Radio Production: Banksy Research

For my radio production with Carlina and Ant we have chosen to do a piece on Banksy with the main aim of it being trying to answer the question "is it art or graffiti?"

So, for a bit of inspiration and a place to start I have done some research on the artist.

Banksy is an anonymous artist who is believed to be from Bristol. His work is often very topical on things to do with political and social issues.
Banksy started in the early 1990's as a freehand graffiti artist in the underground Bristol scene. After a few years he developed his work with stencils rather than just free hand as it took less time to create a piece.



One aspect that we want to include in our radio show is to take a look at his recent exhibition in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery it was his largest exhibition to date with over 8500 visitors on opening weekend and a grand total of over 300000 visits during its 12 week stay.

Here is a compilation of clips found on Youtube relating to the event:


Controversy
Keep Britain Tidy spokesperson Peter Gibson is one who considers Banksy's work graffiti, even going as far as to say it is "simple vandalism". Another spokesperson from the organisation Diane Shakespeare goes one step further in saying: "We are concerned that Banksy's street art glorifies what is essentially vandalism".
This article by Charlie Brooker also goes to some lengths of rubbishing Banksy.

Beatsystem

On first listening to Beatsystem by Beatsystem, I immediatiely thought of a church, mainly due to the sounds of bells. To begin with it sounds more sombre and serious, but it does continue to sound more joyful.
This immediate association to churches made taking photos of a couple of different churches in Bristol the perfect idea!
As the music at the start feels quite cold I also include some other images that give a sense of loneliness and the cold.
Using Final Cut Pro in Fridays session, this is the montage I created:

3 Russians Walk Into A Blog...

...and each have made an impact of cinema. Okay so that wasn't a joke, but you cant blame a girl for trying...

Sergei Eisenstein     (1898-1948)

Eisenstein is often referred to as the "father of montage" he is a leading figure in the modern cinematic form. It was in his 1924 film Stachka that he first showed what he called "dubbed montage". This contained a series of conflicting images which aimed to overlap symbolic meanings, who's emotional effect on the audience was more powerful than the individual images themselves. Eisenstein became a scholor at the Moscow film school where he wrote essays about montage and motion picture direction.

Here is an example of one of his montages from his film Oktiabr:

 

Dziga Vertov    (1986-1954)

Highly influenced by Marxism he was a strong believer "that the impartial eye of the camera is far better suited to recording and organizing the truth than the subjective and often faulty human eye". His films provided a reflection on Soviet 'reality' and were often seen as highly poetic. An element of this is that came out later in his career is that he wanted the viewer to identify himself through the filmmaking process.

His most famous film would be Man With The Movie Camera which was filmed in the Ukraine with Lev Kuleshov.

 

Lev Kuleshov     (1899-1970)

What Kuleshov is probably most famous for is the Kuleshov Effect where he juxtaposed an expression less actor against several different pieces of footage of various items creating an emotional piece. The concept of the montage was very important to Kuleshov and said that it is not neccessarily the content of the film that is important but actually the way it is structured and put together. Therefore when looking at montage theory he is a very important person to consider.
He worked with Eisenstein and Vertov on films in the late 1920's such as The Man with a Movie Camera.

Here is a short video of Alfred Hitchcock going some way of explaining the Kuleshov effect:

"Do I Really Need..." Proposal

This is my proposal for my television programme "Do I Really Need..."

Everyone wants to be up to date with the latest technologies, they want to have the newest, fastest most powerful peices of equipment. To an extent they are all just fashion accessories but effectively they aid how we live our every day lives. As quickly as something is released, something newer comes along and in this day and age its important to keep up with the changes.

I propose to make a consumer show which will in each seperate episode will take a certain piece of technology, for example the iPhone. It will take a look at the brief history, the pro's and cons of it, the alternatives and a conclusion as to whether you do really need it. The production will take both expert opinion as well as vox pops from the public to find out what people truly think of the technology in question.

Not only will my production aim to inform which technologies are best to have and where the future lies for them but it also provides decision making. In the current economical climate people dont want to be wasting thier money on flashy technology that will go out of date within a couple of months.

The programme is aimed at anyone from teenagers up to late 40's, the main consumers of technologies. It aims to be informative and will be delivered in a way that can be understood by all ages and isn't just filled with technical jargon aiming to impress/confuse.

From my production I hope it can help people of all ages looking to invest in technologies make an informed decision about which products they will go out to buy. It will be delivered in a relatively light hearted tone to keep it entertaining but will include all the facts and information required to keep it informative.

Voice Over Editing

In todays session we looked at editing an audio file, we were all given the same file accessed from Minerva containing a voiceover describing how to use the Sony Z1 cameras.

Using Logic Pro on the Macs it was a process of going through the unedited file and taking out any mistakes, breaths and just any other bits we would not want to include in a final edit.

I opened the .aif file in Logic and began working through the audio. Using the scissor tool I was able to "cut out" sections and then delete them. On occassion Richard Wood (the man providing the voice over) would mess up and then repeat a section of the text, so cutting out and deleting the mess up it was just a case of moving the rest of the clip back into place, effectively joining up the gaps made by deleting bits.

After editing the clip, I "glued" all the sections of audio back together to create one audio track. After doing this I could then use "normalise" to normalise the levels of the track as a whole.

The next step was to export the file as a .wav file and then put it through another programme called Levelator.  It is a free programme used to automatically balance audio levels.

