WINOL week 7 (sem II), TV Studio floor managing, filming and photographing sports

While the nation prepares for the election the students at Winchester University vote for their new president of the Student Union. On Tuesday this week our production team took care of making a 1 min videos for the three candidates applying for the role of president of our university. Every each and one of them received a fair chance to give a 1 min talk about themselves to give the students reasons to vote for them. The studio was prepared and the spot lights set on candidates, the three videos can be found on our local news website WINOL.CO.UK.

After quite a thundery decision making over appointing the roles for our Sub editing team we have eventually seen a fair decision made over who did what this week. The whole idea of winol is us learning how to work and deal with problems within a team and it is part of the working environment to overcome the difficulties or differences in opinions within members of the team it is important to find solutions that would help to avoid the conflict the next time. The winol experience is not only meant to train our technical skills for future profession it also shows what should be the right and what are the wrong attitudes when working within a team in a pressurised environment. It is clear that it is important to be able to communicate with the team members on the right level, be fair and respectful for each other and sometimes doing less means doing more. Meaning since our group of sub-editors has to me shifting around different roles beginning of operating Autocue, Floor managing, filming, VT or sound operating, script writing and vision-mixing or directing. All these roles are significant as if even one of them was not covered the Wednesday bulletin would not take place. The level of difficulty or skill involved in filling some of these roles are not equal to others but they are all important and our job is to make sure they are filled and they are filled well. And so if any of our sub-editors feel they want to do a little bit more or fill the time around their appointed role, winol is open to fill other positions like helping out within the news or sports reporting and it is always good to be open and willing to help our team of reporters in filming or even covering the stories. Above all we are all here to learn and we should try to make the best of each role given and give a fair chance to all our team mates to try themselves out in all roles they would like to.

I sub-edited few stories and my new role this week within the production was floor managing of the TV studio and also Autocue operating for the rehearsals. The day before winol I joined the sports reporters to help out with filming and photographing a football game. It was a good experience again and I discovered that I really like photographing sport events, their dynamic and passion makes quite interesting experience of capturing important moments like goal scoring or saving a penalty shot. A new experience a new interest discovered.

From the feedback we found out that our news headlines were strong sports slightly not matching the pictures. Stu's story was one of the bests and it was a follow up of his previous one. In the story about the university's budget the right balance wasn't done and in Teachers story the GV-s could have been more creative. Our presenters, Catherine, Rob and Keileigh did well in new set of the scene and it was good that Rob could try himself in a new role. Keileigh presented as our political correspond er and showed a lot more confidence comparing to last week and Cathrine did a great news presenting, making a strong and confident performance of her role.

It was a challenging week in many aspects, indeed, we had a studio guest and a skype call from Austria about an election and our reporters did a great job on our news content once again. We have overcome a difficulties this week that were not only of technical nature and we have put out another great news bulletin and we should be proud of ourselves. Chanin did really well on not giving up trying to make the skype call happen and took our news to the next level. WINOL traffic 170 unique users with a market penetration of about 3-4 percent which would be at the Daily Telegraph type level, rather than Sun or Mail.

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Production , WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE

WINOL bulletin week 6 (sem2) Autocue operating and sports filming

As mentioned in the headline of my post I have operated an Autocue in the TV studio as well as filmed football this week. After not very successful attempt to practice and learn how to use the Autocue on Tuesday I felt that it was in my own hands to arrange myself some additional training with someone that really knows how it works and most definitely what to do if it fails. Using it looked pretty straight forward but it kept freezing all the time and the text kept disappearing from the screen and so we could not do a proper practice on the script from the previous week because text would not be available when needed and I did not know how to deal with that problem. The next morning I went to ask someone from the loan counter to help me to understand how to deal with faulty Autocue.

It is worth mentioning that before using the Autoque it is important to make sure if everything is set the way it should be. There are few things that can be followed to make sure of the right setting of the program. If you go to Properties, then Settings it has to be on Screen 2- and ticked: extend my Windows desktop and press OK.
- Properties
- Settings
- Screen2
- Extend my Windows desktop- ticked off
- OK
The next step is to upload the script:
- 1 P.Pro,
- START
- File- load
- change colour of the background to black and writing to white, and go to Edit- set up Two Displays - L-R (check if it on the right one)
- EXIT and adjust the speed of running or make used to natural pauses in reading of presenters or make sure that I did all the right speed-ups if it is needed during script reading.

As soon as we are used to presenters’ reading pace and know all the details of the script we have to make sure that if there are any last minute changes made to the script we simply have to update the text on the Autocue (typing in changes). While operating the Autoque it is also worth remembering not to use the mouse to move the arrow for scrolling the text up or down as that may interfere with the program working properly or even freeze the program. Secondly, as it happened to me the day before, the missing text from the script can be caused by a dongle being loose so I had to make sure that the dongle (small USB on the side of the laptop) was properly in and kept checking every so often.



