Digital News Production: Critical Analysis Essay

Introduction

This critical analysis essay will be recapping on the recent Digital News Production project for the Television Production course. This essay will aim to reflect on how the project went as a whole, the research behind the project and our group faired within the project. Areas will be focused on such as Brand Development, Audience Research, News Platforms, Casting, Story Focus and Time management; analysing our research into these areas and how they turned out. This essay will also feature areas where I felt we could have improved or changed in hindsight, also detailing problems we ran into while filming.

Brand Development

Our brand development was very important, we had to ensure that the brand not only looked professional but was relevant to what we were trying to achieve. According to Mallik, “Branding today is a combination of ideas, products, and the advertising and marketing efforts of companies to put those ideas or products in the public spotlight.” (Mallik, S, 2009:54). This means that our brand had to catch the eye of our target audience by being relatable. Taking inspiration from brands from YouTube gaming news channels such as Rooster Teeth, The Know and Funhaus, we tried to create a brand that had retro and stylistic elements that caught the eye and referenced old games. The name of our brand ‘Game-Over’ references older games that upon failure would be greeted with this screen saying game over. These screens were common and seen within console games and arcade games, such as Pacman, Space Invaders, Sonic and Asteroids. We kept our colour scheme simple but as a further reference of the Pacman screens, colours being Red, White and Black. These references were important as they helped in appealing to our target audience, specifically 16-29 year old gamers, ranging from avid gamers to the occasional play. According to Ien Aug “measurement of appreciation does nothing other than register the volume of applause” (Aug, 1991, 145). By situating our target audience with the main consumer of video games we are surely able to receive a louder response. We tried to fulfil the purpose of branding, to ultimately put our channel in the public spotlight. I feel that the time we spent on the branding research was important as it was a prime means of establishing our audience. However, the title ‘Game-Over’ is representative as being negative and maybe could have been replaced by a more upbeat and positive. Below is our finished product, See Fig 1.

Fig.1. Game-Over (2015)

Audience Research

We got our research on our target audience from online forums, PC Gamer magazines, and research into gaming YouTube channel’s audiences and found a familiar pattern. According to Bateman, “No single media text is designed to target, or address, everyone.” (Bateman, 2011:79); and this is indeed clear when it comes to gaming news. We found that the mode of address was very informal with quirky comments and a relaxed demine around presenters which gave us a clear direction to go in when it came to presentation. Our target audience was established as men and women between the ages of 16-29 who have a varying degree of interest in video games, as we found through our research this audience block was the main consumer of video games and one that is more likely to be vocal and willing to find out more about the games they buy. Following on from this, our research into our topic ‘Why Are Video Games Being Released Broken?’ consisted of data from sales, Twitter responses from broken games, other channel’s perspectives and further fan feedback. This helped us essentially find out what the majority of our target audience feel on this subject, which gave us an angle to explore for our actual news piece. Our audience research focused mainly on YouTube channels as a whole and could have been improved by looking at professional television channels such as BBC and ITV news, though may have been of a more formal approach. Furthermore, by sticking to a video gaming news channel, YouTube was rife with alternative channels which caused us to focus on other channels on YouTube rather than television as there were less sources of information there.

News Platforms

News now comes in a variety of different platforms more traditional methods of newspaper are now being slowly replaced by online news updated as soon as something happens, with this news is also broadcasted on radio, television and even through electronic signs. According to Barwise, “A major influence on people’s viewing is their ability to view at a given time. This has been defined as ‘being at home but not asleep in bed’.” (Barwise, P, 1988:16). This brings up an interesting point, in modern culture with modern technology information can be accessed quicker and easier than ever before. This combined with the rush of ordinary life, it could see the times of sitting down to watch the news on television to be gone as, of an evening people have less time to sit to what the news when they can check their phone instantly and find the news they want to hear. With radio news being the main provider to commuters within their cars and online news to anyone at virtually anytime, television could be seen as on the way out. This is why for our channel we decided our platform to be online, through the means of a YouTube channel. We decided this due to it easier access and that in the modern age it seems that this is the direction news will be going in. Once an audience is targeted it becomes the go to place for gaming news and can be accessed and viewed with a quick search on most devices. The ability to view through smart phones, laptops and even smart TV’s, it becomes an easily accessed channel available to all. According to Lowbridge, "I think right now TV is still so large [but] a lot of that viewing habit that happens on TV will be moving online, whether it's YouTube or other video platforms that gain big audiences that's yet to be seen." (Lowbridge, C, 2015). This online direction that media is going in could see a significant drop in television views within the future. The compromise of situating the news channel to online is that televised news could begin to disappear, and our heavy focus on online research into YouTube news channels did influence the production of our channel to be more computer and phone friendly than a simple piece for television. This accompanied by the time taken to create a website, YouTube channel and Twitter page.

