A Guide to ... Rome

Roma! The capital of Italy, and the city with the BEST ice cream, (or gelato) I have ever tasted. Yes, the very first shop you should visit is straight to the corner shop for a tasty treat. Well, apart from the gelato there is still plenty to see and do. I stayed in Rome for four nights and five days. They were jam packed but what else is there to do whilst you are on holiday... sleep? I think not.

Of course there are the normal sights to see that every tourist must see as well as the ice cream. In my opinion the very best sight to see is the Trevi Fountain. It is without a doubt the most perfect place in the entire world. Even when it is crowded with hundreds of people it is still very serene and quiet. If you follow the path from Termini Central, I will show you what you will find along your way to The Vatican. It is a perfect tourist route that wont make the walk feel too long. I did it in 40 degree heat so I know you can.

Your first stop along my route is The Trevi Fountain, but it is a hard spot to find. We found only one sign to it down a tiny back alley. Before I went to Rome I had seen the Trevi Fountain in many films and shows and had always assumed that it was a large fountain in a large square. This assumption meant I was looking out for a large open area. Be warned the Trevi Fountain is a very magnificent fountain in a very small back alley. When looking for it, make sure you go under the road, through the huge tunnel and then turn left.

After Fontana di Trevi you will come across the Pantheon. This is a huge basilica with a dome that baffles architects today. The structure stands very tall but the walls support the huge dome above easily, which should not happen. The dome should collapse because the walls are not big enough but it is still standing. If you go inside you will notice that the design in the dome has also been copied to one of the domes in the Vatican.

After the Pantheon is Piazza Navona. It is a large piazza with three large fountains. These fountains are gorgeous and I suggest visiting early in the morning so you can see the whole piazza in all its glory. After about 11am it gets very busy, mostly people selling art. If you start my trip at about 9.30am you should reach everything along my path without too many tourists there.

Next up is The Vatican. This place is huge! Seriously, much larger than I expected. To give you an idea, there are numbers and words written across the top of the Vatican and each one is 8 feet high. This is a theme in Rome, everything is ten times bigger than you think it will be. Especially standing right up next to it. I was not sure if I would like the Vatican because I am not sure what I really believe in and I know that the Catholics have a very checkered past as well as present. I went with two friends who both had a lot of opinions on the Vatican and Catholics but when we got there it was not too overly in your face about religion. It was mostly about art, the Romans and the Popes.

Thankfully, we were approached by someone that was selling tours to groups of English tourists. It was 40 euros each for The Vatican, The Sistine Chapel and the The Vatican Art Museum. I highly recommend this as it worth every penny. Other guided tours are not, I will mention which ones later. 25,000 people a day visit the Vatican so this gives you an idea of just how busy it is. There were queues everywhere. This alarmed us slightly as we really did not want to be out in the heat for hours. This was our first bonus to having the guided tour, no queues, at all. We were first given a history of the Vatican and the Popes, I found this really interesting but we had to listen though headphones that were annoying. You get to used to them and they are must so you can hear the guide when it is busy.

Once we were on our way we started with the art museum. I expected art that I had never heard of before but there were statues, art and tapestry's everywhere that I had definitely heard of and that all had interesting stories behind. Michelangelo is the most prominent name in the Vatican. This is because he painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and wall as well as doing many sculptures for the Pope. Apart from the Sistine Chapel the most interesting story is behind a sculpture called The Laocoon.

As soon as you enter the museum you will see a full sculpture of the Laocoon and notice the way in which the priests arm is. It is shot out, holding a disc of some kind. This is not the real sculpture. This is an imitation with the arm on. When the sculpture was originally found the arm was missing. The Pope asked Michelangelo to make a new sculpture with the arm in the correct position. Michelangelo felt he could not do the sculpture justice so asked all his assistants to draw a picture of how they thought the arm should be. There were hundreds of drawings. The drawing that averaged the most was with the arm shot out, almost saluting; so this is what was made. A few years later the rest of the arm was found. It turned out that the arm was bending backwards, behind Laocoon's head. The one and only artist to draw the correct sculpture was Michelangelo. He understood the human body, the muscles, the bones so well that he was the only one to study and draw the correct arm in the correct position.

