WINOL - 2 November

This week we had a member of the BJTC come in called Martin Herd. He looked over our whole bulletin day and the making of the bulletin in the gallery at three.

I worked on the vision mixer this week and actually really enjoyed it. Normally I stand back and make sure that everything is running smoothly and that if anyone needs help I am right behind them to help. It was nice to get back in to the actual making of it during the recording. I have actually missed vision mixing.

Martin said that he enjoyed the day and that we were very lucky in the stories we got. Some reporters quite rightly were annoyed at this. I think I can see what he means. He must have been to other universities where they do a news story once in a while and the story is not even news worthy. Whereas we do news packages every week that are newsworthy and that should be in the bulletin. We all work very hard at making contacts and editing down to the last minute to make sure that our packages are worth being put in to the bulletin.

Julie was not lucky to get an interview in Westminster with Steve Brine, she worked very hard to arrange the interview, the travel and did everything off of her own back. She travelled there with a camera by herself and asked him questions that allowed her to get great answers. It was not a coincidence and lucky that she was in London and able to get an interview with him. Luck did not come in to it.

In the laser piece Martin thought that it added another dimension to the news but there was an abbreviation in it which should not have been used as the viewer, and me did not know what the abbreviation stood for. This is a small, simple matter that just needs it explaining a little more.

This week the headlines took a lot longer than they should have done. However this was because the template had been saved wrong. I tried to fix it and make another template but I used the wrong music on the first it of the opening sequence and so it had to be changed again. In a lot of the clips there was upsot which I managed to sort out so everyone could see when the sound would come up. I also made some audio transitions so it did not just ping to life but sound much better. As the template was changed I do not know if this got changed too but it still sounded really good. So we are winning the upsot battle in the headlines. The only down point is that the straps on the headlines were done wrong, they were huge, in the middle almost and swiped different ways. This is a small problem that needs to be changed for next week.

Also, if you are putting a caption of someone in the headline do not change what they say as this could be misconstrued.

Lastly, in the form of straps, we should not have them on the screen until the person we are captioning starts talking.

Try to place the story in context. In Ali's Bournemouth piece we did not know he was in Bournemouth unless he said. This is because we did not see anything that showed the viewer he was in Bournemouth. Such as the BIC, the beach or the town. Small problems but they will help in the long run.

Overall a really great week for both news and production. The features team also did really well this week with WINOL Life and sport with Sports week. We are producing nearly an hours worth of news, features and sport every week now and we just keep improving too.

WINOL - 19 October

This week went just as well as the week before. This week we had a lot more feedback from Angus and Brian as they took on roles themselves. Angus was the director and Brian was the news editor. This helped us by showing us what we should be doing and more information about the roles.

Julie had an exclusive story this week which came about from an FOI request. This enabled us to do something different in the studio this week. Julie did not have any pictures for this as it was about the police committing crimes themselves. So Julie and Chris made a graphic and we used it as an in-studio talk with a graphic wall. This took some planning as the graphics on the wall had to match up with what Julie was saying. This took a lot of rehearsals but finally we got it right and it came out looking great. The graphic could have been better and we need to have the edges of the graphic in another colour other than black because it does bring down the piece. It looks very dark and makes it harder for the presenter/reporter to stand out from the graphic.

We also filmed WINOL life this week which went amazingly. Justina managed to get a guest editor from the Daily Echo; Sally Churchward. She gave the features team some valuable feedback and we managed to put together a great show from it. This too took a few rehearsals but it all went to plan and looks fabulous. Everyone should be proud of the hard work they put in.

Including Sports Week we had nearly an hour of quality programming this week. We also had two guest editor, one for sport and one for the features programme. We did not have one for WINOL this week which made it possible for Angus and Brian to step in for a week.

Jack and I shared the role of producer this week so that he could learn more and it also enabled myself to learn more and focus on my skills as producer. Graham was on vision mixing, Dan was on sound and Ewan was on the autocue. We are quite a small production team but with help from features we are doing well. It also means that more second years are learning the production skills ready for when we leave.

In the gallery, the production team learnt a lot from Angus and how to direct. His directing also helped everyone in their individual roles as they received a lot more direction. Our normal directors do a great job but there is room to improve.

The packages are looking much better this week and there was actual competition throughout the day to get their packages shown as the news board was changing various times throughout the day. George, Ewan and myself made a package about the art exhibition at the university in only two hours on the wednesday. It was not used as it was too much like features but it gave all three of us good experience on reporting and reporting to a tight schedule.

As I was filming on the wednesday afternoon I was not in the studio. This meant that the Tricaster was not set up and so we were not able to stream it. Luckily we were still able to get it up live at 5 but we should definitely use the Tricaster every week as a back up.

Please find above the video for WINOL this week. Also find WINOL Life and Sports Week on YouTube on the winchester journalism page.

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

Winol - 16th March

This week was not the best for the production team. We were not able to get in to the studio until 12pm. We had two Skype interviews to do, Japan and Bahrain, Sportsweek, headlines and the bulletin to do in two hours, (before rehearsals for the bulletin).

Of course we all panicked, Justina had the idea to get a camera from the loan counter and film the Bahrain interview on a normal computer. In the end, it looked really good, not as good as it could have looked but not too bad. We then got in to the studio and filmed the Japan Skype interview. The production team worked really well and we got everything done that was needed of us. This made me very proud of my team and happy that we all work well together as well as knowing what we need to do and how to do it.

We worked on the strap lines throughout the morning, before we were able to get in to the studio. Once in the studio we got the Skype done, we did Sportsweek and the headlines were done. However today was the day that everything fell apart. We tried capturing and logging the headlines but when we tried this there were pink fuzzy lines running throughout the recorded footage. This meant we then had to re-shoot the headlines. We did this in one take and Justina edited them quickly.

We then focused on the bulletin. I showed Natasha what to do on the vision mixer and she did an amazing job with only a little bit of training. We then found that the VT's were in the wrong order, there was one missing and there was a spelling mistake on the sports graphic. With all of this going on, we found it hard to hear each other because of the presenters voices being turned up in the gallery, there were quite a few people in there and because we could not always hear each other there were some raised voices. This was not the calmed gallery we are used to and resulted in us all being very stressed. The problems were solved and Justina made the great decsion of pulling the sports graphic before we went live in air.

I recorded on the usual tape and recorded on the Tricaster too meaning we had a back up recording. In future I have to press record as soon as Justina says roll VT because this week on the Tricaster's recording there was about a minute of black where I had been recording too soon. This is one of the points I want to concentrate on next week.

This week was very hectic, some people did not know what they were doing, some were too confused and others work was not fitted in on time on Tuesday and so ran over on to the Wednesday morning when we were busier than normal anyway. Despite many things going wrong throughout the day, we still recorded on time. The tape recorded version of the show did not go on to WINOL at 4 as there were problems uploading it and it had to be compressed but we did have the Tricaster recording on there with the black hole at the beginning.

Next week is our last week and we hope to make the bulletin as near as perfect as the production team can. I have put my team on the areas that they excel in as well as cancelling the entertainment show; giving us more time to work on the bulletin. We do hope to have an entertainment show at some point but want to fully concentrate on WINOL at the moment; especially for our last bulletin before our Easter Break.

Good Luck, Let's make this the best bulletin of this semester.