WINOL - 9 November

The standard this week was not as good as the quality we have been producing recently. I worked on sound with Ewan shadowing/helping. I actually quite enjoyed it as I have not worked on sound as much as I have on other jobs on production. The only problem was that I did not have a script and so this meant that I did not know when there was an OOV or a package. It does not help that in the sound booth I can not hear the director very well and that the music and sound from the bulletin is very loud in the booth.

We had to re-film the handover as the first time round, in the 'live' version we cut to camera 2 when it was still framing George; our news presenter. This is a split fault of the camera person, (Jack) the director, (Graham) and the vision mixer, (Justina). We have a television right in front of Justina and Graham that shows what all the cameras are looking at and the frames. Before we cut to camera 2, Graham and Justina should have watched the television and seen that Jack had not finished framing the shot. This is something we do a lot but by sheer luck it turns the frame always turns out OK. We all need to focus on the television showing all the frames a lot more than completely focusing on the output television.

The pictures in the headlines were too long and "flabby". They need to be "tightened" by making them shorter and showing our best pictures. They need to be about two seconds longer than what the presenter is going to say. This is a problem every week but this week it stood out a bit longer because Jack tried a different way of filming the headlines. This way made it harder to fiddle around with the headlines but after speaking with him he did not know the simpler way. We have now discussed this and hopefully next week the headlines should be a lot tighter and more tabloid-esque.

This week we also need to freeze the last shot of the headlines as we always go to a black hole. This is because the headlines end very abruptly and it is hard for the director and the vision mixer to cut back to camera two quick enough. Freezing the last shot will make it easier for us and there will be no black hole.

We also had our first live Skype of the year. I went in to town on the Monday and found posters about a demo happening in London by students about tuition fees again. I phoned the story through to Becky, the news editor and she put a reporter on to the story. Tom and Ali then went to London for the demo but they had to film in a Starbucks for their WiFi. This meant that we did not have any views of the demo happening. What we could have done would be to ask Tom and Ali to take some stills of the demo earlier in the day and then to send them back to us so we could cut between Tom and the pictures. This did not happen so it was continuous talking from Tom and George, blurry, against a white back ground. This could have been done in the Starbucks in Winchester and not London. We did not exploit the fact that we were in London at all and did not get any filming from the actual demo. It was also very hard to hear Tom.

Please find the bulletin above. Thank you, also the first years that helped out on production.

WINOL - 12 October

This week was amazingly perfect! Nothing went wrong. We stayed on top of everything and the first bulletin went up at 5 with no

problems at all.

I produced the WINOL bulletin this week as Jack was away. Justina was the director, Graham was on the sound desk, George vision mixed and Dan was on autocue.

We decided to bring all the deadlines forward an hour so instead of starting rehearsals at 2 we started at 1.15 instead. The script was still late, arriving at about 2 but this was not so much a trouble as normal as everyone was calm and had all ready started rehearsals.

We had Rachel Canter from the BBC in this week and she gave us some really great points to improve on. We always pre-record the headlines, which many broadcasters do but as they are pre-recorded we could make them punchier. They can made to be perfect as we have plenty of time to do them. This is something we need to take more care over.

We also made straps for the headlines this week that we need to make more 'tabloidy'. It has been said that if we make them too tabloidy it will make it easier to come down from but it is harder for us at the moment to make them more like tabloid news.

We had a sports graphic this week that we need to improve on. It was a little boring and stayed up for way too long so we either need to shorted the script or make the graphic do more and make it look better.

This week we had three OOV's. On the news board and on the script they were written link-OOV-link-OOV-link-OOV. This is how we did it too but Angus told us that we should have just done the three OOVs in row with a flash between each of them to indicate a new story. This should have done because all of the stories linked together and were essentially one whole news story. So it was a NIB. Our OOVs also need to be shorter as this week they were a little too long.

We recorded with the tape and the tricaster, which again helped us out as it took two and a half hours to upload to YouTube. This meant that we were able to put up the ustream version at 5.

There were not any law problems either and the reporters are getting better and better with their packages.

Next week should go just as well, if not better as everyone knows what they are doing. We are also filming WINOL Life next Tuesday as well as Sports week. We have guests for both so we should be bringing even more viewers.

Picture By: Winolnews

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 - 25th May

My last WINOL bulletin as Production Editor was this week; it also went as well as it possibly could have done. This week we all stuck to our deadlines and the jobs we had to do. We even managed to get in to the gallery early enough to watch through all of the packages on the VT machine to check for spelling errors, strap line mistakes, if the packages would play, the timings etc and it showed because when we came to do the actual bulletin the VT machine worked perfectly.

