Show Presentation

Show presentation - Mike

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Risk Assessment 1

This is the risk assessment for the first episode of Lines

Feedback From BBC Blast

BBC Blast saw my blog for the show unit and left a comment on one of the blog posts. This is what it says:

Hi Mike!

Great to see you're thinking about uploading your project to Blast - and it's cool to see someone documenting how they put together a series like this. We look forward to seeing it!
And a handy hint: if you do upload to Blast then try not to put surnames in the credits, because for safety reasons we can't show videos which clearly identify young people.

All the best,
The Blast team

Good stuff.

Ending the story

Even though we were supposed to make three episodes of Lines, I felt the story was left unsolved so I decided to write a final part to the story.

The Last Line

INT. – THE DETENTION ROOM – EVENING

JAKE, ZEKE, TAYLOR and MEGAN are sitting around a table, visibly bored. SETH is pacing up and down the room.

SETH (murmuring)
I can’t be trapped. I can’t.

JAKE
You’re all missing the obvious here.

They all turn to face him.

JAKE (continued)
The door may be locked, but we have a window. Windows smash.

MEGAN
So can doors.

JAKE
Yes. But unfortunately, we do not have a bulldozer, so that’s out of the question.

ZEKE
I’m not smashing a window.

SETH
I bet you would if your mate asked you to.

ZEKE
Hey. That’s out of order. Taylor’s a troublemaker. He can do it.

TAYLOR (sighing)
Up yours.

MEGAN gets to her feet. She lifts up a chair. Fade to black. The window can be heard shattering.

SETH (shocked)
Whoa, Megan! Why would you do that?!

MEGAN
I only did what guys wanted to.

JAKE
Hey, guys. I found a key.

The third episode of Lines ended with all the characters being locked in the detention room. This ending explains how they all managed to get out of the detention room. I felt this was the perfect solution of how to end the story.

Band Poster

Here is a copy of the poster that I designed to look for unsigned bands to send us some of their music that we could use in Lines. I made this poster using the program called 'Pages'. I left the email address so that the bands could email their tracks to me so that I could review them and see if they fitted in with the episodes of Lines. I distributed these posters around the college in the hope that someone in a band would see them and send in their music.

Final Writeup

Using your experiences on this project and relating your own programmes to other webisodes you have researched, discuss how taking account of the online audience affects the process of showing creative work


Online shows can differ from TV shows or theatre by quite a lot. Online shows can be viewed at any time during the day, whether its in the morning or very late at night. TV shows can be viewed when they are first shown and are often repeated later on that day or on a different channel on a separate day. But the development in technology means that the programmes can be watched online at any time of the day.

They can also be watched on iPhones which are the latest model of phones, which can gain access to the internet by using wifi. iPods can often be used to access the internet where online shows and tv shows can be watched. Theatre shows are completely different from that of online tv shows, in that the concept of online shows are very short, usually lasting from just two minutes to ten minutes. The average length of a tv show is 30 minutes to 60 minutes. The length of a play can be from an hour to three hours. The only way a play can be watched is if someone actually pays to see them, whereas online shows and tv shows are free to view.

They all appeal to different age ranges as well. Online shows mostly appeal to teenagers as a vast number of teenagers spend most of their time on the internet. Television shows, such as Skins or The Inbetweeners, are also aimed at teenagers, although shows like Eastenders or Midsumer Murders are aimed at a middle aged audience. The same can be said for that of theatre shows. They are primarily aimed at middle aged people, but you get shows like Grease or Mamma Mia! that also appeal to a younger audience. This shows that they are catering for all age groups.

Social networking seems to be the biggest way to reach teenage audiences. TV shows like Misfits and Skins have all their facebook groups which people can join, and also follows individual characters tweeting on twitter during the airing of each episode. The websites are also interactive and also give audience members the chance to participate in the making of the show by a band sending in tracks from their myspace or getting the chance to cameo in a future episode. This generates a lot of public interest as they like the opportunity to get involved with projects. We decided to make the main page for Lines on facebook because a large number of teenagers spend their spare time on facebook. This would help to maximize publicity for Lines.

Lines has sparked quite a bit of popularity online. The first episode was a massive success with over two hundred views on the second day of its launch. A lot of the youtube comments were very positive and we ended up with over eight hundred views. Some of the major criticisms we received from the first episode was that the acting was poor, the sound levels were different and we needed a variety of shots. We took all this into consideration and in the second episode, we had a varied use of camera shots and also tried to sort out the sound issue.

