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An introduction to the News

The news is a way of gaining information on either local or worldwide events. There are many different outlets for this, some more trustworthy than others, some more popular than others and some more tailored than others. Many of the big news outlets occasionally have subsidiary outlets for different subjects for example BBC News has BBC Sport, Sky News has Sky Sports News, etc.

Sports can often be very opinionated when it comes to delivering news and so it is a lot harder to obtain consumers, the most popular place for sports news in the UK, or at least one of, is Sky Sports News. This is because they make it fun to watch and so they can even attract many non-sport fans.

A report I watched on YouTube shown them interview the comedian Jack Whitehall on the events in the football world. Being the comedian he is he used his own approach to this and made the interviewers laugh. The interview took place on the 31^st of January 2017 on Sky Sports News HQ.

It was on transfer deadline day and the reporter asked Jack on the opinions of his favoured club’s transfer activity. Jack kept going off topic and the news reporter went with him but kept directing the conversation back to football.

For visuals, they just used the Sky Sports News studio, which is very complicated on the eye for a newbie watching the show, but it is very iconic for the regulars. There was a lot of speech so audio quality was important; to achieve good audio quality, SSN used lavaliere microphones. I feel like this is important, due to the busy routine of the studio, it is important that the audio is focused to the conversation.

In addition, I watched a more local news report – this was to see how ‘popularity’ of news effects the quality or techniques used. I presumed that ‘ITV Anglia News’ wouldn’t spend as much time focusing on fancy graphics or making everything look good, compared to the likes of Sky Sports News.

I was right; the news broadcast I watched was broadcasted on the 22^nd February 2016. ITV Anglia always start their shows with the same intro that has been the case for many years now. It’s nothing fancy, just a few video tiles moving round with their iconic intro music in the background.

The newsreaders for this broadcast were Jonathan Wills and Becky Jago. What they did was introduce the sequence, as well as providing voiceovers for several different shots. What stuck out to me was the importance of staying focused as a newsreader. Becky and Jonathan only ever looked at each other or the camera during their sequence.

Also, newsreaders must speak in a clear voice and be confident in their speech. Of course, this could lose the interest of the viewer if it’s not done right.

A lot of preparation goes in to news reports, but sometimes these preperations will need to take place quickly. An example of news prep is the idea of ‘prospects’ which are different news stories that may appear in the broadcast.

Typically, news broadcasts follow a ‘hit them early approach’ meaning that they will show any sensitive news (i.e. Crime) first, before ending on a more positive news story. In between stories, they will have differing transitions. Some, longer broadcasts, may skip to ad breaks, although this isn’t common. Most broadcasts will just skip back to the presenters in the studio between shots.

It’s important that news reporters can break down and dissect information quickly as and when necessary. The news side to media is all about rapidity. The public want news and generally speaking, they won’t worry too much about checking the most reliable outlet.

Due to all news outlets being similar, Galtung & Ruge wrote down a few of the typical values that will feature in a news article or broadcast.

Of course, there’s a lot of controversy surrounding the news industry. It’s sometimes accused of not doing what it should be doing. The public watch or read the news to hear about the exact details of an event but, just how can a handful of people be trustworthy enough to obtain information from?

There’s a problem with how ‘biased’ a news report can be. Meaning, how much it reflects the opinions of the news-giver, rather than the facts of the actual event.

There’s an idea called ‘bias through selection and omission’, which means that the writer or presenter of the news will ‘cut corners’ to warp the news in their way. For example, if a sportsperson were to give an interview and they say just one thing which could cause speculation, the news reporter will ignore everything else they said and just focus on that one thing.

Particularly with newspapers, the placement of news is also important. Naturally, more people will read what’s on the front of a newspaper than what’s in the middle or at the back. News outlets can use this to their advantage by placing the most interesting news at the front, in the hopes of enticing potential consumers.

Similarly, the headlines are equally as important as placement. In this era of social media, a lot of people may share news stories based on the headline alone, without reading the article or watching the video itself.

Grass Roots Football | My 3MW Documentary

3MW - Risk Assessment

3MW - Interview Questions

In my documentary, a large part of it is based on interview. These are some questions I will be asking to the interviewee:

• Can you explain your personal experience with grassroots football?
• How important do you feel grassroots is in football now in comparison to ten or twenty years ago?
• How much different is grassroots football in England compared to other nationalities?
• What are your ambitions with your club?

3MW - Secondary research

Secondary research is a form of research from already written research. It's the most common form but it is argued to be the least efficient.

The benefits of secondary research include:

• Easy to obtain.
• Gives more than one viewpoint to a topic.
• Depending on the topic, there's a larger variety of cources to research from.

The downsides to secondary research are:

• You're not left to make your own assumptions.
• Due to it being easy to obtain, you don't feel a great sense of achievement with the knowledge you recieve and it's easier to escape your mind.

Using secondary research in this project consisted of me using the internet. Grassroots football is a very subsidiary topic so there's probably a lot more aid on the internet as there is in books, magazines, etc.

The first internet source I used was from a website named 'That team talk' and they had written an article based on exactly what I needed.

Essentially, what it consisted of was how English football differs from other cultures and how we breed young players to fit the stereotype.

After this, I wemt over to a similar article from 'Evolution soccer' except this one revealed the negative side to grassroots football. Therefore adding more depth to my research.

