Fiction Adaptation Project - The Death Bed Ideas

With this poem I have 2 main ideas with what I could do;

1: The first idea I had was to modernism the poem and take the aspect of the first world war and put it into the modern world. This idea was to show an aspect of war in everyday modern life, so I could show it through gangs with a gang war or gangs taking over a curtain part of a city and enforcing their rules with the citizens. Also I could do a mugging in which someone tries to defend themselves from being mugged and gets stabbed or if they are helping someone else who is getting mugged and gets seriously hurt.

2: The other idea I had was to keep it in the world war 1 era and have a soldier just walking back to base when he randomly gets shot from a surprise attack. From hitting the group he gets carried to the hospital all the way passing in and out of consciousness, before at the hospital bed having death take him.

With both ideas I want when either the soldier or the citizen passes into consciousness he would pass into a "limbo" and be fighting for his life while being tortured and teased by "Death". In the "Limbo" state he would pass through a journey of his life and death as he tries to escape the light and into reality. When he comes out of consciousness he would be hopeful and try to stay awake, but slip away again and again fight to come back. But the twist is that as he fights hard to stay away the light and into life he doesn't realise that he'll never come back to the reality and ends up being taken from death to hell.

Fictional Adaptation - The Death Bed Intro

In this unit we have to take one of 5 poems given to us and adapt it into a film. Out of the 5 poems I chose to adapt "The Death Bed" by Siegfried Sassoon.

I did some research on the background of the poem and poet and found that, Sassoon was born into a very rich family in 1886 and had an extremely comfortable early life. He studied at Cambridge and went hunting in his spear time, along with his passion of writing poetry. He was sent to war and revived a Military cross during his service. He was very reckless during the war, so much that he earned the title of "Mad Jack". After he returned from the war he became disillusion and wrote declaration against the war and called for a negotated peace risking court martial, he was sent to a war hospital. He survived the war and went on to publish "The Death Bed" in 1916. The poem is about a dying soldier who moves in and out of consciousness from the battle field to the hospital. The weather frequently reminded him of the ordeal and the state he was in. Sassoon uses the symbolism of the waves of the water to show the border between life and death, and his life being washed away. He continues to use symbolism through the pain which the soldier is experiencing with a 'prowling beast' gripping and tearing at his energy and soul and dreams. These are all constant torture and torment from death before it actually takes him onto the other side. 

(http://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/the-death-bed/)

I decided to do this poem because most war stories are about a brave soldier who does heroic things and survives the war and live. A bit too much fairy tale, so I like this poem because it's about the massive percent of soldiers who went to war and didn't come back and it shows some realism and truth to the war which is death. Also I like that the soldier goes through different states before he dies. Also I like the use of symbolism in the poem to describe the state of the soldier and pain he's going through.  

Digital News Production - Research on Hugh Lowe Farm

We have come up with a couple of ideas for both the package and "Live" report. For the package I have looked at some award winning farms which grow award winning strawberries all year round.

    http://www.tasteofkentawards.co.uk/awards/fruit-awards/

I found this site which is for award winning farms and looked to see if they was anything interesting. People can apply and see if they can win awards for their farms. I found this award winning farm called Hugh Lowe Farms which grow award winning strawberries all year round. They are a local farm to Kent and won the award last year for their amazing strawberries.

This farm is based in Maidstone and has been around since 1893 providing food to London and other places in the UK. 

http://www.producedinkent.co.uk/producer/150/hugh-lowe-farms-ltd/

This farm is a family run farm company and they grow a massive variety of fruits and vegetables and are the largest independent berry farm the the UK. They use glass houses to keep the seasonal fruits running all year round to a high quality. They also supply many major supermarkets locally and nationally. They also supply every strawberry for the Wimbledon tennis championship for over 20 years.

Digital News Production - Ideas

In groups we had to come up with ideas for the news project. We had to come up with a number of ideas, a news channel, a package, a "live" report and a brand logo.

We began by brainstorming different genres for our page to know what kind of journalism we were going to focus on. Our first step was going to deiced between local or worldwide news, as we don't really know any good contacts for worldwide news and we knew the local area better we deiced to go for local news. We then created a spider diagram. (Which is above) After analysing the diagram we came to decision that we were going to focus of nature and different aspects of it. We are going to look at the local wildlife and all charities which deal with preserving them, and communities which have a problem with them. We will hopefully be looking for a event of some sort which we can go to or a festival on helping or preserving or trying to contain a problem. This we think will be good for out "Live" news report as an event is always good for "Live" shoots.

For our package idea we were thinking of looking at food! We want to find something special in the local area to do with food, if its and bad side, like terrible restaurants, bars or pubs and see what makes these places really bad. The only problem with that is identity, because no place which we will film and show as a bad place will allow us to identify the company and that will be bad for us because we can't really help viewers on where not to go if we can't show them the place. Another idea is the opposite, award winning restaurants, bars, pubs, farms ect. With us showing the place off in a good way we will have no problem with identity.

