Production

3x areas to production page

Filming
Production plan shooting...
Shot-list, parts of storyboard, scene - explain this detail of the scene, photos of operation (how it went), what changed? - description - photos.

Sound
Asset list? Voice(s). Music. Sound FX (Foley) - Descriptive - what you did? How it went? What changed? - photos.

Other assets
Graphics, lower 3rd, text, Photoshop, font - Descriptive (screen grab/ quicktime). How it went? Changes? Intro sequence, animation.

Pre-shoot planning

Before I carry out my shoot I ensured I did some photos of the different shots that I would like in my multi-camera project. These may slightly change as I may think of a better angle for example - but they should be very similar.

Here is my long shot:

This will be used to for the opening and closing shot. For the opening shot I will use a slider to get a tracking shot panning from left to right. For the closing shot I will use a dolly to pull back to a Long shot of the studio.

Here is my medium close up shot:

I have decided that this angle is tiled downwards - during the actual production I will ensure the camera is eye-level with the me the presenter.

Here is my medium shot (this will be used for the interview part):

Again during the production, I am going to ensure the angle is eye level with me the presenter and the interviewee (Molly Cross). Also the background looks messy and unprofessional therefore I am going to ensure that I move the news desk further to the right hand side of the studio so the backdrop is the black curtain and not what you can currently see in the photo.

Other assets:

Creating the opening sequence:



Creating the opening sequence was difficult at times but I learnt many new skills.

First off all - as with every project in Premiere Pro I created bins and organised my different media into them e.g. I created a bin called Footage and imported all of my footage into this and a bin called logo where I put my UKB News Logo into it.

I then started to drag the clips into the timeline and create the piece. I did use a range of footage such as stock footage, as I needed footage on famous global cities such as New York and unfortunately I didn't have the budget to fly out and get footage - however most of the footage I filmed myself such as the protests and politician walking into Downing Street in London.

One of the new skills that I learned when making the opening sequence was how to use a green screen effect and edit it into a video. For example for this opening sequence I wanted a countdown clock - like they do on the BBC News countdown opening sequence. To do this - Tony taught me to find and import a green screen clip of a countdown clock like the one below.

He then taught me to drag this into one of the video rows on the timeline - here you can see me keying the green screen video countdown timer into my video:

As you can see in the video I used the Ultra Key video effect and applied it to the green screen clip. I then used eyedropper tool to select the green part of the screen video, and then the countdown clock appeared over my opening sequence video.

I am really happy that I learnt this skill - as it now means I can use this skill with future projects.

Here is my final opening sequence:

My other assets are going to include text that will appear under my interviewee's name when she begins to speak (Molly Cross) just like they use in BBC News Broadcasts. This will help appeal to my target audience (which is BBC audience' profile)

One of my main assets for my multi-camera production was a news style caption which I identified from research appear on BBC News broadcasts. As you can see below I would like something like this.

To create a news style caption - I used a Green screen template from YouTube and then added text onto it. Here you can see a screenshot of the green screen template video.

I then imported this into Premiere Pro and just like the example further above (the green screen countdown timer) I used the Ultra Key effect on Premiere Pro to key the news caption, and then added the text onto it.

The news style caption titles are very close to how I planned. I was hoping to have news caption titles that were more similar to BBC News' which you can see further above however I could not find a green screen template for this so this wasn't possible. Looking back, if I had more time I worked out I could have created a news style caption similar to BBC News' in Photoshop and then exported it to Premiere Pro but this would take a long time, and time was of the essence.

Another important asset for this production were my clothes that I wore. I identified through research that male BBC news presenters wear smart suits and have neat conservative haircuts. I also identified during the research process that by wearing smart clothes in broadcasts such as News - the producer is encoding messages and values of professionalism and importance for the audience to decode. These are exactly the messages and values I want to get across hence why I wore smart clothes (blazer, shirt and tie). This theory of encoding messages for the audience to decode is called Stuart Hall's theory.

