Regent Park Focus

Today, we basically had to edit our radio shows so that they are prepared to be heard over the radio. Most of the recording editing wasn't as hard as it was repetitive. Cutting parts out and making some parts louder than others, that was pretty much radio editing in a gist. I make it sound boring but it's quite fun especially if you can play around with the effects.  The most exciting part of the day was doing a media campaign proportional photo shoot for The She World show that will be coming up soon. I got to take pics of Clara who is the host of the show and she even let me take pics with her which I have to edit soon and then they will go up on the show website, twitter page and facebook. I'm seriously excited to be a part of the up-coming show!  - Nedda

Today we were joined by 2 new youth participants and they seem to be enjoying the program so far which is great. Over the weekend the summer crew had a little bit of homework to do and that was to research and familiarize ourselves with the Trayvon Martin case as well as look at other examples of self defense cases that have taken place in Ontario. We're going to be producing a show meant to educate youth on law. Erin came back in for another visit today and we all discussed more on the topic as well as some cases that a few of us found in our research. Everybody discussed different examples of when self defense is no longer defense and the different between abuse and when the claim if applicable. It was a very good discussion but we're going to be saving the real passion for the production of the show, which will be a good one. All in all today was another good day at Regent Park Focus. Tresvonne Rose-Wilson

The day started off for me by editing the news cast on Nelson Mandela Day which took place at Nelson Mandela Park Public School and on the African Women Acting. Then I worked with Alice and Jeff to help me write my environmental PSA script. Then the group came together and we did a workshop in which we had to look for a book, TV show, Movie and CD album in the top 5 released by First Nations or racialised people.Tomorrow we are going to visit CBC, looking forward to that.

Today I had the opportunity to host my first hour long radio show on Radio Regent. I had prepped, researched and rehearsed for this day for two weeks! I was very excited as the topic was something I am passionate about - health and fitness. My show consisted of tackling health myths, discussing my journey with eating right and exercise - how it changed my life and we even had a special guest Angela Olah who is a hardcore bootcamp coach!  I was nervous about the execution but I had a ton of support from co-workers and everything went great! What I learned from hosting a radio show is to not laugh a lot because when I started editing the content my laugh was pretty annoying. Just kidding, what I actually learned was time management is very important in radio. I did mess up a few times but I was fortunate enough to edit it before it went on air.  This experience has motivated me to do another radio show and hopefully another one on health and fitness! ...

So today we basically had to edit our radio shows so that they are prepared to be heard over radio. Most of the recording editing wasn't as hard as it was repetative. Cutting parts out and making some parts louder than others, that was pretty much radio editing in a gist. I make it sound boring but it's quite fun especially if you can play around with the effects.  The most exciting part of the day was doing a media campaign proportional photo shoot for The She World show that will be coming up soon. I got to take pics of Clara who is the host of the show and she even let me take pics with her which I have to edit soon and then they will go up on the show website, twitter page and facebook. I'm seriously excited to be a part of the up-coming show!!!

Today I had a wonderful experience reporting at the Nelson Mandela Park Public school celebrating the icon's 95th birthday. The event was filled with local celebrities like former Toronto's Argonauts quarterback Damen Allen, broadcast journalist Indira Naidoo-Harris (CBC, CTV, TVO, OMNI, NBC, and PBS) and internationally known jazz singer Amanda Martinez - who performed at the 2010 World Cup series in South Africa. The experience was one of a kind as this was my first official newscast for RPTV. A thank you shout out to my mentor Clint, who gave me the opportunity and had faith in me for doing this project. It was a three "man" team with Clint, Issac and I and we did a wonderful job interviewing all the local celebrities under extreme heat. Yay to us!

Today this morning started off with an independent work period. Working on either editing video, radio shows, or PSA. In the afternoon Joanne, Clint, Nedda, and I went to do an interview at a BBQ held by the Aboriginal Women's Resource Centre. The person I interview gave us info on how the centre came to formation, it"s purpose and the impact it has make on the people that go there. Then we came back to Regent Park Focus to help Vena with her PSA along with Trevonne and Katelyn. After that the whole group gathered together for a workshop on culture, what it is, what it does and if Canada has a culture. We ended off planning for our TV shows in August. Looking forward for whatever else we got in store for the future.

