The Express & Star was founded in Wolverhampton in the 1880s by the Scottish American millionaire ‘Andrew Carnegie’ and a group of radical liberty party members including Thomas Graham. Carnegie’s aim was to campaign, through a string of regional daily newspapers, for the creation of a British Republic. His dream was to sack the monarchy, scrap the House of Lords and destroy every vestige of privilege in the land. By 1902 Carnegie had abandoned his mission and the newspaper has been owned by the Graham Family ever since. In the 1980s it paved the way for the computer revolution in the British newspaper industry and has remained in the forefront of publishing technology. The Express & Star has steadily overtaken its rivals to become the biggest-selling regional evening newspaper in Britain.
There is also an Express & Star sister paper called Shropshire Star which is based Shropshire and mid Wales, printing six editions per day, six days per week. Starting in 1964, when the Shropshire newspaper was the first evening newspaper in Europe, to be printed by offset. The readers have a particularly close affiliation with the newspaper. Within the circulation area, the Shropshire Star has an average issue readership of 223,000 adults, which represents 54% of the total adult population. Midlands News Association, which owns the express and star, also operates three commercial radio stations such as: Telford FM, Severn FM and The Wyre FM.
John Frederick Feeney originally published the ‘Birmingham Post’ newspaper under the name ‘Daily Post’ in Birmingham in 1857. This was the biggest selling broadsheet newspaper in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. In 1946 the paper stopped using advertisements on its front page and then replaced them with front-page news. The newspaper also changed to tabloid size in 2008. The post and Mail building, Birmingham opened in 1965 to accommodate the Post and Evening Mail newspapers, but The Post and is sister titles relocated to the restored Fort Dunlop building, three miles out of the city centre. After changing hands many times, the newspaper is now part of the Trinity mirror group. In February 2008 the newspaper re-launched its website as birminghampost.net. Then the paper moved to weekly publication in November 2009.
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Thursday, 11 March 2010
Thursday 11/03/2010
As a group we have been having some problems as team members are not completing task. Our original plan was to divide the work between ourselves, but now I have thought of doing all the research, planning and evaluation tasks individually and not relying on other people to do the work.
I have got feedback from my media teacher and i have realized there is more work to do than i originally thought. I will be working in my own time and over the weekend to get the research, planning and production tasks complete, so I can start on the evaluation tasks this time next week.
Thursday, 4 March 2010
Thursday 04 March 2010
There have been a few lessons now where my team members have not been attending and the tasks that have been shared out between us are not being completed.
The research and planning have been carried out for the newspaper and poster and the poster is nearly complete and the basic design of the newspaper has been transfered to Microsoft Publisher.
We still need to carry out the research and planning for the radio advertisement. We have also been experiencing technical difficulties with software we have been using for the research and planning.
Thursday, 3 December 2009
A2 Portfolio in Media
3-12-09
My teams original plan was to do brief 3 which would include doing two advertisements, but my team thought it would not be interesting enough so we then decided to do brief 8 which would include creating the first two pages of a local newspaper and two ancillary tasks which are a poster for the newspaper and a radio advertisement for the newspaper.
The main idea we have got for the two pages of the newspaper is a report of the 2012 theory. This would include discussing all the theories of the 2012 event and the film which is based on the upcoming 2012 events.
Monday, 29 June 2009
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Media Evaluation: MorphMinda
For this main task we had to be in working groups of no more than four candidates. In my working group there were myself, Stefan Ram, Manveer Athwal and Ngoni Vhondo.
We were asked to produce the titles and opening sequence of a new fiction film, which would last a maximum of two minutes. All the video and audio materials that we would want to use in our product would have to be produced by us and we could only use music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The storyline of the opening sequence of our movie does use forms and conventions of real life media because the film we produced was based on a character (me) that had an incident which lead the character to become a person who can morph into a rabbit but the film is also funny. This film would be categorised in the comedy, Sci-fi and fantasy genre. A more realistic film out on the market which could be classed within the same genre as MorphMinda would be The Hulk.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our film the two characters represent two people where one character causes a grudge which lead onto a incident and they would come across to be between 12-16 years of age and the actors represent this by them wearing school clothes and being in a school environment. Furthermore this represents the certain social group by showing an act of what you would call bullying where in on of the scenes a character is hit by a snow ball and it is resulting to bullying.
What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?
I think that our media product could be released as a big product as it has the potential for being very close the same genre and storyline of film called ‘The Hulk’. I think that this opening sequence could also be used as educational purpose as well because it shows some act of bullying that is caused because of the snow ball fights. Furthermore this film could also be shown to media students as an example for their work.
