TV News - Project Evaluation

We set out with an ambitious idea to create an alternative approach to News, initially vowing to discard the tired tropes and conventions of news and rejuvenate it with a considered stylisation that aimed to re-enforce the focus on the heart of the story, all told with a commitment to creating something visually satisfying that drew the audience in closer to the story. Did we achieve that?...well, not quite.

We knew from the beginning that MUSE wasn’t intended to be a traditional news channel. We wanted to create a channel that was more of a meditation on the way that we consume news and that slowed down and paid appropriate attention to, stories that we believe really matter. Part of this was lean into creating a News magazine-style channel that seemed to spend more time thoroughly investigating their stories and offering appropriate coverage. To appeal to our chosen demographic, we thought it was important to offer a more contemporary style of storytelling. We aimed to blur the lines between cinematic storytelling and real life, exploring prominent issues with an artistic perspective. To make our footage 'cinematic' we shot with a shallow depth of field on an 18-35mm lens and a 50mm respectively. This helped to draw the focus to the subject and we planned on colour grading to increase the production value in post-production. We had originally aimed to include aspects of cinema verité which weren't quite achieved due to what we were presented with when we arrived at the location. We believed that although this was ambitious, the visual style would serve the story by making the viewer feel as though they were on the inside of a story, ultimately making for a better televisual experience that offered a more refined visual language; a key identifier and USP of our channel that set us apart. This was an idea that felt current and recognised the shift in the way that people are consuming media, focusing on a channel that felt contemporary and would likely exist in a digital space. A great deal of information and news is now being accessed online, predominantly, in fact, by those aged 16-24, but also with a large growth in the number aged 65+ (Watson, 2022). 

Stills from footage shot at Brians house

I think the question we've been asked most throughout the unit is why does News need to look good? 

I don't think I'm alone in saying that when something has a component of visual beauty, it resonates with you in a more profound way. The reason that we enjoy cinema is that it engages us in a way that is deeply affecting, we project ourselves into the spaces on-screen and we thought that filming in a cinematic style would create a deeper sense of empathy and understanding of the stories we were making. I acknowledge that for the usual everyday filming of news, striving to achieve a masterpiece in every frame just wouldn't prove to be effective practice, or at any rate, achievable. We had 6 weeks for this project though, so knew (or so I thought) that this would be sufficient time to really double down and explore our ideas and achieve our vision. 

Although I believe that the visuals of our news make for compelling watching at times, I do feel as though the stories didn’t pack the same punch. I’d hoped for passionate contributors whom I would be able to craft powerful narratives from, but the reality was that time, as well as the contributors' own personal desires for the piece, made that difficult and ‘therein lies the rub.' 

News as a format is quickfire, cyclic and unsentimental and trying to achieve anything beyond that to fit the format is challenging. As a novice interviewer, I had a misguided belief that I might be able to extract perfect little morsels of information in such a small amount of time, finely packed with the right amount of emotion, ready to be presented to the viewer; that belief soon disappeared once we got started. That news doesn’t allow for time is its biggest challenge, old news- especially given the fact that we have near-constant streams of global information in the palms of our hands- is anything that’s beyond happening just moments ago. By the time that editing began, our ‘news’ was already 10 days old. A lifetime in terms of a modern news cycle. Filming within a strict timeframe proved challenging in order to fully realise the intentions of our channel; when you have just one evening to try and film a story, you have a limited capacity for connection with the contributors and aiming for potent storytelling wasn't achievable. I'm disappointed, because I'm a sucker for perfectionism, but it's been a good learning point to acknowledge that sometimes the height of your expectations far exceed the reality of a situation- it's okay. 