These tours tell you as much as possible about the art on show, I do not study art and I enjoyed everything I was being told about. This may be too much for some people but you can always leave the tour at any point. As I said, I went in August and the whole of Rome was very busy, especially the Vatican. We were going round the museum about midday and it was almost intolerable. There were no windows open because of the nature and age of the art and there were easily about 600-700 people in each room. This made in unbearable at time but what kept me going was that at the end of all this was the Sistine Chapel. I have always been interested in the Chapel and the painting on the ceiling and of the Last Judgement. I have also seen many photos of it but nothing compares to the real thing. If you see only one thing in Rome, make sure it is the Sistine Chapel.

Michelangelo never classed himself as a painter, he was a sculptor. This meant that the painting was even harder for him. The next point that made it harder still was the fact that he was painting a fresco. This is when you paint with and on to plaster. It has to be wet when you are painting and if it goes dry before you finish you have to start again. The last painful point was the Michelangelo painted standing up tilting his head backwards to the ceiling. He never laid down on the scaffolding which people normally assume. His first part of the ceiling he did was Noah's Ark with PEOPLE going in to the Ark two-by-two not animals. This first panel took him one month to paint, the last panel took him one day. He took a six month break after 28 months work and finished the ceiling in four years. There were a lot of set backs and the work itself was not your typical fresco. He had to make the people he painted look 'normal' but on a vaulted curved ceiling. Not only did he paint the panels for the depicition of Genesis but he also painted prophets, shields and the pendentives to name a few.

You may think that after reading my blog you do not need to visit the museum or learn any of the art history but you really do have to see it all for yourself, in person and I have only touched on some of the history, barely even scratched the surface. This finishes your tour to the Vatican as we have reached the end. Do not re-trace your footsteps home because getting lost in Rome means you will discover something new and beautiful. There is literally something to be photographed down every street.

The Coliseum is a must see. You will be surprised constantly how close everything is to each other. It is a short walk away from our hotel and literally down a little side street. This is another place for you to expect queues. To give you an idea, the queue literally went three quarters around the outside of the coliseum; this is a large queue. We again had people approach us to give us a tour and because of the length of the queue we took them up on their offer of 30 euros. This was including student discount so if you have a student card take it with you because they do offer discounts in some places. After our amazing Vatican tour we thought that the Coliseum tour would be just as good if not better. We were severely disappointed. The ticket to get in to the Coliseum is only five euros, I advise get there early and queue. This is much better than paying more and being time constricted. The tour was for about 20 minutes in the Coliseum, we then had 20 minutes to explore before we had to meet the tour group outside. You probably do not need much more than 20 minutes to explore but I would say about 30/40 minutes would be good. As I have said the Coliseum is huge and it has such a deep and long history that you want as much time as you can have to explore it.

The tour continued across the road to The Roman Forum. This was included in the tour and we did start it but the heat was too much. Anyone that has done a module in Romans at school will all ready know pretty much everything they talk about during the tour. I would not recommend this but again there is a queue before you go in and our tour did skip the queue. It is a very pretty place but not worth the 35 euros and shortened time in the Coliseum.

Lastly, Pompeii. This day trip was 60 euros and completely worth it. You can get more expensive day trips that stop at Naples but from what I have heard about it, it is not normally worth it. We got to the coach station, which was very close to the Central Terminal for trains, and very close to our hotel, only about a ten minute walk. The coach trip is about three hours but it really felt a lot shorter. They have one stop half way though too. We had a tour guide on the bus who told us about Pompeii and meeting times etc. She did not carry on with us in Pompeii though.

Again, once in Pompeii we had, yet another queue. This one was not as long as the others but took longer time wise. We got half way through before we were offered another special trip. I think it was about 10 euros plus our entry ticket and we skipped the queue and had a tour guide for Pompeii. This is a tour I would definitely suggest. Pompeii is huge, much larger than just a couple of rocks in the ground. Our guide was really nice and although he walked fast he did make sure we were all OK and spoke to us in the shade. He also answered all of our questions and made sure people were out of the way for our pictures. Once we finished the tour we were able to look around by ourselves. There is a bookshop and a restaurant here too. Just outside are little stalls selling tourist souvenirs so these may be a cheap way of getting something from Pompeii.

If you can afford it and are in Rome for long enough I would really recommend going to Pompeii. We pre-booked so we knew we definitely had a trip and the payment was done; it did not take anything from our spending money.

