Exam mock

In the past the LGBT community  was under represented in the tv sector. However, over the years there has been a significant increase in representations from 2015 to 2019.

Looking at the past the stimulus material it states that fasteners was "criticised in parliament for the first on screen gay kiss". This shows the issues revolving around the LGBT community and how their was still many debates around it and it was barely spoke about to a point where it reached parliament debate. I done some further research into this and discovered that there was a significant lack of LGBT representations in the UK up until 2009, this is when the first episode of the hit tv show "Glee" was released. The first episode had 1 million viewers and the numbers kept increasing, the episode consisted of many characters especially a gay white man.  This shows the LGBT stereotype the show is  focusing on making it a sole representation on tv at that time.

In today's world the presence of LGBT in tv has made an significant increase with the effect to challenge those "outdated stereotypes" and the debates attacked to the community .According to a research study taken by Glaad it found that 4.8% of the characters expected to appear on Prime time scripted broadcast tv would be LGBT.

My primary  research supports this as I carried out research analysing the CWs hit tv shows and discovered that they revealed one of the most popular villains was gay and only recently they revealed one of their lead female superhero was transgender and was being played by a transgender as well. However the shows focus was not on their sexuality it was based upon the crimes they committed and the bad things they done as well as the good things they done and the things they have to deal with being gay and transgender. These representations are significant as it does not represent the community to be idealistiv, however is ensuring the characters are given as much depth as a heterosexual character.

The secondary source used to answer the question is reliable as it has a excellent reputation for providing accurate facts and information as well specialising in matters concerning the LGBT community and issues annual reports ensuring the data is up to date.

When conducting my research I used a range of different sources, one being the Glaad report titled "where we are now" . I chose to use this source because Glaad specialises in LGBT issues by releasing reports annually meaning that the information provided in the reports is up to date and accurate.furthermore, in Glaads report they also go into detail about the change of the LGBT representations across many forms of media and the specific representations often used in tv. Although this report is only using data based on USA tv so it is not a true accurate representations of the LGBT community as a whole.

In addition, another source I discovered was on a website called Wikipedia because it is a website that has been around a long time however, I was soon to realise anyone can create an account and edit the information provided which made me understand that the information was not reliable at all.

Therefore, I found another source which was a newspaper article
From the sun. I believe this source is reliable because the newspaper company and the journalist has a excellent reputation for delivering accurate and influential information. The article talks about LGBT characters in tv shows and their familiarity with the stereotypes of the LGBT community.However, the information provided in the article could be bias as the journalist may influence readers by incorporating their personal opinions into their article .

One conclusion I developed from the research I conducted was that over the past few years there has been a significant increase in LGBT characters within tv. The stimulus material provided supports my conclusion as it shows from 1987 until 2017 tv shows that includes LGBT characters has increased. Furthermore my own secondary research supports this as I discovered many tv shows producing characters from the LGBT community, for example in glee there is 4 gay characters who have important roles and some have been in every episode glee also has 2 main lesbian characters and as it increases in episodes they introduced a transgender main character that deals with community not accepting them. My primary research also supports this conclusion as 98% of people have recognised this significant increase in LGBT characters in tv shows from 1990 to 2019.

Another conclusion I have created once I finished my research was that online streaming platforms have more variety of representations of the LGBT community than tv. My primary research also supports this conclusion as 67% of the people emotion my survey state that they are more of a variety of representations of the LGBT community online on streaming services such as twitch, YouTube and 123movies which allows the streaming of tv shows compared to tv. The stimulus material also provided supports my conclusion as it states that Orange is the new black features more in depth portrayal of gay female characters.

To decide a way to understand how representations of the LGBT community could improve I asked the question " what do you think the media could do to cut down on using stereotypes  of the LGBT community? " the most common answer was " get companies to employ a member of the LGBT community when developing games or character s also have more main roles LGBT characters" this suggests that more lead roles need to be given to the LGBT community when it comes to games or tv to help show how different they all are.

within the previous statement it says "get companies to employ a member of the LGBT community". This suggests that they believe characters from the LGBT courses being portrayed poorly and not accurate which could be because the writers of the characters do not fully understand the character they are writing as they will probably not be a part of that community.

The main point I believe all the research and sources convey is that members from the LGBT community need to be added into games and tv naturally and realistically for the audience to fully understand them. Within an interview I conducted the interviewee stated " I believe all gay characters in tv shows are portrayed the same with the same problems and this is not accurate". This quotation shows how things need to change with how the LGBT community is represented to gain a wider audiences approval.