Fictional Adaptation - Brief

During this unit we have to adapt a poem into a short film, we were given a choice of 5 poems, all with a first world war theme. We can't change any of the poet's writing but we can add additional dialog if needed and the poem has to be in the short film in the form of narration, spoken or texts. We then have to create a title sequence with other people also doing the same poem. We can take any form of style we choose and interpret the poem as we want. We are acting at the directer and editor for this unit and must seek assistance for the other roles. This short film must be between 3-5 minutes long. 

With this unit I am very interested and excited to get into the filming of a poem and adapt it in a way which I see would fit best with the poem. 

The other aspect of this unit is the written assignment, this is a 2000- 2500 word essay and we can base it on 1 of 3 questions. 

1: Discuss the views that "with a successful adaptation, the original work is transformed into something new and different, although retaining many traces of what it was formerly" with reference to at least one text adapted for broadcast television.

2: To what extent is it true that "Adaptations of classic texts enable contemporary audiences to re-visit the past; as such they can be situated within the border context of postmodern appropriations of history?" Examine with reference to at least one adapted for broadcast on television. 

3: In adapting a novel the adapter inevitably infringes the integrity of the original text - discuss with reference to at least one text adapted for broadcast on television. 

Digital news production - Break down of brief

So in this project we have a number of objectives to meet.

In groups we have to design our own brand online news channel which consists of our own original title sequence, GFX and strapline.

Now with the online channel I had a few ideas of what to do and expect from a new channel;

This is the BBC news channel, when I look at a news channel I see a number of things before you see the artistic.
First is the brand, which is the BBC logo band at the top of the news page. This is the identifier for the channel.
For our page I want a similar stand out band which will catch the eye of readers to let know know what channel their on.
The next thing is the lay out of the site, as their are government funded they don't need to place advertisements to fund the page. They have laid out the page with a categories bar at the top, so the viewers can select a certain type of news. Then they start with the big head line with a big picture at the top of the channel. Then it gets smaller as you go down the page as the stories get less important.

I like the set out of the BBC page as they grab the views attention with a big head line and big picture of the most important news. This grabs the viewer and makes them want to know more about the story.
With the head line they use simple yet powerful words, followed but a powerful picture.
"RAF set for strikes on IS targets" Short but effective, with powerful words like RAF, strikes, targets. All these words grab the attention of the viewer to read on.

I want this kind of thing on our page, to make the page stand out and look interesting and grab the attention on the viewers.

With the Sky news channel it's a little different than the BBC channel. They still have their brand logo at the top clearly stating which channel it is, but it's not at the top, instead there's an advert. Now this is for funding purposes as their not government funded. With this the channel is covered in adverts. However they still have their big head line and picture as their first story, to grab the attention of the viewers.





The next aspect of the channel is a brand logo, with the logo it's first important not to copy any big logo's already out where.

With all these different brands you can clearly tell them apart by one thing, which is the colour. The colour is a big thing which helps people identify the channel.
The other thing for a good logo is design, each logo has a unique design which identifies them. With channel 4 they have the big purple 4 and the BBC have the letters in tiles all these help identify the channels. With our channel we need the same aspects to stand out, we need a good colour and design which give us our individuality and identity which viewers will recognise.

The next thing is a original title sequence; this is the sequence which appears before the news programme comes on.

These are good sequences because they show the brand logo which help people identify the channel. The music is a good aspect of the sequence as it helps the audience distinguish the programme they are watching as it's catchy and easy to recognise. Also the music is quite serious and formal which helps the theme of the programme. I want our title sequence to have these qualities so our viewers will recognise not only our news channel but they know just from the style and music that it's a news programme.

Another feature of a news report is a strapline. This appears when interviewing someone, the strapline will appear across the bottom of the screen and will contain; the interviewers name and what they do and the subject title. Also accompanied by the news brand logo and colours. In our channel I would like to have something similar to the BBC strapline as I like the lay out of it.

DIGITAL NEWS PRODUCTION - Brief

To start of this second year we have a unit called; Digital news production.
This unit consists of;
                                  To work in a group of 3 or 4. I decided to partner up with Ruby Rogers and Charlie Ansell. I picked these people because I have worked previously with them and we get on well, so believe we can make good work together.

In our groups we have to - design our own brand online news channel. Our own original title sequence, GFX and strapline.

We need to produce 1 news package, with a duration of 2'00" - 2'30".

We need to produce 1 "live" reporter on location based report, which has to be shot live, with a duration of no more or less than 2'00".

And a written element to the news channel.

All our individual workshop material has to be on the news channel.

Final a critical case study of 1500 words on;
Comparing and contrasting two main evening news programmes on the same day on either BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, or Sky.