Storyboard for Chapter 3: Media Control and I

Storyboard for Chapter 2: Economical Consent

Storyboard for Chapter 1: In the Beginning

Drawing isn't a forte of mine, so here are my storyboards (with text instead of drawn images). Whilst editing I have found this extremely useful in keeping me organized and focused.

Having a look around on the net for possible website designs I came across this particular design which I would have really have liked to have implemented with the homepage of my project. Reading a few reviews that suggested that it was quite temperamental and as the exhibition is fast approaching I didn't want to run the risk of my project 'playing up'. C'est la Vie!

JQuery Plugins

Script 2.0

Re-worked script add-ins to original [in previous posts]:

Smith: So yeah, I’ve conducted many an operation for Medicorp… pretty much bullied and lied my way across political life consistently. I’ve done more to lower the tone of political life, even public life than anything else, and that was all of course done with Medicorp’s connivance and authority. Yet I have to bear the ultimate responsibility for it.

Smith: I mean, don’t get me wrong I’m happy to take criticism, I mean I was hired to generate slavish media support for Medicorp. Get a vote of confidence into public voters. The image making department did well. Job done.

Smith: Even now, it’s still all party gamesmanship. Even when the cabinet meet at Medicorp Headquarters it can get pretty heated. Politics is about passionate things, when you bring Media into the equation, well it becomes a tirade of lies, impressions and spin.

Smith: Do I think this is what the British people want?

Smith: Well, what they  wanted was change of some sort, no doubt about that. It wasn’t a bad outcome at first but now I’m thinking it wasn’t the best moves.

Smith: I am the man responsible for what’s changed, they way I conducted my operations, the way I created particular impressions and painted a convincing picture across public life.

Smith: It is a culture that I have created where Medicorp will stop at nothing. I mean these guys are now the guys meant to be keeping our country safe; they are the political establishment. It’s become, simply, way too cosy between the Media and politicians. The way it is though, they’ll always need each other, always.

Smith: I hate what it’s becoming, the relations between the media and politics has become way too close, and now Medicorp have taken over, they’ll forever be intertwined.

Smith: If by spin, people mean communication, then its existed since man because the world revolves around people speaking to each other and communicating their thoughts and ideas and feelings and even passions- that’s kind of what makes the world go around

Smith: I mean since the explosion of social networks, it’s almost like we’re in a global electronic virtual village square where people find that within these networks, with their own sort of people and you know, they talk to each other and they challenge each other and they feed each other information that they are getting from different places, so you can create your own media landscape. Now, that is a scary thought for the communicator because you’re there thinking here’s what I want to say, sell to the public, here’s how I’m going to push it to the public but they’re out there creating their own media landscape and you’ve got to fight your way into it. But once there, yes you’ve got the public in the palm of your hand.

Smith: When you’re the communicator, or the strategist and you’re clear in your own mind what it is you want, what you’re trying to say, what you’re trying to do… What you’re doing is painting a picture over time, you’re not necessarily going to connect with people from day 1, it’s about communicating and connecting over time, so I’m talking about painting a picture over time [one that will get the public on your side] and every time you communicate that little bit more, you’re adding another stroke of paint, you’re getting the desired response you want from the public.

Smith: I could create a landscape from almost saying right here’s what we want to say, here’s how we’re going to say it, here’s the outlets we’re going to go to, which newspapers we want it printed in, go to the broadcasters we need to work on and here’s the speeches we’re going to make, and you can plan it all out, you can plan the impact you make and what impact you want in response.

Smith: I mean the public are much more reasonable than the media, often on a day to day basis, they will regurgitate what’s going on through the media at that time. So we can feed information to the newspapers and broadcasters and the public will believe it and circulate the information we’ve created and plotted into the public domain. I keep to the same approach every time because as soon as decide to keep changing the approach, no one will believe you, no one.

Smith: Don’t tell me what I think, I’m paid to tell the public what they need to think. You have to work at the public, you can’t tell them what to do, you’ve got to make it seem like they’ve come to it themselves [well of course they haven’t, it’s an illusion]. I communicate what the nation needs, what I tell them they need. The common sense checklist goes out of the window.

