Fact Check Prototype

Week 11 Reflection

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/06/07/now-this-week-11-reflection/

Week 12 Reflection

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/06/07/now-this-week-12-reflection/

Semester Reflection

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/06/07/now-this-semester-reflection/

Prototype Reflection

http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/06/07/now-this-fact-check-prototype-reflection/

Overall I’m pleased our final product. I feel that the script Alex and I wrote was easy to understand and communicated the fact check well. Our fact check claim was true and we really wanted to communicate the absurdity that there is still a pay gap let alone that people question it. I think we did this by including a variety of statistics which really helped give our argument credibility.

I think we were successful in portraying an MTV news style video. We kept it simple with one person for talent standing in front of a plain background which allows for the viewer to focus on the information and statistics in our script. However if given the chance to do this assignment again I think it would be interesting to experiment with more talent and different formats such as a talk show.

I’m happy with the camera work and I feel we cut from one camera to another at good intervals throughout the video which important in keeping the viewer visually interested. Despite a couple of struggles with the microphone during filming, our audio is clear and Roie spoke at a good pace. I think the music we chose to have playing throughout the entire video adds to that MTV type feel or a quick video you might see posted by VICE or Vox.

I think it was a good group decision to add in EVS and graphic footage in post production as it meant that the placement of the imagery on the screen was exactly where we wanted it. However I do think the video would have been stronger with more archival and graphics footage as at times just the plain white background and is a bit plain for viewers. I think had we had more time with editing it could have been interesting to experiment with different coloured backgrounds or having some of our archival footage as the background behind Roie.

This semester has definitely broadened my knowledge of the news industry and how essential fact checking is. Media has an insane amount of power and therefore the ability to control what viewers believe to be true or false. With news programs, politicians and those with a social media following being able to make wild claims and only showing certain aspects of a story, fact checking is vital in the 21st century. After seeing a video in class of many Trump supporters believing his untrue statements, it’s quite daunting to see that people do believe the racist claims being made by him. I was also unaware of how utilised fact checking is for late night programs such as the Daily Show with Trevor Noah or the Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Reading through my blog posts from this semester, the growth and development of my knowledge is evident. Prior to this class I had never considered advertisements as a form of fake news but after seeing an array of examples of advertisements being displayed as news, I was pretty shocked. Furthermore as someone who is regularly exposed to clickbait regularly on social media platforms, I had never considered it to be fake news. One of the most memorable readings for me from this semester was Engaging, Persuading, and Entertaining Citizens: Mediatization and the Australian Political Public Sphere by Terry Flew and Adam Swift. Their discussion of politicians such as Kevin Rudd being celebrity like figures really interested me as it’s very relevant with so many political figures taking to social media to gain and therefore gaining a celebrity like status.

I do wish I had more opportunities to learn about using some of the equipment in the TV studios but overall I think I experienced a good basic introduction to the technology as well as the roles available in a studio space. It’s clear to me now that whilst everyone has an individual job when filming, it is very much so a team effort. The final prototype videos gave me the opportunity to be floor manager which I really enjoyed and would love to be able to do during a live to air production. Overall this studio motivated me to put myself out there more with the opportunities available at RMIT such as RMITV which I’m excited to try. I’m also now a lot more inclined to access news not just through articles shared on my Facebook feed but through watching the nightly news or reading online newspapers.

This week it was my groups turn to film our final fact check brief piece. We were up first which I was pleased about but also a bit nervous as I knew with 3 groups filming, we would be cut off at a pretty strict deadline in order for others to film. I think everything ran relatively smoothly for our group for several reasons. Firstly we chose not to have any EVS or graphics footage edited in throughout filming. We made this decision after seeing multiple issues arise for the groups in week 1 and we didn’t want to have to keep retaking scenes purely because of misplaced graphics or incorrect timing. This therefore allowed Roie to be able to take it slower and relax when reading the script and we could retake segments if she stumbled on a word or two. Secondly I think we all did a great job in the roles we were in. As floor manager it was at times stressful having to keep everything organised on the floor. Unfortunately I don’t feel that other class members were always as respectful as they could have been, with there being a lot of talking and camera operators not wearing their headsets which meant I had to waste time having to relay Alex’s messages to them. However I think Alex and I worked really well together, I found all her feedback clear and easy to communicate to Roie who always took it on quickly and was ready to keep filming straight away. Of course in an ideal world we would have been able to film for longer but given the time period we had I was really pleased with my group for just getting the job done.

This week was the first of two filming sessions for our final fact check brief videos. I helped both of the groups this week and worked as a camera operator and EVS operator.

Although being a camera operator was quite a simple task, it was a good introduction to being in a studio space during filming as I was able to observe and learn about other roles such as floor manager and audio controller. Being the first group, there were several issues with their graphics, specifically the placement of them on the screen so I feel lucky in the sense that my group will have been able to learn from any issues that happened in this weeks session. Overall though I think the girls did a great job. They had a really clear and understandable script and their director communicated really well with the floor manager which made my role very easy.

I was quite nervous about being the EVS operator for group 2 as I had never used any of the technology before however after having a run through what I needed to do with Ruth I was confident and excited. It was definitely a lot easier than I thought it would be but I wish I had more time so I could have learned how to upload the footage into the system beforehand instead of it already being all prepared for me. This role definitely made me understand how much team work and communication is required for filming tv productions, especially live to air. I particularly liked being EVS for this group because they had an interesting mix of footage such as an animated introduction and information segment and their host brought a great comedic edge to a serious topic.