Originally I was going to also wear smart shoes (such as brogues) and also suit trousers, however I completely forgot about these items of clothing on the day of production. This meant that I had to wear my white trainers and ripped jeans that I was wearing that day which obviously doesn't look smart and professional. These clothes were clearly not appropriate and certainly did not communicate professionalism to my identified audience. In fact as I was wearing ripped jeans and trainers these items of clothing are generally worn by young people and therefore on TV  shows where the presenters wear these clothes these shows tend to have a young target audience such as teenagers; certainly not people who are in their late 50's to early 60's and are an accountant for example (this is some of the aspects of my target audience). To ensure that these couldn't be seen I ensured that I didn't do many wide shots, and instead stuck to medium shots and medium close-ups however during the opening and closing wide shots - these items of clothing can be seen briefly.

Also another issue was that Molly Cross (my interviewee) was wearing jeans and a hoodie - as I forgot to tell her to wear smart clothes which certainly takes away from the professionalism aspect that I wanted to achieve. I need to ensure next time I work on my organisation, as if I was more organised and gave clear communication to my crew this wouldn't have happened.

Here is picture of me wearing my smart clothes:

The lighting set-up was also an important asset. My research identified that three-point lighting was a common set-up used in production. I originally planned the the lighting warmth was going to be 4800 kelvins to give the presenters a little bit of warmth. However as I didn't have much time in the studio I didn't have time to measure this, so just had to do it by eye. I have learnt now that I should have booked more time in the studio, so I could set up the production equipment such as the lighting more throughly and made adjustments to get optimum results.

Here was my original lighting plan:

Here is how it looked when I set it up in the studio:

As you can see in the picture I stuck to me three-point lighting set-up plan. However I did make some changes. Originally I was going to have the back light low down, to avoid being by the camera. However this made this made the medium shot (which was of me and Molly) really overexposed, and the bright light was distracting in the shot. Therefore I moved the light higher up (as you can see in the image tits the highest light out of all of them), and pointed the light down on us - this worked well and solved the overexposure issue. I have set up three-pont lighting before, however I feel more confident now that I have set it up again, and have realised the importance of adjusting the height of the lights like I mentioned above to get optimum lighting.

Setting up the lights was a quick process I asked the help of my production crew - the only thing that I would have changed when doing future productions with three-point lighting is ensure that I use cable ties as I originally said I would use in my risk assessment as there were a few times when the crew tripped over the cables for the lights. Safety is something that is so important and its vital that I in future productions, I carry out safety measures to ensure the safety of me and my crew.

As you can see in my risk assessment I clearly outlined that one of the risks were people tapping over the cables for the lights - and even said to reduce this risk factor was to use velcro cable ties.

By using a professional lighting set-up, I am ensuring that I encode this professionalism message in my news broadcast, which can then be decoded by the audience - this idea of encoding messages and values is known as Stuart Hall's reception theory.

BBC/UKB NEWS LOGO

The BBC has their own typeface called 'Reith' (BBC, 2019)  - again as my target audience is very similar to the audience BBC News attracts I want my typeface to look as close as possible to theirs. Although I can't use their typeface on Programmes such as Premiere Pro and Photoshop, when creating my opening sequence I will try and look for one very similar.

When creating my logo in Premiere Pro I found a font very close to the BBC's 'Reith font' - it was called 'Gill Sans MT'. This took a lot of trial and error to get the typeface correct - I had to keep comparing the different typefaces on Photoshop with the typeface to the BBC News typeface. In future I will ensure that I try and research alternative fonts online instead of using the trial and method approach as this was very time consuming.

It was important that I had a catchy name for my news broadcast and that my name and logo was similar to the BBC News Logo. I decided that a great name for my news network would be 'UKB NEWS'. 'UKB' stands for UK Broadcasting- which is very relevant as my target audience is people in the UK. I created this in Photoshop.

For this logo I mostly used the 'rectangular marquee tool' as, as you can see this logo features many different rectangles.

I also used the paint bucket tool to fill these rectangles.

Tony also taught me how to make minor adjustments to the letters - this is called kerning and includes adjustments such as increasing the spacing between letters which I did to make my logo more like 'BBC News Logo'. This is something which will really help develop any future projects whether in College or my career that involve using text such as creating logos for websites or journalistic publications.

Here you can see the kerning options on Photoshop. And also other options such as text colour, font and type size - all important features that I used. For example I used a font very similar to BBC News' 'Reith' font and used a font called Gill Sans MT' - this was the closest font I could find to the real thing.

