An outline of questions asked to Fit estate agents and their tennants

also used to interview toby burr our unite tenant

Documentary questions for Fit interview

1. You represent a number of landlords and facilitate the renting of their properties correct?
2. Are the majority of your hopeful tenants that approach you students?
3. Do you feel that the majority of your student customers make informed decisions when renting a property?
4. If not, does your company give advice to student customers who may be first time renters?
5. Do you feel students are misinformed about the residential possibilities available to them?
6. In your professional opinion are students misrepresented in the market, for instance are they falsely portrayed and as such does the standard of their accommodation suffer?
7. Do landlords prefer tenants that are mixed sex or one sex?
8. What is the typical housing that you facilitate students to, e.g flat, house, en-suite fully furbished…,?
9. Who regulates prices and how?
10. What is the typical price band?
11. Is there anything else you would like to tell me?

Documentary questions for tenants

1. How many years have you been studying at university?
2. Before your arrival at university were you made aware of the any other form of residence other that student halls?
3. If your were made aware of the private sector would it have altered your decision?
4. Were you given any advice when renting this or any previous accommodation, such as what was expected from you as a tenant?
5. Do you feel that students are misrepresented in the market, for example are they falsely portrayed and as such does the standard of their accommodation suffer?
6. Do you think landlords and estate agents should monitor their prices in accordance with the funds available to students?
7. Do you feel like a valid and informed customer of your landlord?
8. Drawing from your personal experience what advice would you give a first time renter or indeed a first year student?

Complaints about Unite accommodation!!!

Came across complaints about Unite accommodation on student forums!

http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=189487

''The main argument here is that Unite should give students the choice of a 41 week contracts and 51 week contracts! Students shouldn’t be forced in to paying for accommodation which they won’t even use over the holidays! I think that the 51 week contract is a good idea for people who wish to live @ university but its not suited to all students!''

A student is complaining about the prices and charges of Unite accommodation and has created a petition against their contract!

http://www.petitiononline.com/heights

''The petition signatures will be forwarded to the Directors of Unite and hopefully the better response we get the more likely we will be able to get contracts we want saving us students money!''

The Independant 'promotes' Unite

Came across an article from 'The Independant'; which seems to promote Unite accommodation to students!!

http://www.independent.co.uk/student/student-life/accommodation/your-student-accommodation-questions-answered-1881772.html

sheffield hallam student accommodation: map!

Heres a map of all the different student accommodation sheffield hallam offers to students!

Production Folder

Contributor release forms printed and ready for signing!
Hopefully can get round everyone thats taken part!

Equipment List and Shot list - done :)

Student Loan Rates

Information and tables showing, how much Loan students are entitled to.


http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/Applyingforthefirsttime/DG_171542


http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/Applyingforthefirsttime/DG_174046

Items for £2!!

Having worked one of the cheapest sums, which didnt end up in minus figures after paying for accom with the loan, we worked out that students had 2pound a week to survive on!

We thought it would be a good idea just to see what you can get in a supermarket for that price!

Having looked at Asda online; i came across these items for £2!



Not much aye?! :)

Stop Motion Whiteboard

A short example of Stop Motion Animation on a Whiteboard!

We will do the same with our opening title sequence and working out different sums regarding the prices. Drawing a line/ number/ letter at a time to create the same effect. We will then include a narration of the onscreen action.

"Poor students forced to live at home"

Heres a relevant news article regarding expensive student accommodation;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/nov/25/studenthousing-students

"Most teenagers from low-income families go to a nearby university and stay at home, poll shows"

" More than half (53%) of students from families who work in manual jobs or are on benefits - socio-economic categories D and E - chose their university because it was close to home, a poll by the National Union of Students and HSBC has found."

"Student housing costs up sharply, NUS survey suggests"

Heres a news article regarding the expensive prices of student housing!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8584415.stm

"The average cost of university accommodation has risen by 22% in the past three years, according to the National Union of Students (NUS).

The survey of 132 university and private sector landlords found the average weekly room cost had risen from £81.18 in 2006-07 to £98.99 in 2009-10"

Unite accom ''virtual tour''

Unite Accommodation!

Pictures from Unite Accommodation Website
Showing images from The Anvil, and The Forge in Sheffield

These Halls range from £91-£99 a week!!!


Typical Unite Kitchen:



Typical Unite Bedroom:




Typical Living area, Open plan, with kitchen:

As we can see; the quality is very basic, low standard, cheap furniture, and very small living space, for the price students pay! = RIP OFF :)

Fonejacker - Monies

Change to style

Influences..

Alan Berliners' : Nobody's Business (1996)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117196/

http://www.alanberliner.com/flashdev3/viewing.html

Channel 4 Series. Fonejacker

Phone call to Unite

As Unite haven't replied to our email we sent, we then decided to ring them up and try arrange an interview to see what they had to say. Heres a short script of what we planned to say during the phone call.

''Hi, we're making a film regarding student accommodation. We've interviewed some of your tennants and there have been complaints regarding your prices.
We are giving you the opportunity to express your side of the story which will be recorded for our film.
Would you like to arrange an interview with us?''

Having tried to arrange an interview over the phone, no one was willing to speak to us regarding the topic and kept redirecting us to other offices.

Unite: 0800 783 4213

Sheffield Unite... 01132 426135

Head Marketing Department Bristol... 01173027046

Email to unite

Hey sorry took so long to put this email on that we sent to unite was trying to find it in my mailbox, still no reply from them yet though.

