Girls in Science - Promotional videos 13:19

In the United Kingdom, and through most of the world, the education gap in Science between girls and boys is the widest in the UK reports state. I have found a few sources on the web which have investigated this issue.

This issue is especially a problem in the UK as we have the widest gap out of all developed countries.

"This gender gap is bigger in Britain than in any other developed country, the study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded."

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5389227/Boys-outperform-girls-in-science-in-Britain.html

"The analysis of the 2006 Pisa (Programme for International Assessment) results showed boys in the UK scored on average 10 points higher in the science tests than girls. The average was two points. "

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8070745.stm

"Boys outperform girls in the sciences to a greater extent in the UK than in any other developed country, a study of 57 countries published today reveals."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/may/26/science-boys-better-results

These are worrying reports and we felt that as a group we would like to think up some issues to why girls aren't performing as well as boys in science exams. We would like to try and make a difference by creating some promotional videos about how girls can do well in science.

The group has a client; Mrs Davies, - Head of Science - Park Hall Academy. We are due to organise a meeting with Mrs Davies and we are going to create a brief ourselves for this work.

Appeal - Perhaps the subject doesn't feel right for many of the students, maybe they think of stereotypes and how males are often focused upon in the science industry.

Shy - Some girls may think that if they are out-going in subjects; perhaps more inparticular in Science that they may seem 'nerdy' or 'masculine'.

Afraid of Failure - Girls may want to be certain that what they are doinjg, they will succeed in. They may want to stay in a comfort zone and be sure what they are doing is correct. If this is the case then we will need to re-assure girls that it is trying which matters most.

I, myself am male so it will be difficult for me to understand why this statistic is around but it is. I studied GCSE Double Award Science with two B's, we have Danielle in our group, she studied GCSE Double Award with 2 C's. It is good to have a girl in the group who has studied the same course as I so we can both get a good understanding of the subject we are going to be investigating.

Danielle and I attended a business and education links meeting where the Academy held a stall at Solihull College to demonstrate how we could help local business and some charities also attended the event. We went as student ambassadors and we shown attendee's work with Academy Radio and its website with advertising space, as well as videos from the fashion show.

We met a lady who was ambassading 'Skirting for Science" which is an initiative to get girls interested in studying and taking up jobs in science. They have ran workshops in Weston and are planning on holding workshops for Solihull in March, 2012. As the event will be towards the end of my time on this course, the group shall be making promotional videos for the idea, of getting girls interested in Science. We will still be promoting Skirting for Science but we won't be able to use footage of the event due to time constraints. We will be speaking to the lady representing Skirting for Science and see if we can get hold of any footage from their event at Weston College.

Client Meeting:


Friday 4th November - 2:00PM

Today, we held a meeting with our client, Mrs Davies. This was our first meeting and we went prepared. The group felt it would be important to make the right first impression so before the meeting we brainstormed the areas that we would like to cover. Giving the right first impression would set a good foundation for the relationship with the client and the project itself. Notes follow:

Ultimate product: Promotional Video

Narrative would be great to show an interesting experiment which is in the curriculum for Year 9 students.

The promotional videos should include both Male and Female students. A clip in the promotional video could mention the Skirting Science project.

Creating three consecutive promotional videos including one for Skirting Science, one for Main School Science and one for A-Level Sciences.

The promotional video should be timeline based. Begin with main school science from Year 9 onwards (TA - Year 8 students choosing options), A-Level Science (TA - Year 11 Students making choices for Sixth Form) and Skirting Science at the end (TA - To interest female students in the career opportunities available to them).

Interview three students who study A-Level Chemistry.

A problem in the science department - Only six students taking science in Sixth Form.

Video should inspire Year 8's.

Year 11's shouldn't be filmed as there is no real need as the video is aimed towards them, thus not needing them to be in the video.

We should check out the Science Labs and identify the laboratory with the best lighting.

To Research: An idea of what kind of things create a visual impact.

Summary of meeting:

Promotional video

• Film the week before we break up for Christmas.
• We will film year 9’s, 10’s and the AS and A2 group.
• For year 9 open evening and year 11 going into a level.
• Video will start with the triple science GCSE group showing experiments, then how it can be advanced in year 12-13 with exciting experiments.

