Lack of FAQ & Social media links

First of we were intending on adding an 'FAQ' feature to our documentary. We would have added the feature in a button format along with he interactive map. BUT, we decided that we couldn't really justify being the voice of reason to transgender people who need advice. Our FAQ would have involved roughly 5 questions with long, in-depth answers. The sources of our information would have had to have been mainly from NHS and phycologists on the web, as, due to us being 5 journalism students our knowledge on transgender struggles are no-where near the authority level of professionals. Therefore we decided that overall we couldn't justify doing our FAQ tab, because it may be irresponsible in the long run, and that if the users wanted advice, our fantastic interviews can provide them with this.

We also decided not to add social media links as we have everything we need in our documentary. We concluded that having the links in the documentary, eg, clickable links did not add anything to the content. All the essential content is in the project.

Blog submitted!

This is it, people! Our Klynt documentary has been handed in and completed by the deadline. It's a mixture of relieve, pride and happiness of how our interactive documentary has turned out. We came in at 11am this morning in order to ensure the documentary was fully working and all our links were in the right places; which they were. We then set about getting all our interview release forms downloaded and ready to hand in; as most of the interviewees were under 18 and we needed their consent, which we have. All we had to do was add the credits and we were ready to hand in the documentary before the 3pm deadline! Our presentation is at 10am tomorrow morning, which we have written and prepared for but we will come in at 9.15 in order to be ready to pitch our documentary. Once we have pitched; it will all be over. Hopefully the hard work will be rewarded!

Feedback from User Testing

We had some important feedback from our user testing.

This was an important learning curve for us as we realised there were loads of links that were wrong, which we have quickly looked to rectify.

Now we are in the process of tying up some loose ends but apart from that everything is looking good; the documentary is pretty much finished. All those long hours editing have finally come to fruition!

Now we are continuing working on our graphic and FAQ which we hope to have done by tonight.

#bubeingtrans

User Testing

So yesterday we tried out our documentary on our users!

Here are some pictures...

#bubeingtrans

User test subject 1!

User test subject 2!

Klynt documentary is coming along really well now

At university this weekend; that is dedication!

Luke & Liam hard at work!

Carrying on from yesterday where we spent many long hours on Klynt, our interactive documentary is now in a really good, stable condition. There are still some clips and buttons we need to sort out and clear up, however, we are have this under control and look to have another productive day's editing. The main bulk of our interface and interviews have all been linked on Klynt now; so now we are playing about with different ideas. We hope to be done by Sunday evening!

Evening update: We have made really good progress; the interactive documentary is flowing really well, but there are several more interviews we need to link with our questions.

#bubeingtrans

It's Friday; carry on editing!

So, it's Friday!

However there is no let off for us. We are continuing from yesterday, where we exported all our interviews and interface into Klynt. As Klynt is a new software we are still getting our heads round, however, everyone is coming together to try and make our experience with Klynt as smooth as possible.

Our interface is something we are very happy with and now we are putting all the links onto Klynt and things are looking good. We arrived at 11am and we expect another long day until 7 or 8pm but it will all be worth it with the deadline looming Monday; no pressure!


#bubeingtrans

Now onto Klynt!

We're now designing our project on Klynt!

Web designer Adam Goacher setting up Premier Pro

We have decided to keep the interviewees utterances, 'er' in their answers so it is as natural when they respond to our questions. Meanwhile, another day ahead of us editing as a group! We are now working from Klynt with all our content now transferred and exported from Premier. This was a decision we made; we wanted all our content edited, exported and then transferred into Klynt as editing our content was going to be the most time consuming aspect of the project. Over the weekend there will be large amounts of work in Klynt! However, things are coming along nicely and we hope to be in a good position during the weekend. Things are looking hopeful.

#bubeingtrans

Pitching today to important people

We have been chosen to pitch our idea to some important individuals today. Luke and Liam had written the majority of the pitch on Tuesday but today we are balancing editing our project and preparing for our pitch at 3pm today. Luke, Adam and Indie are going to pitch to the important individuals, whilst Will and Liam will look to answer any questions they may have. We are just going over the pitch and making sure we have everything covered in order for our pitch to be as impressive as possible. We can't wait to pitch our idea and hope they are as excited as we are about our interactive transgender documentary.