Smith: I know how the Media operates, I started off as a journalist, building my contacts, networks you know make it a little easier when I made the move into communications and strategy. Once upon a time there was a belief system. My experience, most people go into it, they kind of believe something, they have a strong set of beliefs that draws you in.

Smith: Have to face up to the influences I’ve had upon the way the world works. Giving impressions that always true, using weasel words, or phrases that stretch the truth, I mean one of my operations early on was the Medicorp campaign slogan: ‘Nothing acts faster than Medicorp’. It gave an impression, even though all the parties all operate under the same regulations, so in fact they’re actually acting all the same.

Smith: Many a times, I’ve sat there with 2 phones, in a middle of a mis-managed frenzy.

Smith: Medicorp govern with fear and favour, that’s how it works and how it’s always worked.

Smith: Building communications is what I do, building relationships with the public bases on some truth. Feeding the public, their staple diet of information that they desire and demand.

Smith: I was drawn in by the belief system, once you’re in, it has a fierce grip on you. It’s like a bizarre symbiotic relationship which is difficult to get out of.

Smith: I’m consumed with it taking over my life, I worked, I work so hard for it and for what? You make enemies, you become careless of the views and feelings of others, you become obsessed with getting the public in the palm of your hand, you have to relocate to Medicorp’s employee housing.

Smith: There’s 2 faces of communication. 1, presenting the public with a particular constructed impression. The 2^nd, the other, betrays the actual reality.

Smith: The credibility of the government lies in the hands of the Media, and now they have the control, the power, the ability to do whatever they choose to do.

Smith: I’m a brilliant liar, to do what I have done. Having to have the capacity to look someone in the eye, and just say the opposite is the truth. You become dillusional, brainwashed. Reality just becomes a blur.




Really happy with the extra work I did with the new script as it isn't as obvious, blunt and the term spin-doctor isn't mentioned anywhere, also it still reads like a stylized noir-esque private detective [which was the style of VO I was going for].
 

Director of Communications and PR analysis...

Returning to:


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017cd0x/One_to_One_Evan_Davis_with_Steve_Henry/

CASE STUDY 1: Alastair Campbell

KEY NOTES [Cited from http://www.alastaircampbell.org/about/]

• Regards himself as a communicator, writer and strategist
• Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman, press secretary and director of communications and strategy. 
• In his time in Downing Street he was involved in all the major policy issues and international crises. He has said that in ten years in the media, and a decade in politics, he saw his respect for the media fall and his respect for politics rise.

Examples of footage watched:

CASE STUDY 2: Peter Mandelson

How to be Peter Mandelson

The article was quite an interesting read [although jaded] insight into the profile of Mandelson. Specific excerpts from the article read:

1. How to face tough questions – and win

There are three things about interviewing Peter Mandelson that stand out, and the prospective MP could do worse than adopt any of them. First is that he doesn't answer the question. All politicians don't do that, though Mandelson doesn't do it more than most, you might say.

Second, when he tires of evasion, his grip on the arguments and the facts is usually formidable, not an invariable rule in this government. Sometimes you wonder if it's only Mandelson who still has a functioning political mind.

Third, and far more entertaining, is the way an interview with him turns, well, not aggressive precisely, more "assertive". Mandelson is audacious enough to tell his interlocutor what the rules of the game are, what he should or shouldn't be asking, "what your readers/listeners/viewers are REALLY interested in", that sort of thing. Yesterday he boldly told Jim Naughtie on The Today Programme that there just wasn't enough time left in the interview to answer questions about the public finances, a remarkable assertion of control. But those exchanges were relatively well tempered. Much more enjoyable, to the point of becoming collectors' items, are Mandelson's increasingly-acrimonious encounters with Naughtie's co-presenter, Evan Davis. Much to Davis' evident irritation, Mandelson always sets the terms of the interview, the pair of them wasting valuable airtime on whether or not he, Mandelson, should be allowed to discuss the Tories' polices.