I then wanted to look at the subject as a whole; I decided to research how football (not just grassroots football) has evolved over time in the hopes of being able to combine my knowledge.

In doing so, I came across an article from the BBC.

I feel that these three articles give me a good amount of analysis to go on and write scripts etc. for my documentary. However, I could always come back to these if I forget anything/need more information.

3MW - Production Schedule

3MW - Proposal

My documentary will be on the decrease in popularity of grassroots football and how large the gap is nowadays between grassroots and major leagues in comparison to twenty or so years ago. 

It will be an expository format. I will achieve this by using multimeadia such as voiceovers and interviews in order to inform the viewer what's going on. Also, the documentary will be educational and it will inform the viewers of the chosen subject.

As the documentary is being distrubuted via the internet, it would make sense to think of a target audience which affiliates with that. I've decided my target audience will be children or teenagers as this is demographically the largest consumer of online videos and it also ties in nicely with my subject.

When filming, I will only need to film in one location and that is a community football pitch, so there will be no need for location releases etc. and it will also help to improve continuity. 

As mentioned in the above mindmap, my friends have agreed to help me in this production so that will save me organising a crew. It will be beneficial to the quality of the production that we all know and are familiar with eachother.

Sample interview questions

• How big is the gap now from grassroots football to the big leagues in comparison to 10/20 years ago?
• How important do you feel grassroots football is on producing upcoming football stars?
• How do you feel this football club is helping the local community?

In terms of equipment needed, I won't need anything too advanced. The only thing I feel I'd need to invest in is a lavalier microphone for filming outside. These aren't too expensive and I could easily buy one for under £20 on Amazon.

I feel like this would be a good documentary for me to do as I have a strong passion for football as well as an in-depth knowledge, with added research in the chosen field I feel like this puts me in a great position to start writing scripts, etc.

3MW - Documentary Mini Task

Documentaries are a popular form of media. To me, when I hear the word documentary, I instantly think of education. It usually refers to real life events and the real definition is "using pictures or interviews with people involved in real events to provide a factual report on a particular subject."

Documentaries can be split in to different sub-categories, some examples are:

• Expository documentaries
• Observational documentaries 
• Interactive documentaries
• Reflexive documentaries
• Performative documentaries 

What is an expository documentary?

An expository documentary is productions in which the viewers can listen to a narrative or view subtitles as an aid or almost a direct message to tell them what's happening. Some say this can fool the mind of the viewer and not leave them much room to imagine. However, sometimes it's a good idea for the more complicated subjects.

A good example of an expository documentary is 'The fear of 13', a documentary on the life of Nick Yarris. In this, Nick speaks directly to the audience, telling them about his experiences of prison and leaving a skewed view.

What is an observational documentary?

Observational documentaries are essentially what it says on the tin. Rather than being told what's going on, you're made to observe and sometimes draw your own conclusion to real life events.

The only use of narration is via the form of non-direct speech (e.g characters speaking to one another).

An example of observational documentary filmmaking is "16 and pregnant". The show follows the life of certain teenagers on their road to pregnancy.

What is an interactive documentary?

An interactive documentary is possibly the most criticised out of these five. It's more known for its multimedia and how good it looks rather than how the story is presented. The filmmaker has a large input on interactive documentaries but they're usually percieved as balanced.

The people being filmed are able to express their own opinions; the filmmaker then has the choice whether he can include a juxtaposing opinion to give a more balanced view to the audience.

A famous example of interactive documentaries is 'Bowling for columbine' - a documentary which explores the events of Columbine High School in 1999.

There are a number of different things to consider when filming documentaries. Due to documentary filmmaking being largely public, it's important to bare in mind the privacy of everyone being filmed.

Under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act 1998, everybody in the public has the right to not be filmed if they feel it might affect their personal life. It's not illegal to film in public places, however, filmmakers should take into consideration and respect the needs of certain people in their film.

However, it's a different story when the location is not private. Like many other media productions, you must gain permission to the owner of the private property before filming.

What is a reflexive documentary?

A reflexive documentary is more aesthetic than other documentary forms and the audience recognise it. This is because some people like to be educated but some documentaries are unaesthetic to view and this puts the audience off from the point. Usually, the filmmaker is in front of the camera and he/she becomes a big part of the production. 

The most famous example I can think of is Louis Theroux. For example, his documentary 'Behind Bars' shows him being toured around San Quentin prison and interviewing inmates as well as guards.

What is a performative documentary?

Performative documentaries are argued to be the most 'honest' of the documentary forms. It tells the story of filming as well as the story it's trying to present. 

We're in a generation where performative documentaries are becoming increasingly popular but are starting to take on different subsidiary forms. An example, many YouTube videos follow the performative documentary rules

However, in terms of TV, a famous example of performative filmmaking is Bear Grylls. What Bear does is explore environmeants without script, and takes the audience along on the journey with him.

In my opinion, Interactive documentaries are the best form. When coming to make to my documentary, I will aim to present it in an interactive manner.

Documentaries are quite a risky media format. Risky with the audience and risky with the people being filmed. The subjects seem to put their faith in the filmmaker to present them in the way they'd like to be presented. The filmmaker must be wary of this because even the slightest bit of misinterpretation could result badly; by this I mean the persona could come out and admit to the public that the documentary is 'fake' therefore ruining the filmmakers reputation.