In overall, the WINOL bulletin went well again, we had good links, good opening, a lot better graphics and quite strong pictures for the news and sport packages. We have been praised for good effort for getting the interviews for the reporters and also for the production team working smoothly together mastering the techniques of our inseparable roles. Unfortunately our sound had some issues this time, in some packages it was all over the place. We have been advised that it is good to write the script for the OOV before setting the pictures as it is easier and more accurate to set the right length of pictures to already recorded audio than the other way around. John's package had a really good sign off, and even though some of the framing was out of place his package had the right balance within OfCom regulations and quite a strong scripting.We have been told that we use too many sign shots and GVs of the campus and so we need to try to avoid signs and get other pictures than of the campus. Catherine's package had a very strong piece to camera and as we heard in the feedback it's production was pretty solid, however it was a little bit confusing and it didn't wasn't fully clear that there was a link made between the national newspaper's story and Winchester (which was originally planned). In sports story, we noticed that softening and disguising in editing (blending sound underneath the picture) was attempted but not fully achieved but as always great attempt for reaching for the right contacts and efforts put in filming and finding the stories. And finally story happened to name the drug company too much and it came out to make a little bit of an advert for it so it was suggested in the feedback that perhaps next time when doing similar story we don't necessary have to name the company at all or at least not more than once.

In summary, our news team is trying their best in getting the stories but perhaps it would have been a lot easier and less stressful if each of them tried to bring at least two ideas for the stories to the news editor on Monday morning instead of starting the research on Monday. As it was noticed by our tutors the stories this week did not belong to the strongest ones and they know our reporters can do a lot better if the put enough effort in it. It was also mentioned that not enough of the stories come from the previous ones- follow ups which can be a good source for new stories.

This week brought us around 180 unique user sessions what means that we are still below the score we are aiming at. As our tutors suggested more attention should be put into promotion of our website and continuity of Date with Fate- which again, hopefully will boost our user sessions up.

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Produvtion , WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE

Studying the role in week 5 of WINOL- Output Editor (sem 2)

Neil Churchman, a senior producer in the BBC’s Radio Newsroom in London says that there are two main rules that must never be broken when writing Cues for Radio and I believe they should be equally applied to cues for TV news bulletins too,
“Whatever you do, don’t bore or confuse your audience. Some stories are simple and compelling; others can be rather dull and complex. Your job is to make people sit up, understand and take notice. The cue is our shop window and we’re selling news.”

As an Output Editor you have to try to sell the stories through the headlines and links. Just as it is in every written story, there is a headline, an intro and the body of the copy, similarly the cue should be doing the job of the first two, leaving the explanation of the news package to the reporter.

The viewer has not much time to absorb what the presenter is saying through links so it is crucial to keep it simple, attractive and in accessible language. In other tips from Mr Churchman that stand out is that we should "avoid a maze of sub-clauses" so therefore when a sentence gets too long it is worth splitting it up and making it clearer for the ear. And of course, we don’t want the cue and piece to contain exact the same words sentences or entire phrases in the link to what will be used in the package. So it is important that as an Output Editor, you know the content of the stories to be able to write relevant links summarising them. When writing a script you will find that the links can simply become re-phrased first lines from the news packages and that is fine as long as these links give all the necessary information to make a good catchy link.

“Headline writing is art”, says Huw Edward a BBC news presenter on the BBC College of Journalism website.

It is important to think of a strategy when writing headlines; search engine optimisation is a good idea to follow. When writing a headline we should be aiming to make sure that the SEO can find our peaces and so we need to have in mind key words that we will include in the headline that will bring the reader to our website.

Brian Whelan, a senior broadcast journalist on the BBC News Channel gives tips on headline writing. He emphasises how important it is to think ahead and be aware of future events, he says that “If you can get a sense of the story before it actually happens, it gives you much more time to focus on producing those pithy headlines (…)” Good headlines will engage the reader with their attention grabbing wording and catchy phrases. Good cues grab the attention immediately and go straight into the action of the story.

Along with thinking of creating an interesting headline or a link we mustn’t forget about being correct and current. One of the easiest mistakes to make is to lose the correct sense of the story. When working on the script we always have to be aware of the last minute changes and developments in the stories. It is as crucial to changes in the headlines as it is in writing links for the bulletin. The classical way of approaching writing links is covering information for the 'four Ws": Who, What, Where, When. This usually gives the audience overview of the oncoming news story but not too much detail not to give the whole story away but to tease to stay for the whole news package.

As Mr Whelan points out it is essential to remember that we are working within a team and we can ask another team member to keep an eye on things for us so that we end up with the best material.

When deciding about headline order it is important to think about the juxtaposition of headlines and taste. “Some headlines naturally sit next to each other because the stories are in fact linked” (Brian Whelan), but others cannot be put together, like for example “a motorway pile-up headline followed by one on booming scrap-metal merchants” (Brian Whelan).

Ref:
WINOL week 5, being an Output Editor- script writing
BBC College of Journalism website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/writing-styles/writing-headlines/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/writing-styles/writing-radio-cues/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/skills/writing-styles/writing-headlines/writing-heads-clips-1.shtml

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Production , WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE

WINOL (sem2) week 5- Multitasking this week: Output Editing, News & Sports Reporting

Great Quality journalism

Along with practising script writing I have also got to cover one of the news stories and film Totton football mach on Tuesday night. As script writing is not a role that would fill all the three days of WINOL production I decided to get myself involved in other departments helping whenever and wherever it is needed. On Monday I managed to study my role a as an Output Editor a little more theoretically through going through the BBC College of Journalism website (I published the conclusions in the separate post “Studying the role in week 5 of WINOL- Output Editor” ).


