Friday, 10 July 2015

Ethical letter

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you in regards to the job advert for Flipside media to produce a small documentary. I have notice that your advert has broken several codes and protocols. I will evaluate on this in my letter in the hopes that these discrepancies will be amended.

First of all I noticed that the Equality Act of 2010 was broken on multiple occasions. You wrote "Seeking male/female under 30" that is discrimination by age and prohibited under the act. Also you said "Religious views: Christian" first off all I'm not sure why it matters what religious views someone is and secondly this is also discrimination, you cannot choose not to give someone a job just because of their religious views. I noticed that later on in the letter while your employees are working you spoke nothing of any sort of protection. This violates the employer liability act, which stats all employers must offer their employees at the very least the most basic health and safety precautions. If this service ins't provided it's best to assume your employees will be paying extra to their trade unions.

I noticed several portrayals you mentioned in the advert that don't apply to practical codes. One being "female victims and male offenders" this is sexist, offensive & just down-right rude. Claiming all females are victims and all males offenders doesn't show it in a non-biased light therefore totally voids the entire documentary. On top of this it does absolutely nothing to expel media bias by furthering the view that it's on men that commit crimes and it makes it even harder for male victims to go and receive help because they'll just get turned away by someone with an outlook like yours.

Your target audience of "children in high school" is also not viable due to Ofcom broadcasting codes. Most notably it's the obscene publications act of 1959. This could seriously damage your target audience physically emotionally and mentally.

Sincerely



William Cutter

Wednesday, 8 July 2015

CV

Ownership and funding

Ownership


Public service broadcasting 

PSB is a form of media that's focused entirely on the public, they are often funded by government. The biggest UK PSB outlets are the BBC and Channel 4. The UK also has roughly 230 ofcom funded radio stations, these are mostly local radios that appeal mostly to the people from that specific area.

Commercial Broadcasting 

This is more common in America, unlike the UK PSB model. These companies are privately owned and play adverts in order to gain a profit.

Corporate and Private ownership

Some media outlets are owned entirely by a single person or company. These companies such as NBC, CBS, ABC and Disney(to name but a few) own a vast array of other outlets, for example ABC has, 4 smaller genre-specific channels that operate under ABC. When one person or company owns an entire TV network they have final say on what they want to play/advertise, it's all, of course, about maximizing profit and gaining absurd amounts of control over as much of the media as they can.

Global companies

These are multi-national conglomerates that operate on a global scale and are often works billions. HSBC is a good example of this.

Vertical integration 

This is a fancy name for a buy-out. If a company pays another business to create their product or give them the component parts(and if said company is particularly wealthy) it may buy-out the other company and absorb it, cutting down on costs and increasing profits.

Horizontal integration 

Instead of looking for companies they already work with a company will look across the chain to see if they can buy-out and absorb one if not more of their competitors. Often this is the case if two companies ship very similar products, one will eventually get bought-out and absorb into the other, creating one massive entity that controls that area of the market, this is known as Monopolizing the Market.

Funding types 

The licence fee 

This us what all people who own a TV or some sort of device that can be used to watch TV on has to pay in order to use such services.

Subscriptions

Companies such as Netflix require a subscription to access their services, this is usually a moderate monthly fee that then allows free roam of the services the company offers.

One-Off 

A one-off is exactly what it says on the tin. The customer pays a one-off price and then gets the services for as long as they wish, services/ companies such as FreeSat & NowTV use these kinds of payments.

Pay-Per view

You only pay for what you watch.

Sponsorship

This is when a company gives money to a network in exchange for raised awareness and advertising.

Adverts

This is when a station will air a certain amount of adverts between it's shows and charge the companies for them, the more people that are likely to see it the more expensive it is.

Product placement 

This is when a company, such as Apple, pay for there products to be put in a piece of media that will be seen by a lot of people, it's often a kind of subliminal marketing tactic. For example, in Skyfall Bond is sitting on a bed drinking a bottle of Budweiser, which has the label clearly facing forward and unobstructed by his hand. This is an obvious product placement on behalf of Budweiser.

Private capital 

This is when private investors put their own money into the company often for a share in the company and by extension the profits.

Crowd funding

Site such as Kickstarter allow people to ask for a certain amount of money from the general public to fund a project. such as a film or video game.

TO DO

Missing (needs to be done)
1. Ownership and funding post
2. Job roles post
3. Ethical letter
4. Career booklet and CV


Changes (will get you a merit ( C ) instead of a pass ( E ) )
1. Formatting in requirements for production post + add sources
2. Add Ofcom and ASA information to advert analysis prezi
3. Nature and purposes of research additions (I’ve done the formatting)
4. Documentary mini-task changes

Jobs in the media industry

Friday, 19 June 2015

Technologies in TV and Film

Consumer Products

A consumer products are items that people buy, from various different retailers. Such as Amazon or Play.com. Editing software is different because it's not a physical item, it's often bought and downloaded from a website. Other types of consumer products are DVD/Blu ray players, these have become a staple of homes. Some newer pieces of tech such as TVs and Laptops have DVD's players built-in. 




