Jun 6, 2017
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Lighting Set ups 2
My Pitch Presentation
Documentary Research
Questionnaire
1. Are you male or female?
2. How old are you?
3. Do you watch documentaries?
4. Do you listen to music? If yes, what genre/s?
5. Do you have an interest in lifestyle and culture?
6. Would you be interested in watching a documentary about the alternative subculture, with a particular focus on the music scene?
7. What would you like to see in this?
8. Would you prefer a formal style, or an informal, interactive style of presentation?
Code and Convention News
Explain the code and convention in your own words
How does the code and convention inform/determine audience responses? How does it achieve an audience response?
Studio news readers role
· Present an impartial summary of current issues
· Relay the facts without opinions (formal/traditional)
· Engage viewers using body language and delivery of news while behaving professionally
· Allows audience to form their own opinions based on the facts
Studio news readers appearance
• Usually an anchor or a pair of anchors with the combination of an older man and young woman
• They must be presentable, so are always well-groomed and dressed smartly
• They speak clearly and in received pronunciation – regional accents must be toned down
• They use direct address to build a rapport with the audience
• Appear friendly and trustworthy, so the audience are able to listen to and believe them
• Inoffensive, so accepted with minimal active response (other than acknowledgement)
Field reporters
· Field reporters go to the location of a story and provide the finer details of the report
• They do their own research for this and write their own script
• They often provide information that would be unobtainable for the studio news readers or the researchers working from the studio
• Their role is very important for getting all the necessary information to accurately deliver the story in a factual and unbiased manner
• Allows the audience an inside view to prove the stories
• Gives the sense of being involved/in the know
Links to studio
• Links to the studio is where the news is featuring interaction with field reporters and other studios and there is a conversation between the studio news readers and whoever is connected via video link
• Diversifies the show to avoid it being visually boring
• Makes the station seem more reliable as they have connections and conduct research into the stories
• It enables the audience to see the widespread coverage of news in the world and get relevant details faster
Mode of address to viewer
• Modes of address to the viewer is the way in which presenters and reporters speak and behave whilst on camera in order to deliver the information in a way that will engage and interest the viewers
• For example, they employ direct address and eye contact to hold viewers’ attention
• They also speak formally, often in received pronunciation, to appear professional and reliable
• Aspects of their appearance and behaviour can be manipulated to deliver the message correctly
• Connects and engages viewers
• Influences the way they are received by the audience
• It is vital this is used to successfully connect with and interest the audience
interviewing
• Interviews are often conducted to get different opinions in news stories
• They can offer both the views of the experts and the general public and can add important, relevant information to the report
• They are often conducted in the studio, on location or via video links and this enables the news readers to find out more in order to deliver this to viewers
• As well as this, it can deliver inside views of people involved, like a powerful politician or a witness to an accident
• Gives exclusivity and insider opinions to viewers
• Shows more opinionated sides of stories to allow viewers to form their own judgements based on (generally equal) representation of two sides of an argument
• Interests viewers more and give them information directly from the relevant people in a story
Experts and witnesses
• Experts and witnesses are used to enhance a story or provide different views for the audience
• Sometimes they are interviewed and other times they are set up in a panel-like formation, speculating on the stories alongside the news reporter
• An example of this is Sky News’ morning section with Eamon Holmes
• Appears reliable
• Makes audience feel current and connected with events
• This adds interest, and sometimes humour, for the viewers
Report structure
• The report structure is very important for captivating viewers
• The studio news reader will begin with reading the headlines
• After this, the stories will be delivered one at a time, using studio links, field reporters and interviews to fully deliver the information in an interesting and accurate way
• Gives audience a sense of organisation and trustworthy preparation
• Enables the audience a first look at whether or not there are stories of interest to them
Actuality footage
• Actuality footage is very useful for news shows
• It has the same effects as witness accounts, however it is more reliable
• An example of this is the CCTV footage of the British man, David Miller, who was murdered in Thailand - it shows him alive and well just hours before he was killed
• CCTV footage of a crime would be effective in delivering the story in an interesting and accurate way as it proves what has happened and shows the order of events correctly
Final Interview Transcript with Apex Washi
Parts of this have been edited, or even removed entirely, for the sake of time and clarity.
What inspired you guys to put together a group, like, as far as inspiration goes and branching off of that, who influenced you on the grime scene?