On Thursday afternoon Maddline and I decided to help the news team since no other reporter was available at the time, we covered the story about the spam fault in IT department of our University. Sarah Fulford, the User Services Manager posted a message on the portal that due to two people ignoring the rules of not giving out personal details via spam the University was attacked with vast amounts of spam. All that caused the Outlook Web access to go offline for some time and made the access to university emails unavailable for students from outside the campus. We had to rush to try to get more details from the Services Manager so that we could cover the story while the problem was still being dealt with. This story became an excellent practise for us from the legal point of view. Sara Fulford agreed to give as more details about the issue but didn’t allow for having herself on camera nor the inside of the building that the problem was at that moment being tackled. We left the room with more details but no pictures for the package. We decided to get Maddline to do PTC in front of the building to at least show the viewers where the problem was being dealt with. We were unfortunately not able to do that either as Mrs Fulford decided that she did not wish us to film the IT services building even from the outside, despite the fact that legally there were no restrictions for us to do so, we were acting within the public interest and there were no signs or legal restrictions about not filming that building but a pure personal concern from Mrs Fulford and wish not to allow as for filming it.

We were not sure what to do in that matter and so we came back to the newsroom to reach a professional advise from our tutors. In that moment we were reminded about the The NUJ's Code of Conduct which has set out the main principles of British and Irish journalism since 1936. And that it is “part of the rules and all journalists joining the union must sign that they will strive to adhere to it.” It is stated in point one that:
“Members of the National Union of Journalists are expected to abide by the following professional principles: A journalist:
1. At all times upholds and defends the principle of media freedom, the right of freedom of expression and the right of the public to be informed “And since that IT building is even named and given a direction to on the way to it (sign saying “IT services”which we have on tape) and there were no signs forbidding filming or stated in the University’s regulations that, that building should not be identified by filming and so we were legally not only allowed but also obliged as journalists to film it pointing at the place of the event happening with the pure intention for the public interest. We were advised to film from the public footpath instead of directly from in front of it, and so we followed that advise, additionally I took pictures of where the camera was standing proving that we did it from the public footpath. If we were asked by the security not to film it even though we were in the public area outside of the University premises we would try to explain the Code of Conduct legal obligations and reasons behind our decision to have gone back to film the building having a full legal and professional justification for it. We would probably not leave until we would be aggressively shouted at or physically removed but then we would have a legal right to put a complaint against the guard that would remove us thanks to the Article 10 Right to freedom of expression in European Convention on Human Rights Act 1998 :
“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by a public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent states from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema. (...)”

In other words, as it is written in Your Rights Liberty website in The Liberty Guide to Human Rights, “Article 10 protects your right to freedom of expression. This includes the right to hold and express opinions yourself as well as to receive and impart information and ideas to others. Before the Human Rights Act came into force, the right to freedom of expression was a negative one: you were free to express yourself, unless the law otherwise prevented you from doing so. With the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into English and Welsh domestic law, the right to freedom of expression is now expressly guaranteed.(…)”
We broke no law and we fulfilled an informative responsibility as journalists in the public interest, we can also prove that the building is identified in other ways (sign on the way up), there are no signs forbidding filming or picture taking of the building and we can prove that our camera was on the public footpath when filming (we have pictures). We stated only facts that we were given by the Services Manager so everything was within the rule of fast accurate and fair. Everything was truth and we could prove it, we were covered by law and NUJ Code of Conduct. The next day Maddline managed to get an additional interview to fulfill the balance of the package and update on the story.

On Monday night I also went along to film the Totton football match with the sports team, it was amazing to gain a new experience and practice something different. Most challenging were probably weather conditions and late hours of filming apart from that I found it quite enjoyable. I tried to keep tighter shots on the players and use some wacky and artistic shots from behind the net angle to make the peace more interesting.

In Overall, the bulletin was quite strong editorially. There was a timing issue as when I finished the script it was showing around 12minutes and the bulletin ended up taking 13minutes instead. I was told that we could still upload 12 minutes but 13 was too much. Some cuts had to be done in post production. We have to make sure of keeping it within 10minutes for the following scripts.

The Spam issue story (mine and Maddie’s was given as a perfect example of using knowledge about our legal rights and the NUJ Code of Conduct. We also found out that the university has its own policy where we can speak directly to people without speaking with the press officers. The Green party story was well balanced and was generally really well done. There was a suggestion that we broaden the area of covering story and stretch it onto the Winchester City rather than keeping it on the campus. Catherine’s piece contained interesting and effecting shots of fashion but came out as a ‘puff piece’. The sports story had to be cut for legal reasons (libel), there was a good example on 'No denial - denial' (no comment) in the same story. Joey’s story had strong quotes, good PTC and was generally an impressive news piece apart from a little bit boring pictures. The Army story’s link was well formed, which I was pleased to hear. Additionally, our “Date with Fate” is back and already ‘working on getting' our traffic up.

NUJ Code of CONDUCT: http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=174
Your Rights Liberty website in The Liberty Guide to Human Rights: http://www.yourrights.org.uk/yourrights/right-of-free-expression/article-10-of-the-european-convention-on-human-rights.html

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Produvtion , WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE

WINOL (sem2) week 4, Output Editor-Script writing

Rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal! WINOL 03/02/10

Thanks to having multiple rehearsals before recording the necessary adjustments and improvements could be made which affected greatly the outcome of the bulletin, was it just not so much better?!