Our research:

What things create a visual impact?
Link to blog post I made

What lighting style we need?
Natural

What lab to use?
LG7

How long do we want the promotional video to be?
Around six minutes

How long do we want participants to talk for?
About 30 seconds each

Equipment:

• Camera
• Microphone
• Tri-pod
• Lights
• Lighting Shield

Issues to discuss in our next meeting (Friday November 11th)

-Lab to use

-Buzz words

Advertisement Planning - Academy Radio Advert 13:18

Introduction of what we are doing..
Our group is going to be creating a viral advertisement for Academy Radio. The target audience of Academy Radio is teenagers currently in education between the ages of 11 to 18, this will also be the target audience of our advertisement.

Advert Style
The style of the advertisement will be viral with the use of comedy. The reason we have chosen this style is because we want word-of-mouth to be used effectively to promote our product. The reason we have opted to use comedy with this is the group felt this will be most effective with the target audience of Academy Radio and our advert.

Budget & Equipment needed
Green Screen - No Cost
Three edit suite machines - No Cost
A Sony HandyCam - No Cost

Health and Safety
As we will be using the green screen studio to film our video footage, we have to take health and safety in to consideration because we will be responsible for our own actions when using the studio. Below are some potential issues and what we will do to try and avoid them happening.

Tripping over wires
We shall be using a cord cover so nobody can trip over the wires and can walk over them safely.

Electricution
As we will be working with technical equipment such as lamps and computers, we shall only be using equipment which has been safety checked by BAM who are responsible for maintaining our Academy. Below is a picture of what this looks like on one of our editing machines.

Spacing

An issue which is likely to occur in the green screen studio is that if there is not enough room for participants in our filming then they may hit their hands if they were to swing their arms without paying much attention. To overcome this, all tables, chairs and other obstructing material shall be moved to one side so the entire area around the green screen is clear.

Technical Constraints

Technical constraints which we expect may happen in our production:

• Faulty camera equipment
  We shall test equipment before we book it out.
• Camera's being booked out
  We shall reserve equipment for the dates we will be filming.
• Files getting corrupted or lost
  We will keep several backups and backups before and after edits on seperate locations, Academy Network, personal flash drives, Media External hard drives.
• Editing software might crash
  We will make timely saves on Power Director

Legal and Ethical issues

We need to make sure that the production is within the law and appeals to all manner of people without causing offence. Some issues which may arise include:

• Defamation Laws
  We don't see the advert being libellous or slanderous in any way.
• Secrets
  If we are given any sensitive information about Academy Radio then we will deal with these in a confidential manner and will comply with the National Secrets Act 1989.
• Copyright
  We will be respecting copyright laws held in the UK as this is where the advert will be displayed. We will use either original content or obtain content to which we have rights and author permission to use. We will comply with this by using open source fonts for branding, obtaining or creating background footage used in chroma key in a fair, lawful manner and any soundtracks we will respect the authors rights to how that is used.
• Discrimination
  As it is illegal to discriminate against anyone on grounds of sex, age, disability or ethnic origin
  when recruiting or in the workplace we will make sure we do not cause offence when casting and we will choose people on the basis of how good they are at acting in front of a camera.
• Representational Issues
  We will make sure we use morals and justify what is right and wrong in the production. We will make sure Academy Radio is seen in a good light and that we do not portray Academy Radio as something it is not.

Past and Current Practice

Since early years of broadcast advertising, laws have changed. A recent change in the law is Ofcom have allowed for product placement. Whilst this isn't of extraordinary use in a commercial, advertising Academy Radio could benefit substantially from the change in this law. The station could be promoted in a television show, marketed towards our target audience. An example of this would be 'Hollyoaks' and one of the characters could be listening to Academy Radio. All broadcasters are required to display a small 'P' which represents product placement in a television show.

Other changes in the law include the Ofcom broadcasting code which has ten different sections we will make sure we obide by. As well as this there are BCAP, CAP and ASA regulations we shall follow.

Other laws include health and safety changes, we will make sure that we create a full risk assesment before we begin film production.