Sound:

To record sound I am going to use Tie Mic's (Sony radio mic kit) - just like the kit below:




This took a while for me to set-up and also this use of capturing sound cause numerous different issues during the editing process.

The reason I picked this technique to capture sound was because I have used this technique several times for other productions and it provided really high quality clear sound quality.

As you can see in the picture below I have plugged the receiver for one of the radio clip-on microphones into the camera. I then did the same for another camera - as I used two clip on microphones.

I also learnt how to set up a camera with the wireless radio clip on microphones. As you can see below with this camera, (the medium-close-up camera). I selected INT (L) for Channel 1, and put this on manual mode (on the picture it shows it set to Input 1 however during production it was set to INT (L). I set this to INT because it meant if the external microphone (the radio clip on mic) wasn't recording then I would have back-up sound. For the Channel 2 I selected Input 2 as I had the external radio clip on Microphone receiver  plugged into the 2nd XLR input. I also set this to manual. Carrying out this project has taught me how to set up wireless radio microphones with these Panasonic camera's which will be really useful for future projects.

I am happy that I set up the audio like this, as it meant that, I learnt how to set these microphones, and also it taught me the importance of also using the internal microphones of these camera's to record audio for backup.

One of the main problems I encountered with using these microphones was during the editing process. As me and my interviewee were both sat very close together, and both mic'd, when I created the multi-cam sequence in Premiere Pro, you could hear my voice through my microphone and also through Molly's microphone which caused an echo effect. This same problem also occurred for Molly's audio. This meant to solve the problem I had to cut my audio from the timeline every time Molly spoke and vice versa - this did solve the issue. I used the razor tool in Premiere Pro to achieve this.

(Here is the razor tool highlighted in blue on Premiere Pro - a tool which I had never used before this project. I learnt that this can be used to separate video clips and audio tracks - something which will be really useful to use for future projects e.g. music videos and news reports.

However the problems didn't end their. When I began to cut the audio tracks using the razor tool, some of the audio became out of sync with the video which really did not look professional. Eventually after spending a lot of time trying to come up with a solution I just used the audio from on microphone - as this solved the out of sync issue. Also the sound was also still very clear and still at a suitable volume for Molly's voice even though I was only using audio captured through my clip on microphone - this was because these microphones are very sensitive and me and Molly were sat close together. This project has taught me that when you use clip on microphones close together (lavaliere microphones), ensure you don't have audio coming from both microphones at the same time in the project, as it will cause the problems that I incurred.

One of the major things that I have identified about sound in BBC News broadcasts through research, is that the voices have a warm tone to them. To replicate this I talked to my lecturer Tony about this and advised me to use the Parametric equaliser in Premiere Pro.

To do this first of all I selected the Parametric equaliser from the effects panel and dragged it onto the audio on the timeline.

I then clicked edit on the effect controls, which allowed me to make adjustments

As I wanted to give the the voices on the broadcast, more of a warm tone, Tony advised me increase mid levels. The mid levels on the equaliser really effect voice. After dragging up the mid levels, I also wanted to decrease the prominence of the sound of the rustling paper. To do this I learnt that by reducing the high levels, this will help reduce the sound of the rustling paper. You can see below the adjustments I made on the Parametric Equaliser panel, below:

By making these adjustments, the audio certainly has more of a warm tone to it, which makes it sound more like a BBC News broadcast. Therefore this will help communicate the BBC news style broadcast to my identified audience as they will be familiar with the tone of sound on BBC News broadcasts they are used to watching (this should be decoded by the audience - this idea of encoding messages and values for the audience to decode is known as Stuart Hall's reception theory)

Creating the music for the multi-camera and opening sequence:

I created the music for my opening  sequence and multi-camera production using Apple's software called Logic Pro X. I did this to ensure my audio was copyright free as I have learnt this is an important legal aspect of production. Furthermore I have used Logic Pro X in previous projects so feel confident using this for this project.

From research and listening to the BBC News opening sequence I knew I wanted to make mine sound similar as I want my production to attract a similar audience. One of the things that I knew was important in the BBC News soundtrack was its upbeat tempo - as this to me symbolises the fast pace and important nature of news and how stories are constantly developing. Therefore to incorporate this element into my soundtrack I found a 'Loop' in Logic Pro X that had a fast tempo and dragged that into the timeline. In fact I also used violins with a fast tempo which I noticed were used in the BBC News opening sequence music, and a collection of other instrument loops that all had fast tempo's.

