After having a look into the stop motion idea, I decided that I was not going to be able to do it, taking into account that it required a lot of time and more importantly a very own area that I would be able to completely isolate so that things like light, positions or even stuff that could be moved, didn't affect the continuity of the video. Having that said, I started looking into very new ideas, but that at the same time sticked with my original plan, which was not to do a usual video with actors and flashbacks, as I though it was very cliché already. I wanted to do an animation, something new that I hadn't even done before. As a matter of fact, after thinking and thinking what I could do, I decided that I wanted to create my very own 2D animation. I have never been very good at drawing, but I am good at designing and creating and playing with shapes in the computer and that is when I said, why not and took the big risk.

The idea is to tell a story through an animation with the poem as a song playing in the background. My original plan was to make the story just as an animation,  but an advice that Simon gave me was that I should introduce the animation with some real life action. I liked the idea a lot to be honest and that is when I decided to create the animation, which was still going to be the main focus of the film, but at the same time was to be integrated and give a reason to it. The idea now was to start with real life, have animation and end with real life as well. I decided that I liked that idea a lot.

After setting up the idea, I talked it through with teacher Helen, who liked the idea as well, but gave me a couple things to take into account. The first one was to make sure that the music fitted, then she told me that I also should introduce the animation with real life, but I had to be careful with the way I did it since she didn't want that for a bad transition, all the hard work looked a bit bad. Taking all that on board I started working on it.

The virtual studio was a very big thing for the group, but specially for me as I was the one creating it. At the beginning the idea was just to find a template of a nice studio and adapt it with our colors and use it, but it didn't really seem to work. The original studio was something I had in my possession from a previous training and it is all royalty free, so the idea was alright, but then the problems started to come. I finished the first studio and brought it for our green screen training, but neither Danny or Helen liked it and in my opinion I didn't really like it that much either. This is a screenshot of the design of it:

The idea was to have the anchor standing and presenting the whole news segment form there as some relevant videos or images were in the background in the both big screens. The virtual studio is not bad, is just very flashy and doesn't really suit our brand, which is why we decided to create one from scratch and just do exactly what we needed. We discussed different ideas on what we all thought that was necessary to have in the studio. Here is the list of it:

- A monitor

- Anchor in a mid-shot

- A small studio

- Sport look

With all those elements I started searching and looking for some ideas to create the studio. I looked into studios like Sky Sports and ESPN, but none of them were really virtual, which didn't really help on what I wanted. The only thing that did help, was to have more or less a look at the kind of light and how the layout should have been. This are both the examples on what I looked at:

ESPN

Sky Sports

I realised that it wasn't going to work, so I remembered something that was definitely going to help me and it was the gaming news I look at sometimes from a very big company like it is IGN (Imagine Games Network) which is an online only news company. They have their own channel and massive brand on youtube and by looking at of their segments again I realised that what they were doing was more or less exactly what I wanted for the final studio for our project. It included sort of a mid-shot, some of them include a screen and it is very online newsy, which goes with ours as well since it is online only. This is a screenshot of what make me had the idea for our studio:

Although it has a real working place on the background of the right side, it has more or less the ideal scheme for ours. It has some sort of monitors, so virtual areas, sort of a mid-shot and it does look very according to the their brand. After looking at it and taking everything into account, the whole idea just started to emerge. 

One of the main ideas we have, although it wasn't included on the brief, was to create a virtual studio for our production. The idea was simple, design a studio on the computer and then green screen it. As for our green screen we realised that we had a lot of issues from which we are quite happy we did some training before. I have particularly used green screen before, as a matter of fact I own one, so I know that it can get to be a really tough job as there is a lot of things that need to be taken into account, which in my experience are:

- The very first thing that everyone needs to now is that no matter what you do, you need to have your green screen flat, as all the shadows that folding and bending creates, can become quite a problem when you edit. 

- Second is light. No matter what you do, no matter if you have the best place, the best actor or the best graphics, no light will absolutely ruin your video. When it comes down to lights, it is not as simple as just turning the lights of a room on or letting the light that comes from a window do the job, as the objective is to give equal light to the whole area plus make sure that your anchor is very very well light but at the same time not look yellow or over lighten. 

- The third and most annoying issue are shadows. Shadows might seem something obvious, but in a very well design green screen set, they are completely avoided as they become a big pain when it comes down to taking them out in post. In order to remove shadows, it is necessary to know and learn where to set up the light and work with the amount of lights you have. 