There was a massive reduction in views for the second episode. We have two hundred views. The third episode also has roughly the same amount of views, so we may have reached our peak early. With the second episode, there were some criticisms that the story didn’t go anywhere, so with the third episode, we tried to make the episode more entertaining. This worked to a certain extent, but we still got criticism for the continuity between episodes two and three.

Having looked at Living With The Infidels, an online series, their series has the episodes uploaded to their website and also on youtube. However, they have been uploaded on two separate occasions, which means when an episode is watched on their main website, the views on youtube remain the same. We tried to avoid this problem with Lines. A large number of our views are from a large number of websites, not just from youtube. This helps us to keep an accurate tally of all the views each episode has.

In conclusion, this has been a good project.

Audience Research - Q + A Session

Here is the video for our Q + A session. The people participating are Chris Lyon, James Baker, Catherine Montgomery and Jack Talbot.




They gave us very good feedback and also said that we should make an episode 4. Woohoo!

Audience Research - Questions

Here is a list of questions in preparation for the question and answer session. The questions were prepared by me and Tara.

1) What do you think of the concept of Lines?

(Shows first episode)

2) Overall, what did you think of the first episode? What were the strengths and weaknesses?

3) Did episode 1 make you feel like you wanted to carry on watching future episodes?

(show second episode)

4) What do you think is different from the first episode?

5) What did you think of the second episode? What were the strengths and weaknesses?

(show third episode)

6) Do you like how the story has progressed over the series?

7) What did you think of the third episode? What were the strengths and weaknesses?

8) What would you like to see in future episodes? Would you want a change of characters/different locations etc?

overall questions

9) What ways did the characters appeal to you, what did you like about them and the social groups they represented?

10) Do you think Lines was marketed well?

11) Are there any other ways you think we could promote the series of Lines? (not including facebook, myspace, twitter etc)

12) Would you look forward to an episode 4?

Thank you for taking the time to come to this Q + A session, we welcome any further feedback you may have.

Audience Research - Episode 3

Having released episode 3 of Lines on Monday 1st February, the episode has had the least amount of time online than the other episodes. Here is a copy of the youtube comments from that video. We are still recieving comments regarding the structure of the episode and how things aren't being properly explained to the audience. Even though this was explained by a voiceover in the episode, maybe we need to make this clearer in future episodes. From 7th February 2010, the video had recieved a total of 231 views on youtube and two five star ratings. Here is a few charts explaining where the views came from.

In my opinion, the number of views are still good, but they are still lower compared to the previous two episodes. And yeah....

Audience Research - Episode 2

Here is a list of all the youtube comments for the second episode of Lines. These were taken from youtube. As you can see, a number of the people who have commented have left quite positive feedback about the episode, though there has been some confusion about the short runtime and also what the story is about as some people claim the story never really develops, which I feel is a true comment. By 7th February 2010 the video had recieved a total of 298 views, which is a massive drop from the first episode. However, this may be because some people did not enjoy watching the first episode, so they did not want to watch this episode. Here are some graphs.

As you can see, a large number of the views are still coming from people watching the video on facebook. But what we are also starting to get is people watching the episode from watching either the first or third episodes. This is good as it shows people are interested in the series.

Audience Research - Episode 1

As of Sunday 7th February 2010, the first episode had a total of 806 views on youtube. Many of these views have come from other social sites where the video was posted. Here is a chart and graph to prove this.






As you can see, the majority of the views came from Facebook, which is where Lines is more heavily represented and marketed at. By the end of the first hour of Episode 1 being online, the video had recieved 89 views on youtube, which is pretty successfull. Episode 1 recieved a large number of views, which was a good confidence boost when it came to making the second episode.

The Soundtrack

Sam was in charge of creating the soundtrack for Lines. The band who gave us the rights to use their songs were called 'Kids Love Lies'. Their music was used for our title theme and also in the end credits for each episode. Very nice..

Costumes

As the story of Lines features a group of school kids in detention, we realised that we needed to put the kids in school uniform. I thought the uniform should be kept simple: black trousers, black shoes, white shirt and possibly a tie. I was thinking that alternative characters could wear different things in order to make their stereotypes stand out more. These are a few examples that I looked at.

Tim brought the costumes and they did not look much different, except from the fact that the cast did not wear a tie and did not wear the trousers. In my opinion, this made the characters stand out more in their individual stereotypes and hopefully make the audience realise why they had been put in detention in the first place.