Sam Harper was our presenter this week and she was fabulous as always. We had a full hour of rehearsing but only about 30 minutes of rehearsing with the script on the autocue; which stopped working throughout the day but played nice with Hana when it came to rehearse and go live.

The only small problem we had during the bulletin that came about live was that the headlines were slightly out of sync. This week we also put the bulletin on ustream and so for the first time in our second part of the semester we were live at 4. With the editing, I edited the whole bulletin, synced the headlines and put the credits on for the last time. I then uploaded it to YouTube and we were finished by 6pm, having all ready had the bulletin up for 2 hours.

I am so proud of my team this week. It was the last week, we were all tired, we were all sad and yet we got the bulletin out perfectly, on time and live. Throughout this semester we have worked so hard and so well together I am extremely sad to leave this amazing production group but I look forward to our final year together, our final semester on WINOL and our final roles for WINOL as I know my very ahrd working team will excel at everything they do. Thanks for the best team on WINOL my lovely ladies.

Check out the last WINOL bulletin that I have produced above.

Winol - 18th May

This week was a DISASTER! I probably say it most weeks but this week was the epitome of awful.

We started out with a plan, as always but we had to pre-record an OOV in the morning which is where it all went wrong. The OOV script and package was not saved correctly so this took time to find and upload. The drop box where we were going to be putting all the packages instead of running back and forth with a hard drive didn't work also. We managed to record the OOV fine and Justina edited it just before we were due to upload the headline clips. This was OK, again a couple were not done by the deadline but they did not miss it by too much time.

Every week the headline script and straps were not as good as they could have been. This meant that we were then trying to come up with better ones when we should have been recording them. Just gone 1 we finished the headlines but we could not export any storiees to our hard drive until Justina had finished editing them and putting them on. This put us back on deadlines for colelcting the packages. If the drop box was working we would have been able to stop the constant backflow of missing deadlines.

Once all the packages were uploaded we then had trouble putting them on to the VT machine, once they were on it then kept crashing and disco wheeling so we closed the whole computer and it then looked like it would work. After last week having Andys package fail in the actual bulletin because I had not checked it meant that I was extra careful this week and I checked that every package worked correctly. What we did not have time to do was to fully play every package for timings. This meant that we found out Kieran had left his package long during the actual bulletin.

The production team did plan 30 minutes after we uploaded the packages to watch through them, make sure they work and for timings but we just did not have the time to accomplish it this week. However I will try again next week.

We also had Andy in as an interviewee about his package this week as well as Natasha as presenter and Sam as Sports presenter. This meant we needed three microphones and three talk backs. We only had two talkbacks which meant Andy went without one. It would have been better if he had had one as his alloted time was limited but Natasha did really well in getting him to wrap up his answer. We had three microphones but two of them kept cutting out and dying. Katie kept replacing them with batteries but in the end Corin checked mic 3 which is now not to be used and Andy and Sam had to swap a microphone I got out from the loan counter at 2.40pm.

After all that I was downstairs trying to get the new microphone to work whilst Justina was counting down to going Live. No one pressed record so we had to stop and start again meaning that we went live at 3.05pm. We still have not done a recording on the Tricaster for the last two weeks as it was messing up our voice syncing but I would like to try this next week.

After it was all recorded we had to put in packages that the VT machine did not allow to work in the bulletin. We also edited the ends and took out a problem we ahd with Kierans pacakge as well as a bad handover.

We then could not export it. We took out the two packages we had problems with in Final Cut and on the VT machine and it exported within three minutes. We could not log on to YouTube after the editing problem and then when we finally could log in YouTube would not fully upload our bulletin. I stayed in Tab9 until eight pm and Justina and Karen stayed until ten pm resutling the multiple upload failures and the bulletin still not being on the site.

The next day Brian managed to get the bulletin uplaoded and on to WINOL by the afternoon. He took out Stuarts piece on Vince Cable and went back through the rushes. I think this is what stopped the VT machine from working and stopped the export from working on Final Cut. This is the first week that I know of where the bulletin has not been up on a Wednesday.

My aims for next week are to use ustream, use and train people on the Tricaster and to have the bulletin up by four pm.

Winol - 23rd March

This week we focused completely on the bulletin, the polish version and sportsweek. This meant we had more time to focus on them and that, fingers crossed we could sort any problems early on and not panic at the last minute. We also had Maria Milano in this week so we wanted to make sure we made a good impression on her too.