Recording Ideas

Our ideas for recording are to use mostly mid shots. We shall be using Sony Handycams at a resolution of 720p (High Definition) to record the footage and sound.

Identification of Message

The message that we will be promoting to our audience is that "Academy radio, is the radio station that students listen to". This will work on the advertising method of social acceptance.

Production Schedule
We decide that it would take us about three 1 hour lessons to get all the filming done and that was the time we spent on it. We then decided on spending at least week on editing to make sure it was the fullest of our potential. When the decided that all our research and after production stuff will take us about a month to complete.

Location Plans

The locations we will be using will be the mainly the green screen room and our normal class room. The green screen will be where all our filing will be don’t and the class room will be where all the editing will be done.

Focus group findings 20:20

>>View Focus Group Questions
>>View Focus Group Findings (note form, excuse grammar)


We asked these questions to two focus groups we conducted and audio recorded. The reason for having two groups is that it made each group smaller and people would feel more comfortable than being in one large group.

The group had seen three advertisements. One was a Heart FM Advert which was on around lunchtime which fits in with its target audience of middle aged women. The Capital Radio advert the three people had seen was of an evening time. The BBC Radio 1 advert was broadcast within the BBC network on an awards show.

Some similarities that all the videos had were that they all had famous figures in them, Heart focused on showing some musicians and presenters. Capital focused only on famous musicians. BBC Radio 1 only shown their presenters to shows. I think that this reflects what the station are in the figures they chose for the videos. Heart FM have some personality presenters and it would seem they want to promote this, but as they don't always have presenters that mostly speak, they have put some musicians in to the advertisement to show the style of music. Capital have recently opened up to the Midlands area, taking over Galaxy and their listeners really just want music thus their choice to have musicians in the commercial. BBC Radio 1 is quite different as this was an internal promotion, I think they will have chosen to use presenters not only because they all have personality and speak a lot on their shows but because this is in the contracts with the presenters and would mean the BBC do not have to pay any other parties for the commercial.

We asked what was/is the favourite advert of all the participants in the focus group. The majority of the group said the Fosters advert was there favourite advertisement with the australian characters taking phone calls. Some group members said the Barclay-card advert with the man on the slide making his way home from work and how his Barclay-card has helped him to get the simpler things done faster. Both of these adverts I feel would be targetted towards young adults between 18 and 28.

With the Fosters advert the group said that they wouldn't choose the product because of the advertisement, however, most group members were below the age of eighteen and wouldn't be able to buy this product under UK law and this would have been something that the producers of this advert would have in mind.

The same result was with the Barclay-card advert, group members said that the advert appealed to them if they were to make a decision because of the wireless processing the card used, but, they would not use this advert to decide on something financial like moving banks, starting a new account etc.

The radio stations that were most listened to in the group included Capital Radio (Midlands), BBC Radio 1 and Absolute Radio. Only one person chosen Absolute and Radio 1 where the rest of the group chose Radio 1.

Everybody besides one person in the group who listen to radio 1 listened for the presenters, not the music.

We asked how the group members discovered this radio station and not a single person said that they started listening to the radio station through advertisements, rather through word of mouth and pre-tuned stations picked up by default scans on devices.

The focus group taught the group a lot about how people find out about their radio stations of choice and how they are advertised to coincide with this. Something that we came across was that the televisiona dvertisements had no effct upon listeners in our focus group and that people found out about their favourite radio station through word of mouth or because the station was readily available.

From thos findings, one may think, why have a television advertisement if they are not immediately effective? Well, that question is false and television advertisements can still have a huge impact, even from our focus group findings, if they are done right! We feel that we need to promote how Academy Radio is accesible from anywhere, not just when in Park Hall Academy, as well as this we need to make sure that people will talk about the advertisement which in-turn will drive publicity towards Academy Radio.

The way we can play on the readiness of the station is to promote the listening of the web, through the Academy's Virtual learning Environment. However, this is useless if we don't establish the brand of Academy Radio and get people talking about the station. To maximize word of mouth publicity, we will need to make our advertisement go viral. If we make an advertisement that is suited to our target audience of secondary school students aged between 11 to 18 who are currently in education, then we need to make sure that the advertisement will be relevant to them and will get them all speaking about Academy Radio.