The day started off with us doing research on the subject of our radio project and start planning on what were going to talk about for our assigned newscast. After that we got to try out all of the "behind the scenes" stuff like director, camera operators, sound tech people, and even got to be on set! It was really cool but I thought that the directing part was really confusing because you, as the director, are controlling everything that goes down behind the scenes and even in front of the cameras! So you have to pay attention to  every one of those things and make sure it is as presentable as possible. So because of that I thought it was challenging but a very interesting experience.   - Pierce

Today was a day buzzing with excitement at Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre (RPFYMAC). The youth started off the day by planning out their radio shows coming up in the next week. They were especially focused on researching information for their PSAs (Public Service Announcements) in the works. The PSAs are about harmful household chemicals found in everyday products, such as hand sanitizers, hand soap, deodorant, hair products, and many others. They researched information on the harmful effects of the chemicals, which products they could be found in, and product alternatives free of the harmful substances. They really showed an interest in wanting to provide people with the best information possible on the subject, and leave people feeling empowered about how to protect themselves. Later on, after the lunch break, we moved onto the fun experience of being media executives at RPFYMAC, where we listened to 3 different TV show pitches for RPTV. Each of the pitches ...

So today we had a task were we had went out in to the community to interview people about anything of our choice. We were split in to two groups of four. My group choice to go to Yonge Street Mission to interview them about the summer programs that are going on. During that adventure on going to the Christian community center we had to make a detour and speak to the communications person to get the approval to start filming. Then when we began the filming we started to notice the fact that we never have a battery pack. so then in the middle of the interview the camera died, but we continued. - Cassandra  

The first day of the summer program at Regent Park Focus was a good start to the summer. There are a few new faces which is always good. We started off with an orientation of what this years summer program is all about and we began training right away. I've been part of focus for a while but it was refreshing to be given a "how to" camera tutorial again by Eman. Ehsan gave everybody a run down of how to use the soundboard for  Radio Regents internet radio program and I think the new staff enjoyed what bit the best. I can tell this summer is going to be a fun one with Focus and I'm excited to start new video projects and produce my own News Segments and Radio Shows. The day was a good day and it's only getting started. Tresvonne Rose-Wilson

Today Isaac, Pierce, Ree and myself went out to Daniel's Spectrum to interview a few people there about what the venue had to offer to the community and why it's such a special place. We spoke with Elwood, the Regent Park Film Festival coordinator, along with Christie the Regent Park School of Music director and Timothy the Art Heart Media Center coordinator and director. These people spoke to us about why the building and the programs that it offers are great. We personally got the opportunity to become comfortable speaking with strangers and organizing meaningful interview sessions along with camera and mic setup and the execution of the entire interview. It was an amazing experience that I learned a lot from in terms of equipment setup, proper interview etiquette along with useable footage. I would have preferred a longer session to complete this filming task for next time, but overall it was incredibly fun! - Nedda

Today we did a workshop on how to use Adobe Premiere Software to edit the footage of the interviews we did yesterday. We learned how to use all sorts of tools on the software to adjust the footage to flow better and to make a story out of the random footage we shot. It was incredibly informative and by the end of the workshop i felt very comfortable being able to teach this software to others. Both Tyrone and Emmanuel were supportive during the process and the learning experience was a lot of fun. I like the time length of this workshop and would love for other workshops to be just as long in order to be more effective. All in all this workshop was the most fun and informative.    - Nedda

Today we had the opportunity to participate in a 101 TV/Video workshop with Emmanuel K. Regent Park Focus' TV Coordinator. Throughout the session, Emmanuel showed us the different cameras and microphones the program uses to record and broadcast its' shows. He taught us the crucial basics such as putting in the proper battery, which microphone line to use and the importance of audio - no matter how bad the video is. He was very knowledgeable and funny - something instructors must have to keep their group learning and in focus. The 101 workshop was a great learning experience for first timers as they got hands on experience and a good reminders to those that already had experience in the field. -Vina