Thanks to all of this possible issues and many more that anyone could find when doing green screen, we decided to have a testing day before the actual shoot. One very common mistake by amateurs, is that they don't practice all this before and expect to get the chroma key right the very first time, which is very unlikely to happen. 

Our very first issue was the camera. We started using a Sony PMW as all the Sony EXs were being used for a workshop. In my opinion it was the worse choice we could have gotten as the PMW didn't really help us the way we wanted. One thing that is really important when it comes down to green screening is that the camera needs to have a very good resolution so that the computer can recognise the green screen and then the anchor and don't mix them up. When we did our very first shot with that the PMW, we ended up with a very bad resolution, which in my opinion is thanks to the distance between the camera and the person, although I am not entirely sure, but a lot if things were tried and nothing really worked. This is the outcome of the very first try:

After trying it with different people and different light angles and effects, the outcome was exactly the same and I never knew if there was something I was doing wrong, but I doubt it as I checked everything three times. Looking at the outcome we decided that this was not the best decision for us and we decided to change it and use the Cannon 7D. We borrowed one and used it form the same angle and same lights to see if there was something odd in the distance, but the Cannon helped much more with the resolution. Here is the outcome of it:

Once we say the outcome we decided that we were going to use that camera instead of the Sony PMW as it helped us more deliver what we wanted. Although in the end we decided to using more of a mid-shot for the final studio set, the Cannon was key for chroma keying. The resolution of it is so good that it allows the Keylight plugin in After Effects to identify very well the green color and separate it from our anchor. We were all happy with it and all the details with the final studio and resolution will be posted on another post. 

For our logo we had meeting to discuss what is it exactly that we wanted. We all agreed that we needed something sporty and something that didn't say "Football" or "Racing" we needed something that tell people that this was not the usual stuff you look at. At first we looked into other channels logos which helped us a bit to understand more or less how a logo should be design and how each of these ones have a message in them. The first image has some channels and film companies all around the world:

This second one has UK only channels:

After looking at all these and more, we decided that the logo had to be small, consistent and have the initials of our brand, TTV. The main thing that had to be chosen was the font that we wanted to use for our logo as we all agreed on not having a standard one. We came across with one of them that was exactly what we wanted. It is called Sports World

The whole idea came from wanting something that looked like those typical american sport fonts in college and even at school, they are all over the movies and they are real. This was one of the examples we took into account:

After getting the whole idea together we came with the logo first time, no change of design as we liked a lot what we produced. The logo TTV has the colors orange and purple. The orange represents bright, new, happy and fun and as of the purple it represent, innovation, unisex, sporty. Here is the final logo:

This is the Risk Assessment form for the Kent Roller Girls piece:

Risk Assesment Roller Derby by helzwelsh

After showing our first draft to teacher Helen, she helped and made some adjustments that were needed regarding how to introduce the show and the V/O. Here is the one with corrections:

Digital News Draft Script 2 by helzwelsh

Here are the consent forms taken for this production. We had to use them for Beth, Emma and Angie.

This is a Risk Assessment form made for our shoot at the Pole Persona academy.

Pole Fitness Risk Assessment by helzwelsh

As a first try our producer Helen came with this script based on the ideas that we wanted to implement in our video

Digital News Draft Script by helzwelsh

The second step of the project was to contact this girls and see if they were interested in us making a quick piece about them and their views on being the fastest growing female sport in the UK. At the beginning we went to their website in the 'Contact Us' area but we couldn't find a single phone number anywhere plus the email that was on there didn't seem to work. To be honest contacting them was the most painful bit as we didn't have a direct way to go and talk to them, but just sit and wait for a reply. We found they have a Facebook page.

What I did was that I contacted them through the Facebook website as I saw they post stuff every day. meaning there is someone checking that site and updating it regularly. I created a message that was sent to them which was the following:

Hi. My name is Chris Sarmiento, I am 2nd year student at the University for the Creative Arts, currently studying Television Production. I am the Editor of a new online channel for youngsters, focused on innovative sports around the area of Kent. As a member of Tekkers Productions, we would like to know if we could do a quick 2 min story about your group and what you do. We will be coming to you in Chatham for this project. We are really excited of being part of this unique sport and showing the local people about this exciting activity. If possible, we would like to have a contact number to discuss and explain more in depth what our aim is about. If you rather arrange a meeting with us, we are more than willing to come to you.