The gallery felt a lot more professional and fully under control. And as we can see now smaller and smaller mistakes are being pointed out which automatically put our work in higher standards and shows how we are improving within the WINOL experience.

This week was our first fully deserved success. Our joined efforts effected in a best so far news bulletin. Technically we did an amazing progress, which was in a big part thanks to rehearsals and continuous practise as well as very detailed handover to new roles.

What would make it even better would be making sure of good headline pictures and also ensuring of handing in all the headlines in the afternoon on Wednesday and then making sure of handing in the LINKS, IN/OUT-WORDS as well as the length of the news/sports packages always soon after the headlines. All this allows the Output Editor finish of the script for the bulletin and give the Gallery-team sufficient time for rehearsal before recording the bulletin. All the roles within Winol are incredibly dependable on each other and that is why the team work and respecting the deadlines are crucial. As we have learnt from the past bulletins missing the deadline for packages or handing in the headlines late affects the whole look of the bulletin. In the first few weeks we had hardly time for rehearsing if any, and we were still learning the roles, this week we could hand over the roles that some of us have already practised, like operating VTs, directing or vision mixing, which allowed for giving advises and helping the next person to adjust quicker and practise on old scripts. Every new person can be trained in Gallery on previous script and VTs.

When I did directing I found myself having not even one chance of going through the script myself, once I didn’t even get the script till the very time of recording the bulletin live. Handovers from sport to news and coming in and out of the packages was one big guessing game. Also being one of the first students in the team as a director there was no one to hand me over their role or teach me how to do or not to do things which effected the bulletin. Winol is a sea of surprises filled with different experiences and lessons that we take out of it.

Being an OUTPUT EDITOR this week, I found myself learning how to use ENPS and write the script for the bulletin. I knew how important it was to deliver the script on time so therefore, I put my best affords to get the relevant information to finish of early enough for the new Gallery team to rehearse before going live. It is very responsible and detailed role, it is crucial to make it accurate and on time as well as making the bulletin a worth to watch peace attracting viewer’s attention with catchy headlines and interesting Links before the packages. Main difficulty is to chase the information like, headlines, links, length etc, I had to make sure that I took relevant information from reporters and finish it in time for pre-recording the headlines followed by decent rehearsal for the bulletin. I am still going to have to work on making the script crisp and catchy and learn how to re-write a good Headlines and Links.

Editorially, our news stories were stronger with a lot better angles.
Joey’s package came across as very engaging, was very strong technically and had a good set up. He is pretty confident in his PTC and delivered an ambitious news package. Jon’s package was brilliant technically but it was a “puff peace”, meaning it was talking about the topic only in superlatives, there were no negative comments about the simulator. For example Jon’s sign off-s should or could have brought is a balance. We should always remember about the BIG “BUT”, balancing the piece. We also didn’t see any pictures of the actual simulator and the interviews were slightly too long. The story about the Fair trade was not explained fully, vix-pops were interesting exposing reporter’s good interviewing techniques. In Kayleigh’s package we could notice a classical Expo by the reporter, as she explains details of her story for quite a long time; other two examples of expo story are ‘Bexpo’ - short explanation or ‘Lexpo’ - long exposition, there is also a third, unofficial one called ‘Flexpo’ - f****** long explanation(:o)
In Sports, we would like to see more of tighter shots. Grant did well with his PTC which added a value to the whole feature. The sports team, however, should remember not to assume the viewer’s knowledge about the topic.

Additionally, we were also reminded about the OfCom regulations, ‘underdue perminance’ – danger of giving more air time to one side of the argument/political favour which makes a piece unbalanced and therefore not broadcast able. As a recap we also heard about ‘subterfuge’ - going undercover (Section 7 of Human Rights Act), this stile of investigative journalism can only be applied when we act in public interest, must have prior permission and also can be done in no other way. ‘Equal air time’ (Section 6 Human Rights Act) is very important especially with oncoming election, this is a major restriction to broadcast journalism during the period of a general election campaign. The Ofcom Privacy act (Section 8 Human Rights Act), forbids identification of young persons under the age of 18.

Generally we got 200 user sessions, which means that we are still falling behind the amounts that we reached in the last semester (around 600) so we really should focus on advertising and trying to make the site better known around the campus and not only. However, as we all know in second semester there is generally less students around than in semester one therefore having the same amount of user session will be a considerable challenge for us. Despite these and other difficulties we will be trying our best to bring the traffic up and improve the quality of the bulletin as well as work on the website layout to make it more attractive.

