The split

In my first proper lesson back on friday 8th Jan, Nick declared the production agency would be split into two seperate teams, having not experienced what went on when the class was working as one big team, i can't comment on their efficiency however i feel it was probally a good choice as the speed of our work on friday was very impresive.

Dave took charge of us very quickly and effectivly, setting Ash on re-branding us and setting up an email, facebook, blogger and youtube account. sending Kirk, Mike and Tara out to put up audition posters for the show and Matt organising the twitter account and other various things. Still feeling fairly un-well i wasn't hugely active, but set about thinking of the new name, designing a logo and helping Ash write the synopsis of the show.

The Show Project

This is my blog page, i will be using to document everything we do in this project.

Due to being really ill, i've been stuck in bed for the best part of a week and have been un able to do anything, at all really! This has meant i've missed the first 4 days of the project and have had little understanding of whats been going on. Finnally feeling able to actually string an intelligent sentence together and not just write worthless rubbish, i endeavour to get back up to speed and be a key part in this project.

For our show project it was decided that we would make a series of 'webisodes' (an online program)

Originanlly the project was going to be a full class production each with our own roles etc, however it was felt that this wasn't working and as a large group we worked well but far too slowly. The group was there fore, split into two seperate production agencys.

The work is over looked by the network agency 'CRaM Creatives' (this is comprised of our teachers Nick and Pete) the two production agencys are called CDFilms and AnarchyFlow Productions.

I'm part of CDFilms, our team is made up of

Tara - Marketing / Websites

Matt L - Camera Operator / Editing

Mike - Script / Casting

Dave - Chair Man / Budget / Paperwork

Ash - Marketing / websites

Me - Sound / Editing / Lighting

Kirk - Director

Tim - Camera Operator / Editing

Alie- Marketing / Websites / On set photographer

Our show is called Lines and is about a group of students in detention and the troubles they get into.

The name Lines came from being made to write the same lines over and over as punishment when in detention, the punishment is known as doing lines.

AnarchyFlow Productions team members are

• James Walker
• Laurence Smith
• Alex Whitcombe
• Hayden Martin
• Matt Hornby
• Philippa Price

Their show is called Dettetion Deficit, and is also about a group of students in detntion.

Dettention Deficit was the name the class came up with in the start of the project, but when split into two, their group kept it as Matt Hornby had already produced artwork for it and he was in that group.

How has technology changed how artists get their work noticed?

The media industry as a whole is one of the biggest industries in the western world, taking many forms, from the expressive but sometimes frowned upon graffiti art of the likes of Banksy to the more conventional theatre, television, photography, advertisement and the multi billion pound film and music industries. A media text is a way artists use to show their talents, in the past to distribute these texts and allow the world to see them, would have cost a lot of money. However it is now far easier to market for free virally than it is to pay.

The advancement of technology is ever increasingly making it easier for artists to make them selves known. Not ten years ago, for an up and coming musician to have their music listened to by a lot of people they would need to get on the radio or play a live event. This wasn’t ideal as radio stations often didn’t care and only wanted to play well known tracks and live events only wanted artists that would bring a large crowd, some what of a catch 22, no crowd no gig but with out the gig, nobody knew who you were!

New York anti folk artist, Jeffrey Lewis did his best to get around this problem by recording his own tracks on cassettes, performing at open mic nights and selling his tapes to anyone that was interested. The technology of cassettes seems some what primitive now, but then was the only way of recording without a big budget. It was one of these cassettes that were handed on to Rough Trade Records and eventually got Lewis a record deal. However this process took about 4 years.

With the huge advancement of the internet, media sharing has significantly increased and now allows artists the opportunity to be heard across the world with little to no effort. This is possible with social networking sites like Myspace, on which any musician can create a free music profile. The page is able to host photos of themselves and they can upload their music. These profiles are then available to anyone online. These profiles can lead to recording contracts, gigs and feedback. This is worlds apart from only a few years ago when it took Jeffrey Lewis 4 years to get a contract, now it can happen in just 4 weeks.