Who should be the audience for your media product?
Again I would think that this film has the potential to becoming a Hollywood Hit, but I think it would mainly be targeted for educational purpose as it is not perfect. Schools could use it for a number of reasons such as bullying and for using the film as an example for future media students.
How did you attract/address your audiences?
We attracted our audience by putting few ideas forward for our opening sequence which would be the most popular and then went onto the best storyboards to make the film as good as possible for our target audience. We had a couple of comedy scenes so the target audience would enjoy the film but we also had to make it realistic and sensible so it could be used for educational use.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
By constructing this media product I have learned how to use Imovie and Garageband software on the Apple Mac computers whereas I did not know how to use these software’s while I was doing my Preliminary task. I have also learned how and why it is best to use a tripod as much as you can with a camera because it keeps the shots more steady. I think that I will be able to do more editing later on in my career using the same software.
We were asked to produce the titles and opening sequence of a new fiction film, which would last a maximum of two minutes. All the video and audio materials that we would want to use in our product would have to be produced by us and we could only use music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
The storyline of the opening sequence of our movie does use forms and conventions of real life media because the film we produced was based on a character (me) that had an incident which lead the character to become a person who can morph into a rabbit but the film is also funny. This film would be categorised in the comedy, Sci-fi and fantasy genre. A more realistic film out on the market which could be classed within the same genre as MorphMinda would be The Hulk.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
In our film the two characters represent two people where one character causes a grudge which lead onto a incident and they would come across to be between 12-16 years of age and the actors represent this by them wearing school clothes and being in a school environment. Furthermore this represents the certain social group by showing an act of what you would call bullying where in on of the scenes a character is hit by a snow ball and it is resulting to bullying.
What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?
I think that our media product could be released as a big product as it has the potential for being very close the same genre and storyline of film called ‘The Hulk’. I think that this opening sequence could also be used as educational purpose as well because it shows some act of bullying that is caused because of the snow ball fights. Furthermore this film could also be shown to media students as an example for their work.
Who should be the audience for your media product?
Again I would think that this film has the potential to becoming a Hollywood Hit, but I think it would mainly be targeted for educational purpose as it is not perfect. Schools could use it for a number of reasons such as bullying and for using the film as an example for future media students.
How did you attract/address your audiences?
We attracted our audience by putting few ideas forward for our opening sequence which would be the most popular and then went onto the best storyboards to make the film as good as possible for our target audience. We had a couple of comedy scenes so the target audience would enjoy the film but we also had to make it realistic and sensible so it could be used for educational use.
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
By constructing this media product I have learned how to use Imovie and Garageband software on the Apple Mac computers whereas I did not know how to use these software’s while I was doing my Preliminary task. I have also learned how and why it is best to use a tripod as much as you can with a camera because it keeps the shots more steady. I think that I will be able to do more editing later on in my career using the same software.
Monday, 17 November 2008
Media: Ghosts Evaluation
In this media project we had to produce a short film which would be called ghosts which showed the conversation of two characters. One of these characters would be the ghost. We used four different camera shots which were long shot, close-up shot, 180-degree angle from the right and left. This would make the film look more interesting rather than having just one camera shot.
In our short film there are two characters which would be expected to be friends as the way they are performing. The characters in this film would thought to be young as young children only think about ghosts. The setting of this film would be in a school as the characters are dressed up smart and they are in a office type environment.
I think that our film would be released as a promotional or educational purpose because school students can learn from this short clip. I wouldn’t think that our film would be released as a big product because its duration is less than a minute. So I don’t think that this type of product would appeal to older people, I think is main interest will be young students.
I have learned many skills by creating this short film because I have learned how to use a camera and a tripod and I also know what different camera shots there are and how to use them appropriately. I have also learned how to use different software’s such as Imovie.
In our short film there are two characters which would be expected to be friends as the way they are performing. The characters in this film would thought to be young as young children only think about ghosts. The setting of this film would be in a school as the characters are dressed up smart and they are in a office type environment.
I think that our film would be released as a promotional or educational purpose because school students can learn from this short clip. I wouldn’t think that our film would be released as a big product because its duration is less than a minute. So I don’t think that this type of product would appeal to older people, I think is main interest will be young students.
I have learned many skills by creating this short film because I have learned how to use a camera and a tripod and I also know what different camera shots there are and how to use them appropriately. I have also learned how to use different software’s such as Imovie.
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