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Production , WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE

Directing and Vision-mixing for WINOL, week 3, Sem II

Setting the green screen before Vision-mixing
• Funk button (left hand side) - press to use other functions
• Memory – 3rd page SD card – to load the image for the green screen
• Press Load
• backfinal (name of the screen for news)
• press F5 to load it
• ChrKey
• Pick Aux
• GrKey (left hand side Key) – Marker On
• press Sample start
• Press Key- next to the fading handle (put the handle up)
• Back to Background

Example 1 of News-Sport camera handover (Camera 2 and 1-right)
News to Sports handover
• VT for last news package running
• Cam 2 (Autocue) moves to sports presenter
• Cam 1 on standby - prepares for hand over from News to Sports presenter (wide shot of both of them)
• Cam 1 News presenter hands over
• Sports presenter continuous to Cam 2 (Autocue)
Sports to News handover
• VT for last sports package running
• Cam 2 moves to News presenter
• Cam 1 on standby –prepare for wide shot handover from Sports to News presenting
• News presenter continuous to Cam 2 – And finally story…

Example 2 of News-Sports camera handover (Camera 2 and 3-left)
News to Sports handover
• VT for last news package running
• Cam 3 on standby (set very close to cam 2)
• Cam 2 News presenter says “And now to …(whoever is the sports presenter) with the Sport”
• Cam 3 - Sports presenter says “thank you for that…” to Cam 3 - in the meantime Cam 2 moves quickly to Sports presenter (very quick handover)
• Cam 2 Sports presenter continuous with sport link and VT
Sports to News handover
• VT for last sports package/ Graph running - Cam 3 on stand by, prepare for handover
• Cam 2 Sports presenter says “That’s all for sports” and now back to News
• Cam 3 News presenter says “Thank you… (name of a sports presenter)” to Cam 3 – in this moment Cam 2 moves onto News presenter (quickly)
• Cam 2 News presenter continuous to Cam 2 - And finally story

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE WEBSITE
WINOL NEWS BULLETIN 24/02/2010 in Week 3, Sem II

Directing, Vision-mixing and Reporting, WINOL week 3 (sem II)

Winchester News Online Bulletin 24/02/10
In this week I was put not only in front of the challenge of directing but also vision-mixing and additionally, with our editor’s help, covered the “And finally story” for the bulletin. It all came out as an intense and complexed experience but enjoyable.


Once again we could not pre-record the headlines and we could only go through the whole script once because of the missed deadlines. Despite the tight schedule, the gallery felt calmer and more disciplined than last week, I felt more confident as a director as I practiced the News-Sports handover and I was able to go through the script before the recording. Having done the directing already once before I had an overlook on what I should be focused more and what to practice before going live.

Introduction was executed better than last week. During the recordingthe VT computer froze once, so we had a slip on timing but we recovered well, Stuart did not panic and stayed focused, it was also well edited in post production to make it look smoother. Stuart and Lucy did incredibly well with presenting.

In Nib-s and OOV-s the timing and in- and out- words should be displayed in the script. The OOV this week was quite complicated in vision-mixing and actually it could have been dropped of the script, as it became an unnecessary confusion.

Content wise, as we heard from the feedback, our story telling as reporters came across as still quite confusing but we certainly had stronger interviews this week. News is meant to be about people and we reached the right people. We were advised to do our voice-overs in the sound rooms instead of using the Gun-microphone, for better quality of the audio. Links for worked well within the bulletin, and dramatic headlines made the bulletin more attention grabbing. The only slip was that the headlines were giving away too much detail about the stories.

We were advised that we should stick to the golden rule [First Para- SUBJECT+ VERB+ OBJECT]: WHO (subject, with the function), WHAT (verb, has done what), OBJECT, and [Second Para- WHY].

In News reporting, each sentence matters, as journalists, we should be crafting words and sentences.

We should be always taking notepads with us to the interviews to take notes of the relevant quotes. We have to remember that the first minutes of our interviews are usually a waste, a worm up. Also, always remember to ask open questions and get the interviewee to explain the story (get them talking and keep them talking) and don’t forget about the ‘nod-dies’.
To the other useful interviewing techniques also belong:
- Good planning of the story, pre-planned angle and idea of quotes
- Finding out in detail what is the story (understanding the story)
- Executing the filming, cutaways, nod-dies and relevant interviews
- Avoiding the “cutting room journalism”, when we try to leave everything to be finalised in editing, as we should already have an idea of how the package will look like before filming it.
- The story should be told in our own words and the interviews are only for opinion in quotes. We mustn’t treat the quotes as facts and use interviewee to tell the story.

The forst story was quite a good piece, well scripted but was lacking in cutaways. It began with a powerful quote from the interviewee, as that is exactly what we should be looking for while interviewing- good quotes.

Tom’s story was a well scripted court report supported with a really impressive interview. Tom also did well on not identifying his interviewee for legal reasons. He also told the viewer about the legal restrictions before he applied it in the package, it looked professional. Tom should have been a little bit more careful with juxtaposition libel of number-plates of passing cars in his package. He only managed to make then blur. The case was protected as it was no longer active (no jury, after the verdict had been announced we are protected as hournalists).

In third story, about parking issue, there was a comment in the link to the story, which shouldn’t have been there; even though it was quite a reasonable comment we should have kept it out of the script. Instead of saying “There is a big parking issue” we could have used, “many say that there is a big parking problem” for example what would be a fact. In this package we cover section 8 of Privacy Act about person performing public duty which makes the shot without consent.

The following story was well scripted and had quite strong quotes but listening further through the package the interviewees went into too much detail about the story (the story should have been told by the reporter instead). In his PTC, Jon has commented, where he could have summarised what the doctors said.