My final piece sounds something like this, I have also uploaded the original version so that you can hear the difference between the two files.

The Film Programme: Radio Content

I have been set the task of looking at the content of a radio documentary/programme. The one I have chosen to look at is a podcast from The Film Programme, it was released this week by BBC Radio 4 and talks to Terry Gilliam

The Film Programme, is a weekly programme broadcast on a Friday and it is hosted by Francine Stock.

The content of the show was structured as follows:

• Standard BBC Podcast jingle
• Francine Stock giving brief intro/history of Gilliam
• Clip from his new film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus featuring Heath Ledger
  
• Stock speaking of Ledger's death and the effect on Gilliam's filming
• Interview between Gilliam and Stock about how the film came about and the concept of the "imaginarium"
• Another clip from film then fade back to interview about cast
  
• Continuation of interview talking more about Ledgers death and how it changed him & the film.
• Questions from Stock to Gilliam about how other actors getting involved.
• Stock talks to Gilliam about future projects
• Further clip from film
• Interview continues to compare his work
• Gilliam discussing the state of Hollywood
• Interview ends with clip from film
• Stock closes programme with what is going on in next weeks programme.

The programme has quite a simple structure and if it werent for the clips from the films they are talking about it would be quite monotonous, however it does have very in depth interviews and is very informative considering it only lasts between 25-30mins.

Soundscapes

The Wikipedia definition of a soundscape is :

A soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment.

 A soundscape is something that allows us to picture a scene or environment through sound and without us actually having to see it. It can tell a story or just be a general insight into a place.

A key figure in soundscaping is Raymond Murray Schafer, more commonly known as R. Murray Schafer. He was an author, composer, musical educator as well as an environmentalist.

Schafer suggests that there are 3 elements to a soundscape:

• Keynote Sound A keynote means the same here as it does when talking about any music, a keynote is that which defines the key of a piece.
  
• Sound Signals Are the sounds that stand out to us and we probably pay more attention to, for example sirens or alarm bells.
  
• Soundmark Similar to the term landmark it means a sound that is specific to a place.
  

A simple example of how to build a soundscape can be found here.

Vox Pops

According to Wikipedia, the definition of a vox pop is:

Vox populi (pronounced /ˈvɒks ˈpɒpjʊlaɪ/), a Latin phrase that literally means voice of the people, is a term often used in broadcasting for interviews with members of the "general public".

 So put simply, a vox pop involves having several interviewees, often in a public place (perhaps relating to the news story/question itself) giving a spontaneous opinion on a given topic of concern or question.

To make this explanation a little clearer here is an example of a vox pop from a northern news programme:




As we can see, from a  technical perspective they are often shot with a medium close up shot with there being no evidence that there is an interviewer (though in this case there was an introduction) as each person is asked the same question there is no need for one.

The aim is to get a variety of responses and is particularly used on the news particularly on local stories in order to gauge a range of opinion.

A good checklist on making sure your vox pop is well filmed can be found on the BBC Training Website.

A vox pop isn't purely restricted to television though, radio interviews can also be structured in a vox pop style. The presenter of the radio programme may introduce the question and then peoples responses are edited together in the same way as is done on television. There are different things to take into consideration for example whether you want background noise or not, but in terms of content the two are very similar.

Do I Really Need...

As part of our project production lesson a couple of weeks ago we looked at the ways we think of ideas.

One of the tasks we were set was to come up with an idea for a 15 minute television programme to be aired on a channel similar to BBC3. All we were given to start our ideas was that the title of the programme would be "Do I Really Need..."

With only this and the target audience in mind I came up with the idea of doing a short informative technology/gadget programme similar to Channel 5's The Gadget Show or- looking further back- BBC's Tommorows World.

An example of a show could be "Do I Really Need...Blu-Ray". The show would run in the following format:

• Introduction to blu-ray: what it means/what it is and does/how it developed etc. It would be wrong to assume every person watching knows about the technology.
• The pro's and con's of the technology, including some brief interviews with the public to get their opinion on it.
• The other options currently available (e.g. HD DVD) and whether they are considered better or not.
• The future of blu-ray and general DVD format.
• Conclusion: whether it is worth having/using blu ray.

Other technologies could be: iPhone, HD/LCD TV's, iPod, mobile phone, laptop, a digital camera.

I think this concept could work quite well as a series as there are many areas to cover and also as with the The Gadget Show because technology is always changingthe programme could be revisited after a few months with a new set of technology to focus on.

Sound&Vision 9th Oct

In todays session we had our first attempt at doing some stop-take animation working in a team of 3. I worked with Mandy and Simon and we came up with the idea of using a stuffed toy and telling its story of eating some crisps...it was just before lunch that I thought of this (maybe I was hungry!).



I think the end 5 seconds work the best because by that point we had got into the rhythm of it and also had worked out how little to move the toy and the crisp packet without it looking too jumpy.

Welcome to my blog!

Well hello there.
My name is Kirsty and this is my blog for Media Production FdA.
I dont want to sound too cheesey or nerdy so will cut this first post quite short!

On our induction week we went out on a photo marathon in Bath, the categories of our photo's were set by our tutor Mike  and we had to take the photos in order, which with a hangover can make your mind boggle a bit! The categories were: autumn, activity, colour, water, repetition, musical, light, contrast, decay, self portrait, old and flash.
This is my result of the expedition:



Can't wait to get started on the projects =]