Deadline

We are exaclty one week away from our deadline. So as this is the final stretch, we aim to complete everything this week, so we have time to make final tweeks to our website, news package and evaluation.
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Inspiration for our Evaluation Powerpoint

We have looking at examples of previous evaluation powerpoints to try and gain an understanding of what is expected of us; and the type of layout, content and level of detail that is needed. It will consist of how we have progressed throughout the process of making this news package, and we will evaluate the pros and cons of our news package. Above this, we have enjoyed learning how news channels and corporations produce news. The evalutaion also allows us to have an idea of how our news package is similar and different to model news packages that we have seen in the past.

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Our Finish News Title Sequence

Here is what our finished news title sequence looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uzLm_4V9xA&context=C374c8ecADOEgsToPDskJJOczMaUI6oKW8gxgvs-pD

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News Title Sequence Youtube Video

We are uploading our news title sequence onto our Youtube channel so that we can then upload it onto our blog and website. This will allow other Youtube users to get a feel of the style of news we produce and hopefully would attract audiences who are interested in culture as well as we are.

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Website Restrictions

We have come across some obstacles when providing news; because due to use being a local news team we are limited to the number of stories we can produce as we only cover a small area. 

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Website

We have also added adverts to our website as it gives a more realistic feel as news websites like the guardian and the telegraph have adverts. So since we are taking inspiration from these news websites, we have created adverts for our websites.

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Evaluation

Since we are coming to the end of our project we are starting our evaluation powerpoint. In this powerpoint we will talk about our news package and we we chose to do it in the way we have.

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Website Effects

We are adding some animation to our website to make it more attractive to users. These little tweeks will help the website to look more user friendly, in which ITV News and the Guardian do well to attract audiences. We have embedded comment bars and links to our twitter and blogger that allow people to find us on those sites. Our vision states that we want to enrich people's lives with news that is relative to life and so people are able to interact with us and share their views publicly.

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Voice Over

The Stages:

1.We firstly sat down together, watched the whole footage (with diegetic sound) carefully.

2.Then, after observing the footage we discussed the main areas which we were going to speak about during the voice over.

3.Getting all our ideas together, we wrote a rough draft of our voice over script.

4.Then cutting it down according to the footage, we tested it.

5. I then prepared myself like a news reporter would and keeping to the directions and techniques, recorded the voice over.

6.We then placed it together into the footage, matching with the scenes and adjusted the sound settings.

7.Finally, once everything was in place, we looked over it a few more times tweaked it here and there, and finally our news package started to come alive.

8.We were happy with our final result.

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Deadline

The deadline date has been confirmed to be on the 20th March.

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Culture News Packages

We are currently looking at various cultural news packages to try and get a better understanding of our theme. As culture plays a big part to our lives, we wen to explore and experience different festivals and events that enables us to gain further knowledge on how people celebrate and immerse ourselves in their culture. The reason for chosing culture is because our group consists of different nationalities, and so we wanted to feel what it would be like living a similar lifestyle to them. Other genres such as investigation and crime, celebrity endorsement and sports didn't interest us as much as culture does. This is also because those genres are popular trends in the news, in which we felt it would be right to try something different and present a new type of news package.

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Website Adverts

We are currently going to take photographs for our website, to use for our adverts. We will be producing adverts for technology, food, lifestyle and leisure. We aim to put these adverts on the home page, our main headline and page, and throughout our website as this mimics how websites operate. Many websites have their news headlines and stories, then on the side - there are different adverts that link to the story's genre. For example, news about lifestyle and leisure may have on the sidebar adverts for top restaurants or popular film trends.
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Title Strips for News Package

Currently, we are also working on our title strips that will introduce the presenters, reporters and professionals in the field. This will give a clear signal to the audience of who we have approached to talk to and as well introduce the various speakers in the news package. Convetional news packages such as BBC News and Channel 5 News use title strips, and we want to mimic that. Moreover, with our title strips we have decided to use the same font as our website and blog and the same colour theme, so that our news package is distinctive and linked to everything that we have produced.

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Website plan

This is a sketch of what we plan our ICN London News website to look like.
We plan to keep the colour scheme of maroon and black, whilst having it eye-catching and presentable to our readers. Our viewers will be able to navigate themselves around the website with our tabs, found under our logo and banner. We will make our own adverts and news stories in London and link our blogger and twitter pages to the website making it more accessible for our readers.