Bruv, like, as far as grime goes we didn’t even take that much influence from grime MCs on the scene. We don’t wanna be put in a box or marginalised like that. Like, obviously we love grime and we grow up listening to Giggs and all of them but with our music we don’t wanna fit into a genre. We just wanna do us. It’s all about having fun for us, we just wanna do our thing, have fun, and that’s why we put together the group.
All right, man. That’s positive. Coming away from that, in terms of influence, do you think that grime music and the music you guys make influences youth culture or the other way around?
(Washi laughs.)
That’s mad you know. Not even being big headed or anything, but as far as we go and the music scene as a whole, I definitely think that we’re an influence on youth culture and what’s in, init. Cos obviously people look at what’s popular, and what the guys on stage are doing or whatever, and they wanna copy that and they wanna do that cos people aspire to be like that. It’s associated with success. Like, look at Kanye West, yeah? He’s really egotistical, and arrogant, but he encourages everybody to be the same. He encourages people to be like that because it’s about being the best version of yourself. We wanna have that kind of influence init.
Kanye’s definitely an interesting character. Southend as a whole has quite a lively music scene for and by young people, but you guys are quite different. You stand out. Do you think that because of that, you guys get stereotyped?
Definitely bruv, we’re always getting stereotyped for what we do and people assume we’re dumb cos of the way we talk or the words we use. It’s a culture thing, I don’t really like culture man, cos of the way I dress, or the words I use, or where I’m from, people wanna act like they know me or build their judgements on me before they even know me. Like, bruv, you don’t know me so don’t act like you do, you know what I mean? It goes back to being marginalised or put in a box again when you asked about genres and influences man. I don’t like that, labelling things and labelling people is a negative thing and it restricts creativity and other stuff man.
Do you think that’s a deterrence from more people getting involved in music, or even doing what they want to do overall?
Yo, man, definitely. Nobody’s gonna want to be doing what they enjoy if you got these people putting them down at every corner init. Like, why would you? Eventually you’re just gonna give up and say f*ck it. People don’t wanna see you do better than them and people don’t like others being different, or ambitious. It intimidates them init. Goes further than music man.
What’s the end goal for Apex? What do you guys want to do, where do you wanna take this?
Again bruv it’s just fun for us, but if we can inspire people to be themselves and do their own thing then that’s a big thing for us too, but right now it’s just fun. At the moment we just wanna get on with the music and play our shows and do all that, you get me? I can’t speak for the rest of us, but as far as I know, we’re all just enjoying doing our thing and creating the music we create. We’ve got so many different opportunities coming through right now, there’s a photo shoot in a couple days for some Prada thing, that’s gonna be mad.
(Washi laughs).
All right, finally, Chipmunk or Bugzy Malone?
(Washi laughs).
Chipmunk all day, man, cos obviously from what I’ve told you I’ve got nothing but respect for his versatility as far as music goes and Bugzy’s trying to put Chip down for it, like why? He’s doing his thing and getting recognition for it, and he can do whatever. Pop, hip hop, grime, anything. That’s something to be respected, not dissed.
Research and Planning for Main Interview
The interview I’m going to be doing is with a group of young musicians from Southend-on-Sea called Apex. With them, I’ve run over the ins and outs of the interview and what I hope to achieve by and asking the questions I’m going to ask. The goal of the interview is to get a better understanding of the underground music scene in Southend on how it works in hand with the youth culture of Southend.
Grime, the music they primarily produce, is a genre of music characterised by hard, fast, industrial beats and aggressive lyrics. The genre is dominated by young black men with many of them being from impoverished, urban areas. Growing up in one of these areas has left me interested in the music and how the culture influences it which is why I’ve decided to seek Apex out.
Myself and Apex have agreed that we’re going to conduct the interview (and get some photographs) before and after a show that they’re playing in the Old Hat at Southend. The reason I’ve jumped at the opportunity to conduct the interview at a show they’re playing is because it’ll give me a better insight into the music they make, the type of audience they perform to, and the personal side of the group due to seeing them pre-show.
I’ve taken inspiration from a piece of journalism by a magazine called CRACK based in London, I picked a free copy up in a Shoreditch vinyl shop and managed to find the main piece online on their website. Researching the magazine’s work and deconstructing this piece in particular has helped me organise my own interview even down to the questions I’m going to ask and how I can make my questions flow, suggest, and build an article on their own. The interview is hyperlinked here.
