail about each of the points above and how they have affected us as individuals. In some lectures we have had screenings of programs that discuss the information that have been talked about in the lectures. Programs such as; The Genius of Photography, TV is Dead, Media Revolution, Tonight Programme- Police Caught on Camera and also How Facebook changed the world- The Arab Spring.  

For this module we have 2000 word essay that is due for Monday 3rd December 2012, the list of essay titles we have been given are:

• How are public service broadcasters responding to the challenges of the contemporary media industry?
• "Developments in digital technology are democratising the media industry". Discuss.
• Choose one area of the cultural industry and assess the impact that the internet has had on the way that particular industry operates.
• Outline and discuss the shifts in the relationship between producer, text and audience. Your work should acknowledge recent theoretical shifts in audience studies.
• Analyse the impact of formats on the television industry. Your essay should also analyse debates that relate to the potential social and cultural impact of formats on audiences.
• Analyse the relationship between developments in media and the processes of Globalisation.
• "The pursuit of profit has become the driving force in the development of media and has ultimately had a negative impact upon culture." Discuss.
• Outline and discuss the impact Apple has had on the contemporary media industry.
• Choose one area of the media industry and assess how the shift from analogue to digital has impacted upon that industry.

I think the question I am going to answer is going to be question two, I don’t know how am going to write 2000 words, I find it hard to talk to people anyway. 

Second Year!

So its been a while since I last blogged, it feels so strange getting back into the habit of blogging on a regular basis. But as of today I’m starting again, fingers crossed I’ll stick to blogging either each day or week!!

So at the start of second year we mostly had induction into each module, and what the module would contain. The modules we are studying over second year are; Digital Media Cultures, Beyond the camera, Television studio production and Applied media research.