The difference between Academy Radio and the radio stations spoken about in the focus group session is that Academy radio isn't yet an established brand. We will need to make sure that we can use the Academy's image correctly and can make sure that the advertisement is branded with what Academy Radio currently has in place for branding to not alienize people.

The Electric Theatre, Britains oldest working cinema: The last projectionist 20:16

Today the Media Department ran a trip to visit The Electric Cinema which is the oldest working cinema in the United Kingdom.

We watched a film in the second screen on the first floor, called The last Projectionist which is a film about the cinema itself. After this we watched the film we went to the first screen on the ground floor for a Q&A session with the man behind the film; Tom Lawes.

The film told a tale about the history of cinema and how it has changed over the years. We heard about news reels and news cinemas which linked with my radio technology unit covered with Mr Crawford. A theme which was strongly covered in the film was how multiplex cinemas really dominate the industry but as well how independent cinemas can still thrive and sometimes benefit over potential changes to the industry which would affect multiplex cinemas.

Another main topic in the film was about the introduction of new technologies where we learnt about how cinemas are becoming digital and projectors are becoming less used. We was able to link this topic of the film with the Q&A session afterwards where the producer of the film, also the owner of The Electric Cinema had told us about his plans to add a digital projector to the first screen and spoken about why the second screen was digital.

The film itself spoken about how different projectionists felt about the introduction of digital projectors rather than 35mm negative projectors. From this topic in the film I noticed how the older generation are less in-favour of change and would prefer things to stay how they are, where younger projectionists and new-comers can see the benefits to not only the quality of digital screens but also in storage, transportation and costs.

Some of the benefits I found that digital screens may have include:

• Storage of Media
  Using 35mm projectors mean the film has to be bought in reels, this is very costly. Digital projectors use a hard drive to store the media and are about the size of a book.
• Cost
  In transport the cost is significantly cut as the media is smaller. The cost of the film itself in terms of the media used to show the film would be a lot lower, rather than relying on printing the film.
• Training
  This was discussed in the Q&A session with Tom Lawes, he said that training somebody to use a digital projector would take about thirty minutes, where as it would take about three weeks to train somebody to use a 35mm projector correctly.
• Viewing
  Whilst some older projectionists said that the quality is better on 35mm, most projectionists say that digital is much better, including Tom Lawes in the Q&A. 

The idea of keeping 35mm is becoming more of a nostalgic thing as everybody reacts to change in different ways. Personally, I see this change as evolution and it is things like this that make the entertainment film industry better for everybody.

A subject covered in the Q&A session was the effects of film in our immediate local area. IMAX, Birmingha, we found out no longer exists. This was added to the film in April and shortly after this the IMAX cinema turned in to a usual cinema as the costs if running under the IMAX title as well as the film costs were too much.

I really enjoyed the film and I liked being able to see how film has changed so drastically, especially in the immediate are of where I live. It was interesting to see where the cinema entertainment industry was going, and with our Academy being the first group of students to see the film was excellent, especially that we had a Q&A with the producer of the film, in his own cinema.

PR & Marketing: Fundraising 13:07

In the media department we are going to start fundraising to buy a new professional video camera and microphone boom. Whilst the Academy has agreed to supply some funding, we want to earn some money too for the equipment.

The class has put together a fundraising committee and I am a member of this. I have thought up a few ideas I think we could put in to action to begin fundraising:

• Audio advertisement creation for Academy Radio - As well as airing the adverts, this would be some marketing material an organisation or company could use.
• Graphic advertisement creation for Academy Radio website - As well as publishing the adverts, this would be some marketing material an organisation or company could use.
• Auction - We could ask local companies, famous people, teachers could all donate something unique to be auctioned at a school event. This could even be themed.
• Sponsored spelling bee - Hold a spelling bee, this could be sponsored and each student could be sponsored.
• DJ 100 - Act as a promotional drive for Academy Radio, try and get as many DJ's as possible on Academy Radio, live, atleast once through the day.
• Auction of promises - The same as the auction theme but all of the things being auctioned are from local businesses, such as a free makeover at a Salon, or a free meal at a restaurant etc. This would work well as it would promote local business and at almost no cost to the people offering the prizes.