My Role - Production Editor

This is what I have been up to on WINOL for the past 12 weeks. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I loved putting it together. Please leave comments below on how I could improve or do better next time. Thanks.

Winol - 9th February

This week was our first bulletin in our different roles. All in all it was OK. With all of the technical faults and low level of training for some people we only ran 15 minutes late rather than an hour; which I had expected.

This week we were all settling in to our roles and for half my team they had never been in the studio before or worked on any of the different areas; so I was very happy that it worked out in the end.

We managed to set up the studio and everything was working perfectly, everyone had their roles assigned and everything was booked out and set up. We recorded Sportsweek and everything was OK. The lighting, sound, recording and rehearsals went perfectly. Our next job was to do the strap lines and put them on everyones packages, gather the headline footage and make the sports graphic. The strap lines looked great but with the program they were on we found it hard to change them. Thanks to Becky we managed to get them on and that was one problem down. The next problem is that I am not very good at final cut pro and thanks to Claire and Katie for helping me and getting a relatively OK sports graphic for our first bulletin. This is something we will improve upon in the coming weeks. Justina also did well at gathering the headline package parts too.

This week we had a breaking news section where 40 people were due to have their jobs cut because of the riots in November. We hoped that this would bring in more viewers, maybe of a higher age group as it was affecting adults more than the students. This bought panic to me and my production team. Julie did well in getting the breaking news footage together but because it was exported in the wrong format we had to send it back for Julie to do again. This meant that instead of filming the headlines at 12.30 as planned we were pushed back to 1.30. This was also because final cut stopped working, the computer froze and when it came to record the headlines the recorder had lost signal. This had never happened before to my knowledge and I was at a loss of how to fix the problem. Drew managed to fix it and we recorded the headlines. At least we thought we had but when it came to editing them they were nowhere to be found meaning that we had to film them again. This put us back further but they were done and being edited by 2 by Justina.

We then got everyone in place for the headlines, put the VT's in order, put the script on the auto cue and set up the lighting. The green screen kept going wrong and in the end meant that we could only have one camera that was completely clear.

At five to 3 we wanted to do a very quick run through but then found that the VT's weren't putting out any sound, this meant that we needed the technician again and thankfully he sorted it out. We then went live without any rehearsals. Many people had a quick panic but we got through the news part of the bulletin ok and the interview with Cara and Andy went well. When it was time for the handover from news to sport everything went wrong. As we hadn't practiced it Becky didn't know what she was doing on cameras, the VT person was confused and there was a confusing part in the script for Drew on sound. This wasn't clearly conveyed in the script but it went OK in the end. After recording it we went to log and capture and found that yet again we were having technical problems with the macs in Tab 9. We were due to have the bulletin on the site at 4 but it wasn't until half past 5 that we got the headlines and interview on to the site.

On Thursday 10th February, Justina did an amazing job at editing the bulletin and the whole news show was up on the site for 1pm, a day late. At the time I was a little angry, tired and stressed but after this being our first week I am very happy with my team and we have learnt from this what to do differently next week. We are going to learn form the technical problems and our mistakes and improve week on week.

Production Schedule

MONDAY - Not completely sure on times but should follow this sort of order

10.00 - Debrief

10.30 - Production meeting for the week. Will asign roles and go through any other ideas for the week.

11.00 - In to the studio for Entertainment show to be recorded. Edit until 3.30 if we have time.

4.00 - Editors meeting

TUESDAY

10.00 - Finish editing the entertainment programme.

11.30 - Put the entertainment programme up on the Winol website.

12.00 - Meeting for the following weeks entertainment programme. This gives you nearly a week to get ideas, interviews and packages together. As well as any background supplies if it is for a special show, e.g. St Patricks Day, Easter special, National Hug day etc.

1.00 - Set off to sort relevant roles for the entertainment programme.

WEDNESDAY

9.oo - Meeting with the other Editors

9.30 - Set up and open the Studio and Gallery (to be done by anyone on Production if I'm running late with the meeting)

10.00 -Meeting with everyone on production. Make sure the roles are filled. Jobs will be given out for the day and to make sure everyone is confortable in their role and know what time do what jobs.

11.00 - 'Live at 4' should be on the Winol front page by this time.

12.30 - Record and edit the headlines. Read to export and add as part of the VT's.

1.00 - Add strap lines to the packages.

1.40 - First Rehersal - mainly equipment and cameras rehersal

2.00 - Second Rehersal - run through witht he VT's to make sure they're running well.

2.30 - Last Rehersal with the presenters, equipment and auto cue. Leaving out the VT's.

3.00 - Record the 'live' edition

3.20 - One person to make sure the Ustream one is up on Winol.

3.20 - Other people to edit the recorded tape version and put on to Winol. To be done by 4

4.10 - Close the studio.

8.00 - All articles should be on Joomla ready to be subbed.

If this is done correctly and followed well we shouldn't need to panic too much and there shouldn't be any problems unfolding minutes before 3pm.

THURSDAY

All articles should be subbed and on the site by 1pm.