Today the summer staff team re-watched footage that we had all shot on Wednesday and Thursday and we learned about video logging. Unfortunately there was a technical difficulty with the camera that my team had been using so we just got a lot of blank space on our tape. It's all good though, mistakes happen. Later in the afternoon, Tyrone taught us how to use Premiere Pro, a video editing program. After that the rest of the afternoon was pretty much dedicated towards editing practice and adding little touches to our videos. Over all this has been a productive week. Tresvonne Rose-Wilson

Today Emanuel led an incredibly useful workshop regarding the proper way to interview people in terms of questions, media release forms, and the type of camera angles taken for the interview. He mentioned the importance of interviewing people who are important in events as well as having different roles in the event as opposed to interviewing everyone who have a similar role in an event. For example, if a news story is covering the Regent Park Soccer League it would be better to interview soccer layers, and their parents as well as referees and coaches as opposed to just all soccer players. This allows for a broader perspective and better coverage of the story as well as making it more interesting. Another important point Emanuel brought up was to cover the 5 W's and H. This answers all the questions that viewers could have about the news story and makes the story more informative. I thought the workshop was incredibly informative and a good review since I have...

Pierce, Issac and I had an opportunity to film Regent Park's first Farmers Market located beside the Daniel Spectrum building. We were fortunate enough to make it on time for the official ribbon cutting and caught an interview with Daneil Spectrum's Vice President Martin Blake. The turnout to the event was beyond expectation and it was really nice to see Regent Park supporting local, organic food vendors. Coming from a health perspective, I was really glad to see that the people of Regent Park made smarter choices when it comes down to produce - that they are supporting local produce and making healthier dietary choices. It was a very fun experience to be at Regent Park's first Farmers Market! - Vina

This morning I started off editing the PSA on The Daniel Spectrum with Needa, Shaun and Pierce. I then went with Pierce to get cut away shots for PSA with Pierce at the Spectrum, Nelson Mandela Park and Lord Duffrin. In the afternoon we started our first workshop with the youth that come in the afternoon. we started things off with an ice breaker game, gave them a tour around Focus then started our the first camera workshop with them. We showed them how to set up a camera and tripod, put the battery and tape in and different types of angles. The youth got to participate by focusing the shot in the camera to what they wanted and telling everyone what the shot was.  - Summer Volunteer

Blog: Today Emmanuel taught me and a bunch o other staff how to work the cameras and do stuff like add effects. Some new things I learned is that you can only control the cameras from inside the studio and not from the camera itself. He showed us all the basics of how to operate the camera. (Zooming, fade effects, removing from tripod etc...) Another thing he showed us is how to enable/disable the microphones and that while you're operating the cameras, the director gives you specific directions through a microphone. So I thought it was an over all cool experience and am looking forward to the up coming weeks.  - Pierce

Tuesday July 2, 2013 on Cath da Flava Radio we started off with a moment of silence for the 19 firefighters that died in the wild fire in Arizona. Then we kicked off the show talking about the 16 year old boy who got stabbed on Ashbridges Bay during Canada Day. We (Tyrone, Emmanuel, and Clint) all came to agreement that youth in Toronto are getting more out of control. The next topic was on how since this years Superbowl 27 football players have been arrested, we touch on Aaron Hernandez case how he could face 25 to life if found guilty. We talked about how youth are idolized by these athletes and how those same athletes get into trouble with the law. On a high note our last topic was on Anthony Bennett, how he's from Toronto and being the first draft pick for the NBA.  - Isaac

For the last five weeks the Diva’s at Regent Park Focus Arts Media Center have been working on “Creating a Digital (Self) Portrait” using Internet and Photoshop in a creative way, building some artistic and technical skills, learning about artists, photography and digital art. Some faces … The creation of a digital (Self) portrait consisted of taking digital portrait photographs, manipulating them in Photoshop, researching artist they like and choose a “face frame” for their portrait inspired by a painting, photograph or illustration that communicated in a unique way their personal idea of (future) self. The final digital composition was to express in a symbolic and/or more representational way their individual story or vision. The choice of images, colours, shapes, arrangement, manipulation, etc. had to be unique expression of how they see themselves, or tell a (personal) story that is meaningful to them, and/or anything else they would like to represent. The Process Exa...