In Sports, there were still some sound problems, especially in the interview with the manager where the wing got picked up by the Gun-mic and was quite disturbing for the interview.

In the ‘And finally story’ there were also some sound issues that came out during editing. The story was interesting and catchy, but it was more of a feature story rather than a news story.

In overall, we put out a lot better bulletin than last week and our traffic doubled comparing to last week (120/130), we should be still aiming to reach at least 400.

Winchester News Online Bulletin 24/02/10
Multimedia Production: WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE, Semester II

Sub-Editing in Production Team (sem II)

Winchester News Online Production Team, week 1, day 1 , Sub-Editor in Production team

The key to the Production desk is Joomla, the WINOL content web system, this time we are administrators instead of authors, it enables the Sub-editors and all above to access the articles and decide about their content.

Our team will make get the strip-lines ready to make it available for the VTs and prepare for the Headlines. It is important to follow the strict Schedule for the Production team.

Mondays will be the production planning day, we will be focusing strictly on appointing the roles and make sure we have our papers read and attend the De-brief, chase how is the progress of the News desk. Main Editorial Conference will be at 3.30pm and by 4.30pm all the main editors, managers and tutors will have decided the final planning for the Wednesday bulletin.

Tuesdays will be writing and early Production day. After 3pm we will be proofreading the articles submitted from the Newsdesk using the Article Manager checking for fast accurate and fair delivery of the News articles content. The word Limit is 200-250 words and when not met, articles will be returned to the Reporters to correct it as well as when other errors found. The articles will be ready for us for check in the stage of ‘READY FOR EDITING’ and we will pas it over to publishers when they are ‘READY FOR PUBLISHING’.

Wednesday is our most significant day, the day of Production for WINOL.
09.00 there will be an Editorial Conference – Editor, News Editor, Production Editor, (Chief Reporter) (sort out the running order for the daily bulletin)
10.00 Subbing news pages/creating pages
01.00 Deadline for finished news pages to chief sub
01.00- 2.00 GETTING THE TAPES AND STUDIO READY
02.00 Write/Edit News Index (deadline 4pm) NE/CS
02.00 Write/Edit Listings Index (dline 4pm) AEE/CS
02.00- 03.00 Headlines
03.00 Write/Edit Front Page (deadline 5pm) Ed/CS
03.00 Live broadcast

1. We need to make sure of clean desktop on the computer, the output from the desk has to be captured onto the tape. Export it onto FCP first and then onto QTP.
2. Now we have it on the TAPE
3. Make sure we watch it while capturing
4. Minor editing if needed- make sure it’s under 10min (Youtube limit),
5. Compressing it down (high band with, 40-50min)
6. Youtube uploading, make sure that once it is on You Tube- it’s public.
7. Programming into Live-Stream http://www.livestream.com/winol2009
- Log In
- skip to account
- Winchester News Online (winol2009)
- STUDIO
- Broadcast Live (which enables us to mix the output with the loop- we never stream it live!)
- MANAGE LIBRARY
- Create a new STORY BAND, New Folder- name it
- go to Control AUTO-PILOT
- News Story board
- Winol news search results and then
- drag the movie into desired folder
- AUTO-PILOT and drag the movie into THE PLAYLIST
- BROADCAST LIVE
- Pick the story board (tick the right one!)
- ‘PLEASE QUE A CLIP’
- cross the previous bulleting off- drag and drop the new one in- START AUTO PILOT

The University of Winchester Journalism Course
Multimedia Production: WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE, Semester 2

Winchester News Online week 6- Hero Student rescues pensioner from fire

Student risks life to save pensioner from blaze - made air and front page story for the website! FOURTH LIVE EDITION of WINOL

Story 6, Semester week 11 (7th December)



This week was not only my personal big success but also the best so far edition of WINOL. I brought quite a few ideas to the newsroom this Monday. I chased papers over the weekend and I found that at Southampton University there was a sex offender, University’s stalker, I searched into it and I received an email confirming that he has stalked one person in Southampton University’s area and is of no danger for Winchester University for now, the investigation only just started and I was advised that it would not be resolved as of this week yet. Another story that I researched was a Winchester Community’s Choir concert that was going to take place on Tuesday evening. I got permission for filming, behind the stage entrance and arranged interviews with producer and was allowed to interview singers. I thought of it as a good 'and finally story'.

Our editor suggested I investigated the outcomes of The Silent students Happy Homes campaign. I researched it and interviewed the SU president Jimmy who took part in the campaign and tried arranging video interview with Tommy Geddes, deputy v-ce councillor of the University of Winchester but he was not available for interview in the next few days. I also tried reaching PC Emma Port, who is part of the Safer Neighbourhood Team, which was also involved in the campaign to reach opinion from police side and was awaiting the reply from her. I decided to film “backs of the heads, out of focus images of drunk students going back from clubbing at 2am. I was determined to stay up and film it for my cut-a-ways and fillers for the story.

While I was waiting for 2am to come I received a phone call around 11pm from one of my colleagues that there was a fire in Stanmore next to his house. I took my camera and managed to get to the place and filmed a burnt house and found out that our university student helped in saving life of his neighbour pensioner. I spoke to a police officer on the place and he said that the cause of fire was still under investigation and no one from the fire brigade wanted to give me video interview so I managed to get visual footage and name of our hero student. I still filmed the images of drunk students just in case my footage of the burnt house didn’t come out well. Next morning one of the fellow reporters, Kaileigh managed to arrange an interview with our hero Edward Herbert from year 3, heritage management course. My footage was fairly good I was missing and active shots, opening shots of our hero as I only had time to film his interview.

