Winol Week 8.....Everything went right and then we had a wonky collar

Week 8 and I felt that this week was my best week to date as I felt that I took good story that after countless number of technical problems and interview time changes, was resurrected at the last minute.

The week started with the usual news meeting where I pitched my story, which would cover the plans for Southampton City Council to implement commissioning of services, but these changes were being seen as a chance to privatise the council, according to local unions. I was able to obtain an interview with Councillor Royston Smith, leader of Southampton City Council and Mike Tucker, Branch Secretary for Unison Southampton.

I had a series of problems on Tuesday with my equipment, which included my camera not working, the battery dying, not taking the right tripod and changing cameras. However, after 3 trips, back and forth from Winchester to Southampton, I brought Tom with me as I had arranged an interview with a local Green Councillor for his story. Luckily at the last minute, I received a phone call from Southampton City Council's press office and they had arranged for my to meet Councillor Smith.

I felt this was my best interview to date, as Councillor Smith was very vocal in his opinions to defend the council and attack the union's claims. This left me with Wednesday morning to do all my filming of my Gv's, my piece to camera and the second interview with Mike Tucker. Just your usual Wednesday morning at Winol

After a morning of rushing around, I returned to the new room with two hours to editing my piece together and hand a headline clip in.  I finished my package and was given in time. I felt that my overall package this week was my best to date as the interviews I had gave two very good soundbites, as well as continuity as this was the first time I used two part of one interview to use as counter balance to the ongoing debate between Southampton City Council and the local unions.

There was still some issues with the overall piece. I felt that Gv's I used could have been stronger, however I was on my own and worked to a very tight deadline, therefore it was good with the limited amount of time I had. My second interview with Mike Tucker was framed well, but he was looking directly into the camera as if he was being interrogated and I need to ensure that they are looking at me to make the piece look more natural. The final gripe I had was the most annoying as my piece to camera was confident, I kept constant eye contact with the camera, but my collar was wonky. This made me look scruffy and unprofessional and I may take Angus Scott's advice from now and take a mirror with me to ensure I do not look scruffy.

Now to the bulletin, I feel we are getting stronger with our overall content and focus to our primary and secondary demographic. In terms of the bulletin it was good to have the Vice-Chancellor, Joy Carter as it promotes the University in a positive light and in any news institution if you can have an important figure within the organisation (in this case The University of Winchester) in the bulletin, you do it as it the best way to reach your target audience. We also included an in-studio discussion about the rise in youth unemployment, which was again good as we were target the demographic.

However, we should of known in advance and made a package about an important topic to students, as they will be interested in job prospects after graduating. We finally had a court story, but it was not a broadcast news story as it was about a local paedophile and we only had a mug shot and as it involved a minor we could not divulge many details. This would of worked better as an OOV, but it was good that Flick found a story in her patch.

Overall Winol is going from strength to strength as we are targeting our demographic audience's and grabbing their attention with good stories. We just need to ensure that we are focusing on getting the most detail out of every story and keeping the audience engaged every week. With the impending and now success of the 30th November national strike protest broadcast in history, we did not have a Winol bulletin last week and therefore my next Winol review will be the rolling coverage of the strikes!

Winol Week 5: Two stories, twenty two takes and two wires that I am now in fear of

Week 5 and it feels like I have starting to feel that I am acclimatised myself to my role of Political Correspondent on Winchester News Online. After last week's baptism of fire, I felt that I needed to redeem myself from my story from last week, which was poor by my high standards. 

On Monday we had a different type of debrief where Chris Horrie reviewed WINOL as a whole including What's On, Sportsweek, Radio and the WINOL website as a whole. Not many relevant points came out of the debrief from a news aspect, but we were told about the aspect of fair dealing, which allows you to use a few seconds of footage from a copyrighted piece of footage for the purpose of reviewing or commenting on. 