As well as artists showing off their work, with the introduction of online shops and download sites like Play.com and Itunes you can now purchase music from all over the world that before now you may have never heard of before, this is all possible with out even leaving your home. This market has had a huge uptake and influence on things such as the charts.

Social networking sites can also have influenced music consumers. For example in December 2009 Rage Against the Machine's 'Killing In the Name' were Christmas number one after a Facebook campaign for them to beat the, favourite to get it, X-factor winner. This just goes to show just how much of an impact the internet can have.

More recently artists have been able to record to CD’s, however this advancement in technology wasn’t life changing for musicians. The introduction of the ability to record digitally into an MP3 file made sending music to others easier and quicker. When it comes to the advancement in technology for DJ’s, the birth of the MP3 has caused a somewhat dieing profession to explode back to life. Artists like DJ Yoda had to carry around hundreds of vinyl’s with him where as now DJ’s like DeadMau5 and PennyForTheDJ can perform with just a laptop and a hard drive full of songs running through a program like Ableton Live or using DJ controllers like the Torq Xponent.

Not only the music industry has benefited from the ever so apparent explosion in technology over the past few years. The shift from film to digital had a huge impact both the film and photographic industries. The new digital technology is far quicker to produce and with advancements in the quality of it very quickly has taken over from the old traditional film methods. The main advantage of the digital methods is work can be previewed straight after it is finished rather than have to process in chemicals first and it also allows more to be done with editing in terms of styles and techniques that just are not possible with chemicals. Films like Disney's 'Cars' would not have been possible to produce without these modern methods.

The film industry, more so short films and budding film makers have been able to exploit the progression of video editing programs like Final Cut Express and the Adobe suites. Things like The Creative Media Diploma would be a totally different course without this technology, having so much available gives us almost no boundaries allowing us to be as creative and inventive as we possibly can. On a much larger scale, full time productions like James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar is one of the most incredible visual things created, Cameron’s creativity is largely to thank however, no matter how creative he is, the film would not be any where near as impressive if it weren’t for the advancement in CGI technology. Towards the end of 2009 films also became available in 3-D in standard cinemas. Avatar was one of the films produced in this way, which just added to the stunning visuals.

Another big shift in the market is that towards portable multi media players such as Apple's Ipod. This allows people to carry vast amount of music, movies, photos and games with them in a hand held device. Very people have not heard of an Ipod these days and most will probably have their own. This makes showing a friend new music very easy, as most people now carry their whole music collection around with them everyday.

Popular web-series

Whilst looking online for good web-series to watch and take inspiration from i found this website http://mashable.com/2010/01/08/top-10-web-series-december/ its basically a table showing the top ten most popular web-series each month, here is a screen shot of december 2009s table. 

As you can see in the 'Genre' category, all of the series but one are classed as 'comedy' this shows that a key element of a web-series is for it to be funny, i think this is mainly because for somthing to be a GOOD drama, horror, thriller etc you need to be able to build up a good plot and need time to build suspense. this is difficult to do in a webisode as they are usually no longer than about 10 minuets 

Living with the infidels

Living with the Infidels is a five part comedy web-series created a London-based multi-platform production company called "The System Predicts". Living with the Infidels, produced in late 2009, was the companies first production.

The show is popular because it publicly pokes fun at a serious thing which many people are afraid to do. Terrorism is a huge issue in the world, a dutch paper got into enormous amounts of trouble for publishing a drawing of the prophet Mohamed. This makes it risky to produce a show that openly mocks terrorists and their beliefs. The fact it is risky make it even more funny because feel that by finding it funny they are agreeing and therefore at some sort of vague risk themselves.

I think the show it's self is very funny, well scripted and well produced how ever it is very poorly marketed. It's not advertised anywhere and is difficult to find, they do have a facebook group about it but this is not linked the the website at all. also the episodes are only available to watch on the website and not uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo.

