3MW Feedback

Introduction to the News

I watched BBC News At 6 on 29th June 2017. The first stories goes as followed; Grenfell fire and the judge; Irish women can come to England and don't have to pay for abortions; Cardinal George Pell accused of sexual offences; RAF strikes on Islamic States; 21st Century Fox taking over Sky; Hillsborough disaster - Tony Brands death; farmer creates an art gallery on his farm. In the starting sequence, the audio is rather fast pasted, the way the presenter talks makes it so to quickly brief up the story while leaving details out for later in the program.
The presenter was George Alagiah, aged 61. The role Alagiah provides is to tell the nation of the latest updates in various stories that are selected for that news reading. The skills needed are clear communication skills so they get the correct meaning across to the audience. Confidence as well as this will help the presenter voice their story clearer.


News Ordering is the term used to describe the stories shown. The first story is the important, relevant breaking news, the topic that affects the most people; this is usually something devastating like a terrorist attack or in this case, the fire of Grenfell which is dubbed "The worst fire in modern Britain". After the first report, the stories lower in relevance to the audience ending with the last story - the Kicker - which is used to make the audience feel a little better. Slow news day is when there aren't many stories on a large scale, so they use small stories with not much detail as a filler. Each story has a news value and these values are used to rank the relevance of each news story.
Immediacy - How recent the story has happened.
Familiarity - The distance between big areas of Britain or Britain as a whole.
Amplitude - The size of the event that impacted people
Frequency - How often the event happens.
Unambiguity - How clear the event is.
Predictability - How predictable the event is
Surprise - How much shock the even caused to people
Continuity - How many times the event has been reported
Elite Nation/People - How big a country is/how famous a person is.
Personalisation - How an event can change a view or belief
Negativity - How good or bad the event is.
Balance - Making an equal amount of good or bad in a broadcast or ending with a happier story.


Discuss bias through selection and omission
Editors can be biased in choosing the stories that they want to be broadcast. They can also breeze through a story or can completely cut out details to imply a different meaning to the story.
Discuss bias through placement / order
The order in which a news artical is placed can determine on whether that artical is read.
Discuss bias through headlines
A headline can make or break an artical. Various headlines can be used to centre the report to a different aspect of what is actually happening, it can also be used to grab the audience's attention.
Discuss bias through shot selection and camera angles
Certain images and video clips can be used to make an event see better or worse than what it actually is.
Discuss bias through names and captions
People can get trapped in a bad turn out and sometimes the news can make it worse by labelling various people and certain things.
Discuss bias through use of language
Language use can imply meanings, for the better or for the worse; often making the viewer have negative thoughts about the topic.

My 3MW Documentary

3MW Research [Primary and Secondary]

My primary research is my questionnaire which I've asked various people to get a rough understanding of how they feel. I've also [within the video] used my own personal experience of going to the bathroom, just my walk to the only toilet I feel comfortable using because it's a unisex toilet. My secondary research is present through Google's definition of 'Transgender' and through a book I was given to help me out. The book contains information about how to walk through the transition to become the person you want to be. It also talks about coming out to friends and family.

3MW Proposal - Pitch

-My idea is awareness of transgender people. I will not, however, directly talk about how transgender people deal with their situation, more so about the people around them and how family, friends, work colleagues and subject teachers react and act towards the person they know.

-The genre of my documentary is interactive. Mine will involve asking questions to the people within my documentary. These questions will be related to how they react or how they would react to transgender people.

-My target audience would be mostly 16-30 year olds, perhaps extending the range on both sides.

-I’m hoping that most - if not all - of the filming will be done within the college; though I may have to do filming outside of the college during after hours.

-I will not need experts for the documentary, all I will need are selected people who I will personally interview; similar to Louis Theroux.

-Various questions will be asked. An example of the sort of questions that will be asked is “Do you think people who are transgender are influenced in their choices?”.

-Props and costumes won’t feature within my film, meaning there won’t be anything that I will have to purchase for the documentary, making a budget list irrelevant.

3MW Proposal - Mind Map

Documentary Mini-Task

A documentary is a topic based film which details the facts about an event that happened in the real world. An expository documentary is spoken to the viewer directly. This can come through as a voice over or titles. the aim of the documentary is to push the viewer to one side of a subject using strong arguments and point of views. An observational documentary observes the person/people involved with the documentary topic which. Topics can be an incident that impacts heavily on a person's life. An example of this is "Beware the Slenderman" [2016], a crime documentary following two girls who attempted to murder their friend for a fictional character. An interactive documentary is where various people are interviewed while the audience is also being interacted with. A presenter is often on the screen talking the the audience while they interview others. A reflexive documentary is where the film-maker is apart of the documentary itself. It can help show the themes of the film clearly. An example of this is the "When Louis Met..." [2000] series, where Louis Theroux would meet various people such as Jimmy Savile. A performative documentary is performed using actors in the place of real people. It's often used in crime documentaries to show a near enough view of what actually happened.