We then were sent to call our contacts in order to have a story ready for the news meeting at half 2. I went into the meeting with a story I had found that Hampshire County Council were planning to implement video technology into their council meetings to promote transparency between the council and Hampshire residents, but at a cost of nearly £250,000. 

I had got in contact with Unison Hampshire and arranged to interview the Branch Secretary, Tim Cutter with the angle of showing if this equipment was a waste of taxpayers money during the current economic climate of cuts in both jobs and public services. I was given the task of putting together another story in regards to the announcement by UCAS in the falling number of university applications this year. 

From past experience this year, I knew that this would be a hard task to pull on by Wednesday morning, but I was confident and went on to interview Tim Cutter and was able to gain what I thought was a couple of good quotes. Tuesday morning I was able to meet up with Councillor Colin Davidovitz who is the cabinet member for communication at Hampshire County Council. After I finished my interview, I went into town and filmed my GV's ready to then focus attention on the university application story.

I got in contact with the four local universities in the area, but both universities in Southampton and Portsmouth University were unable to give me their application figures, as they had not yet been released. Therefore, I had to use the information on a national scale to focus the angle on my story, which had been decided to be an in-studio piece with help from a graphic. 

Thanks to Chris and Charlotte were able to create a graphic and a graph, which would help explain the extent of the problem and I was then able to pass my other story onto Flick and gave her the background behind the story and what was left to be finished. I decided it would be more helpful to capture the footage, but we then found that the interview with Councillor Davidovitz had technical and sound problems, which were not evident when I played the interview back through the camera. 

Thankfully, I was able to give Flick the statement I had received from Council Leader, Ken Thornber for her to use in a piece-to-camera in the morning. At the same time, The University of Winchester had got back in contact with me, which allowed me to make the story more relevant with a local angle, but with it being 2am on Wednesday morning this point, I decided to leave the news room and try and get some sleep to be ready for recording my in-studio piece in the morning. 

Wednesday morning came and it was decided that we would only use the graph in the in-studio piece and that the presenter would explain the first part of the story. The time then came for me to go in the studio to record my piece, ready for the bulletin. After a near-hour long constant struggle with sorting the wires out and with the help of five pieces of tape, I was ready to record my piece. After what felt that twenty takes, the piece was recorded, but what was clear is that I need to slow my pace down as sometimes my nerves take control and I will speak to quick, which will make harder for the viewer to understand what the story is about. 

A big thanks to both Angus who helped me relax and pace myself with the piece and to George and Dom for great direction helping me ensures I remained focused throughout. 

After editing the piece together, I handed it in and awaited this week's debrief after the bulletin at 3. After the bulletin had been played out, it was clear straight away I had made a fatal error. I had announced Tommy Geddes as the Vice Chancellor, not the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Therefore I had not checked my facts 100% and if this has been live it could of been a major legal error and it was not the best thing when the real Vice-Chancellor, Joy Carter came in and witnessed this error during final rehearsal.

Other points that came out from the debrief including that the majority of the images this week were poor and did not tell the story. Brian mentioned that if you turn the sound down on the news, you should be able to tell the story from the pictures and this week's WINOL did not do this. Also, you best picture should be used at the beginning of your story and should keep the viewer engaged throughout.  

Broader points included the use of verb structure between the use of singular and plural verbs. It was also evident that this week the interviews were mainly dull and we were not filming with the story in mind or the quote we wanted. This has now been decided that no story will be used without balance and decent soundbite and without being seen by either Will or Becky to ensure everyone facts are right. 

From a personal standpoint, I think I did very well with the workload I had this week, but feel that I could of put more effort and time in with one story and could of made it better. My in-studio PTC was good, but I know that I need to relax and pace myself in order to get my point across, but also ensuring the viewer is able to understand. My biggest weakness is still keeping my eyes focusing down the camera at all times because there were a few small occurrences where my eyes wandering from focus.

This week has helped me appreciate how hard work does pay off, but the key thing now is to ensure that my non-verbal interaction is as polished and strong as my verbal interaction on camera and during this week's story.