Cable & Satellite

Cable TV is TV the brought through from underground in big cables. A good example of this is Virgin media, who do fiber optic cable for TV and internet. Satellite, is when a satellite is fitted to someones house, this allows them to pick up just as many if not more channels than cable. Service providers such as Sky offer satellite packages.


Analogue & Digital 

Analogue is now outdated and was switched off October 24th 2012. All TV's now work off digital signals. Digital signals are a series of pulses that only consist of two different states, analogue however will fluctuate in pitch and sound, but when coming through a radio that fluctuation is reduced down to nothing.

Internet

The internet is a very large part of most peoples lives. Most people use it perfectly legally, usually for checking social networking sites like Facebook & Twitter or consuming various different forms of media (Youtube, Imgur, Reddit etc etc). A large portion of the people who use the internet may also use it to access TV catch-up services like BBC Iplayer, ITVplayer, 4OD and so on. However plenty of people use the internet for illegal stuff too, such as torrenting movies, TV shows and illegally downloading music.

Interactive

Interactive media is become more and more common in households now, with things such as video games, music videos and TV and so on. TV has become more interactive because people can now record, pause, rewind and fast forward the programs they're watching.

HD

HD is now widely used throughout all forms of media. 1080p & 60fps are becoming the standards for recordings and video games. Technological breakthroughs are the only things that have made HD readily accessible to everyone. HD is used to see things in far greater detail and definition to SD. This is used by films, TV and most video games to help with immersion.

3D

In order for 3D pictures and film to work properly each of a persons eyes must see slightly different images. The brain then puts them together to make one 3D image that has actual depth to it. 3D allows things to be seen as if they were right in front of someone, which is used a lot by films and such for a greater sense of immersion into the piece of media text. HD & 3D work well together to form something truly immersive.

Pay Per View

Isn't often used much anymore thanks to On-Demand, although they do sometimes work in conjunction with one another. Pay per view does exactly what it says on the tin, you pay for what you watch and nothing else.

On-Demand

On-Demand services such as Sky, TiVo, 4OD and others all allow people to watch TV whenever they want, and on any device that's connected to the internet.

Streaming Content

The difference between streaming and downloading or recording is that whatever your watching doesn't stay on your device, for example if you download a film, that film will stay on your laptop or tablet and it will be available anytime. Where as if you stream something it's much like watching a YouTube video. Once you click off the page it goes, it doesn't stay like if you've downloaded something.

Digital recorders

These are things we use to watch films and such through the TV. Netflix is one of the most common ones to be used, so is LoveFilm and so on. Like many other things this works only when using the internet.

Thursday, 14 May 2015

The Nature & Purpose of Research In Media

Primary Research
Primary Research is research you do yourself and is often done first.
For our primary research we sent out a questionnaire & asked people via word of mouth. We also organized interviews for the documentary. Below is the link to the survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3RJ68CS


Secondary Research
Secondary Research is any other research collected during the research stages. Often from third party or external sources. Click here for my full research document.


Quantitative Research
Quantitative research is data formed entirely of numbers/statistics. It often takes the form of graphs and such, as pictured below:












Qualitative Research
Qualitative Research is the opposite to Quantitative, it's made from facts and longer, detailed explanations, not numbers and so on. A good example of this is TV and film reviews, which are often long and in detail. My research took the form of several conversations about Mortal Kombat, mainly the new one too.


Data Gathering Agencies
Broadcasters audience research board or BARB are an organization that collects TV viewing statistics. Other websites and organizations such as IMDB & Boxofficemojo do a very similar thing. Radio Joint Audience Research LTD (RAJAR) Is the BARB of radio, they collect figures and so on.

BARB allows media outlets to see when best to air their piece of media so it will be most viewed. RAJAR as I said earlier, are the BARB of radio, they collect data and stats for radio listening figures.


Audience and Market Research
Audience and Market research is research that's done on the prospective audience and the current market. To see if there is an opening for their particular piece of media. The audience and market research I did was sending out a questionnaire to gauge peoples interest in my idea for a documentary.


Production Research
Production research is comprised of plenty of different forms and releases. For example a talent release is a form that actor would sign to say they're happy to appear in the film and so on.

Below is a link to my pre-production research/paperwork

http://williamcutterenbtec14.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/3mw-research.html