Post 4

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/05/03/now-this-post-4/

Post 5

http://https://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/05/03/now-this-post-5/

Week 6 Filming Reflection

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/05/03/now-this-week-6-filming-reflection/ 

Pitch Reflection

https://www.mediafactory.org.au/jemma-perelaer/2019/05/03/now-this-pitch-reflection/

Group Proposal

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Mk5rSLQW22kKauszbaqRsNzlHcnJ3bhRtZ1TQ2nkumc/edit?usp=sharing

This week in our Tuesday night class, each group presented a pitch to a panel for our final Fact Check assignment. Overall I was really pleased with how my groups pitch went and we received some great constructive feedback and suggestions.

One comment we received from the panel was to use a timeline to show the development of the gap and with this we could use a lot of archival footage from archive.org. Even if we weren’t to use it in correlation with a timeline, I still think archival footage throughout the decades of women and men at work would be a great visual aid. We could also use it in the beginning of our video (welcome to the pay gap) before cutting to the host in the studio.

Something that the panel responded really well to that I am personally really keen to pursue is representing the mental load placed on mothers in the household as I think that is a part of the wage gap that is rarely discussed. When the gender pay gap is examined there always seems to be a miscommunication that men and women are being paid differently to do the same job which isn’t true so we really want to focus on what isn’t spoken about us much.

I think it would be really interesting to further develop the idea the panel gave us which was to have a male host in the studio and a female host for our vox pops. Similar to style in how Jimmy Kimmel does his street interviews with a different host, I think having a fun woman on the on the street who is interacting with the public and asking what they think about the pay gay still being an issue will contrast well against a more harsh male character as the host. We definitely want the tone of our video to be more comical so hopefully we can humorously communicate tension between the female and male host and emphasise how ridiculous it is that the pay gap still exists in a satirical style.

For one of my groups for the filming exercise I was the producer which meant I had to create a script for our talent. After the director communicated with me what the subject matter of our news segment would be, how to use less wasteful materials, it was pretty easy to come up with a quick script.

On the day of filming I wasn’t able to attend and there were definitely some communication issues within my group. I had uploaded the script to a shared google doc created by the director but before filming there were problems finding the script but thankfully after communicating with me they were able to find it. I think the filming session would have been quite stressful, especially as there were quite a few groups with everyone having different roles. Obviously because it was a lot of peoples first time using such a big studio space in a professional sense and some were still not overly familiar with the equipment, it is understandable that there may have been time management issues.

Watching the footage my group filmed, I think the camera operators did a really good job with the talent being placed well within each shot. However I do think that the director could have given more instruction to the vision switcher and graphics operator. At times the camera stays on the same shot for quite an extended amount of time and the visuals could have been more similar to what you would see on a morning news tv program.

I was disappointed I could not attend the filming session because I was really interested in experimenting with the role of vision switching in my second group but hopefully for the Fact Check Brief final assignment I can pursue vision switching.

As a millennial living in the 21st century, I access news largely through social media applications such as Facebook and Instagram with news programs constantly uploading stories to their profiles. However recently in class when asked when the last time I sat down and watched the nightly news I was unable to provide an answer. It’s a rarity that I sit down in front of the TV to watch a show, let alone the news so I challenged myself to do so. After making it through the ending of channel 9’s Millionaire Hot Seat, I tuned into their 6pm news program hosted by household name, Peter Hitchener. 25 minutes into my viewing with all the main stories now having been covered, I was expecting things to wrap up pretty shortly but was surprised to find out the program went for an hour instead of the 30 minutes that was the normality several years ago. Multiple news stories that would be covered in the second half of the program were then advertised before cutting to a commercial. I found it interesting that before the news program started, they only advertised the stories that would be covered in the first 20 to 30 minutes of the show. It wasn’t as though the stories in the second half weren’t as important or valuable to viewers. I definitely think sitting down to watch the news verses obtaining news via social media is a generational difference. Much like my parents wouldn’t even create social media accounts, let alone use them to keep updated on world news, I find it odd and tedious to have to sit down in front of the TV to hear about a story I could quickly read or watch on my phone no matter where I am.

In class recently we discussed the idea of news reporters gaining a celebrity like status. I think this concept is definitely evident within Australian media with news anchors like Peter Hitchener and Lee Lin Chin gaining popularity outside the sphere of news, especially amongst millennials. It’s not uncommon to see posts plastered over social media and dating apps of a person posing with Peter Hitchener. After stepping down from her role at SBS World News, there were countless Facebook events being made to celebrate Lee Lin Chin’s career. Chin has also recently appeared in Uber Eats commercials alongside celebrities such as Rebel Wilson and Hamish Blake. Although it might to be a hard hitting nightly news program, The Today Show’s ex host, Karl Stefanovic, has also gained a notable celebrity like status within Australia as he regularly appears in gossip magazines such as the Daily Mail who heavily tracked his recent divorce. I believe social media apps such as Twitter and Instagram have massively aided these news personas in gaining a celebrity like status. Peter Hitchener currently has over 50,000 Instagram followers whilst Karl Stefanovic has over 200,000 Instagram followers and 430,000 Twitter followers. In using social media Hitchener, Stefanovic and Chin create a platform in which the Australian public can easily interact with them. Furthermore more personal photos are being posted on Instagram which gives the public an insight into who these news celebrities are when they aren’t at work. Although I do wonder if this stardom and constant usage of social media takes away the credibility of these news reporters. Particularly in the case of Stefanovic who is seen as being somewhat of a joke by the Australian public. But it could also be argued that news reporters having a celebrity like status and actively using social media for their personal life could be the new norm of the 21st century.