By week 3 I am hoping that we can pull together our own headlines, strap lines and logo. Any ideas are welcome and obviously this will be slotted in to the timetable when needed.

This week, 10/02/11:

Director - Justina Chlad

Vision Mixer - Claire Lomas

Sound Desk - Drew

Autocue - Katie Rowles

VT - Domonique Jenkins

Cameras - Becky Gray

Thanks

Critical Evaluation of Winol - 8th December

This week I helped Andy film his piece for features about the man that ran across the driest desert on earth in six days. Josh showed me how to open the studio and how to turn everything on, ready to record. I now feel very comfortable with whole of the studio and practically every switch. I really enjoy working in the gallery and studio and now I am 100% comfortable with it too. From knowing completely that I want to be a features writer I have switched. I love the buzz in the gallery and think that it would be very worthwhile for me to learn more and spend more time in there.

The feature went really well and the interviewee was really good. He described everything he saw, felt, thought and it made it really interesting. Andy had great questions and did not look nervous at all. This can be seen on www.winol.co.uk along with the news bulletin.

The Winol bulletin went quite well. We had one major problem that happened as we were recording the live show. This was when we went to Stuart in the newsroom about his piece and redundancies made at the Council. Stuart was talking but we had no sound. This meant that Cara had to apologise to the viewers about the technical problem and then carry on with the rest of the bulletin. The apology went well and we carried on without a problem. We then went back to Stuart in the news room after the following VT and it all went smoothly. This was the only main problem this week.

I loaded the script on to the auto cue and ran it again this week as we were low on numbers and no one knew how to do the auto cue. There were a few changes to be made on it before we ran through but they were small and simple.

We had first years on the cameras this week and they did really well. There was a handover to sport where camera 2 had to change position and Josh, the first year, did well moving in time and positioning the camera quickly. This was done after a very quick 5 minute tutorial so, on that, they did really well. It will help when they come to work on Winol in the second year too. I did not know anything when I came to Winol so they will already be ahead of the game.

Again, I really enjoyed working on production and in the gallery. Josh showed me how to work the Tricaster and the new VT programme, as well as the air conditioning; this would prove very useful as it either gets very hot or very cold in the gallery.

I have decided to put myself in for the position of Production Editor for the next semester. My fingers are crossed and I am looking forward to working on production full time if I get the job. Next week is our last bulletin and I look forward to doing our last bulletin of 2010.

Critical Evaluation of Winol, 27th October

After three weeks working as a sub editor and working on production for Winol, I have decided that it is time for me to evaluate the work we have done. Now that I know the work that needs to go in to the weekly bulletin, the different sections coming together and how the bulletin can look, I feel I can now have valuable input.

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to write for features on a magazine. This was all I thought I would ever want to do but after working on production for four bulletins I have found another facet of journalism that I like to work on. It may be the fact that the craziness is happening around me and that the jobs I do, I feel, won't mess the bulletin up too much, or it may be the buzz around the room and the studio doing rehearsals and going live; but I really enjoy production. I enjoy watching the different sections come together to create a bulletin, I really like being a part of it and I love the feeling when the bulletin is done, recorded and ready to be uploaded. It is a sort of "phew, it's done and I didn't mess it up" kind of feeling.

Now that I know what has to be done and I am starting to understand why we include some items and why we do not include other, why we do it in one order etc. I feel my contribution can now be correct and that I am not criticising a point that has been done correctly.

To begin with I'll start with the negatives as you will finish reading my piece happy. There were a few black holes again. This can easily be fixed with the packages being left to run a couple seconds more to allow the mixer to click back without a black hole. A simple problem but we should not be having them in our fourth week now.

The audio levels in some packages were not correct. Again this is something we should not be doing in our fourth week but can easily happen. We just need to take more care when setting up the camera for an interview that we check the audio levels.

In Stuart Appleby's piece there was a shot of the pavement with puddles. It lasted for about eight seconds and juse made me a little bored. It did not go with the story at all and even though writing came after it and it was used for a background I believe there could have been better backgrounds used.

In the same package, it opened with a guilty building. I believe it was hard to get many shots because of the nature of the story but it was another guilty building.

Lastly, Jake Gable, the news presenter was situated in the middle of the screen. I would prefer him to be sat slightly to the right. Meaning that his head didn't interrupt the title, "Winol News," but that Jakes head was right next to the letter, 's'. I know that this may not be popular and that it would leave open space to the left but I just prefer it that way.

Now, the good news. I think that it was nice to have two new presenters and I think that Karen Purnell and Jake Gable did really well. In Stuart Appleby's piece he did some really good sequences of the woman he was interviewing. This was better than more guilty buildings.

I also really liked the interview of Joey Lipscombe in the news room. It was different and allowed a story to be shown without making a package of it.

Lastly, I love the feature at the end. We did it last week and again this week and it leaves the viewer with a bit of colour. It also advertises the Winol website where the viewer can see the full feature and re-view the bulletin again. If these wern't included in the bulletin, the viewer may not know about them and only view the bulletin.

Below is a link to watch the bulletin for yourself, enjoy.

http://www.winol.co.uk/