Magazine TV Show: Self-Evaluation

The first thing I had to do was create an idea, which I struggled with. I had to create an idea that was newsworthy and preferably something that I could passionately talk about. I landed on 'Self-Destructive TV Shows'. The concept is to choose three TV shows with awful endings, so awful that it ended up ruining the show and sending millions of fans into a frenzy. Then to talk through the ending of the show whilst rating it, so viewers can judge based off the review if it's worth watching. Once the idea was sorted I then had to think of the layout of the TV show as well as what I would be discussing, bearing in mind that my segment can only be five minutes long. At first I wanted to talk about numerous TV shows but with the time crunch I landed on just three, which I presume will still be hard to fit into five minutes. Regarding the layout of the segment, I'd at first give a brief summary of the show before I digress into the awful ending. I would go on to discuss the repercussions it had on the show writers, directors and actors as well as asking, could it have been avoided? And if so, how? Then that's when I'd give my rating of the show as well as my reasoning.

I came up with seven shows that I have watched with the worst endings imaginable; Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, 13 Reasons Why, Sex Education, and The Wilds. I ended up deciding on Game of Thrones, How I Met Your Mother, and The Wilds. The reason I chose these shows is because I feel in credibly passionate about them, as do a majority of Gen-Z. These three shows have accumulated well over 50 billion views through TikTok not to mention other social media platforms. I thought I'd be perfect person for this topic because I'm passionate about both film and TV but I feel very passionate about these particular shows which makes their endings hurt all the more. I’m also aware that there are many who feel the same regarding these shows which makes it easy to appeal this segment to my target audience, Gen-Z. This segment very much links in with pop culture and Gen-Z with the three shows, as mentioned earlier, accumulating a combined 50 billion views on TikTok proving them to still be relevant and hated on to this day, even though all three shows finished well over five years ago.

Once I had decided on the three shows I would talk about, I needed to write a script. The script for my show came to me quite naturally as I'm already very passionate about the shows so this meant that there was very little research needed. For the research I conducted I used secondary and quantitative research. For this project I could not conduct primary research as I needed facts such as statistics like the year a show came out, primary research would not have covered this. Quantitative research was needed for my statistics to answer questions such as: how many viewers did this show have?, what year was this show released?, how many people didn't like the ending?, etc. other than this there was not much research to conduct as I'm a regular watcher of all three shows and have set opinions on them all which is majority of the show.

Once my research was complete, writing my script was very easy. My script ended up being longer than I expected because I had to explain each show quite a bit at the start so people can understand why the ending is so awful. I removed as much as I could from the script as this is just meant to be a five minute segment. I ended up leaving quite a lot in the script as is was crucial information. I decided to create my own logo to go on the back of the script I was going to be reading from, to make it more professional. I made this by logging onto Canva and looking up a basic vintage template, this took me 10 minutes to find the template and edit it with my information. I then put it into my camera roll and used a black and white filter. This was easy as it's basic editing software and Canva is free to use. I then printed off my script ready for filming.

I booked the studio for Wednesday 21st February to film my segment. The filming process didn't take long, it took me roughly 5 minutes to set up and ten minutes to film. Prior going into the studio I had already thought of my setup so I knew exactly how I wanted it to look. I setup a black background with curtains, pulled a desk into frame and had Martyna position the camera to be focused and in the centre. I moved my chair slightly to the side in order to allow me to put pictures next to myself in the editing process. Filming was simple, I read my script out to the camera and then we were done. I had a few slip ups but I just went back and started again, not from the very start but a few lines prior to where I had messed up. I did have a slight incident halfway through filming, people were trying to access the studio. Martyna, who was on the cameras, was quick to run and tell them it was in use. This was a little hiccup that was definitely going to be edited out. We then realised that the 'On Air' sign had not been turned on so that was a lesson for the future, always turn on the 'On Air' sign when filming to avoid interruptions. Once I was done filming I had Paul, the man in charge of the studio who was also my sound engineer, transferred my files onto a hard drive.

Next was the editing process. This process took me two days to complete. I had never used Premier Pro before so this was completely new to me. My first impression was that it was similar to Adobe Audition as everything is in the same place. This meant it was easy for me to navigate the tools I needed to use. I mainly stuck to using two tools, the marker and razor. I watched through the video and anywhere I wanted to make a cut I wold mark, once I had made my way through the entire video I then proceeded to use the razor tool to cut segments out of my video. I managed to get the video from 10 minutes down to 5 minutes and 25 seconds. Our segments were only meant to be 5 minutes long so I'm aware that next time I should make the script shorter. Once I had cut the video down to where I wanted it, it was time to add the photos. Cutting the video up took me 20 minutes, the rest of my time was spent adding the pictures. I asked for assistance from my tutor John, he showed me how to do it once and then from there on I was capable of doing it myself. My main issues were finding clear enough pictures as the ones I were finding were fine at first but would become heavily pixilated once the video started to play, and the second issue was trying to make the pictures the same size. This was important for me in order to make the video more professional because if every clip had a different size picture the jump from picture to picture would not look aesthetically pleasing. I did have an issue with my audio, there was a slight muffling sound that you could only hear if you focused hard enough. I quickly realised the muffling sound was my hair on the mic. I had one strand of hair that seemed to be perfectly placed next to the mic. I asked for assistance from my tutor John and he informed me there's nothing that could be done. This allows me to not make this mistake next time by simply placing the mic away from my hair or not wearing my hair down.

Once this was finished I watched through several times to check everything was the best it could possibly be. I was happy with how it all looked so I proceeded to export the clip. Once the clip was exported to my one drive I proceeded to send my video to one of my tutors who will be merging my clip with the rest of my classmates to make a TV show. I then uploaded my video to my professional YouTube channel, by doing this I'm able to put my video on my wix site. I proceeded to embed my video to my wix site on my video page. Now the video has been uploaded to both YouTube and wix, I'm able to promote it on my various professional social media channels.