Personally I believe the government equality office should conduct research into the representations of the LGBT community in UK media/ tv to gain responses and information from the audiences, to show how diversity is being implemented into tv shows. The reports that would be issued could contain more information on how many transgender characters are on tv shows and the number over time.

There needs to be more primary research taken to help identify and understand how the LGBT community s feel about the representations that they see if themselves in the media. A focus group should take place with members of the LGBT community and producers of tv shows to help identify and solve the issues of stereotypes and allowing the community to give advice on what is is really like. Hopefully this would have A positive outcome on tv allowing shows to have a more accurate representation of members of the LGBT community whilst also making the community happy.

Demographics would need to be taken into consideration when researching because in my primary research people aged 16-18 years old answered it however it would have been beneficial for me to expand the age range of whom participates in the survey in order to produce more of a accurate form of results based upon individuals opinions on representations and how they may differ due to age.

Radio production- pre production

Radio production- Pre production 

Firstly, I began editing the script because my radio drama did not contain any musical numbers so I had to go through the script and convert the musical numbers into dialogue that could be spoken by the voice actors. I then continued to look through the script and identified where I wanted sound effect and the type of sound effect it was going to be, during this process I decided on which sounds I would create by using foley to ensure they sounded as realistic as possible. Foot steps walking towards and away is what I decided to create using foley so I grabbed a microphone and a walking actor and headed to a quiet corridor to where I recorded the actor walking away and towards me. I knew this foley sound was appropriate for the specific scene I had in mind because if just seemed right to have people walking to and from, and this helped create perspective for the audience and allowing them to be able to engage more into the radio drama. In addition, I then searched the internet looking for all my other sound effects which I was going to use to help bring my radio drama to life, I used a mp3 converter online once I found the right sound effect I was happy with. After gathering my foley sounds I put them into Logic Pro and ensured there was no unnecessary Audio in my clip and if there was I removed it to ensure I only had the footsteps as my sound effect. Overall pre production taught me to be mindful of what technical issue can go wrong and how to fix them for example saving multiple versions of a recording to ensure I have a backup if one gets lost or corrupt. It also allowed me to get a grasp on how to organise people effectively and how to record time efficiently to ensure no ones time is wasted but everything is complete to a high standard. 

To begin recording me and my crew went into a recording studio and began turning on the Mac, speakers and plugging the xlr’s into the software whilst it’s also connected to the microphone ( a Rode NT1000) to ensure the sound recorded is captured and monitored. The reason we used this microphone is because it’s a large diaphragm condenser microphone which is perfect for recording voiced although as it’s a condenser it’s requires Phantom power +48v. Once we were all signed in and had the microphone set up with Logic Pro we done a test take, where we got the voice actors to repeat some lines to ensure everything was plugged in properly and working to the standard we would like( this includes the volume they spoke at which we changed by adjusting the gain). During recording we encountered some issues with the voice actors changing volume and moving closer and away from the microphone which meant the volume of the audio was difficult to Change because of the amount of times it increased and decreased.however this is understandable because their is a lot of pressure performing voice acting and this meant we had many takes of certain scenes which was expected and overall gave us more material to work with. Once we were finished we ensured to save it in multiple places as well as on a usb so we were able to transfer what we recorded to our editing room where we worked on a different Mac in a more appropriate environment for editing. Previously we had trouble transferring files and lost a few so we ensured we kept many back ups incase this occurred again. 

When it came to editing the audio clips we gained from recording our voice actors we decided to firstly trim down all the clips to ensure they ran smoothly together and there was no huge pauses in conversations between characters.This was done by using the scissors tool and cutting the audio files at the correct time and then dragging them into place where they will line up with the mouse.   During this process I had to keep in mind that some of the audio might sounds sudden or long so I had to keep listening to entire conversations to make sure there was no sudden and snappy lines. Once we done this we jumped in even deeper and began removing background noises to ensure we had the cleanest audio possible and we done this by using effects at our disposal to accomplish this. Furthermore, we then continued to adjust the audio gain to ensure all the audio was basically the same volume where necessary to ensure our final product flowed nicely. Furthermore, whilst doing this I made sure to create perspective by adjusting certain levels of dialogue down and up to really show the audience if someone is shouting or if someone is scared and they have suddenly gone quite. Creating a perspective for the audience really allows them to visualise and escape reality whilst entering the visual escape in their mind which is the radio drama. In addition, we then decided to add in the sound effects we gathered earlier and we adjusted the audio gain to ensure the sound effects did not over power the actors speaking (if an effect was used during a conversation). Also we decided to speed up and slow down background audio to create a pace within the conversation to engage the audience more and this again was done just by adjusting the gain of the files and extending them or shortening them. Whilst editing the audio clips we discovered a few mistakes in the voice actors speak so we ensured we listened to the audio tracks to identify the flaws/mistakes and made sure we corrected them by either finding the correct take of the specific dialogue within the audio files or just cutting the mistake out and ensuring the audio still continued smoothly and fluently. This technique came in very helpful when editing and defiantly helped make the final project better. Finally certain audio clips needed a dramatic effect adding so to create that I decided to fade out the dialogue as it came to the end of their conversation to create an atmosphere of drama whilst also keeping the audience engaged and wondering why it faded out and keep them interested in the radio drama. 

