WINOL Week Two and Three

Week Two was a good week for me - I got to do a fluff piece about a baby giraffe at Marwell Zoo. I'd set it up over the weekend and was ready to film on Tuesday afternoon. Henry came with me and between the two of us we got some really good shots - especially great were the ones shot from up on the raised platform that the keeper suggested to us.
I feel like my scripting was okay and I used my best picture first, but I was told that the bed of music was perhaps too cute and cheesy even for an 'and finally', which is something to bear in mind in future.

Week Three was a little bit trickier. I had tried my best over the weekend to secure interviews for a story about a supermarket trying to establish itself in the suburbs of the city. It looked like it was going okay until the press office for the supermarket got back to me on Tuesday morning and said that they couldn't get a statement to me within the next two weeks. I gladly let it go because visually it would have been dull. I had already hedged my bets and spent three hours at court on Monday - which unfortunately didn't provide anything interesting. I went back on Tuesday and stuck around for another few hours until I found something sort of newsworthy. I filmed my piece to camera on Wednesday morning - and a piece to camera was all my package was.

The guest editor, Chris Coneybeer, spoke with me and gave me some great advice. He rightly said that my package needed something else - a mugshot of the guy, footage of him walking in to court, even a GV of the place where the incident happened. I had already filmed cutaways to use on Tuesday evening but when it came to editing they seened pretty irrelevant so I couldn't use them.

He said that having these things won't only just take the stress off of me by making the PTC shorter, but make scripting easier too - you can tell the story around the images, perhaps introducing the story while showing the picture of the man, the place, and then coming in to vision. He also said that, as I'm reading out a quote from the judge, I could cut to and end with a GV of the court to signify that it's the crown's words.

I'll admit that it didn't even occur to me to go and get a shot of the pub, but that would have been brilliant and would have helped to tell the story better. The only issue is that it's twenty miles away out in the sticks and I can't drive, but in real life (and when I bother to learn how to drive) I guess that wouldn't have been an issue.