During class, we discussed the presence of bias in TV. Ruth highlighted that often in Breakfast TV, they would often have debates where both sides have one person advocating for their view. Visually speaking, it appears as if the argument is 50/50, or evenly divided. This becomes counterintuitive when the issue is something where the evidence for and against something is far greater than 50/50. In the John Oliver segment, we see him engage with this concept by creating the “mathematical accuracy” of the ratio of the scientist who supports evidence of climate change. Leading to a room filled with 3 scientists against and 96 scientists for the existence of climate change. I think this visual way of depicting debate based on the public’s or researcher’s consensus is a useful way of educating the public.

Due to our group going last this week, I had time to design more graphics in class. By doing graphics with my team members around me, they tend to provide me with suggestions on how to make something look better. I find this to be more effective when doing graphics, especially since members who wrote a certain joke would have a certain graphical representation of it in mind. By listening to their advice, I could make a joke land better more coherent with the writer of said joke.

During the run-through this week, there were a few things that we learned and will improve next time. Firstly, we chose to use the studio lights pointed towards the curtains as a backdrop. By altering the colour of the light, it would also give a different feel to the show. If nothing better comes along, this background will be used in the final taping. Additionally, there were a few timing issues this week with the EVS and the host. Since the presentor has no way of knowing when the EVS footage ends, it is hard to pick up immediately when it ends; resulting in the presenter starting his lines before it is over. In the future, it would be wise to discuss the length of the clips before taping so that everyone knows when the footage ends.

In class, we spoke about Bassem Youssef who had his own late-night comedy show. In his documentary, it depicts the toll it takes on him and his own family due to him being outspoken against the Egyptian regime. We see how the dictatorship would censor criticisms towards them. This lead me to reflect on our topic of Hong Kong. I realise that us talking about this issue in this format would not be permitted if it was aired in China. Satire can only be performed safely when it is in a country with free speech. I appreciated our position a lot more after seeing the effects it had on Bassem Youssef.

In the studio, we continued to build on the script we had in our prototype shoot. In preparation, I went through the script and created corresponding graphics and any relevant EVS footage. After running through what we have so far, we noticed so issues with the script so far. Due to the 10-12 minutes time constraint we had, we had to be concise with the content. We then worked on the script further. During our discussions, we thought that we should remove parts that do not directly relate to the topic, such as our detour about 50 cent.

We considered how we wanted to close out the segment. Looking at John Oliver, he often ends his segments on a call to action. We also considered using EVS footage as a way of closing. This EVS footage would be a parody of the Mulan trailer that would act as a climax which summarises our coverage of the issue and entertain the viewers at the same time. Moving forward, we want to focus more on the script that will fill up more of the time that focuses more on the issue. At the same time, we will work on how we want to conclude the segment.