WINOL Reflection - Week Five

This week did not go as well as the previous one.



I've been quite unwell for a while and, coupled with the loss of my phone and no money to replace it, I wasn't as on the ball over the weekend as I should have been. I missed a court case on Monday morning that looked as though it could have been quite interesting. I rang up to see if there was anything coming up the next day or Wednesday that I could sit in on, and there was nothing that I could use. From there on I had no more luck in trying to find a story - everything led to a dead end, and Chris's idea about chasing up local authorities and lawyers to see what they thought of the legal aid cuts was surprisingly difficult; I could not find anyone who would agree to an interview before my deadline. I had a statement from the Taxpayer's Alliance backing the cuts, but I could not find anyone to balance it.

As I was essentially twiddling my thumbs while still looking everywhere for a viable story that could be shot and edited before the ever impending deadline, I decided to help everyone else out as best I could. I went with Tom to help him film his interview with the media lecturer about the 'zombie symposium' and went to town with Lou to help him film some GVs for his piece.

Lou did very well and had found two stories this week, one about a drop in university applications and another about the council's plans to install cameras in the meeting halls - the only problem was that he could not be in the bulletin twice, and so I agreed to voice the latter story. I used the footage Lou already had to stitch the story together, but we unfortunately found that one of the balancing interviews was completely unusable due to a problem with the tape. To balance the story, I went out on the Wednesday morning to do a piece to camera in front of the Hampshire County Council building in which I read out a statement from the chairman.

My piece to camera was poor, as my voice apparently seemed almost mocking of the Chairman's statement to the point where the balance of the story was thrown in to doubt. I didn't sound like I had enough authority. I was unaware that this is how I come across and will work on that in the future. Holding the soggy bit of paper was also a mistake as it looked unprofessional and I should have just held my notepad instead.

My grammar was also off - it's "The Council is" not "The Council are." Such an elementary mistake is embarrassing and I'm annoyed that I didn't catch that. In future I should always double check subject verb agreement as I have made this mistake before.

Chris and Brian mentioned on a broader note that everybody's interviews were a little bit dull, and that we weren't going out to film with our story in mind. Always get a soundbite is now as important as always making sure you get an interesting headline picture. I think this is a good rule to stick to as it'll make the whole process much less complicated.

WINOL Reflection - Week Four

I feel that this was the first week that went smoothly for me.

On Monday at the news meeting I said that I wanted to cover an appeal about rhinos that Marwell zoo had just launched, and to go down to Southampton to see Princess Anne open a police station. I was given the go ahead and so I set about confirming interviews.

Tuesday was an absolutely incredible day. I went to Marwell in the morning and got some shots of the rhinos, some tigers and a snow leopard (which we didn't use for the package in the end, but we've got them if we need them in the future.) Then I tried to do my interview with the rhino zoo keeper and there was a small problem; the sound didn't work. We chalked that up to some loose connection inside the camera because the levels weren't even moving. It was my fault for not checking my equipment before we set out, even though we are constantly being told to do just that. I won't make that mistake again.

That was annoying, but we asked there and then if it would be okay to come back in a few hours and they said that was fine, so we went back to uni, grabbed a new camera, and came back. I did my interview and then did my piece to camera inside the rhino enclosure – as we were messing around trying to get a decent angle, one of the rhinos decided to come over and see what was going on. The result is that I'm tentatively patting a rhino in my piece to camera. Anyone reading this is probably absolutely sick of me bragging about it, but I don't care. Sula the rhino completely negated how technically bad I was in my PTC, and saved the day. I should thank Karen as well for climbing around on the bars with the camera to get the best shot. Cheers!

For once, I was prepared on Wednesday morning and already halfway through my editing. Brian helped me write my voice-over script and told me that I wasn't writing to the pictures and instead I was imposing some sort of essay over them: I can see what he means. I was also being too literal and writing as someone might for a radio piece. It's a hard habit to shake but I'm going to try much harder in the future to let go of whatever I seem to think the story should be, and lead with the pictures, rather than using them as aids. Brian told me to write a drop intro, which is setting the scene a little bit more and getting the viewer involved, rather than just chucking facts at them like I was originally.

I finished with time to spare and tried to see if there was anything I could do to help the others. I was told to operate camera 2 for the bulletin, which was both dull and nerve-wracking at the same time. It's still nice to have the experience.

I got lucky this week. Even though a story about rhinos isn't exactly hard hitting journalism, it was an enjoyable experience. I got to go to the zoo twice, for free, so I'm checking this off in my head as my first ever job perk.

WINOL Reflection - Week Three

This week hasn't been as bad as the last, even though I've had to stumble through the same number of hurdles.

The previous Friday, I went to the Crown Court for the first time since last year. It was a great experience; all of the staff were really pleasant and helpful, which I suppose makes sense when one of the primary purposes of a journalist is to help the public see that justice is being done. The clerk directed me to Court 8, where a string of sentences were going to be processed.

