Well it has been nice to have a chance to relax as it's the weekend and the weather is the best I've seen it all summer.... The bulk of this week has been learning and getting to grips with the experience of Winchester News Online and this week I have learnt a lot of lessons.
My overall experience of my first week is to take nothing for granted and everything that could of possibly gone wrong this week went wrong. However, it was a positive as it allowed me to feel what it is like to be a news reporter under pressure and I have realised how fast-paced and demanding the role is. I knew that my role as Political Correspondent would be very demanding and luckily my background knowledge into local politics helped me out.
I think was overall news package was below-average, but I did not expect to come shooting out the blocks on my first week and needed to make the mistakes to show where I needed to improve. I felt that the interview was the strongest part of the story and would like to thank Julie for helping me film. Councillor Stephen Godfrey was very helpful as he was straight to the point and explained the true extent of the parking permit issue. The wind did effect the sound quality, but then you can not always control the weather sometimes, but it is key that the gun mic is used in most instances as it can guard from certain weather conditions.
The main problem I had was with my choice of camera shots as most of my shots were either out-of-focus or were blue, which was down to me not correcting the white balance for every shot. This stopped me from using many of my shots and left me to use only a few of the shots, but I did not get the key shots and the subject of the new story. Therefore, I need to ensure that I use a variety of key shots, which establish the story for the viewer to understand when they are watching.
The camera problems I had meant that I had to increase the duration of my piece to camera. I felt that my piece to camera was very weak in the fact I felt that I should of looked more closely at the camera and needed to keep my eye focused and not squinted. The positive from the piece to camera I felt was my voice over as I felt I explained the story and that the voice training I did over the summer had worked as have tried to remove my voice of it's regional tone and accent.
After the first "dummy" edition of WINOL we all went back into Tab where Angus gave his overall opinions on the first edition and gave the reporters some key advice on what not to do in our next news story. This included:
* Do not start your story with a piece to camera.
* Don't say "I talked to".
* Ensure the white balance is sorted and the focus is settled before you film your shots.
* Use a range of different camera shots and keep them relevant to the topic of your news story.
* Do not use more than 12 seconds of footage per interview.
* Keep your audio constant throughout.
* Get another member of the WINOL team to read direct quotes.
This week has been a challenge and I hope that I have learnt from the mistakes and will ensure my story for next week is nailed on and will impress the first guest editor.
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