After I had filmed the interview with Edward I went to film Maddeline’s story with her. We attended a memorial for our international student who died in a car accident just a week earlier. It was one of the worst experiences I have ever had. An hour of filming a chaplaincy full of grieving people after a young and talented Chinese students. Her parents came over all the way from China to pick up her body. As my family does not live in this country it was even worse imagining that if something like that happened to me my parents wouldn’t even be here but could only pick up my body. Mixture of strong emotions was going through our minds and while our eyes were full of tears we were still trying to remember that we were there to fulfil a duty as reporters. It was incredibly hard for me to focus on filming, thinking about angles, colours and framing while tears were flooding my eyes, sadness and pain of reality of being foreign and not being able to see my family. And empathy with the parents of the dead girl… all that was going through my mind but then a cold reserved determination came, desire to achieve goals in my life and realise how far I have gone, made me stay there and deliver a story that was in fact very personal and brought up my biggest weaknesses and thoughts of dying in foreign country and not being able to say the last words to my beloved … or not being there for them when they die…

I knew what I was going for when applying for journalism and experiences like that will be a big part of the profession; I will have to learn how to build an emotional barrier when death or cruelty is involved in the story. Keeping cold blood and not letting emotions to take over, despite how personal or emotional things will get- I will need to remember that it is my job and I am fulfilling my duty as journalist no matter how hard it will get. I would like to do it with passion and perfection to fulfil my ambition.

After the memorial I decided to cancel filming of the concert, James allowed for dropping that idea and told me to focus on my hero-fire story, also as I have not heard from the police officer so even though I had a footage of drunk students I stopped working on that one too.

My student story became a hit and made a front page of the Winol website. Memorial story was olso in the package, with which Maddline did an excellent job with editing and received a fantastic feedback.

I have not felt so rewarded and proud of myself during the course. Our team given ourselves plenty rounds of applause and it surely deserved it. We had top stories, we tried our best and gave 100% as always and that’s what made us proud and happy.

The bulletin was lead by equally great story and was by far the best we have done. We received 300 unique user sessions overnight (WINOL 459) so we were once again almost certainly the single most read media source on the campus. Rob Kirk of Sky was genuinely impressed and I announced that that we were in the 'Premier League' of BJTC journalism courses is sincere considering that that the majority of BJTC courses he deals with are at the MA level. We can be proud of our bulletin and development of features also thanks to Catherine's 'behind the scenes' short film.

Winchester News Online Week 5, Southampton Chaplains story

Chaplains facing axe from two of the Southampton Universities because of the budget cuts due to recession. LIVE BULLETIN III

Story 5, Semester week 10 (30th November)

My ideas for this week were not so strong but I still managed to bring fresh mind to the newsroom this week. There was a Crafted Contemporary exhibition and Merry Exhibition by local artists and craftspeople at the Winchester Discovery Centre which I was planning to film as an informative “and finally” artistic stories but I didn’t get a go ahead with it as they were too weak. And also reopening of a Portchester Library on Tuesday 1st December, which was still within Hampshire area but as we looked it up it was a little bit too far and so it felt not so relevant for our WINOL. I also kept chasing one of my ideas from beginning of November when I found out from one of the press releases that there was a proposal on reduction in Mileage Allowance for Council Workers in Hampshire and I wanted to take an angle on it researching on how would it influence performance of council workers especially in delivering important frontline services and looking after needs of the county’s residents. Unfortunately, the proposal has still not progresses.
I kept in contact with the press officer Suzie Southgate, Media Communications Manager for Cabinet (Policy and Resources and Environment) who issued the release, and she kept me updated, so I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make a story of that issue this week.

Having no strong ideas for story for this week James, our news editior, suggested I investigated the case of University chaplains facing axe from two of the Southampton Universities because of the budget cuts due to recession. I had to find out if our chaplain was likely to loose his position and how was it decided that those particular Universities were chosen. I video- interviewed Winchester Universities chaplain and went to Southampton University with Colin. Colin, our deputy News Editor knew the chaplain whose post was cut and on the place we found out that the students from Southampton University were leading a campaign against the decision of cutting the chaplain’s post.
While doing the research trying to get to the right people to talk to I managed to get in touch with the Bishop of Winchester, Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, chairman of Bishop’s Council and Standing Committee, responsible for making the decision about cutting the two posts, who wrote me an email confirming the decision and informing that the Winchester University’s chaplain is employed by University not but Church if England and that was why his post is not involved in the Diocese’s decisions.

Because of technical difficulties with editing I was worried that I wouldn’t make a deadline and also on the day of our bulletin going live we found out that our studio guest that was connected with the story I was covering could not come and so we had to call our university’s chaplain to come and replace our guest what meant that I had to cut his interview out of my package and re-edit it all. With Colin’s help we managed to construct new package with Southampton’s chaplain and couple of vox-pops that we filmed at Southampton University. We made the deadline and our University’s chaplain could be our studio guest for this week’s bulletin. The story made the TOP STORY OF THE BULLETIN.