We are cutting up the videos so we have the individual answers and then we can choose the answers we want to use in our documentary. Very long process but it will all be worthwhile in the end. We started it yesterday and it took many long hours just for the 4 interviews but we go again today! We aim to export our edited answers and transfer them into Klynt today, which is the most time consuming aspect of our day so far. Once we export all our interviews to Klynt we will be in a good position but there's still a lot of work to be ahead.

Update! The pitch went very well and our idea was well received, which pleased us. We showed the start of our video we had produced, which gave an idea of what our project was going to look like. They were all suitably impressed and asked some good questions about our project. We then returned to edit our project; the work never ends!

#bubeingtrans

Boys looking happy on set at our interviews! 

Style Guide

For inspiration and possible guidance we looked at 'Question Bridge' which we instantly felt our documentary would be inspired by 'Question Bridge'. This was the interactive documentary that we felt appealed and inspired us the most.

We have decide not to use a go pro anymore as we want to use the DSLR for better quality interviews as we want a clear, crisp setting for our interviewees as the quality of the interviews will be imperative to the success of our interactive documentary. 

We ideally would like black background for interviews but it depends on the location of the room we are interviewing in, with many factors having to be taken into account including lighting as we want the best possible background with the DSLR. We will interview at Bournemouth and Poole College where we will be able to look around classrooms in order to find the best location for our interviews as we want to show emotion and honesty with the DSLR in a medium close ups of our candid interviewees and their answers. 

We have decided on our interface! We will have all the interviewees on show, with the user able to click on each of the interviewees in order to get their different answers.

#bubeingtrans

Interface

Out interface was initially meant to mirror that of 'question gate' but we decided that we didn't want to make it too dark. We want our interface to look inviting and welcoming, therefore, we settled on using a moving LGBT flag as a central panel, and having the standing figures of all our interviewees around the outside. We have also settled upon a background piece of music as we want the the documentary to be as welcoming as possible. Slowly but surely everything is coming together; we have just got to keep editing!

Editing. Editing. Editing.

#bubeingtrans

Creating A Story World

GOOD MORNING!

It's now the 23rd of February, and we are firmly settled on our idea of 'BeingTrans'! We realised that this idea/radical change to our storyline is more feasible in terms of the equipment we have access to and the time we've got left. Much depends on the honesty and application of the interviewees as to whether our documentary idea can fully work; if we are given honest and frank answers then this will be critical for us as we want to to explore this topic with honesty, an open mind and the ability to change viewers attitude towards transgender.

Hoorah! We have interviews set for this Thursday at 4pm at Poole College. It was imperative to our documentary idea working that we had to nailed down this date to interview as the transgender group meet once a fortnight. Luckily for us their meeting fell into the week we needed; relieve all round! We will rent out our kit from SISO tomorrow and get to know the camera before we set out on interviews. We are using the DSLR, which we feel will enhance our documentary to look as crisp and effective as possible.

Today we will be creating our mind maps...

Constructing a story -

We are using multimedia to create a story world for characters & insight & situations & experiences.

#bubeingtrans

Why nobody has anything to run!

Tuesday 1st March 2016,


Today our workshop was supposed to be running any content we have. Except nobody in our workshop has anything to run! We have exactly one week, minus 13 minutes to deadline day!

Last night, 8pm, we discovered that we couldn't pull an all nighter after our lecture and edit our footage from Thursday's interviews as the SD card on DSLR camera, can't be plugged directly into the macs! We needed an extra part from Siso which, of course, was SHUT!

So instead we listened to the audio content from our interviews, listening carefully for the claps which will eventually make it easier to sync up our audio & visuals.

Currently our web designer is playing around on premier pro working out how to remove backgrounds from footage, were quite excited because we think this will look good and add to the personal, face to face, diary affect we were aiming for.

It's worth mentioning that after all the deliberation on which camera to use, the images from the DSLR are rather stunning!!!

We will be editing until the cows come home today.

Our social media presence is also building up slowly we now have a Instagram, a Twitter and a Facebook page. We have a running hastag, 'beingtrans' to keep our followers up to date!

Twitter link- @bubeingtrans
Facebook link- https://www.facebook.com/bubeingtrans/?notif_t=page_fan
Instagram link- https://www.instagram.com/bubeingtrans/

Bon Voyage.

#bubeingtrans

One of the lovely couples we interviewed yesterday at Bournemouth & Poole college 

Interview Day

So on Thursday we conducted our interviews at Bournemouth and Poole College.
We arrived a little nervous with our camera equipment and walked into a session with roughly 15 people sitting down looking at power points on the LGBT community, we listened for a while to their educational and supportive session.