Kind Regards,

Chris

The days passed and passed and I had absolutely no answer about it and one week before our tentative shooting day, I received and answer from one of the girls called Jo-Commotion. This was her reply:

Hi Chris I'm happy to to talk to you about KRG over the phone. I'm on 07779998136 if you'd like to give us a call. 

Cheers!

Jo-Commotion

I phoned her and she was really happy and keen for us to go there and film and the only sort of condition that she gave us was if they were able to get hold on some of the footage once it is done, as they all lack skills in technology and would like to have some footage of them in action. After that it all came down to decide which of the 3 places where they meet was the best one for us. At the beginning we said Chatham on Wednesday as we all live closer and it will come more in handy, but Jo explained to me that the best one and the one we could get the most from was the one in Herne Bay during Sunday. We decided to give it a go and Haley, Helen's friend and our production assistant, took us there alongside with our reporter Jamie Terry, which made the trip easier for us. 

After deciding to give it a go to do this sport for our live production, I started doing some research so that we could find a good angle to make this story a good one. I had a tutorial with our teacher Helen Curston and she mentioned something to me that was very true and useful. During the tutorial she pointed out that in order for us to do show people what this sport is about, we need to know what it is about, because it is hard do deliver properly without self understanding. The first thing that I came across with was finding wether Roller Derby is considered a sport here in the UK or not, as it is in the USA. The very first bit of research that I did was whether there was an organization of Roller Derby in the UK or not and that is when I came across with the UKRDA (United Kingdom Roller Derby Association). Like FIFA on football, it is the maximum authority of Roller Derby and has been the one to consider Roller Derby a sport in this country.

 Here a link to the article http://ukrda.org.uk/?p=90 

After confirming that it is a legit sport, I went more in deep to find out whether England had a national team or not, because the goal was to see how big this sport really is. For that I found the website of the Team England which is http://englandrollerderby.com and also a Facebook page that has some really interesting information about the events and the trainings in which these girls are involved.

During the research and after talking to our producer Helen Welsh, we went to find out a bit more about the angle and one thing that popped in mind was how big the sport is and how fast is going and voilá, we did find what seemed to be the best angle for a live piece. 

First of all we have The Independent making an article on this, saying,

"It's the UK's fast-growing female sport and there's a World Cup to be won but you'll need strength, speed, cunning and a risqué nickname" - See more at: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/roller-derby-rollers-who-are-rocking-the-world-of-women-6268604.html

Then we have the BBC making a video about it saying,

"Roller derby: Fastest growing women's sport in Wales" - See more at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-23085953

And finally we have The Positive making a long article saying,

"The Positive talks to the stars of roller derby, the UK’s fastest growing female sport - See more at: http://thepositive.com/roller-derby-female-sport-britain/#sthash.KD6RPIBV.dpuf

This was all the main research done for our angle and we found a way to sustain that it is definitely the fastest growing female sport in the UK. After that it all went down to research about the sport itself and the kind of stuff that needed to be known in order to understand how the game rolls. I came across with I like to call the ultimate and perfect piece to read exactly what the whole sport is about which is The Rules of Flat Track Roller Derby, published by the WFTDA (Women Flat Track Derby Association). Here is a link to the full book in PDF: http://wftda.com/rules/wftda-rules.pdf

Making a summary of the basic rules of what needs to be known in order to understand what you see is that Roller Derby is a contact sport played by two teams of five members roller skating in the same direction around a track. Game play consists of a series of short matchups ("jams") in which both teams designate a scoring player (the "jammer") who scores points by lapping members of the opposing team. The teams attempt to assist their own jammer while hindering the opposing jammer, playing both offense and defense simultaneously.

I believe that even a better way of understanding what the whole sport is about is by watching videos which is when I came across with a very good documentary made by 5grand productions called "This is Roller Derby." Although is a documentary from a university student, the video covers very well what the sport is about, including Derby associations like the ones in Liverpool, Manchester and we can also see our Kent Roller Girls in action in this video as well. The whole idea of the video is to show what this means to this girls and it is not only a male sport. Here is a the full documentary:

As part of the research for our live piece, we came across with this sport that at least I had never heard about, Roller Derby. We looked into exotic or unusual sports, as our brand and our aim is to broadcast sports that are not really out there on TV and that are not being taken too much into account. As soon as I googled roller derby uk, the best and closest we found was Kent Roller Girls. Although they all come from across Kent, they all meet at the following places:

