Thursday 6 March 2014
Tomorrow we will be filming all the improvements we were given for our news sequence.

We will be re-shooting these scenes:

- The first scene outside the house of  Robert Jason. We will be using 2 different shots.

- We are filming outside of the security organisation.

- Re-filming the interview.

- Filming an outro behind a green screen.
We received the feedback for our news package from our supervising teachers, and there are many ways we can improve our work to take it to the next level.

The OCR Spec has 3 Levels; to attain the most proficient in our skills we must.

- Use IT appropriately for the task set
- Show understanding of conventions of layout and page design
- Show awareness of the need for variety in fonts and text size
- Shooting material appropriate to task set

And these are just some factors we need to incorporate to improve our guide.

Specific points that we need to change or improve for another draft include:

- Re-filming
- Using more advanced graphics when to do with text
Wednesday 26 February 2014
After handing in our first drafts before the half term and we received a sheet filled with feedback and advice of ways in which we can improve and develop our news package.

- Our opening scene where David is speaking through a computer screen with green technological graphics in the background. In our draft we have still image of the green graphics in the background with David speaking and being the only moving object within the frame. 

- We are going to develop this scene by animating the codes and green technological background in order to match Davids dialogue. We are going to keep the frame the same but develop the graphics slightly by getting the code of letter and numbers to move vertically down the screen as David speaks.

- We then need to re-film the scene of Akshay presenting the news channel and giving an overview of hacking. Factors such as the sound and volume of Akshay's voice needs to be reconsidered in order to make the dialogue a lot more clearer, also the shots used to film this scene need to be re-evaluated as some shots were shaky but also some of the shots used weren't great therefore by re-filming the scene were are able produce a more professional finish to our work. 

Yesterday, we had arranged and completed an interview with the CEO of the Future Fortune Group, an insurance company that specialises in working with large corporations and conglomerates. As the company has financial relations with large firms, it is paramount that their online data is kept secure. As a new age company, FFG is well aware of the dangers of using online financial systems, banking and the storage of sensitive and confidential files. 

After contacting his office, we managed to agree upon a time to meet him at his office for later that day. We set out with the camera and a set of questions. We sat down with him for roughly 20 minutes talking off record about how his company assures its clients complete confidentiality and security online as well as how they cope with constant developments of hacking and the growing population of people who seem capable of hacking. 

The questions that we recorded on camera were related to his own personal opinion and recommendations on how to deal with the constant threat of being hacked as well as having control of your data and how reliant you become to online services. 

We had a few problems at first with lighting as his office was walled with windows, letting in light. this meant that the shot would always come out darker than it really was. To solve this, we used a flashlight application on a smartphone to counteract the light from outside. this made the colour of the shot more balanced. Additionally, the mic embedded in the video camera sounded muffled, therefore we placed a mobile phones in close proximity to both the CEO and the news reporter who asked the questions.

All in all, I'd say that both the interview and the discussion were successful in providing us with vital knowledge of how large businesses try to cope with the dangers of online crime, as well as obtaining a resourceful interview that would enhance our portfolio as a professional online news team.




Monday 10 February 2014
Scene 1 - Exterior

(AKSHAY)

- A hacker may break into a system just out of curiosity or for the challenge. But with the development and growing dependency of the digital age it is more likely that they are breaking in to access data, usually because the data has value.
- For example, if a hacker enters your computer and steals financial information such as your credit card number, or the password to your bank account, they could use that information to make purchases.
- We are live outside the house of Robert Jason, the man being accused of one of the largest hacking scandals this year and we have been given access to his property.

Scene 2 – Interior


VOICE OVER
(AKSHAY)

- Mr Jason was caught trying to break into the most secure online virtual vault in an attempt to embezzle a large quantity of the highly valuable BitCoin.
- Police believe that they have had a stroke of luck as evidence suggests that the self-taught hacker was conspiring to hack several other online systems in a string of devastating attacks on several large corporations. The extensive list includes Chromecast, Prime, Apple, ThinkGeek and Ebay. So if this man could single handily commit such a hanus digital crime how hard could it really be?