Title Sequence Filming

For our news title sequence, we took a trip down to Central London to film famous landmarks such as Big Ben and London Bridge to feature at the beginning of our news package, as well as the London Eye, in which is of much significance to our ICN logo. We have seen in many news packages that they include well known landmarks or places that people can relate to, for example ITN London uses Greenwich and St. Pancreas to show that they are british broadcasters. Also, for many news packages - the title sequence only takes 10 to 20 seconds, so there is quite a lot of fast paced movement going on such as people using the escalator or walking on the streets, which has its speed doubled on the edit. We decided to mirror that and film people walking in and out of Westminster station, to show the many diverse nationalities that are moving around, in which is linked to our news package, culture.

The London Eye takes up much significance to our title sequence as our ICN Logo features the London Eye. We decided to use the icon, as the London Eye is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the heart of London. Londoneye.com says: "Since opening in 2000, an average of 3.75 million visitors have experienced London’s favourite attraction each year, proving it more popular than renowned historical landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral (2 million per year) and even some of the internationally celebrated seven wonders of the world. The London Eye receives more visitors annually than the Taj Mahal (2.4 million per year), Stonehenge (850,000 per year) and even the Great Pyramids of Giza (3 million per year)". 


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News title sequence storyboard plan

Shot of the London Eye rotating (shot is sped up with time stretch)

     Shot of the Millenium Bridge, people walking past with the London Eye in the background (shot is sped up)

      Shot from Westminster Bridge, people walking past with London Eye in the background (shot is sped up)

       Shot of a London bus with the London Eye in the background (shot is sped up)

        Shot of the Big Ben with the London Eye in the background (shot is sped up)

        The ICN LONDON logo fades into white screen, the London Eye rotating

This is the storyboard, showing a plan for our news title sequence. The idea is to have the London Eye in every shot to link to our ICN LONDON logo.

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Chinese New Year

On Sunday the 29th January, we went to Leister Square, China Town, to film the great annual Chinese New Year Festival.
As we entered the narrow streets of China Town we were suprised to see such a huge crowd. We were able to smell the strong chinese aroma before evening stepping onto the streets. Decoration filled the town up with baloons colours and the noises were filled up by crowds cheering and the children playing with the fire poppers. There was alot going on starting from, street stalls selling handycrafts and hot food, leading the way to the Lion dance which were being performed in front of shop to shop wishing all businesses in the town a successful new year. It was great to see so many people from different cultures who were able to enjoy this festival all together, it was truly a cheerful outing.

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Team

Now that the major filming is complete we are dividing the team, so every member will have a separate task which they can concentrate on. This will make us more productively efficient and allocatively efficient as no time will be wasted. Although we will still be helping each other out and working in all area's of

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Footage

We have got most of our footage together, meaning we can start piecing our new package together. This is the harder part of the process as we have a limited amount of time in which we have to show enough footage and give as much information so users feel fully informed.

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Inspiration

We have been looking at other news websites like the guardian and news packages from BBC and ITV. Watching these have given us ideas to use in our news package and website.

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Filming in Central London

On Friday the 20th of January, we all met up outside Westminster Station, early morning, in order for us to start filming for our Vox Pox, reporter speech and some extra footage for our title sequence. Since, the concept of our news is 'culture and diversity' we thought that getting Vox Pox interviews from people of different races would be most appropriate and central London being a place of most of tourist attractions, the busy locality of office goers, Westminster was the right place to be.

From this Vox Pox, the main idea which we were trying to capture was the views of the local Londoners about what they think about diversity in London.

Questions which we asked:
 1. Name a few cultural festivals which you celebrate?
 2. What are your views on the mulicultural diversity in London?

Therefore, by asking two significant outlining questions we were able to capture all the views appropriately.
Westminster is in the heart of London and so we were able to film the top attractions of London all together as they were all fairly near by, for example; Big ben, London eye, Houses of Parliament. Then we headed further on to film Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square. With all this footage together, we will be able to cut down and create our title sequence.

Finally to finish off our day, we went back in front of the London Eye to film my reporting scene, we chose this location as it is very iconic to london and it is also a part of our 'ICNLondon' Logo.


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