Schedule:

1. Prepare our 'Metro' mock-up
2. Film reactions in a few locations
3. Asess the footage
4. POTENTIALLY film again if it is not adequate
5. Take into account the reactions- for the final video piece will be more shocking (hopefully)
6.

The footage:

Filming: the public reaction:

How successful was the filming?

Our first attempt at filming the publics reactions went reasonably well. Whilst I (James) sat on a bench with the paper, Neal sat 20 feet away with the camera hidden under his arm whilst reading his own paper so people did not become suspicious. People tended to just walk by without glancing (which we expected would happen) but those who did look, took a long hard stare, clearly interested in the story of the Gherkin being blown up. However, people simply kept on walking, so the reaction was nothing more than the glance, which we both agreed wasn't that effective, especially in terms of our final presentation, as it would just be a series of clips of people looking interested in the paper.

Whilst on the way home from the filming we decided to see how effective it would be if we were to read the paper on the tube, we decided not to film it however as it was very obvious as the carriage wasn't very busy. This achieved a far better response, the people that did see it became very interested in the article, some getting others to look at it as well, creating discussion about it etc.

The underground obviously allows for a better reaction, as the onlooker is stationary and can take time to look at the paper, which gives time for it to sink in, as oppose to the brief glance of a passerby. The best reaction that we received was from tourists, who seemed to take the article as truth. Underground journeys are generally speaking very boring, so people are constantly looking around them, at posters, books and newspapers, so it is more likely that somebody will look at the paper, than somebody who is walking past.

Considering this preliminary work if we do decide to use newspapers in our final project we would want to film on the underground, but this would be very difficult, we probably do it secretly, but it wouldn't be certain that we would get good footage, and might not be as effective as other methods, which gives us something to think about.

Filming: when and where...?

We needed to make sure that lots of people would be walking past, therefore increasing the possibility of gaining lots of 'reaction' footage. We decided to film at two different points, the first would be early morning, from 7 through to 10, to try and capture the early commuters who won't have yet seen the metro, and may not have seen any news, consequently are more likely to believe the headline, and as a result react with more animation. The second filming time that we have decided upon is about 11 to 1, just before lunch, although by this time all of the metro's will have been removed from the train's so there will be very few around. As the Metro is printed and distributed in the early morning, it is likely that the majority will be read by commuters, and not by the unemployed, tourists etc who start their days slightly later.

We decided that the best places would be;

- Public parks- several people will walk through on their way to the tube. Secret filming will be easy due to unconfined space, and several concealed spaces. We decided an especially good time would be just after the changing of the guard ceremony, as we knew that lots of people would be walking through Green park and St James park, which are obviously very close to Buckingham Palace.

- On the Tube- although may not be achievable due to the high security regarding filming on the tube, although could attempt o do it secretly or using a mobile phone, still remains difficult however.

Darko Maver

The rumours about Maver began in 1998 within the circles of underground artists in Europe. Originating in Yugoslavia where he was accused of anti-patriotism, where his work was reputedly censored and he was persecuted. This story was spread around the art world rapidly.

On May the 15th, press agencies receive and released a shocking announcement: "The Serbian artist Darko Maver has died in the Podgorica prison".
Together with the announcement of Maver's death came the image that went down in history: the only evidence of Darko Maver's tragic death in the Podgorica prison. The photo was taken in a garret in the centre of Bologna, and was believable enough to be seen as true.



The image spread rapidly and the articles written about the event illustrate how Darko Maver, his works and history, can be read as a critique to the reality of media and the exploitation of images of victims of war.

Tutorial Three:

During today's tutorial we discussed how our ideas had furthered since last talking it through with Andy and Peter. We raised our idea of using print and highlighting the hoax in one of London's free newspapers. Instead of trying to gather together all the Metro's at a station and trying to re-distribute them before commuters appear for their journey to work, we are going to attempt to print just one paper with our covering story, and have one of us sit on a bench near a busy crowd reading it whilst the other two group members video the event from a hidden location. This seemed to be an easy but relatively effective method of capturing a reaction. Although this was moving away from our initial large scale reaction, it would be an interesting experiment, illustrating how an individual would react.

Before this would be possible we would have to make the paper, so replicate the format of the metro paper, adapt pictures so that they are suitable, then get it printed onto news paper in the right dimensions.

Different Types of Paper

We have looked at different types of paper to use for our preliminary experiment, and found that most companies would print onto a minimum of 180gsm. We phoned many companies using the Yellow pages and found that if we wanted to print onto a paper of around 60-90gsm it would only be in black and white, although relatively cheap. However, we want to use colour and the price then rises dramatically, as does the weight of the paper. We eentually found a place near Covent Garden which would print for us onto newspaper weight paper and in colour, but due to the price, we feel we are only able to get a couple of copies so need our stories in the paper to be as immaculate as possible.

The Metro

The Metro is given away in the morning rush hour, this was the first paper that we made a mock-up of, the results that we gained from this paper was very successful, and led to us creating the other five front covers.

Newspaper Format

The Metro was the chosen format of paper to use in the end. We mocked up a version on Photoshop, taking into account all of the dimensions of the paper, the colours and page numbers etc. Little mistakes on each copy led to problems in that if people studied the papers too closely, spelling mistakes or wrong news (i.e. sports, not the faked explosion) would stand out and cause them to disbelieve in the paper. This caused us to create a third copy which was probably the best of the three, except a big football match was on the night before we were planning on printing it, causing us to have to guess who would win the match, and unfortunately we guessed wrong leaving the paper stating how Chelsea had won, when in actual fact Tottenham had. However, when we film with the paper, people hopefully will be too interested in the front page to notice the back page- which is not our priority anway.

Obviously there is a lot to do in order to get the paper looking authentic. We will need to copy the same formatting as the metro, keeping everything similar to how the metro would publish the piece. We need to get authentic photos of the instance, print onto realistic news paper, keeping the same weighting, colouring etc.
People read the Metro everyday so will have a good understanding of exactly how it looks, and if we don't manage to make it look authentic enough, the story will be instantly dismissed. On the other hand, because the story is so attention grabbing, it may detract from the paper meaning it may not have to be identical, however we want it to be as close as possible to the real thing in order to maintain the realism.

Internet Campaign:

Something that had developed within our idea, and how we would generate interest into the at of terrorism would be a gradual internet campaign, something similar to the recent campaign for Matt Reeves' "Cloverfield", which instead of using the normal trailer process to entice the public instead released small clips on the web that acted as clues to final piece, thus making the audience more and more intrigued about what all the clues meant.

However, we would have to be extremely careful about how we went about this, due to the nature of the project hoaxing terrorism. Such clues would not be taken lightly by the authorities, and we really wouldn't our laptops to be taken away from us. However, we remained adamant that an ongoing internet campaign would be extremely effective, and would work help raise a lot of awareness and speculation.

Utilizing London's Free Newspapers

It was highlighted in the tutorial that we should be more subtle when it comes to showing the public the hoaxed footage. Whilst talking about about how we could depict our hoaxed event, we liked the idea of utilizing London's free newspapers, especially the Metro which is issued in the early morning in underground stations. We were thinking that we would be able to make our own version of the first two pages of the paper, replace them and as a result it would appear to be real. We would then record the user's reaction. We also discussed the idea that one of us could be sat reading the paper in a public location. Whilst walking around people tend to notice the headlines on a newspaper, and will be keen to take more notice regarding the content of our fake front page.