To whom it may concern,

Hi my name is Sam Parker, I am currently a second year student at Sheffield Hallam University and studying film and media production. For our latest project we have been asked to make a documentary that is within the public interest, being students we decided to tackle the issue of student acommodation prices. we decided to look at both student and private sector letting agents to find out who offered the better deal for students. upon our findings we found that your company is one of the most expensive.

From this we decided to speak both past and present tenants of your acommodation to see wether they thought you acommodation was worth the money. From this we discovered that not all of them were entirely satisfied with the service that is provided by you. We would very much like to hear your views on the issue as to your pricing structure and to the standard of your acommodation and allow you to have an input into our documentary, unfortunately we discovered you were not the only company that didn't provide adequate service or value for money and we as students feel we deserve a better standard of living especially for the amount of money we are spending on such service.

We very much looking forward to hearing a response to this email and hopefully shed some light on the disillusionment we feel as students on the current issues.

Yours Faithfully

Sam Parker

Statistics

A table of statistics regarding student accommodation prices :)

http://www.shu.ac.uk/accommodation/costsandcont.html

Interviews..

Looking back at our interview from Fit estate agents with feedback from the tutorial, the interview will have to be re-shot, due to poor sound quality (from a faulty rifle mic, which we didn't realise until it was taking place), the framing could also be improved aswell as the lighting!

Having rescheduled this, Ashley has now been stranded abroad due to the Volcano in Iceland. So will try get this done, asap on his return!

The Interview with the students in the house is useable aswell as some footage of the tour around the house.

An interview has also been arranged with the Uni student accommodation services has been arranged for 3pm, 20th April.

What we see on screen

Introduction of what we will be talking about:
This will include a voice-over which will explain what we are doing and why we are doing it. It will last around 1 minute and should tell of exactly how we are going to highlight our point. Whilst the voice-over is telling the audience all of this there will be shots of Student Accommodation and student buildings. There should also be a small montage of vox-pops that we have done that describe the accommodation with words like “disappointing”, “awful” and “sickening”. After this, there might be a title saying “student accommodation”, with maybe a devil horns and tail around it. Throughout the intro there will be music playing and the final chord plays when the title comes up.
The main body:
Whoever the presenter is, they will appear now and talk to the camera directly as they explain “but before we go and speak to the student letting agencies, let’s go and find out what the students themselves have to say about the places they live”. He will say this in a busy street and should have a mini mic attached to him to pick up sound as road noise may be a problem. We then show some vox pops with students and for the first one we will see the presenter asking them the question “what do you think of student accommodation prices?” We will get 4 or 5 full responses to the question.
Then the presenter will talk about the findings and explain how it’s “time to find out what the student accommodation places have to say about prices”. There can be a short shot of their sign with maybe the sounds of thunder and a haunting church organ. The next shot will be in the student letting agents with the presenter asking what prices everything is. Once we find out the results we go to a whiteboard and copy the figures we have found out and compare it to the minimum loans that people get. This will be done by the presenter saying to the camera what he is adding up and then in fast motion he writes down his findings on the board. After writing it all down the presenter then asks the camera “hmm, I wonder if there’s another way”.
There will then be a short clip with a voice-over (of the presenter) saying “so we went and had a look and we found this, a non-student letting agencies” and there will be a shot of the front of the letting agencies. From here the presenter has a talk with the guys at this letting agency explaining why there place is so much better. We then go and have a look around one of their properties with the letting agencies showing us around it and interview the people that live there. !Hopefully! they will say that they haven’t had any problems which will allow us to lead onto the next section.
The next section will start with another voice-over or talk on street which says “so what are the sorts of problems students are getting at their student properties”. This will lead to more vox-pops of people with problems with their accommodation. For this we will have people that we know doing it so we can ensure that we get the juiciest stories.
After this, the presenter says to the camera (whilst talking on a street) “I think it’s about time we highlighted these points to the student letting agencies themselves”. After this we will either have footage of an interview with them where we highlight all these problems or we read out a statement that tells the audience that they refused to comment.
Conclusion:
With a voice-over we then sum up what we have found and finish with another collection of one word response to vox-pop questions. There will be music playing as this is playing. Then the credit roll.

p.s. the vox-pops should generally be people we know as we’re more likely to get more detailed answers from them.

Style of filming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqYNCS9MR0Q
This is for the bit where we add up the totals on the whiteboard... obviously we won't need to do all the extravagant stuff, but you get the idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcV38fNKiqA
Having a Louis Theroux type voice over would be cool to tell the audience what is about to happen on screen.

Letting agents websites research

I have added a few websites that i have researched feel free to have a look and let me know what you think to investigating these.

http://www.sd-properties.co.uk/

http://www.westone-student-accommodation-sheffield.co.uk/

http://www.unite-students.com/student-accommodation-sheffield?_$ja=kw:Sheffield%7Ccgn:Unite+Sitelinks%7Ccgid:1176319872%7Ctsid:6774%7Ccn:Brand+-+Unite%7C&gclid=COypuZr3laACFRQulAodghjndw

Project statement

Hi, just wanted to let you know i have completed the project statement and have carried out some research on letting agents. we all need to start asking students to partake in the film though this shouldn't be too difficult. we then need to go into letting agents and get information on some properties to carry out our initial research. so if we could all bring some information with us to the documentary session on monday then that would be awesome.

sam