WEDNESDAYS (Main league members) 8pm - 10pm - Lordswood Sports Centre, North Danes Way, Chatham, ME5 8YE

SUNDAYS (Main league members) 7pm - 9pm - The Bay Arena, Herne Bay High School, Bullockstone Road, Herne Bay, CT6 7NS

SUNDAYS (Rec League) 4.00pm - 5.00pm - Abbey Sports Centre, London Road, Faversham, Kent, ME13 8RZ

As we went into their website www.kentrollergirls.com, we saw this amazing world that seemed very fun and it was even better the way they were showing this sport and their team. On the first picture below you can see their logo which doesn't look like typical baseball or football or even american football teams. We can compare

PSG

New York Yankees

Miami Dolphins

Apart from the Miami Dolphins one, all of the others look very serious and professional, when the Kent Roller Girls one is very cartoony with a funny image. 

Once we started surfing on the website we found a bit of information of the team. We thought that was the best and most hilarious thing we could have found as they put up their team as a proper group that is about to fight. First of all they get some 'derby names' which is their way to be called in the sport. Like the almighty Brazilian football player Ronaldinho is not really called Ronaldinho, but Ronaldo de Asis. Even though is more or less the same deal, their names are funny and are usually based on something the person likes or does. For example we have Scrappydoom that comes from favorite character Scrappy Doo. Here are some of the members of the team (for a full roster visit the website):

After discussing the focus for our channel and the type of news that we wanted in it I came up with the idea of making a story about pole dancers and what people think about them compared to what this means to them. A lot of people tend to judge and describe pole dancing as something 'slutty.' As part of how people see this sport, people also tend to think of women that do pole dancing as 'the easy thing' 'the sexy ones' and all this adjectives that makes them look or sound like 'sluts' when they are actually not. We want to show people what this means to them and how they make this one of sports that builds the most strength in your body. There has also been attempts to put this sport in the Olympics and there are many associations trying make this a reality, but at the moment is still a no go. 

Me and Helen found some pole dance academies that were willing to do this, from which we decided to go with one of them. The one I found is called Bewitched PoleFitness and I got to it thanks to Kym Mumford who works with me as a Student Warden here in Rochester. The one Helen found was thanks to a friend of her that also works with her at Cineworld called Beth. Her academy is called Pole Persona Dance and Fitness. Both of them based in Rochester. 

The main idea for our package and for our show in general was to talk about sports that are not very popular or are becoming very popular but are not being taken into account when it comes to broadcasting them on TV. 

One of the main questions that emerged while trying to find the angle for our piece was wether pole dancing was a sport or not and if it should be included as and Olympic sport. A very good article from the Huffington Post talks in depth of what some important celebrities of the sport say and believe should be done 

Pole dancing has evolved over the last decade, becoming a popular workout and an organized gymnastic competition. So is it time for it to become an official Olympic sport?

In the last week, the International Pole Sports Federation instituted some new rules to help get it there. On HuffPost Live Friday, a group of pole dancing enthusiasts and national champions came together to discuss whether the sport's athletes should be allowed to compete on the world stage.

Sergia Louis Anderson, the 2013 U.S. National Pole Championships winner, said that while she defines herself more as an artist, she thinks those who want to see pole dancing in the Olympics have a great argument.

Amy Guion, co-founder of the Pole Sport Organization, and Fawnia Dietrich, owner of Pole Fitness Studio in Las Vegas, agreed.

For our piece we are set to talk about whether pole dancing is considered a sport or not and the views of becoming an olympic one. Our main character for this piece is Angie, the instructor of the Pole Dancing Academy. She told us she is a mom and after having both her kids she wanted to lose weight but didn't engage that much with the gym, so she tried pole dancing and in a couple years became a professional. She is accredited as an instructor and has trained some important people such as:

Estee Zakur (US Pole Dance Federation (USPDF) 2010 2nd place & Miss trixter )

Karol Helms (USPDF East Coast Champion 2009 & USPDF Miss Sexy 2010)

Alethea Austin (USPDF Champion 2010)

Pantera Blacksmith (USA & world famous pole dancer)

Sally Ann Giles (Multi-titled UK pole champion)

Josiah Grant (aka BadAzz one of the top male pole dancers in the USA)

If you wanna find out more about this centre visit the website www.polepersona.co.uk