As you can see below - my news theme song was created using 'Loops' from the Loops panel on the left of the screen. As you can see in the panel on left - I used a Loop called 'Greek Sirtos Violin 01' which had a tempo of 78.

I also found a 'Loop' called 'Recycled Lead Layers' which as you can see on the Loop panel has a fast and upbeat tempo of 128.

I also used other instrument loops such as one called 'Boomer FX' which gave my opening music quite a dramatic feeling - which symbolises the major, important  dramatic stories that news broadcasts cover.

Finally once I had all my loops in place I edited the piece to 30 seconds - which was how long my opening sequence lasted.


Here you can see below all of my loops in place:

Finally I decided to create background music for my multi-camera broadcast for when I was reading out the headlines and also the studio opening and closing part of my production just like they have on the BBC News. To do this all I did was used this song that I had created but removed all of the loops except the 'Recycled Lead Layers Loop'. Now I had created a full soundtrack for my multi-camera production

The music I have created is similar to the BBC News opening sequence, e.g. some of the same instruments are used such as violins, and the tempo is the same. This will therefore help closely align my news network brand with BBC News - a trusted news source, and therefore ensure my identified audience have confidence in my brand which is really important as I have identified my audience is very brand-conscious.

Although I am confident using Logic Pro X, I did learn that you can see the tempo of loops you use on by the loop in the loops panel, which really helps inform you of the pace of your piece.



Filming:

Setting up the time-code was quite a complicated process and I did get confused at times. I learnt that setting up time-code was a really important multi-camera production technique during our lessons as it allows you to easily edit the multi-camera production in Premiere Pro. To set it up I did request the help of one of my production crew, Hannah.

To set up the time-code:

I ensured that all of the camera's were set to REC RUN in the TC/UB setup menu.

I then selected the TC preset:

 And then ensured all of the camera's were set to the same timecode of 01:00:00:00.

Once all the camera's were set to this. I ensured when we started recording we all pressed record at the same time so they were all in sync.


For the opening shot I was originally going to use a camera slider to get my tracking shot from Left to Right, however I couldn't get hold of this piece of equipment so therefore I used the dolly tripod to achieve this shot. Also as you can see on my storyboard plan below I was going to originally get more of a long shot of the studio for the opening but instead I opted for a medium shot for the opening, as I preferred how this looked. Also I made this decision, as I liked how this shot created more of an intimate environment which will help communicate the idea of a live news, also it will ensure my broadcast is engaging, as I have identified my audience like to engage with everything around them.

This is how part of the opening shot look:

This tracking shot worked really well, however at times you can see the movement of the camera slightly judder - which does take away for the professionalism aspect. Next time this could be fixed by asking my camera operator to rehearse this shot more thoroughly to ensure they know exactly could perfect their movement to get a smooth tracking shot.

Apart from this shot most of my other shots remained the same to how I originally planned them.

My medium close-up (which I identified through research is a very common shot in news broadcasts) didn't look as good as how I originally planned. For example as you can see below I am not exactly in the centre of the shot, which they are in BBC news broadcasts. I am too far to the right. This happened because when I moved to the centre of the shot, I was too close to my interviewee - which looked odd in the medium shot.

If you compare this to a shot from BBC News - you can see how I'm off-centre. As this is quite a major difference from what you see on BBC News, this is making my piece look less like a BBC News broadcast therefore I am not communicating these BBC News ideas of aspects such as professionalism to my identified audience.

However I must say I directly addressed my audience by looking directly into the camera, which was something that I identified from research was a common element to news broadcasts. By directly addressing my audience this will help communicate the information I'm taking about, and as I have identified from research my identified audience enjoy being informed and being able to share their insight within their professional circles.

Another important point to make, is I also ensured that when speaking, I was well-spoken and spoke with a typical middle-class accent, which will appeal to my identified middle class audience, who live in middle class locations such as Haringey and Islington. It's important to note that they will be used to hearing middle class voices on BBC News. Encoding these messages of class and professionalism will then be decoded by the audience - this is known as Stuart Hall's reception theory.

