I was a bog standard mix of nervous and excited at the thought of getting back in to the routine of University again. As it turns out, I was unprepared for how intense the first couple of days would be; we were seemingly dropped right in the thick of it as a chance to prove ourselves. Maybe. That's what I was telling myself, anyway.
We attended our first news meeting on Monday and we were asked about any potential stories we had lined up. I'll plainly admit that I didn't have very much. Solely relying on the court to provide me with a story the next day was a bad move. Thankfully, Will the Editor gave me a pretty much fully-formed story about the tobacco vending machine ban and I spent all of Tuesday chasing that up.
What I learned from work experience, and what I reaffirmed that day, was the extent to which press officers and other people will fob you off as if you're a child of a divorce. I rang one place and was referred to another. I rang that place and was referred to where I came from. What a horrible, time wasting recursion. I'll definitely be having some abstract nightmares tonight about that.
The pure, 100 per cent proof, triple-filtered stress that I have felt this week (or more accurately, these past three days which have felt like a week) has truly knocked me off my feet. I want to throw around ridiculous hyperbole like "No one has ever been as tired as I am now" and "Nobody has ever walked so far" but that's obviously not true. The feelings of exhaustion are probably more down to the total inactivity that I enjoyed during the summer. If I could change one thing, it would be to go back in time and make myself do more so that WINOL wouldn't come as such a massive shock.
Following up the story itself and filming vox pops and other bits and pieces I really enjoyed. On the Wednesday morning, I went to film an interview with a pub manager which went fairly well, apart from a few technical issues like some light falling on the interviewee's face in a weird way and the mic picking up annoying background sounds. Also, there was the fact that I took at least 20 tries to do my piece to camera. It wasn't even very good in the end, I could hear all sorts of crazy stuff going on with my speech because I was so focused on trying to memorise my script ( something else that is much harder than I thought it would be). You know, that's unless a nasal quality and glottal stops are in vogue right now or something, in which case I did super well.
After the delivery of WINOL at 3pm, Angus debriefed us on what he had seen. He told us that starting a package with a piece to camera was poor form, that reading out statements yourself and not corralling someone else in to doing it sounded odd, and that interviews in packages should never be more than 12 - 15 seconds long. If you didn't get a salient quote in that sort of time frame, then you weren't asking the right questions.
Another point was to completely eliminate any unnecessary audio saying "I spoke to blah blah blah"; the video that we've captured of us doing exactly that should get that point across, and if it hasn't, we haven't done our job. It takes up valuable time in a package which could be better spent telling the story.
It was a lot to take in, but surely the only way from here is up. That's what I'm banking on. I think every one of us did pretty well considering we only had a day to deliver on a story where we'd usually have close to a week, and the fact that we're all newbs.
In the mean time, this is what I'm going to bear in mind:
- Spend more time making sure that the camera is correctly set up, fix white balance and focus
- Never open a package with a PTC
- Don't bother recording "I spoke to..." because planning and editing will obviously imply this
- Limit interview grabs to 12 - 15 seconds
- Get someone else to read out statements
I'd just like to say that I'm really, really grateful for all the help the third years gave me. So cheers in particular to Julie, Dom, Aimee, Will and Becky. I owe you all a few pints, or at least a pack of ten from a vending machine.