I can recognise a lot of the techniques we’ve been taught by Steve in this piece and being able to recognise these techniques is going to help my construct my own piece using the same ones. While the inverted pyramid technique isn’t particularly going to help me here (as it’s not a news piece, more of a social media piece) I can use the who, what, why, when, and where that the inverted pyramid stands on and utilise quotes and description to build the piece.
I’m going to take a phone to record the conversations we have and the questions I ask to the show, as well as my film camera - an Olympus OM-10 - for photographs. I’ll develop the negatives on Wednesday afternoon and put them in my folder.
The questions I’m going to ask are:
What inspired you guys to put together a group?
Were you influenced by other musicians?
(If so, who?)
Do you think that youth culture at the moment influences grime music, or grime music influences youth culture?
(Why?)
Obviously Southend has a massive music scene, but from what I can see there’s not a lot of people doing what you guys do, and a lot of people would see you guys and hear the music you make and stereotype you on the spot. Do you think that’s an issue, and maybe a deterrence from getting more people into the scene?
Where did you guys grow up, and what was it like?
Where do you see your music going, like, what’s the goal?
All right, finally, Chipmunk or Bugzy Malone?
Why?
I believe that the positioning of these questions and the way the majority of them are open, and some suggestive, is going to help me get the best out of my time with Apex and hopefully score me some good material.
History of Grime Music
Grime music started in the early two thousands as a product of UK garage raves and dancehall parties, where the garage beats were too fast for an MC to write lyrics for, new producers sampled garage beats and slowed them down to facilitate somebody writing lyrics for them. When this new genre formed, multiple producers were providing beats for artists to perform over.
This quickly skyrocketed in London, as the producers and lyricists were primarily from social housing communities and poor, and were using the new genre as an outlet to express themselves. This is why the sound of grime is aggressive, fast, and angry. It matches the motivation for the music that they’re creating.
In the mid-2000s, after its explosion on the scene, grime died down for a little while but recently grime has seen a huge resurgence in popularity and is experiencing a mainstream success that it’s never seen before. Whereas before grime was an outlet for kids in social housing performing and battling one another in youth clubs - it’s now a commercialised fashion statement. Grime is popular, with artists like Stormzy and Skepta propelling the scene into success.
Success in the grime scene is measured in different ways - from YouTube views, to money they earn, album sales, chart ratings, awards won, and festival appearances. A good example of success that encompasses a good few of these is an artist called Dizzee Rascal and his album Boy in the Corner which was top 10 in the British Charts upon its release. As well as this level of commercial success, more recently Skepta, JME, and Stormzy have all won MOBO awards for videos and songs.
Recently, an artist called Novelist is creating a grime renaissance by bringing back music videos in the style of old school TV channels from the early 2000s and soundtracks that sound like they’ve been pulled from pirate radio stations (grime’s first true place). It’s interesting that he is also branching away from grime with a new genre called ‘ruff sound’, increasing the tempo of the beats from grime producers and performing his lyrics in an even faster way.
Planning our Vox Pops
In order to get our vox pops done as quickly, and efficiently, as possible me and the person I worked with made a plan before we went out so we knew exactly what we wanted to ask, and exactly how we’d record our questions.
We knew that the most likely way of us getting a fair spread of opinions on the topic, we’d be best to approach different age ranges. So we decided to seek out one person from each age group. A younger adult, a middle aged adult, and an older person. By doing this we assured our answers would be fair and not bias. Interestingly, despite this, most of our participants all shared similar views.
In terms of equipment, the person I worked with recorded the questions and answers using the microphone on his iPhone, and we both took notes on paper after each person. The goal of taking notes after each person was to get down on paper the things that stood out most to us - the things that were stained in our memory. It worked well, because we managed to put the vox pop together fairly well.
The questions we asked were, “what is your overall opinion on the Syrian refugee crisis?”, “do you think that enough is being done to facilitate refugees in our country?”, and finally, “do you agree with the current Tory policy on the refugee crisis and their stance on the situation?”.
If I could redo the vox pop, I’d have changed the final question to an open one. Asking a yes or no question was a fault of mine because it dead ended the vox pop entirely and wasn’t the best to get the most information and wasn’t really fit for purpose.
However, if I had planned my vox pop with an agenda, and wanted to paint a certain picture with it, the use of a yes or no question at the end could have been useful. Short, blunt, responses are obviously associated with an absolute answer. They leave no room for doubt whatsoever. So, ending the vox pop with a yes or no question would have really served my agenda and possibly had my audience questioning things. That’s what journalism is about for me - provocation in all its many shades.