Week 2 - The Magazine

Set reading: ‘The New Television Handbook’

Holland, P. (2017) The New Television Handbook. Taylor and Francis Group. Chapter 17

The second task of the module was to create a magazine show which included a number of different reports known as packages that would last around 16 minutes and using a 1 minute intro with graphics. As a group we decided to base our magazine show around the idea of a student survival guide that would be targeted specifically at students to give them an idea of what University life is like and inform them of what living in Plymouth is like. As it was a magazine show, the packages covered different topics: Homesickness, how to combat being homesick, and things to do in Plymouth.

Before the Practical, as a group we had a couple of days to go out and get footage for the piece. We went out and filmed some interviews and locations for the packages. This was done in key locations of Plymouth and on the university campus to get some opinions from current students as we wanted to capture life in Plymouth in a way that is relevant to people interested. 

Practical:

In the studio, for this task my role was as one of the camera operators. This was my first real experience with the camera and I spent a bit of time before we were going live and recording just trying to understand how the focus and zoom worked as this was something I wasn’t confident with. Part of my role was framing, I had to make sure that the actors in the piece were central with none of the lighting equipment visible on-screen. When we were actually going for a take and recording, I didn’t actually have chance to move the camera of use the zoom, this was because I had not been instructed to by the director but also because I was not very confident in myself and didn’t want to take the chance.

In terms of improvements, I think that I need to be more confident in making decisions for myself and experimenting more with the zoom functions on the camera instead of always waiting to be told what to do as it can affect the overall look of the show. Another improvement would be that even though we only had a short amount of time to film the interviews for packages, we should have as a group been a bit more organised about devising and making sure that everyone had a clear role with set tasks as I think this would have made the process a lot smoother.