Tutorial To Using Garageband

When creating the Modern London News theme music I used these simple rules to help create it. Due to my knowledge of the programme through previous projects in Media, creating a simple jingle was straight forward.

Firstly, I browsed the existing loops to look for a bass melody, with a simple 'drag n drop' I placed the piece in a separate track. To control the track fading in and out, I used the 'Track volume' slider which allowed me to choose when I thought it appropriate to fade the track out. This technique was followed throughout the other tracks.

Once I had completed the music I saved it as an audion file and added this to the opening sequence.

Thabani

Uploaded Opening Sequence

James here,

After hours on Motion 5, the first completed sequence is completed. Watching tutorials via youtube on how to function the complicated program did pay off. Now knowing the basics, I managed to form a simple yet effective sequence with an mp3 file, Jpegs, avi files and graphics within the program.

To watch the first draft of our title sequence, click on the hyperlink below

After reviewing the sequence, a lot of 'tinkering' is at hand. The timing: too slow however the graphics (the orb) came out with a great results, also the music is 'too up-beat' compared to our visual and has a gentle approach. However, as a first attempt on using Motion 5, I have learnt basic techniques to add layers, text, graphics and audio. 

Website is taking shape

MLN Website

After a change in the home page format the Modern London News website is beginning to take shape. The introduction of a block format including articles, pictures and videos has helped in making our website more professional and more effective. After looking at the BBC News website we discovered that this block format is better because it makes it possible for us to shows a small part of an article with a picture linking to the story. so the audience can be drawn into the story if it is something they are interested in, rather than having to look for news on the news page we found it more effective if we draw the audience to the news page.  

Thabani

Storyboard

James here,

From researching contempoary news openings, a quick concept design was created. Using graphical visuals which might be an issue with Adobe Premire as the program is fairly basic. The idea of multiple screens portrays the busy city of London. We limited ourselves with the colour scheme as most visuals do, in this case, purple and white. Researching programs to create the title sequence was useful; After Effects, Sony Vegas, Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5. These programs give us an advantage for the animation/graphical terms.

Animatic Storyboard - Opening sequence

James here,

After a few sketches, logo designs, and planning of location; a very rough idea of the visuals was made. The use of multiple screens can portray different meanings; the CCTV cameras or to capture the busy streets of London. Using imovie, allowed me to animate the camera positioning within the image, as well as inserting the music mp3 file and captions to inform the viewer what is occurring.

Due to the graphical advantages in Apple Motion 5, the concept idea will be easy to make, compare to Adobe Premier Elements on Windows PC.

The idea of the globe originated from BBC's intro from which we researched, also like BBC, limiting ourselves with the colour scheme with grey, white and purple. Most news broadcasts have patriotic colours: blue and red, to standout from this ever lasting chain, the unique choice of purple was decided.


Now to plan filming in the locations of decision (Houses of Parliament, London Eye, Gherkin, Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, and The Shard)  



For the Youtube version, click on the link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EHkiXroU3E&feature=plcp

Anime Studio Debut Break down

James here,

Here is a quick run down on the program 'Anime Studio Debut'. Similar to paint, photoshop and Adobe Flash, the program was easy to use to animate the final logo. To animate, a simple drag 'n' drop is enabled in this program, meaning from where the object is in point A, where ever you place it further in the timeline, the shape will automatically move between the pin point.  

Thanks to the program the final outcome of the MLN logo was also completed, using a screenshot to cropping to only see the logo.   

Target Audience Questionnaire is complete

Our target audience questionnaire is complete

This questionnaire is target audience questionnaire and will be used to get answers to questions of which will help to make our content more enjoyable and accessible to our target audience. When creating the questionnaire a lot of thought went into the order of the questions and the selection of them, hopefully this will help us get the answers we need.

The questions in that ask the participant about how they access news is useful as it tells us what platforms to focus on when displaying out content, as well as this we learn the tendencies of our target audience so we can focus on more efficient ways to make our content accessible to our target audience. Asking the participant what kind of news they enjoy is a good way to think of alternative subjects to include in our news channel, making our content more diverse. At the end the participant is asked whether they enjoy the theatre and how often they go, I added this question because I felt it was important to know how interested the participant was in the arts and the theatre because the arts is an area our news channel focuses heavily on.

Thabani

 

MLN Questionnaire

Tick the correct boxes

How often do you watch the news?

Never            1-2 times a week           3-4 times a week         5-6 times a week          Every day

At what time do you usually watch the news?

6:00am         12:00pm         8:00pm         10:00pm          24 hour news 

What type of news are you interested in?

Showbiz             International               Local                    Sports              Arts              Political

How do you accesses News 

TV                         newspaper                           Internet

Do you enjoy going to the theatre

Yes                    No

How often do you go to the theatre?

Once a year                 Once a Month              Once every two weeks             Once a week

VIDEO RESULTS:

We decided to make a video diary of the questionnaire to show what are target audience are like. We recoreded six people three boys and three girls to get an even amount. Four out of six people said that they enjoyed going to the theatre however they went to the theatre an average of two times per year due to cost as the decent seats at the theatre can be costly.

News Title Sequence: rough cut

After filming in london with James, James and I began to edit the footage using abode premiere which we have used before at AS. 

We began editing by uploading the footage from the HD camera on to the program, which was a lot easier because these camera's were up to date as the media department had received new cameras. To upload the footage we opened the adobe premiere program, then went on 'organize' and 'get media' and then 'DV Camcorder' where we found our footage and uploaded it. After this we began organising the sequence of our footage as well as cutting out the unnecessary footage. This was a long and boring process and we had to watch and re watch the clips in order to make sure all the unwanted lips were deleted like the clips were the camera was slanted etc.. 

To make the sequence look more authentic (like the BBC's news title sequence) me and james decided to speed up the footage this was achieved by left clicking on the clips and going on 'time stretch...' which allows us to speed up or slow down the clip by typing in the speed we want it to go. We changed the speed of each clip to 600% at first but that just wasn't fast enough and so we changed it to 700% but that still wasn't fast enough eventually we changed the speed to 800% which was just right.

After speeding up the clips we added the animated logo that james had been working on, on Anime Studio Debut on Mac, to the end of the sequence of clips. We then added the theme tune to the sequence by going on 'organize' 'get media' and then file and folder where we found our theme tune and uploaded it. We then cut the sound track down in order to finish when the sequence of clips did, but we left 5 seconds more of the sound at the end so we can have the audio track fading out at the end.

Next we decided to add some transitions and effects to the clip because it felt a tad dull towards the end of the clip. To add transitions to the sequence we clicked on 'edit' then 'transition' and began playing around with the different transitions. The main transition we used near the beginning of the sequence was the 'Cube Spin' which made the clip move in a cube form to the next clip. We used this transition because it wasn't to over the top and distracting. In other sections of the sequence where we used the 'Cube Spin' we made it move in reverse order so it didn't seem to repetitive.

After showing our media teacher our rough sequence she felt that it was still at tad boring and repetitive and so we thought that it would be best to film more clips of different parts of London, iconic places such as london bridge. We also felt that it would be best for james to edit it at home as he used an exclusive program to Macs called Motion 5, in which the schools Macs do not have, and professional graphic artists use.

Sayonara

Joycelyn