Digital News Production: Original Ideas

The Team

Myself, Wez, Jordan & Harry.

Due to our abilities to work well both on our own and as a team - as proven in previous units and workshops, the four of us have teamed up for our digital news production. We've all got brilliant work ethic and have very similar interests, so we can trust that we'll work extremely well together.

The Starting Point

We all understood that we wanted a human interest story. We're easy-going characters, so we can relate to a more light-hearted side of the news a lot better than a 'doom and gloom' story.

The topic of gaming proved to be not only our first sparked idea but the strongest. As especially I, Jordan and Harry have a very high interest in video games. When Jordan and Harry mentioned creating a gaming news channel, I could see it working fantastically.

Initial Idea

While taking notes during our lecture, I had an idea come to mind. As video games are usually associated with a younger generation, I thought we could deal with the mood effects of playing violent and aggressive video games. Below are the rough notes I made...

Package:

- Interview/s with parent/s and their opinions/experiences

- Video game footage, either requested from Youtube or potentially recorded ourselves

- Discussing examples of violent video games

OB:

- Reporter holds interview with a 'gaming nut' teenager on location at their house to get their opinions or experiences

- Reporter plays a violent game on camera

- Then talks about how their mood is affected

This originally seemed like a strong idea, however after discussion with the team, they pointed out that the topic and story seems too broad for a short package and OB. I realised that we could be taking on more than our broadcasting and production time would allow, and that it would be unlikely to finish strongly. So the idea was written off.

Idea Development

Sitting down as a group, ideas were thrown around. It was pointed out that video games seem to be full of 'bugs' now days, yet they're still being realised without being fixed. Seeming like this topic could explore a variety of areas, we went in depth.

Then our strongest idea came up. We decided that if possible, we could base our OB on a reporter attending the midnight launch of a game. So we researched what games were being released around the time of our shoot week and found the perfect game. Assassin's Creed Syndicate is being released within our shoot week, this turned out to be the perfect game to focus on, as the previous Assassin's Creed game was released with a lot of flaws. Now all we needed was to find a midnight launch event and the OB would come together.

Leading from this, we knew we could have a very strong package on the topic of games being released unfinished. After discussing what could be included, for the package, we roughly decided on...

- Using bug footage of 'Assassin's Creed Unity' (Syndicate's predecessor)

- Talking to an expert for their perspective

- That we want to use a green screen for part of it

What's Next...

- Discussing our idea/topic with our tutor and getting feedback

- Research on local Assassin's Creed Syndicate midnight launches

- Conducting research on gaming news channels