We chose a room that was quiet, un-intrusive and private to do our interviews, as naturally they are of a sensitive nature. It was also after college hours so there was not that many people about the building.

We first interviewed Alfie from Space programme, the interview lasted about 15 minutes, and we clapped before each recording to make the syncing of our content easier. We placed our subjects sat down, looking directly into the camera, as sort of like a confessional. We asked our interviewees if they would like all 5 of us in the room whilst they were giving their answers, a few people decided that the fewer of us the better. We hope this made them feel as comfortable as possible.

What we were surprised by was how KEEN, ENTHUSIASTIC AND UNAFRAID the young people were to be interviewed. As honestly, we were worried that nobody would want to come forward and tell us their story - let alone be filmed. But in the end, we were overwhelmed by how many people wanted to be filmed. We actually had to cut the stream of people off!

Unfortunately, we had a problem with one of our team members who 'mis-pronouned' one of the participants. (Called a non-binary person, a 'she' by accident) It was a very tricky and new situation for the majority of us and slips of the tongue were exceedingly hard to avoid.

We also had a problem with the Tascam and it took us a while to get used to the new format of recording equipment, but we mastered it in just enough time. Another thing that wasn't idea was the camera running out of battery half way through one of our very emotive interviews with Jay, the volunteer at the Space programme - but luckily we had pre-empted this and put another spare battery on charge in the corner.

Overall it was an incredible experience, and I think we would all admit that it was an emotional experience, and it widen our views on the topic of being transgender. It was an enlightening journey and something we will never forget; which we hope to reflect in our interactive documentary. In addition, most of us didn't realise there was a term called Non-Binary! Which is where a person doesn't identify with any gender whatsoever.

Space, also wanted us to show them the finished product and were very keen to help us get parental consent for all our participants.

Transgender Flag

'Being Trans'

'Being Trans' - Here we go!

This. Is. It!


Follow the hashtag #bubeingtrans

New Idea! Transgender?!

A couple of hours ago we had to scrap our idea, but nobody panic! - We have another...

We will be taking a journey in to the world of young transgender people. We realised that this idea would be easier as we already have access to contacts within the area.

We are all really excited to start this, and I personally can't wait to interview and meet some young transgender people. We will be using a question style system, and our interface will be clickable options of people answering a set of questions.

We have begun contacting people who are potential interviewees, and planing the look of our interface. We are also beginging to develop our social media presence, but we can only do this once we have come up with a name.

Stay tuned for more!

#bubeingtrans

Roles & Goals

Liam - Content Producer
Will - Content Producer
Luke - Editor
Indie - Social Media
Adam - Web Editor

'Getting Home Safely': Getting Started

Hi! Today is workshop two of our project!

Uh-Oh, there's a spanner in the works. Our idea that we settled upon last week has proven almost impossible after a discussion today that showed that the software we are using wouldn't support some of our main ideas. For instance, our 3 critical, health, social, and money 'bars' would not be possible in Klynt, as we would have to edit them into EVERY SINGLE frame - this would take a very long time and that is one thing we do not have!

We decided that it our idea would be Getting home: Getting Safe idea would be feasible is we had unlimited time but in our situation - it's probably not going to work. Don't panic just yet!

SCRAPPED THAT.

Now, we have to come up with another idea...

#bubeingtrans

First Workshop

Blog number 1! All very new and exciting!


It's Tuesday 9th February and today is our first day on our interactive documentaries. We've mostly been deciding on which roles best suit each person, and brainstorming story ideas. Although we have been told we needn't decide today - apparently it must be a meaty subject!

We toyed with the idea of doing a 'First Year University Survival Guide', but after speaking with Matt we concluded it wouldn't be challenging enough. Our second brainstorm was on 'Consent', we watched the 'Consent with Tea' video to spur our imaginations but after much deliberation agreed that the topic was a little too serious too tackle in our time frame.

After the two hour workshop we settled on the provisional idea of 'Getting home safely from a night out', eg, spending money, drinking habits and social behaviour. We want it to be an interactive game, that is user driven by the choices they make, so there will be a variety of multiple outcomes. We have created a theme where the user is playing for the goal of getting home with the most money and most health, which will be displayed on a virtual reality bar. There will also be a 'social' bar, that goes up and down according to the behaviour of the player.

We are set to meet again on 16th Feb for another two hour workshop, where we hope to expand our ideas and get the ball rolling with our project.

#bubeingtrans