News Broadcast - Research and Analysis

Thinking about our storyline an epidemic would be big news and research into previous films taught us that an emergency broadcast to stay safe etc. was inevitable in any zombie horror film therefore we had to have one in ours. Another reason we wanted a news broadcast was to set the scene and the storyline in the opening shot and a news broadcast about an epidemic taking over Britain pretty much explains what the film is about in the first 30 seconds therefore it is vital that we tell our audience what the film is about and draw them in as soon as possible so that’s why we want a news broadcast in the beginning of our film.If we want a news broadcast in our film we need to know what’s involved in one so we decided to research an average breaking news broadcast. When researching we wanted to keep it as close to home as we possibly could so we wanted to look into an English breaking news broadcast and found this one by the BBC:

Looking into this clip and analysing it at first there’s an intro to tell you it’s BBC news but we don’t think this will be necessary for our film as long as we get straight to the point it’s fine. That way also we have more time for the actual film footage. Whilst the news is happening the reporter is calm, this is perhaps essential because a job of a news reporter would be to remain calm and collected to keep everyone’s nerves down. When he speaks he gets straight to point so our script needs to be straight to the point. As you can see on the screen the graphics of the BBC news always stay there. We think in order to show people it is a news broadcast this needs to be featured on our film. This particular example has animation on the graphics which isn't necessary for our film and also we don’t have the skill required to make good animation so just graphics overlaying the video is good enough. We also need a live shot of a city as well to enforce the fact that the epidemic is occurring in live time.

Secondly we wanted to research a news broadcast that was similar to our film so we looked up zombie outbreak broadcast and found this American one:

This next clip has been made by someone on their view of a zombie outbreak broadcast. This is easier for us to analyse because it is related to our film and has more parts about it what would be similar. The first thing we took into account is the graphics this broadcast has on. Compared to the other this one is so much more graphical and animated, most likely because it is American but it looks much more like a zombie apocalypse news broadcast. Although saying all this and this one does look more professional we don’t have the skill to replicate this one or make something similar and to be perfectly honest we don’t have the time. One thing that stands out to me about this clip compared to the other is the fact that it relates to the apocalypse theme when it goes static and looses connection. This is definitely something we will want to use on our news broadcast because it’s what would happen if there were an apocalypse, the broadcast may loose connection and go static and the noise would be too therefore that would be a good effect to add on to our broadcast. Another factor that appeals to us is the fact that when he is speaking his words flow, like a monologue it makes the broadcast look so much more professional and is something we will apply to our broadcast. Looking at both clips this one is definitely more alike what ours will be due to the fact it is a similar broadcast but both are very good. 

Now that as a group we have researched two different news broadcasts it’s time to pick and choose what we want in ours. We believe we should use the BBC graphics just for the fact that it’s easier and can be done much quicker and still gives the same effect it also lets the audience know that the film is taking place in the UK. We will also utilise this report as a monologue so it looks more professional. The way that the screen goes static reflects that something is going wrong and this is something we want in our broadcast, it makes the situation look panicked. We will most likely use a green screen and a shot of our a city to really set the scene and to show the reality of the epidemic.

After much consideration we developed this:

   

Looking at our news broadcast it has the BBC graphics in that we wanted about the epidemic. I feel this is better because it is much more cleaner and much more simplistic which makes it a better and looks much more professional. For this to be done we copied the BBC style and made an overlay on photoshop and deleted the white background so only the graphics remained. Next as I stated earlier we wanted green screen so we filmed Tom with a laptop and news notes and told him to talk calmly and smoothly which is good as it makes it look more like a news broadcast. However we did want the fear in the voice to make it look like it was a genuine threat to the world. But we couldn't portray that so we decided to leave it out and keep with the calm professional theme and make it look more realistic. And also we wanted a shot of a city and because we wanted to be as original as we could, we filmed Barnsley Town Centre.
Overall we are pleased with the news broadcast as it has come out just how we wanted it to be. The only problem is that the green screen on the edges isn't very good but after a lot of editing this was the best we could get it and we thought due to the fact we don't have any skill or previous experience in green screen editing we thought our time was best spent editing other parts of the film and keeping this as it is, we still believe this is one of the best aspects of our film.