Character Identity

We had been given the task in the module Contemporary Media Issues, to create a character(s) with some sort of narrative, using social networking and present it to the rest of the group. We were given the choice whether to make it realistic or fictional. I worked with Megan on this task, and after a lot of thinking, we came up with the idea of creating two characters, Lucy Taylor and Sophia Jones. They are both friends and are both are 21 years old and come from Liverpool, however the twist to the narrative was that Lucy is suffering with anorexia.

We wanted to make this story and the characters realistic, as the topic is very sensitive and serious. We decided to look into it before posting anything, so we knew exactly how it would feel to be anorexic and anybody who cares for them. We found on NHS Choices website, a story from a 19 year old girl called Katie, who suffered 4 years with anorexia. It gives very in depth details about her journey in and out of this illness, and also gives different reasons why she felt she ended up with this illness. We found out one of the reasons was that her parents split a couple of years before, so we felt we could base Lucy around this real life person's story, to make it as realistic as possible and to deal with it properly.

We created both characters a facebook, twitter and tumblr each, to express any feelings they had about the illness or anything else in their life. Lucy did interact with 1 or 2 people, going through similar problems as our character. Megan spoke to these people which made her feel quite guilty as she wasn't really having to deal with any of these problems, however we felt it would be better to reply and help these real people talking to her. We felt the task went well, however next time, we would maybe pick something less serious, as we felt pretty bad pretending to have all these problems, when it is real life to many people, however it was challenging and we felt we handle everything well.

MMA Production Practice Film

On Tuesday morning, we went down to Next Generation MMA Fighting group, to get some footage for our last production practice film for this year, Factual Short. We saw what happens in training for MMA fighters, and what MMA includes. MMA is Mixed Martial Arts, and people who went to the club are all different ages and both male and female fighters. We got different shots of them practising different moves in partener work, and managed to get two interviews with a female fighter and a professional MMA male fighter. We found out more about the club and what MMA fighting, and we hope to focus on people's opinions on the violence and limits to the sport.

We are still yet to film more footage and edit ready for our rough cut, but I feel quite pleased with what we have got at the moment.

What you need in a team

On Thursday's Creativity and Concept lecture, we worked in groups to focus on team-work. We discussed that a team is 2 or more people working together to achieve the same goal. We also talked about the negatives in teams that can occur such as having no communication with each other, taking control of everything, not sharing out tasks and not listening to other people's ideas. We felt these were important negatives to think about, as they are ones that affect how a team works, as it can cause problems and make team members feel less motivated. Having been in a difficult team to work with in the past, I could relate to some of the things said.  We discussed solutions to these problems, and the one we felt most effective was to talk to a team member face to face about problems, rather than in text, as people can be misunderstood. It would also be better to have all the group join to sort problems out but have just one person talking, so no member of the team feels intimidated by all members of the team.

Narrative/Storytelling

We were put into groups and each group picked a particular object to create a story about.We had chosen a brooch which we had to base our story around. Looking at it, it had gems on and looked like something older people would wear. We decided on a story that the Queen of England had her brooch stolen from the palace. We thought it would be interesting to have the suspects people who are close to the Queen. The suspects were  Prince Charles, Pippa Middleton, David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nick Clegg.We thought using our paper, we would create a police board, making it look like a police investigation. We created a tabloid front news storyprint to give details on what had happened. We also created an invitation and a guestlist of the Queen's garden party, where all of the suspects were invited to, giving them each a reason to be in the palace on the day. We used postick notes to show each of the suspect's motives and any evidence found for each suspect.  As we were showing the rest of the course members our story, we decided to create a tally chart of each suspect and titled it with 'Who's Done It?' giving everyone an option to choose which suspect they think it was, allowing people to interact and engage with our story. I enjoyed making this story as I thought it was enjoyable and funny thinking of motives for each of these famous suspects.

Liverpool

 Photos I've taken around Liverpool