The show would be hugely more popular if they had made multiple different social network profiles, uploaded to multiple different video upload sites (youtube, vimeo or daily motion) and then linked every page to each other. by doing this it would give the show 10 times the amount of web presence, would appear at the top of search engine searches and make it over all easier to find and more likely for people who don't know about it to stumble across it by accident, be interested by it and start watching.

Eastenders E20

Eastenders E20 is a 12 part spin-off web-series of the long running BBC program Eastenders. Once again, E20 is another largely popular web-series, The series has used a similar basis to gain it's fans as Chad Vader, both have taken things with an existing fan-base and made something new that will appeal to the original fans because it incorporates elements from the original thing (in this case it uses the same set as Eastenders and some of the original cast) and then make it different and interesting to appeal to a new different fan-base. E20 took eastenders, shortend it, cut it far quicker, used much livelier music and employed a handheld camera technique to make the whole show faster paced and edgier. These techniques have been put in place to try and attract a younger audience to the show.

In this case the marketing is done less through online means more on BBC as adverts etc, this is a good and a bad move on the advertisers part, its good because it is forced upon people who regularly watch Eastenders any way and therefore are likely to be interested, how ever its bad because the whole point of E20 is to draw NEW fan-base, a fan-base from the 'Online Age' and the best way to do this, is to advertise ONLINE.

Chad Vader

Chad Vader is another hugely popular and long running web-series. The series is by BlameSociety Production and has been running since June 25th 2006. The show is popular because it makes fun of one of the most famous series of films in the world, Star Wars. by doing this, before they even started they had access to an incredibly huge fan-base.

Unlike Living with the Infidels, Chad Vader has been marketed fairly successfully, it's easy to find, linked together well, on YouTube, with the videos embedded on different sites and because it is related to Star Wars, people searching for things to do with Star Wars are likely to stumble across it and are likely to be interested in it.

Different types of show

Creative media practitioners from different fields have a wide range of ways they can show their skills, these include;

Theatre

When practitioners perform live in a theater, the audience feels much more involved unlike things like TV and Film, It's similar to them in the way it's fully scripted and un-scripted. This art form is loved by the performer because it is scripted and controlled yet live and unpredictable at the same time, whilst they know how the show should got, nobody can predict what will happen on the night. The same feeling is what draws such big audiences to the live theatre scene, they can always expect a certain level of performance but repeatedly attend in the hope they will get something slightly different to other nights.

Standup Comedy

Like theatre, Standup Comedy is loved by the audience because of it's interaction with them, if anything standup uses the audience to a much greater extent. As Dara O'brien said on one of his live tours, he was going to call the tour " You had to be there" because no two standup comedy performances are ever the same due to the frequent audience interactions.

Street Performance

Street Performances are a less well documented but still highly enjoyed art form, everyone has seen the guys stood on street corners in tourist areas, painted entirely gold or silver normally. they are so enjoyed because of their unpredictability and randomness.

Live Gigs

With a cross between the level of audience interaction in Theatre and Standup, live gigs have an ever increasing following with people from all ages wanting to experience a unique show and have a different experience to others.

Cinema

For those not after the live experience but still wanting to be part of something on a big scale with a difference to the everyday television watching, the cinema is something that brings an exciting experience at a relatively low cost and at ease.

Television

TV offers a much easier access to viewing than things like cinema, although it lacks the exciting experience that cinema and live event bring, it comes cheaper in the long run and offers almost effortless viewing.

Web-TV

Web-TV has all the benefits of regular tv with the added bonus of it being even more convenient for frequent computer users due to being able to watch it at any time you want. the only real draw back is an occasional lack of quality. Web-TV is an fast growing format to watch programs and its convenience and ease are the main factors in this, people don't have time to take chunks out of their day to just watch tele anymore so they watch the specific programs they want on Web-TV