Casting

With regards to our actual recruitment method of presenters and the style of our live, we aimed to combine the structure of the BBC to the informal and friendly style of YouTube channels. Our presenters were chosen based on their improvisation, comfort with to camera pieces and ability to be engaging with the audience. The BBC style of news reading, by which meaning a beginning summary of the news that will be covered, a live piece, a studio interview and further information was determined through research into the BBC, and other news networks, such as ITV. We needed to make sure our project didn’t run over time but by sticking to the BBC’s and other professional channel’s method we made sure it kept within the time constraints and was also transformed into an informal, visually interesting programme.

Story Focus

Choosing our topic/question for our story was split between one of two ideas, ‘Why are Video Games Being Released Broken?’ and ‘Do video games make people violent’. We decided to go with the first topic because as a collective group we felt the latter had been asked many times before and is a story for those looking into the video gaming culture not a story within as the majority of audience we were targeting would have looked at the title and collectively sighed at the regurgitated question. According to Wilson, “Audiences actively interpret screen content. From a sociological point of view, using media across the world draws upon people’s different cultural perspectives” (Wilson, T, 2009:9). This argues our point that by supplying material to our target audience, we had to be sure that the material we were supplying was culturally relevant to the audience. It seems at the moment video games being broken, is a story that keeps popping up with fans expressing their anger and companies expressing apologies, something that almost takes over social media on release dates of games. According to Moriarty, “You’ve earned the right to not believe a publisher or developer when they tell you that their game will work day one.” (Moriarty, 2015) which speaks in volumes as in today’s day and age with all modern technology, a game will most likely not be finished on the day of its release to the paying consumer. By choosing this topic we managed to find something relevant within the video gamer culture, something that is current and something that a lot of people are willing to talk about. This allowed us to adopt methods like lives at release dates and attempting to get interviews with experts and officials who can guide the unknowing audience through what is happening. However we found that because this was such a hot-button issue at the time it turned out to be the opposite of what we hoped. We managed to get an expert and fans to express feelings but situations restricted us from getting in contact from officials of development companies because of the frenzy surrounding the state of games. This left our live to be rather boring but was however saved by our presenter. The live and project could have been significantly improved is access was granted to officials and events however given the recent examples we were simply not allowed.

Time Management

As a group we made certain that our script and timings were as close to the tee as possible. As we had pieces that involved to camera we had to make sure that the script was free of grammatical errors but also flowed well. The last thing we wanted was our presenter to read the script and for it to sound robotic and dull. With our script we had to be sure that it flowed well but also the timings were adhered too. We had good communication with our presenters which means we are all able to understand what was required when it came to tone, speed and style. By ensuring this our project came out fairly well with regards to timings and scripting. Narration and to camera pieces where almost exactly what we wanted and presenters gave a professional performance.

Conclusion

In conclusion I feel that the project was an overall success. Areas could have been better and with a larger time of production we could have produced better, but given the circumstances, brief and time constraint I feel that the project fulfilled what was required. The key areas described; Brand Development, Audience Research, News Platforms, Casting, Story Focus and Time management; were all focused on in detail prior to production which allowed us to go in with a structured format and shooting schedule to be confident in that we had and wanted what was required and more. Furthermore as a first attempt towards a news based project where, within our group, we all had no experience, I feel that we were able to produce a solid, professional and polished final result.

Bibliography

Bateman, Anthony (2011) AS Media Studies. Oxfordshire: Routledge

Barwise, P. (1988) Television and Its Audience. [online] At: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ucreative/reader.action?docID=10326867 (Accessed on 21/11/2015)

Lowbridge, C. (2015) The UK YouTube Stars With Fans Around the World. At: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34504053 (Accessed on 22/11/2015)

Wilson, T. (2009) Understanding Media Users from Theory to Practice. [online] At: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ucreative/reader.action?docID=10301329# (Accessed on 22/11/2015)

Aug, I. (1991) Desperately Seeking the Audience. [online] At: http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ucreative/reader.action?docID=10017573# (Accessed on 2/12/2015

Moriarty, C. (2015) How You Can Help Put a Stop to Broken Games. At: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2015/01/19/how-you-can-help-put-a-stop-to-broken-games (Accessed on 4/12/2015)

Illustration List

Figure 1. Game-Over. (2015) From: Game-Over [logo still] Great Britain: UCA Television Production. (12/11/2015)