I stayed in Hotel Ariston for four nights in the first week of August for £300. This was a nice, modern hotel in perfectly situated part of Rome. It was close to the trains, and had plenty of places to eat around it; cheap, middle of the road and for the more expensive taste. There were cheaper hotels but this was the cheapest four-star we could find. Definitely take a map too, they had some in our lobby which really came in handy. Have fun and remember to explore, do not stick to the main roads, you will find something beautiful.

A Guide To... Putting an image on to the Vision Mixer

As I said in my last blog, we had a problem with all of our green screens being deleted in some way. In this blog I will tell you how to put an image on to the SD card for the Vision Mixer and I also have the pctures of our backgrounds on here so you can take them from here whenever you need to. Lastly, we now have no backrground for WINOL Life so a new one will have to be made if you carry on with it next year. You may want to make a new background for everything so that they all link. These are not perfect, especially the WINOL bulletin background as that is only a captured image but it was OK for our last bulletin as we had no time to make anything else.

"So, my only idea for making sure that we had a background for the following day would be to look though all our tapes of WINOL to find a spot where there was no-one being filmed and just an empty room with our background. It took five tapes but I finally found a tiny spot, about three seconds long that had no-one and nothing in. I captured this, grabbed it, then saved it to the desktop.

To get the picture on to the SD card you have to open it in photoshop. You then have to change the image size to 720x576 pixels. You then need to save this as 24 bit.bit map or 24 BMP. Put in the SD card and move the background in to the file marked, 'images' and you're done. When it is put into the vision mixer it should download properly. My next blog will have the Sportsweek and WINOL backgrounds in for any future use, best to back everything up."

Hope that is OK. Here are the pictures of the backgrounds for WINOL and Sportsweek but please keep in mind you may not be able to drag them straight on to the SD card, you may have to go through the above process. Also there is no photoshop on the computers in Tab9 but there are in the MMC if you can nab a computer.

WINOL - 7 December

Au revoir my beloved WINOL. My very last show and it was much more emotional than I first thought. For the last 11 weeks I have been counting down the shows as things have gone wrong every week and I was not enjoying WINOL as much as I used to. I expected to just feel relief when I finished and we packed up the studio but it does feel a bit like the end to an era. I have been on production for WINOL for the last three semesters and I have learnt so much. I know every part of the gallery and the studio and I really do hope that this will not be the last time I am in a studio.

The show went well, Dan directed, I was on the sound board, George vision mixed and Justina was on autocue. I think it is quite ironic that I was on the sound board and enjoying it when only three weeks ago I dreaded it. The show went so smoothly, everyone was relaxed, happy and calm. The packages were great, and the presenters did really well too. It felt bittersweet because we were all tired and just waiting for the end but on the other hand I felt quite sad that it was all finished. My three semesters have flown buy, it feels like only yesterday that I was working with third years before me on their last WINOL. The only advice I can give to anyone working on WINOL is; enjoy every minute. From the complete lows to the ecstatic highs, enjoy everything because it will all be gone in the blink of an eye.

The only problem we had this week was that our green screen was no longer on the SD card and ALL of our work had been deleted from the computer in the studio. When I say ALL I mean absolutely everything, even the routes and backgrounds to the files were deleted. Suspiciously Media still had all of their work on the computer though, and in fact had more work; plastering the entire desktop. I worked on getting back the green screens whilst Jack focused on putting the beginning sequence together.

Luckily on the Tuesday I found all of our music for the opening sequence in ten second parts which helped Jack as he then only had to find the video of the opening sequence and put the two together. I remembered that Chris had saved the Sportsweek background on Flickr so after trolling it for a while I found the background. The WINOL news bulletin background was completely lost though. I realise that this is partly our fault as we should have backed everything up but I do not think it entered any of our minds for a moment that we may loose all of our work.

So, my only idea for making sure that we had a background for the following day would be to look though all our tapes of WINOL to find a spot where there was no-one being filmed and just an empty room with our background. It took five tapes but I finally found a tiny spot, about three seconds long that had no-one and nothing in. I captured this, grabbed it, then saved it to the desktop.