Another attempt at editing techniques

This video is the test footage I used to practise the card effect which was shown in my second short movie Four Of  Kind. The reason I wanted to test the effect out was to ensure it would work and run smoothly before I decided to use it in my short movie. All the effect is doing is taking two shots one of someone throwing something and the other person reacting to catching said object and then all you do is precisely cut the video files so they flow and therefore making a seamless cut. The seamless cut adds a dramatic effect to what's happening on the screen by making the audience believe that someone in the same shot has actually caught an object thrown towards them which engaged the audience to the unique effect used.

https://youtu.be/X1ilMqjjY8c

Four of a kind

four of a kind is another project i decided to take on to help support my camera and editing techniques. I personally believe four of a kind with holds a lot of unique and varied camera techniques such as selective focus and smoothly edited camera techniques to help create an illusion. For example at the end of the short film a character throws a playing card and it lands in another characters head and this was all done within two shots but because of the seamless editing you cannot tell. Four of a kind varies from wide shots to POV shots and tracking shots, i used these to enhance the story telling by using the camera and the specific ways it captures each of the characters. Certain clips i had to adjust he audio by right clicking and selecting audio gain and either reducing it or increasing it. I also dragged the noise reduction effect to allow any ambient noises to be removed and on this effect i sleeved the high noise reduction to ensure all unwanted noises were removed.

Another effect i done was i increased the speed of specific clips to help make the scene look more realistic and effective whist also enhancing the story by making it more dramatic and suspenseful.


https://youtu.be/fLg4BU8pC4w

Coin Toss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loHxxenB_ig

Coin Toss is another example of how i have experimented with different camera techniques to enhance a story and making it interesting. The different shots that were use make the scene flow more fluently rather than being one long shot which would be boring and dull for the audience therefore, using a variety of  multiple shots make the scene more engaging to the audience. I also decreased the time in one of the clips to create more of a dramatic effect to the situation and hopefully enhance the story. Furthermore i added a sound effect of a heart beat and timed it perfectly within the video to ensure it sounded as realistic as possible whilst being an effective way of engaging the audience into something exciting thats happening in the scene by creating a dramatic atmosphere.

Cereal killer:Spoiled Milk Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNCduN6lZMY

The reason i created a movie trailer was to demonstrate non-continuity editing. The trailer shows how my movie can be played is several ways and still seem intriguing and exciting. The editing of the trailer shows how i can cut and stick clips together effectively as well as timing the soundtrack in time with certain clips to add a comedic effect, this took some time to do however the overall product is excellent. I used the voice of one of the main characters to voice over the trailer to add more of a dramatic effect and to also hype the movie up even more just incase the video clips are not effective enough. I also use a fade at the beggining to vary my editing effects whilst creating an effective transition and at the end of the trailer i fade the text out to create tension and mystery whilst also making it look spooky by the effect i used.


-use my own videos to show how i experimented with effects to decide whether they are suitable for my movie and why( linking with my movie"
- Four of a kind-specify how this was a trial run of a movie idea you had however scraped it because it wasn't how you envisioned it but it allowed you to experiment with camera angles and editing techniques.

Post Production- Editing

Whilst i was editing my movie together i decided to add a green screen effect so i had to download the clip and drag it into my timeline. I then went into the effects panel and selected the effect called "ultra key" and dragged it onto my green screen clip. This then removed all the green within the clip so i just trimmed down the clip to the length i wanted it and made it fit perfectly into the scene i wanted it. The only problem i encountered whilst editing this effect into my movie was ensuring it lined up perfectly with the beat and the movement within the scene to increase the tense atmosphere that the scene was omitting.