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.

Winol - 9th March

Well Done guys, this week we again got the bulletin on to WINOL at 4. The beginning recording on the Tricaster ran a little long but thankfully we go the edited bulletin on to youtube quite quickly and by 5.30pm it was on WINOL.

Only a few problems this week. Katie was a little too quiet during the headlines. There were a few black holes, as well as the background appearing before Katie, this was down to the vision mixer, Drew but as it was his first time with barely a rehearsal he did very well. These little problems were edited out in the second version so it was not too bad. Drew also went to camera three instead of the VT for the OOV but it looks OK. A minor problem. Drew, I think you also need more confidence in Justina as your director as she will cue you in when needed. I thought you were panicking a little and maybe you were letting your nerves take over a little.

I love the new strap lines but as we are changing the background at some point I think we should have waited and made a big change overall instead of little bits at a time. We also should not really introduce an interview in a link. Especially when we do not go straight in to an interview but GV's. This makes a package and not an interview.

For next week the reporters would like their own strap lines, as Sportsweek does but I think it may look a little weird that they have a strap line and then say Domonique Jenkins, Winchester news etc. Does the viewer really care, and do they want to see and hear the reporters name multiple times?

Paul Carter made a great point that there are two televisions on the wall that are not used. We should have the news on them all day on a Wednesday. There may be breaking news one day and we will miss it. This would be a huge mistake, especially if the breaking news is about Winchester.

We had a small rehearsal this week due to the script being late again. This is the second week in a row this has happened and it is meaning that the bulletin is suffering as no one on production and the presenters get a chance to rehearse. The script can be started Monday afternoon and should be finished Wednesday morning. Even if there are last minute story changes, the script should still be ready early on a Wednesday and not the one thing running late.

Katie I think you did really well this week. It was your first time presenting and you did not have much of a rehearsal due to the late arrival of the script. You held it together, even when you tripped over your words and remained professional the whole time, I would say maybe smile more though; as a viewer it feels more comfortable when the presenter is comfortable.

Natasha you were amazing on the sound board as you, again had not had much training. You are new to production and you have fit in really well and work hard. Justina, as always is an awesome director, as well as helping with the vision mixing. Sam, you did really well on VT's again, I think you have definitely mastered this. Let me know when you would like to try something a little more challenging. Claire, you did really well on the autocue. I think you were particularly nervous as it was your best friend reading the script and I think this added to your nerves as you wanted it to be perfect for Katie. You did really well and I think you're covering everything in the Gallery really well.

No more subbing. This means we can completely focus on the entertainment program and getting the bulletin out every week. No more going home from a stressful Wednesday to subbing but a chance to relax. You all did really well on subbing and I am proud of you all. You were new to it, it has problems and people are not always reliable but you did your best, congrats.

Goals for next week is to again get the bulletin on WINOL for 4pm and to try and be a little more adventurous with filming and sports. Also lets try and get the Entertainment program up this week.

Critical Evaluation of Winol - 17th November

I loved Winol this week. This week everyone reproduced their packages, making them better. This meant that there were no new news stories. We produced four or five bulletins with everybody swapping and learning roles in the Studio and Gallery for each one. However we did produce a documentary style bulletin of the student demo of last week. It is really great to watch so head over to winol.co.uk if you want to watch.

I have already learnt how to do the script, auto cue and the VT's but this week I learnt how to present, vision mix and PA. Look out for a blog soon on 'how to' do all of these different parts of production. I've always said that I do not want to be in front of the camera and that I would be no good at it because I do not think that my voice is very good. I was pleasently surprised, however that I loved it. I was relaxed and laid back and the auto cue wasnt half as hard as I thought it would be to read. I defintely think that everyone should give it a go.

Vision mixing was a bit harder than the rest as I had to pay attention to when the VT were coming on and what camera we were going to next but I loved doing this too. I do not think that when I did it there were any black holes but I did realise that I needed to press the green screen button a second quicker than the button for camera 2 as they were coming up a bit weirdly.

I have always dreaded doing PA as I'm not that great with numbers. As in if a package is 1.13 I find it a little hard to get half way etc. However, you guessed it, I enjoyed this too. It was not as hard as I thought it would be to coutn and I got them all correct with the help of the stop watch on my phone; who knew that was one there. The package timings wern't correct for a few of the packages though and this meant that when I told Charlotte, the director, to count down she was about 5 seconds late. This can be corrected if the timings were perfect and the people doing packages left some time at the end so it did not go to a black hole.

Overall though I really enjoyed Winol this week and can't wait to get back in to the Studio next week.

Win With Winol - My First Time Presenting

This week I did a range of roles for the bulletin throughout the course of the day but to begin with I presented 'Win With Winol.' I've never really watched myself on camera before and was pleasently shocked when I first watched it. I do not look awful; which was a start but I do think I sound rather nasaly. This may due to an oncoming cold but I shall look out for it in future and try to master a better television/radio voice. However, for my first time on camera I think I did quite well. Watch me below, I'm just after Kayleigh presenting, 'What's on in Winchester'.