WINOL Week Eight

On Monday it turned out that the focus of the bulletin should be a 'budget special' - and that we were all supposed to be doing packages based on any far reaching effects the budget might have.

I settled for the nicely vague theme of 'local businesses'. A handful of shops in Winchester had or were in the process of closing down and this meant all I had to do was contact these stores to get a case study. I arranged this on Monday along with what I thought would be the balancing interview and then went to film on Tuesday morning. She was incredibly helpful and happy to let me film sequences and cutaways. During her interview, however, she mentioned the person I was going to contact for balance and I realised that they were on the same 'side' - so that wouldn't work. She also knocked the local City Council and blamed the store's closure on their lack of support.

I emailed and rang the press officer for the council and stated that a local business owner had criticised the council in my story and if they gave me an interview with a councillor that this was a chance for them to provide a rebuttal. Sure enough, I was given an interview with the council leader the very same day.

I felt lucky that I managed to get a quote out of him in the extremely short period we were given - he had to dash off to a meeting two minutes after we arrived.

After filming some more cutaways in the town centre, I put all of my efforts in to my script. I'm glad that I had a day to play with it as my first and second drafts really weren't that good, and again Chris had to go through it with me to cut away the fat.

I'm really happy with the way my package turned out this week but I don't feel like it was particularly down to much skill on my part - there was a great deal of luck involved in getting that council interview and the case study in the shop. Without those elements everything would have fallen through and I didn't have any sort of back-up story.

WINOL Week Seven

I had been sitting on a story that I got from a council meeting a few weeks ago about a local tattoo artist who has been speaking out against a bunch of 'DIY' tattooists who have been operating in the area and putting people at risk of blood-borne infections and, in the tattooists own words, "naff tattoos."

In the intervening weeks I had gotten in touch with the tattooist, met with him and spoken to him for ages about how angry he was about the whole thing. He agreed to be interviewed whenever he had a free period in his shop and even sought permission from a woman he was tattooing to see if it was alright for me to film her.

The opening shot of the package was of a nice, big closeup on the skin, ink and needle, something which I do actually feel kind of proud of. A common complaint from editors in the debrief is how visually dull the bulletin was, something which I feel like I couldn't be accused of this week.

The interview with the tattoo artist was brilliant, but as usual the very best quote came at the end. After we'd packed up, I asked if I could take away a spare needle and tattoo grip for my piece to camera and he seemed more than happy to let me have them - I was thinking that my PTC would be more interesting if I was doing something.

I tried the whole 'walk-and-talk' cut away shot with the councillor, but I've got to admit, I kind of hate it. I always laugh at other reporters when it pops up in their packages and I even chuckle when it comes on in the news. Why is it so incredibly cheesy?

Something that's been bothering me ever since I started reporting is my voice. I feel more confident during PTCs now, but my voice will seemingly always be crap and disinterested. I sound bored during the voiceover of my package, which could not be further from the truth as I actually found this story personally really interesting. It annoys me that I come across this way and I need to figure out a way of speaking that just sounds more engaged. I wish that I'd studied Drama at school or something.

Another issue was again that of libel; the original package had a bit of expo with me talking about how kits bought from ebay can pose a risk of AIDS and Hep to those unlucky enough to recieve the tattoo while such a kit was on-screen, and Brian felt that it was best if we just took it out. I was annoyed that I'd messed that up again following directly on from last week but it's definitely for the best, it was far too suggestive and it's always better to err on the side of caution.

All in all, I was pretty happy with this week. It's probably one of the more visually interesting straight news packages I've done and my interviewee certainly couldn't have been any less dull.

WINOL Week Five and Six

Week Five

It was a promising week in which I feel like I let myself down slightly.

I was chasing a story based on a report that the UCU had issued on the drop in variety of undergraduate courses available to students.

A whole variety of shots were open to me, but in the end I just didn't get it done; I also didn't let those on graphics know that I needed graphics well in advance, which made them look cheap and rushed when we tried to cobble them together on the day.

The pie-chart graphic was confusing and didn't really illustrate what I was trying to say - I also only had the one interview with a lecturer and UCU member at this university where ideally I should have provided both sides of the equation - although both parties said essentially the same thing.

As I said, the story initally looked quite promising and intriguing but due to complacency, illness and inertia it just didn't happen how I envisaged it. Not the best week.

Week Six

I didn't fare much better during Week Six. I had an OOV about the uni offering an air traffic control course to students in 2013 done and dusted by Tuesday morning, and had neglected the search for content for another proper news package. Completing an OOV doesn't feel like a very good contribution to the bulletin, so I was eager to grab anything else that came up - in this case, this happened to be the local Council Leader stepping down in order to persue the new Police Chief Commisioner job that is opening up, which was breaking news on a local newspaper's website.

While I was extremely pressed for time and only had an hour to research, script, film and edit a package about it, I failed as not only did I not meet the deadline but I managed to libel the Council Leader in my script as well.

This is a pretty serious error and something which can't be repeated. Not meeting the deadline was awful but I kept editing the package while the bulletin was going on just in case they needed it. In the end, the edited version was slotted in post production and then the bulletin was taken down and re-edited by Brian to catch something I'd missed.

It was a total disaster and next time I'll more carefully assess how much time I'd need for something like that, attempt to stay calmer and make sure that I control the script-writing myself rather than relying on someone else to do it for me.