We got everything we wanted. This bulletin was perfect, there was not a single problem with it. The tricaster version was up on the website at 4 on the dot. The tape version was captured, logged and uploaded to youtube by 5pm as there was no editing to be done. The only problem we faced this week was that 30 seconds in to filming the live bulletin the fire alarm went off. We handled this by stopping all recordings, closing the studio and gallery and walking out. We were all annoyed about it but found that we just wanted to start again. So when the alarm stopped we all went back in, Justina told everyone we would be going live again at 10 past three so this gave everyone 4 minutes to calm down, get back in to positions and check sound and lighting. We went live at 3.10 and everything went swimmingly. We were later told how well we handled the fire alarm so I am very proud of my team for getting on with it and not letting the fire alarm ruin the bulletin.

Later, we did an interview with Maria and she congratulated us on how well we work together and how well we reacted with the fire alarm. We now have a break for four weeks but I am looking forward to getting back to WINOL at the end of April. When we get back from our Easter break we no longer have sportsweek to do anymore. This is because there is not so much sport happening anymore so there would be nothing to fill the show with. This means that the production team will have more time and we may try another show of our own and make it a little better than what we have had. Happy Easter everyone.

Winol - 16th February

This week went amazingly well. I can only thank my lovely production team girls for being fantastic. They have really picked up on their roles now and I believe that they are confident in those roles. For this reason I have decided to switch them round this week. This will mean that next week, after riding high on this weeks success they should be confident enough to get hold of their new roles with ease. After last week being such a train crash it was relief that this week that there were practically no technical problems.

Last week, the 9th Brian said that we should have a plan B for news stories. This will then mean that if a story fails or if a story is not exported in the correct way that we will still be able to fill the bulletin. Katie and Justina came up with a fantastic plan B. The plan was to set up the camera in Tab 9 so that if we had any breaking news or if a story failed and we needed the reporter to simply fill in the blanks of the story they would be able to do this from the newsroom.

After some encouragement from Justina, Drew managed to get the camera working and the OB broadcasting equipment. He is now fully trained on that and will be putting it up every week. This does meant that people in the newsroom will have to be careful of maybe being recorded.

The plan B was actually put in place when the "and finally" piece was spiked due to there not really being enough interviewees. This meant that if we had not had the plan B we would have a news bulletin short of about 1 minute and no "and finally". So I think Justina, Katie and Drew very much for this.

The OB went perfectly and Julie did very well writing up the answers and getting on air just in time, she spoke clearly and the whole OB was really well done. This meant that we also had news about Southampton in our bulletin which is more of our new target audience. This will hopefully improve readership.

Sam, is our new production person. Her main job is to work on the website and to make it look good but she will also be helping us on production on Wednesdays. She did very well on camera 2 this week with not much training. Sam also helped immeasurably with getting the headline clips and the packages on to the hard drive and then in turn on to the VT machine. She made sure the reporters exported in the correct format and that they got the packages on to the hard drive by the deadline.

Claire and Katie also did really well with the strap lines. We need to make them a little larger and maybe and easier font type to read. They were spelt correctly, looked good and even managed to pull a new one together for 'What's On'.

The headlines and graphic were superb from Justina, I love the new music and it is really good that we now have the healdines carrying on after the headline clips. It looks a lot more professional.

This week, everyone was perfect in their roles and I was very happy with what everyone did. We had one black hole that was at the beginning but we were able to slip that out in the editing quickly. Due to a few rehersals we were also able to calm Michael Connelly. He was our sports reporter this week and did a fabulous job. The rehersals also allowed us to spot that Aimee Pickering's sports package was nto completely finished and so Claire was able to cut it in time. Again Ali did well on the VT machine and if he would like to help next week I will probably put him on auto cue which will give him more experience.

The sound was a little low at some points of the bulletin and a little high at others, again Justina managed to this out in editing but it would be better if we were able to get this correct whilst recording.

This week we rehersed at 2 and went live at 3 so we now have the deadlines sorted and they are being met. However we did not use the tricaster last week because I could not get an Internet connection on my laptop. This week we managed to link it up to Brians laptop but because the tricaster had been reset accidently that morning we had lost all of the information needed on the tricaster to make sure that it went to the correct website. So this week I hope to complete the deadlines on time, to make the tricaster work, to have the ustream bulletin on Winol by 4pm and to have the recorded bulletin on Winol by 5 with no edits. This is ambitious but I am confident that we will be able to do this. I would also like to try and set up a mobile talkback system so that I can walk around and find out where people are and what they are doing.

I look forward to starting our third bulletin and only hope that we reach our goals and that it runs as smoothly as it did this week; which I am sure will happen as I have full confidence in my lovely team. Well done guys.