Scene 3 - Interview with the head of security for 

Question 1 - What in which do you as head of security, ensure that they companies files and data are not hacked and accessed by an outsider?

Answer 1 - We as a company have a database called... which monitors and records the activity of every worker within the setup. We also have reminder and pop ups that inform us of what each employ is meant to be doing within the setup therefore as soon as something goes wrong, an urgent alarm is sent to all of the directors within our company allowing us to put a stop to this activity.

Question 2 - How effective has the software been for your company and have you had any recent encounters of hackers trying to access your data?

Answer 2 - So far since i have been at the company we haven't had any encouter with possible hackers which is good, we often run monthly tests of the system to ensure that there are no faults within it and it still works to its full potential. 






Thursday 6 February 2014
When we sat down to try and come up with an emphatic way in which we could start the news package, we realised that it would have to make an impact on the audience to give them something to ponder during the intro sequence. To gain some insight on how it is currently done, we looked at samples of openings from packages that were similar to ours. After watching this youtube clip of BBC Click, we were inspired to create a similar scene but chose to include a rhetoric question.

Thursday 30 January 2014

Here are several pictures of different locations where we will be filming various parts of our news package. The first picture is the view of the exterior of Akshay's house where we film the news presenter (Akshay) delivering news about the hacking incident regarding Robert Jason. We then use this location once again, at the end of the news package to finish things off and give our work a nice round off.


The second image here is a picture of Akshay's study area within his house. We are using this area to show case the work area whereby Robert Jason (the hacker). Using the PC shown in the picture we are going to display the websites and programs Jason used in order to hack the company. We are also hoping to to create a reconstruction of the hacker using his work station to bring a sense of realism and add another aspect to our news package.


There aren't many risks or problems with using these locations, however the main issue when working in these locations, is ensuring that we are responsible and think about other residents needs.
After speaking to our teachers and gaining their advice on ways to improve the planning and research of our news package, we were given a suggestion which had a large effect on our research and planning as a whole as this was to with the storyline within our news package. Originally we were told that our news package needed to include two different stories, therefore we decided to speak about cyber bullying and hacking, two very large and well known crimes involving the use of technology.

However, after speaking to our teacher during a lesson we were told that we were not meant to use to different stories within our news package and had to decide on one to go through and continue with. We decided that the hacking scandal was the topic we were going to keep as it was an extremely exciting story which every member of our group was looking forward to doing. Having made this decision, it meant that many changes needed to be made to our existing planning and research as well as the planning and research that is needed to be carried out in the future. Some of the changes and developments involve:

- Call sheets that were produced need to be updated as now scenes such as 1,2,3,4 and 5 shown in the call sheet have all be deleted as it was not a part of the hacking story. Now using scenes 6,7,8 we need to develop the story in order to produce a full news package lasting for approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

- Similarly the storyboard needs to be changed and adapted now as almost half of the storyboard needs to be scrapped and replaced with new ideas and scenes involving our topic of hacking.

- The short outline of the structure that was going to be used for our original news package needs to be adapted to replace the information regarding the old storyline.
Wednesday 29 January 2014
It was recently brought to our attention that a London University [which has not chosen to be identified] had been attacked by the notorious group of online 'Hacktivists' known as Anonymous. As explained below, there is reason to believe that the people behind the infiltration of the educational institution's multiple websites and databases, because they actively disagree with their “cross-cultural attitudes and the shaping of online behaviour in crisis situations” to “the analysis of crowd behaviour through ad-hoc mobile sensors”.

Wednesday 22 January 2014
To prove how dedicated we are to the topic of hacking, we have decided to learn how to become "professional" hackers. Thanks to the help readily available on www.hackertyper.com , we were able to "master the basics of hacking" in a matter of minutes.
FOR LEGAL REASONS, I AM OBLIGATED TO STATE THAT THIS BLOG IS ENTIRELY SARCASTIC