I'm still really proud of what we made, although it misses the original target that we'd aimed for. I think that because of this, there's a lack of cohesion between the slick, punchy and dramatic intro in comparison to the rather tame news that we actually managed to get, which would be my biggest personal criticism of the work and a responsibility I'm happy to bare as a rather idealistic interviewer. I also hadn't considered the importance of trying to film as much actuality as we could and that it just might not be possible to get the shots that we wanted. At Fort Amherst, I'd created an image in my mind's eye of rows of sleeping bags, a hectic tension in the air as people fought against the rain to set their tents up, but that proved to be rather misguided and when we got there, there was only one lone tent and a handful of people. This greatly limited our potential to get impactful shots that would help bring some weight to the story and would have made for more compelling viewing as well as an additional choice in the edit. It works as a functional news package and in many ways satiates many of the more generic expectations of news programming; interviewing contributors to the camera, stats and data, and stock footage. This in many ways helped us to meet the brief more closely, but not my own personal vision for the project. 

Despite some of the shortcomings of our channel, I still believe in the notion that news can be made in a way that is visually gratifying. Interestingly, whilst filming at Fort Amherst, there were various other news crews covering the same story. One of the news crews was KMTV, a local News organisation that is associated with the Kent Messenger brand. We thought that it would make for an interesting comparison if we found the piece published by KMTV and compared it to our own. I think that when you watch one alongside the other, there's a huge contrast in the quality and very little argument that our news channel, and the style it adopts, makes for a more engaging experience for the viewer. Although not nearly as potent an opponent as BBC, or Sky News, it was interesting to have an example to measure our work against and I felt as though this helped to justify our creative choices in regard to our channel and the goals I've previously laid out. 

On location at Fort Amherst

Throughout the development and casting processes, there was an emphasis on authenticity and finding somebody who felt appropriate and representative of our channel. I still strongly consider Mike to have been the best option we had, but given more time to cast, we would likely have gone for somebody younger who better fit within the age range of our chosen demographic, as well as finding other diversified performers for the VO. Mike was a good fit given the characteristics that we had attributed to the channel itself. He felt representative of a (type of, in regards to my thoughts in my content research post) prototypical working-class man without characterising or manufacturing a suitable personality. This was incredibly important as if he didn’t appear authentic, I had major concerns that the whole channel could come across as critical of those who we intended to appeal to and it might have felt contrived to the point of satire. We had approached Diana, a woman of colour who told us in her application that she identified as working class, and that she was the daughter of an immigrant and she seemed interested in the concept of our project. Unfortunately, though, Diana didn't manage to fulfil the VO in time, but it would have been great had we been able to engage with more people who are under/misrepresented in other forms of media.

“Trust was the conventional argument used by BBC and larger channels - that people would turn to them in time of crises. That is not the case anymore. People now go to many sources- You can cling to the notion of trust, but trust is not enough now. It is about being there. It is about being authentic”

I took on a lot during this unit, which you’ll see evidenced among my other blog posts. Admittedly, being involved in creating visual aspects of a project is my modus operandi, so I was happy to take on things such as graphics, branding and developing a pitch. However, not all of these responsibilities were as welcome and I felt as though I had a lot piled on me that could easily have been distributed among other members of the team. Working on many things at once also meant that I couldn’t focus on achieving one thing to a high standard, but many to a lower standard than was desired. As with all group work, sometimes things don’t go to plan, and where others might not have taken been able to communicate difficulties within their own roles, it felt appropriate to step in in the interest of time and simply get things done which proved to be alienating from others perspectives. We did have a ‘stay in your lane’ policy agreed upon by the group, which in theory seemed an appropriate way to effectively manage everybody’s roles and responsibilities, but in practice proved to be impossible. Because of this, many things fell into my lap to the detriment of my sleep pattern and my blog posts (the time of writing this, for instance, is now gone 2am- that’s determination to get things done for you). A lapse in communication proved the be the biggest challenge in this unit, with a clear segregation between two halves of the group that proved to be less of a bump in the road, rather a metaphoric mountain between us all. Where, in hindsight, this should have been addressed, it was left to stew and negativity turned into feelings of resentment from all sides- not particularly conducive to team working. It's important to be a team player, and I acknowledge that sometimes, my level of enthusiasm and passion for a project can't be expected to be matched by others which I find difficult. 