4. How to get away with things

What sort of satanic pact he made we may not know even when he publishes his memoirs (and what a read those should be), but Lord Mandelson has acquired the sort of immortality generally confined to Greek mythology and science fiction. Politically, he can no longer be harmed, let alone killed. Like Captain Scarlet, he's indestructible.

He has achieved this reversal of status, having been so vulnerable a decade ago that his second "resignation" was purely on reputation, through several factors, some deliberate and others less so.

First and foremost he is a fighter, not a quitter, and there is nothing so admirable to the British as sticking around. Here, as Alan Bennett said, you need only be 90 and capable of eating a boiled egg, and people think you deserve the Nobel Prize.

We also have a taste for brazen chutzpah (returning to Corfu while George Osborne shivered at home) and self-parodic teasing (a pussycat forsooth!). There an arch self-knowingness about the modern Mandy that echoes Tommy Docherty returning to the after dinner speech circuit after being done for perjury with: "Now I know you're not being to believe a word I say ... " and that's almost impossible to resist.

He knows we know he's a rascal, and couldn't care less. There is a law of diminishing returns with moral outrage, and most people long ago grew bored by what he loftily regards as petit bourgeois moralising over his personal ethics and a hands-off relationship with the literal truth.

On the eve of the Labour conference, he didn't rule out remaining in the limelight even under a Conservative administration. He probably had in mind some special envoy position, or a Washington job that involves first-class travel and plenty of dinners with Henry Kissinger. Of course he wouldn't rule out a public position under the Tories; he wouldn't rule out selling the kidneys of orphan babies if he thought it would further his self-interest. He gets away with saying such things because he makes no pretence. He is brazen.

One more thing, too often overlooked. He happens to be, by several light years, the cleverest and most competent Cabinet minister of his generation. Even those who stubbornly cling to ancient loathings acknowledge this, and in troublesome times any amount of naughtiness will be overlooked if the perpetrator appears to know what he's about.

5. How to manage the media

According to interviewer Bryan Appleyard, who travelled to China with him for a profile in last weekend's The Sunday Times Magazine, Peter Mandelson has "taken the battle" to the media in a manner far more sophisticated than the crude approach deployed by Alastair Campbell.

"Mandelson draws you in because you desperately want to hear what he will say next," says Appleyard. "He always gives you the impression of having enormous amounts of information at his disposal, so you feel you have to be quite nice to him or else you might miss the story."

While Campbell confronted the media like an angry bouncer, the smiling Mandy holds a guest list that hints at access to the inner sanctum. A dichotomy results whereby reader responses to online press articles about the First Secretary of State often express a uniform hatred for the subject – while the articles themselves are invariably approving. "This interview isn't journalism. It's marketing and PR," fumed one angry respondent to a recent piece in The Guardian in which Mandelson defined himself as a "kindly pussycat".

Journalists are charmed by him because he gives good copy. "Has Peter Mandelson taken some sort of vow never to give a dull interview?" gushed James Kirkup, political correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. "Since his return from Brussels, the Business Secretary hasn't opened his mouth without committing news in some way or other." Some readers were horrified. "Most of the intelligent amongst us cannot fathom the media attention given to this childish and vitriolic Machiavelli impersonator," said one.

So image conscious is Mandelson that he corrected The Telegraph's diarist Tim Walker, who falsely associated him with a Louis Vuitton bag which he was standing next to in a photograph. As he well understands, modern political journalism is personality-driven and – as pussycat or Machiavelli – he excites the public sufficiently to generate air-time, column inches and page views. That's why PM for PM is such a good story.

Examples of footage watched:

CASE STUDY 3: Andy Coulson

"It's certainly an interesting move by the Tories who have not had much luck trying to find an equivalent to Alastair Campbell, someone who knows the business and can make the media weather," 

White added.

As I first thought, conducting a search on Andy Coulson just comes up with lots of material relating to the hacking scandal which isn't what I was looking for. What I did manage to track down was this short clip from Question Time:

It became clear to me that the role of Director of Communications involves a past of dabbling in Journalism... This is something I will consider in my project. 

Organising webpage Layouts...

Here's  drawings of a basic layout of the website of how it will look visually:

(Re-posted as images were not working)