I sat there and wrote down as much as I could about each case, including names and ages, but critically I missed where each person was from. No matter what else I had, above all, I needed as much identification as I could find or the story could not go ahead; the name, age and occupation of a person was not enough to prevent accidental libel. After trying to contact various magistrates courts and being denied a request for more information, I had to accept the fact that we could not run the story. At least I know what I need for next time.

Most of Tuesday was spent chasing a breaking story about record youth unemployment figures which were to be released the next morning; I spent all day trying to track down and speak to relevant members of youth groups and job centres but nobody was available to speak to me, and the job centre flat out refused to be interviewed about it.

I was a bit stuck at this point. Eventually I was given a story about an Antarctic expedition to cover - I rang up the centre in Southampton and attempted to speak to them on Tuesday afternoon, but the interview had to be on the Wednesday morning.

Karen kindly drove me there bright and early for 8.30 and we managed to get the footage and be back in the newsroom for 11. I had under two hours to turn that around in to a package which I just about managed, but it wasn't that great. I again left my interviewees to tell the story and committed the sin of using them to tell the viewer facts, which should be my job - my scripting should contain the facts, the interviews should contain comment. The framing was poor and I needed the shots to be a little bit tighter on the face. I also used a cut away of one interviewee demonstrating something else while he was speaking about another thing - this made it look as if it were out of sync.

Angus and Rachel also mentioned that I should have 'rounded off' my package - there's an interview, then it abruptly stops and I gave my SOC. This sounds a bit strange and I should avoid that in the future.

I still feel much more positive about this week than I have done about the others, and that feeling seemed to be echoed throughout the whole newsroom. Hopefully next week will be just as good.

Second Week WINOL Reflection

These past couple of days have been the most stressful and physically exhausting ones that I've ever had at uni, which either speaks volumes about my ability to cope or says more about what a breeze the first year is. A bit of both?

Like Chris and Brian have said, it's better to make mistakes because it shows that you're doing something. I did a lot less last week, and felt positively serene compared to the way I feel now; but I didn't learn as much. I understand what they mean now - it's much better to touch something hot and get burnt rather than simply being told not to or watching someone else burn themselves. Nothing that I've learned this week will be forgotten any time soon.

My week

Over the weekend I had attempted to get an interview with some local students who had had their house broken in to and 7000 pounds worth of their stuff stolen, but it soon became obvious that they didn't want to talk about it, which was fair enough. On Monday, I went out to film an interview with a museum curator about the theft of lead from the building's roof. At the news meeting an hour later, I found out that this story was unlikely to go anywhere so I dropped it and instead went with Chris's suggestion about filming Conservative club members watching Kenneth Clarke's speech on law and order.

The following morning, I went out to Totton to the nearest club to film, but unfortunately no-one was around at 11am; when people finally did start filtering through, they would speak to me but point blank refuse to be filmed. I still should have made the best of a bad situation and came back with anything at all, which was the first mistake I made. I wasted my own time and effort and came back empty handed.

Tuesday afternoon wasn't so bad; on the journey back from Southampton and the walk through Winchester town I met a local councillor who was pleasant, helpful, gave me times and dates for various meetings and said that I could personally come along as his guest. It was complete luck that I was walking to the uni at the same time he was, but I'm glad that it happened. There was a fire in town a few hours later so Henry and I ran out to film that, and I went back to edit it during the evening. It was made in to a 30 second OOV which I was proud of as now I at least had something to contribute to the bulletin, but it was riddled with issues that were mentioned in the debrief.

A planned council worker strike was reported on Wednesday morning and we tried to pick up on that and present it as breaking news. I rang the union and the council to find out some facts about the strike and was instructed to write a short script telling viewers what had happened and what was going to happen. I ended up in the studio as a guest speaker talking to Hana about the issue.

Debrief notes

The biggest, most fatal error I made this week was relying on technology to see me through my chat with Hana on screen. If I'd made any effort to take in what I was supposed to be talking about, learn my script or even have it there in front of me on the desk then it might have been okay.

Even if the auto-cue did work, my eyeline would have looked weird anyway, so in future that is never going to be an option. Hopefully no-one else will make the mistake I made, because it didn't feel great.

Angus also mentioned that my choice of words was strange and that instead of 'citizen' anyone would just say 'person.' I'll bear that in mind in the future and keep my script simple.

The guest editor, Rachel, commented on the overlay of the previous bin men strikes and said that I should cut the pictures myself so that I know the timings. This will help it to flow well on screen – she said if it doesn't flow then it can look quite odd.

In terms of my OOV, the pictures were in the wrong order (I should have started with the burnt out sports car) and I should have gotten a wider selection of shots so that we could see what the eyewitness was talking about - it's TV, not radio. I also needed to make the eyewitnesses interview shorter - she took up about 20 seconds which is way too long in a standard package, let alone a short piece. As I left in the bulk of the interview it made timings difficult in terms of the presenter knowing where to talk over the underlay/oov and where to stop to allow the actuality/upsot to be heard.

So yeah, this week has been a bit of a baptism of fire, but I'm still looking forward to the next one.