Audience Research

Here is a screen grab of a message sent through facebook to invite people to attend a question and answer session in tomorrow's lesson. I shall also invite each of the cast members as well. Job done.

Feedback From Episode 2

Upon the launch of the second episode of Lines, we got feedback from each of the members of the class. The feedback is as follows:

Teacher Feedback

A couple of interesting shots
Strange narrative, cannot understand it (7 People mentioned this)
Cuts well
Characters work well
Sound levels are high & low (5 people mentioned this)
Taster bit / preview works well (3 people mentioned this)
Too much in one content in one episode (2 people mentioned this)
Good angles used
Jumps too much
Pointless shots used
Confusing genre (comedy or drama?)
Acting is not very good, could be better
Spy could of been done better, e.g appears in the room like is the skeleton
Silent moments ned sorting out
Need quicker cuts
Continuity works well
'Jaws' sound / music cuts in too suddenly & drops out to early


Teacher feedback (Pete)

Continuity with previous episode (costume, scripting) works well
Elliot's character has been developed well
Use of jaws music?
Suddenly goes silent
Much better editing than the 1st episode
Add footage, where it goes black / silent?
Like the taster for episode 3 at the end

We have taken this feedback into consideration and will make all the relevant changes with the third episode.

Episode 1 Youtube Audience Feedback

Here are all of the youtube comments that we received after the first episode was put online.

Most of these are quite positive comments, although some of them do give suggestions as to how the episodes could be improved. 

Lines - The Online Presence

We have our facebook group for Lines, which seems to be the first place to be updated. I have included a screen grab of the group's facebook page. This is always being updated, keeping our audience involved in the progress of the series. We also have a myspace page for the group,

 which mainly focuses on the soundtrack for the series. This is where we found the band 'Kids Love 

Lies' who gave us the rights to use their music in the series. Here is a

screen grab of our myspace page.  Twitter is another social site use

d to help promote our series. Here is a screen grab of the main page. And finally, we come to the official

 Lines website. Here is a screen grab of what the website looks like. 

Creating A Discussion

Upon uploading the first episode of Lines to facebook for everyone to see, I created a discussion in the hope that some people would leave feedback on what they thought of the episode, how the series could improve upon later episodes and also story suggestions. I thought this would be an important aspect of the show. Unfortunately, no one participated in this discussion.  Maybe not enough people knew about the series to generate a proper discussion. 

Cast Auditions

This is a brief video of everyone that auditioned for a role in Lines. Unfortunately, not everyone got the roles that they auditioned for. 

Audition Lines

Here is a copy of each of the characters's lines used for the auditions for each of the characters. We gave each of the candidates a set of three monologues to perform, whilst we filmed them. This was done so that we could see who would be more suited to each role. 

Lines Episode 3

Here is the third episode of Lines, which went online at 7:00 pm yesterday evening. The video was edited by Matt. 

Hope you enjoy...

Episode 3 Poster

Here is the poster created to help promote the third episode of lines. It was created by Tim and Tara and can be found on the lines facebook page. 

Reflections From Filming

I became the new director for the third episode of Lines. Upon planning  for the third episode, we learned that the teacher playing Teacher 1  was away in Disneyland. This caused slight problems for us as the teacher helped with the main plot arc for that episode. We sent out other emails to members of staff and as we never heard back from them in time, we had to cut the teacher out of the episode. 

Another problem we encountered before we began filming was that the girl playing Katie, Angelica Thomson, was ill on the day of the shoot. This was a problem as she was an important part of the first half of the episode. We were going to replace her with someone else, but as we couldn't find anyone willing to appear in that role, we had to change the scene. Instead of Taylor having an argument with Katie in person, we changed it to Taylor arguing with her over the phone. 

Now that we had this problem sorted out, we had to begin the task of creating a shot list and a storyboard for what we were going to shoot. I managed to plan the shot list for the majority of the episode, but there were some parts in which I weren't so sure where we were going to put the camera. 

The end of the lesson arrived and we all headed over to the filming room, ready to begin filming. I felt that the shoot went smoothly. We filmed every scene from a number of different camera angles and positions. I then allowed Dave to film the rest of the footage so that episode 2 could be edited completely. 

Afterwards, we filmed the corridor scene, which we had to cut short due to the fact we ran  out of time. In total, we managed to get around fifteen minutes of footage, which I feel is quite good. I feel I did a fairly average job as director. We filmed everything that we needed to and I made the cast rehearse a few times before we filmed, in order to make them more confident in their roles and subsequently act better.