Hollie setting up sound on location.

I think there were objective failures on all sides within the group that created a feeling of being part of a fractured team and had we all have been transparent about our concerns and voiced them constructively, it would have made for a better team dynamic. I also believe that being of different ages presents difficulties that are tough to overcome, making for a lack of relatability between one another, meaning that communication aside from anything other than work is stretched when trying to find commonalities. This would usually be something that helps develop a relationship and creates the distinction between a working relationship and a friendship, without this- it becomes solely about work and ultimately less enjoyable to interact with one another. In the future, I'd like to try to connect with other members of my team and try to build trust between us from the outset and reenforce that we're working toward a common goal. This would create a group dynamic that was built on transparency and respect for one another, encouraging people to voice their concerns in a face-to-face setting whenever possible, so that communication wasn't misinterpreted and each individual had adequate time to have their needs and concerns addressed. 

It's important to note our successes too though and when the group worked, it really worked! Tasks were completed and everybody had a purpose that they understood and a role to fulfil, making everybody feel like a valuable cog in a well-oiled machine. Casting was an enjoyable process and a time when we really all came together and chipped in with our thoughts and connected on an interpersonal level which felt important at the time given previous conflicts. I believe that we made something worth being proud of and also something newsworthy, which are two big achievements that the whole team can be proud of. I also got to work in a team that I was unfamiliar with and become more accustomed to the personalities of my peers, something that I'd not really had the opportunity to do before this unit. When I reflect on the process in its' entirety, it was stressful but a genuine learning curve that will prove valuable to my future practise and inform my ability to adapt to future challenges.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” – Viktor Frankl

Now, having finished the edit, I can safely say that I'm happy with the final result and am also happy that I had some input with the edit. This last week or so has thrown some new complications into the mix that I wasn't aware were coming my way and I hadn't previously intended to edit any of the footage. This, however, has given me the opportunity to further develop my skills and dust away my editing cobwebs, having not used Premiere since our first year. As well as revisiting the basics, I also developed new skills to create the graphics and text transitions that although simple, I wasn't aware of before. Editing alongside our Director (Who did a great deal of the work prior to it being presented to me) was enjoyable and it was nice to throw ideas back and forth and tweak and adjust different parts of the story in order to make the package as refined as we possibly could. 

Stills from our shoot at Fort Amherst

Another thing that I developed my knowledge of during this unit was operating cameras. Having Dana on board as Director proved to be really beneficial for me as someone who would like to direct, but also has a strong interest in cinematography and creating beautiful things. The camera Dana brought along to the shoot blew me away, pointing the lens at anything and looking at it on the monitor made for an impressive cinematic feel which was perfectly aligned with our group objective. I also explored using other cameras for various other specific qualities; their low-light capabilities for instance, (More on this in the test shoots blog post) as well as getting hands-on experience with our new Blackmagic cameras. All of these steps felt like measurable, positive progressive steps that also made me reflect on my work from last year, specifically the Documentary unit where I'd struggled with camera shake when using the DSLR. This time around, armed with a stabiliser, the camera work was significantly stronger, a learning point from last year finally having the opportunity to be actioned and making for a stronger visual element in the end product. When moments of reflection like this happen, it proves important to be able to recognise them for what they are: hurdles that felt catastrophic then are remedied now, but only because I've had the benefit of the experience in the first place. I hope that I continue to make this progress as the course moves into the future, and will (hopefully, don't hold me to this) be more recognising of them as opportunities to grow from.

You can view the teaser and full news package now on our Website:

WATCH MUSE HERE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Watson, A. (2022) News platforms: Importance to consumers UK by age 2021, Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/278620/most-important-news-platform-to-consumers-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-by-age/ (Accessed: October 29, 2022). 

 "The landscape of news has changed dramatically and people are now free to access information from an innumerable amount of sources, often searching for the source that most closely aligns with their own views, regardless of objective validity."

The battle for authenticity (2015) Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. Available at: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/battle-authenticity (Accessed: October 29, 2022).