Another point to make about my news broadcast, is that I ensured it included detailed analysis of the main prescription drug story. Its important that I communicate this detailed analysis, as I have identified my audience are well educated and like to be informed. Furthermore I also link the prescription drug story, to the prescription drug adiction problem in the USA, as again I have identified its important to communicate this to my audience, as I have found out from research that they have a global outlook.

Finally one more point to make is that I ensured my news broadcast communicated subtle pieces of information to appeal to my identified audience's left-wing leaning views of the major social injustices in the country. For example the Chief health correspondent, Molly Cross talks about how doctors are claiming the under funding of the NHS, is leaving doctors with a severe lack of alternatives to the long term prescribing of  prescription drugs to their patients thus making it hard for them to reduce the prescription drug addiction rates. What I am doing here is encoding subtle messages for my audience to decode - known as Stuart Hall's reception theory - a theory which is liked to my broadcast in many ways.


You can see my link to the underfunding of the NHS in my script (2nd page):

The medium shot was similar to how I planned it. That being said originally I planned for the camera to be further to the right of the desk - which you can see in my pre-production planning shot. This was changed as the planning shot that I took had no people in it, and it didn't look as good when it did so I changed it to the new shot. If was to do this production again I would include a fourth camera to get a medium-close-up of Molly when she is speaking. I would also reduce the head room in this shot.


Production shot (the shot that was used)

Original planning shot:

Finally my ending shot was how I originally planned. As you can see in my Shot list and storyboard below I planned that the camera would pull back to a long-shot of the studio:

These shots were really important as these were commonly used in news broadcasts - as I identified that BBC news broadcasts frequently use long shots and tracking shots for the opening and closing of their broadcasts.

Long shot of the studio - the camera pulled back from the news desk to get this shot.

Here you can see in this BBC News broadcast, part of the opening (after the headlines are read) is a tracking shot of the studio - this is something which I replicated as I want to appeal to BBC News audience profile. You can also see that the ending is a long shot of the studio - again something I replicated. By replicating this it helps effectively communicate my news broadcast to my identified audience (BBC News audience) as it aligns my brand very similarly to BBC News, which would appeal to my identified audience as I have found out from research they are extremely brand conscious.

Editing

Editing the multi-camera piece was relatively easy and simple to set up. Also I have never done I learnt a lot about the different features Premiere Pro has to offer.


First off all I set up a bin called Multicam and imported the footage from all 3 camera's. I then right clicked on the bin, and selected 'Create Multi-Camera Source Sequence...'.

I then selected Timecode on the menu, and for the audio I switched it to All Camera's. I also ticked the box that said 'Create Single Multi cam source sequence. Once this was all OK, I clicked OK.

Once this was done, Premiere Pro then created a multi-camera sequence in the bin. So I then dragged this onto the timeline, as you can see below. I also switched the view on Premiere Pro so I could see all camera's. All I needed to do now was click play, and then switch between the different camera's using the number pad on the keyboard. I didn't realise how easy and simple this would be. I had now created a multi-camera sequence and now it was time for fine tuning.

Once I had finished the multi-camera switching part of the edit I then exported this and imported it into a new Premiere Pro Project. I then added the opening sequence that I created to the project, so I had an intro. Creating this multi-cam project has really helped develop my organisation - by creating multiple different projects for the edit, it means you can go back to the different stages of the edit, and make changes to them quickly and efficiently. Also if you forget to save one project, you have another part of the project to go back to. Once I added the opening sequence in Premeire Pro, this alone made it seem like more like a professional BBC News style broadcast. As I talked about further above in my production page, I mentioned how I edited the sound, and the problems that I faced, and also how I edited the opening sequence.


One of the final things that I did to the edit: as the opening and ending shots were filmed using the dolly tripod - some of the movement was a bit jerky. To reduce this, I used the warp stabiliser, for both the opening and ending shots. It didn't work properly for the opening however for the ending shot, it worked really well and the movement of the camera looks considerably smoother than before. I have never used this effect before, but I will certainly use if for future projects where the footage is a bit shaky.

Finally for the very ending I added my UKB News Logo that I created in Photoshop. This can be seen below. This was very simple all I did was drag and dropped the logo onto the timeline, and adjusted its position.

Final multi-camera News Broadcast: