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Welcome to my blog!

Hi. My name is Jack, I'm 17 years old, and I'm taking Media Studies at Hills Road. This is my coursework blog. I've been tasked with producing a cross-media piece, consisting of a 2.5-3 minute audio-visual sequence, and a double page magazine spread and front cover. The video piece must be from an ITV or Channel 5 show of my creation, either factual or fictional, with a target audience aged 18-35, and containing either 'a key turning point, a point of significant conflict, or a resolution', while the print elements will contain interviews and promotional materials relating to the show. I haven't yet decided which channel, genre, or direction my piece is going to take, but I'm excited at what lies ahead. I'll be keeping my blog up-to-date with all my progress, so feel free to stick around and have a look!
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Location Scouting

Over the weekend I visited the likely location for my warehouse scene, and took a few photos to help me stage the shots in my head, which can be seen here. I've chosen this location because a) it looks the part, especially if I board the windows up, b) there's plenty of space for filming, and c) I have easy access to it as I have a set of keys from my job there cleaning. A walk around framing shots in my head confirmed that I feel it might be the right location. As a bonus, when turned on the overhead lights give a fantastic flickering effect and 'plinking' noise, demonstrated in the video, which in a well-constructed shot and with a little tweaking could look fantastic.

My other choice at the moment is a basement owned by my friend's dad, but as it is in London I haven't had a chance to scope it out yet. I'm also not sure how I'd work the outside scene with that location, which is something I'll have to think through should I go down that route. However, from the photos I've seen it also looks almost like it was designed from the ground-up as an atmospheric kidnapper's basement (no offence Mr Smith), and as such it's definitely not to be ruled out.

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Shooting day I

Today marked my first day of access to my primary location, and thus my first shoot. I managed to film over two thirds of my footage, meaning I'm happy I'll be able to finish off tomorrow. Here are some photos from the shoot. I also decided to experiment and see how I'm going to grade the footage. The strong green grading is going to be one of the things that ties my extract and my magazine piece together stylistically, and as such I thought I'd try it and get a feel for how the final piece could look. My first test is shown below - it hasn't been stabilised or sound edited yet, so ignore the squeaky dolly.
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Magazines

Aside from the audio-visual piece, I also have to create a front cover and double-page spread about my show for a lifestyle magazine. As such, I've been looking at several of these magazines to see how they're designed and laid out. One thing I've noticed is that practically all the covers are more about the star than the show itself. Take the following examples: All of them have a celebrity taking centre stage on the cover, usually with their name in the strapline or main cover line, always either looking into the camera or slightly off into the middle distance, surrounded by several cover lines promising to drastically improve your life, entertain you, or both. As this format is shared by practically every lifestyle magazine under the sun, this is the format I'll use. Originally I was planning to have a cinematic-looking still from the show as my cover, perhaps the opening shot of DCI Griffin tied up in the chair, but that's not really right for lifestyle ma...
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