To get the picture on to the SD card you have to open it in photoshop. You then have to change the image size to 720x576 pixels. You then need to save this as 24 bit.bit map or 24 BMP. Put in the SD card and move the background in to the file marked, 'images' and you're done. When it is put into the vision mixer it should download properly. My next blog will have the Sportsweek and WINOL backgrounds in for any future use, best to back everything up.

That was my feat for this week. Getting our green screens back and having them working in time for our bulletin at three.

Please find above my very last WINOL Bulletin show. Enjoy.

I wish good luck to everyone that is carrying on with WINOL or just starting. I hope I have guides that are relevant for you on my blog. Such as my OB Kit and Tricaster post and my next one with the green screens in. Best of Luck.

WINOL Strike Special

This week has been a lot of hard work preparing for the strikes. I am happy to say that it was all worth it and we all pulled together an amazing four hour show. I had my reservations about not doing in the studio and going to the Unite the union offices. My gut feeling was that we have a studio that we all know how to work and will only have a very few technical problems; if we do there is always Dave or Corin there to help us. I also thought that the day was going to be hard enough without moving it to another location and taking all the equipment there.

The reasons for which it was moved were: it was easier access for guests, no picket lines to cross, it was a better backdrop for the audience than just a green screen and we were in the heart of the action being in the middle of Southampton.

After visiting and starting to set up on the Tuesday I soon started to feel excited about what we were going to attempt to do. The offices looked great, and had a real old air about them. We had the desk in front of the window where you could see The Avenue behind and the room was plenty big enough for everyone to fit in and work. Rehearsals did not start off as we had liked but within an hour we had been rehearsing and nothing had gone wrong. The hour literally flew by. My role was to work as the director for packages and adverts, worked on the vision mixer, sound and VT's but this was extremely hard with the Tricaster because you could only do everything via a mouse and a keyboard. Jack fixed the vision mixing problem by finding the correct wire for the vision mixing desk and plugging that in but it was still too much work for one person so on the day Katie Rowles and I worked together.

After the rehearsals I felt much better about the strikes on the Wednesday. We still had a few problems to work out but it did start to look like we were going to be able to pull it off.

We started more rehearsals at 10.30 on the 30th. They started out all right but the Internet connections in the room were not as good as they could have been and a problem that we should have fixed the day before. We had guests arrive at about 11am so we were not rehearsing for long before we had to start being professional and working as if it was a live broadcast.

Once the interview had finished we were left with about 10 minutes to prepare ourselves before going live. The interview was no scheduled and I think it left a lot of people worrying and panicking about not having a proper rehearsal and time to breathe. This may have been one of the reasons that in the first hour we were broadcasting on ustream with very little to no sound. The ustream was also behind out filming by about four minutes. The problems with the microphones meant that we had to shut everything off and practically start again. This was not a good start but once this problem was fixed we did not have any others that day.

Working on the vision mixer. the only problem was the lack of cameras and the fact the once we started broadcasting we could not shut the program off. This meant that when we got more packages in on the memory sticks, we had to keep the sticks until we had aired the package otherwise it would go offline. We also only had three memory sticks that were programmed with the Tricaster so we had to alternate with these.

Katie and I also found a way of writing straps and putting them on the live cameras as we were rolling. This was a large feat for us because this enabled us to put names up as well as naming the different areas of the studio. For example when the guests came on we had the strap, "WINOL Live Debate", this made it look even more professional.

The reporters did an amazing job with all of their packages and if we did not have as many as we did all ready save and in the bank we would have had a lot less content and the beginning few hours of the show would have been really boring and hard to get through. Towards the end of our broadcast we started to get some really great content of the strikes, however, the strikes had also started to calm down and in some places they had gone home.

Our Skypes did not work as well as we had planned, or as we had rehearsed. We had one from London Metropolitan, which had to be cancelled half way through and a couple from Liverpool which worked really well but that was it.

Louis O'Brien did really well with getting in the guests that he did. We had Seb Miell, a student, some union members and some councillors. It was really well rounded and we got some great answers from them about the strikes. Jake Gable was great at interviewing them as was Hana Keegan and Cara Laithwaite at presenting. They had all really got a firm knowledge in a lot of the points of the strikes. This was a necessity but they managed to pull it off really well and left myself and the viewer understanding what was going on during the day.

As we streamed to ustream we do not currently have the full show for upload. You can watch above the OB's though, so enjoy.