From the technical side, we managed to organise a new front page and new way of displaying features. Our next push was concentrated on the visual side of the magazine and features working in which Catherine took a big part in having a great talent in photography.

This week’s Guest Editor was Chris Ship, ITV Political Correspondent who is also covering Westminster, and presents the main ITV News. He was generally impressed by the interaction between the internet and TV bulletin we are putting out and that we are actually tracking who was logging on to our website and what stories we were doing. He also liked the way we focused on the stories and the way we have worked out our targeted audience. He said that having to practice week in week out is invaluable.

In overall, WINOL's circulation has now overtaken both the Hampshire Chronicle and the Basingstoke Gazette which means that we continue to improve.

Students Protests continue- Town Takeover in Reading and overnight success of WINOL

Winchester News Online, week 9, 23rd November, News Bulletin 25th November LIVE BULLETIN II Covering this week’s story for our News Bulletin, I joined students from Winchester in their trip to Reading, where they combined the powers to raise awareness of potential changes to University fees payments for future generations. Lord Mandelson launched a tuition fee review stating that fees could potentially significantly increase under a major Government review of university finance. ("The review’s final recommendations are not expected to be published until next summer") It was amazing to be at the place of news happening and capture real emotions and be able to film the whole event to share it with the rest of the community of students.
It was so far one of the most enjoyable news making adventures I have experienced. The DV tape was full of material for great story for this week’s news bulletin. After careful scrutiny of my fellow colleagues’ reporters, editors and myself watvhing my package over and over I thought that I was given the final go ahead. Unfortunately, the next morning I found out that my package had to be changed, that meant that my deadline nightmare had not finished. After editors’ meeting it was decided that my package was not balanced enough to go onto the bulletin unless I found quote from Government’s side, it was not going to be put on air. From the piece I was proud of, my story turned to not broadcast able at all. After reaching Central Government’s press officer, I managed to find the missing quote from Lord Mandelson’s Review. Unfortunately, technical trouble of fitting my quote within my package did not allow me for meeting my deadliest of deadlines. My story did not make air.

However, on the other hand, my misfortune did not touch outcome of WINOL, thanks to our fantastic team’s work, another video package replaced my story. I was given exclusive story video insted, which would be put underneath the news bulletin in week beginning of 30th November. James decided that, the story would be given exclusivity and posted on our News website as soon as updated.



Despite my unsuccessful attempt to make air with the story I covered, I was proud of the general output of our News Bulletin. Row over students 'taking over' Stanmore was another of Stu’s great top stories; he surprised us with his fantastic walking shot when doing PTC. Erasmus Park story was full of shock factor pictures, especially with images of cracked walls and mushrooms growing in the kitchen. Kaileigh’s Children in Need was a pleasant addition “and finally story” that signed of our bulletin with a positive accent. Maxine did and amazing job as a news presenter and Tom continuously proves unbeaten title for an excellent sports presenter. Hard but accurate decisions made by James and Editorial as well as Production team during package making effected in an amazing and another best so far News Bulletin we produced.

We were also privileged to have heard a flattering feedback from our guest Ian Anderson. He emphasised that our headlines are becoming more accurate and attractive and advised for more flexible approach from imaginative camerawork on them. He also mentioned that that this week's lead story about road smash felt wrong for the audience and that “Tuition fees felt like the right lead for the audience and the interview off the back in the studio was editorially good - although framing could have been better.” He really liked our stripe lines but also added that there was still not enough pieces to camera or reporters 'involved' in stories.

Effectively, WINOL got 260 unique user sessions on Wednesday for the second bulletin, that could be justified with the technical problems (Rich tried his best to get it up) that we had with uploading the bulletin to the website but we still managed to overtake The Basingstoke Gazette in the Alexa rankings, and have left the Hampshire Chronicle behind.

Car parking issue at Winchester investigated by WINOL

Winchester News Online experience, Story 3, week 8 at Winchester University

This week was another successful week for WINOL. Our bulletin went life for the first time and it reached a significant number of viewers. Our website becomes a competitor for other local news sites.
It was a fantastic achievement for students of Journalism from Winchester. My story about car parking issue currently troubling not only our students but also residents of Stanmore and West Downs. The story made air along with other great video packages produced by our students.
My interviewees (Councillor for Stanmore, James Stephens and SU President,Jimmy Weighell at our University) contributed greatly in my research for parking problems story. I tried my best to reach the essence of the issue and fulfilled an informative role for the community of our students.

To my surprise few hours before my story was meant to go on air I was told that I had to find someone else to represent students’ side of the parking issue instead of Jimmy, because he was also interviewed by my fellow colleague for other video package. The pressure of a new even tighter deadline, not even one hour, to find equally representative interviewee, film, edit and fit it within my package again, so that our final News bulletin would look better. Thanks to a great team work, my new version of the package was put on air and fit within the deadline once again. I must admit that it would have certainly helped to had known that I couldn’t have an SU president as an interviewee in my package the day before when I was finishing my original package rather than unexpectedly be told that I could not use his interview.

If I did not find my 3rd interviewee in that last minute my package could have not be put on air, the day before none of us picked that there were two the same interviewees in our news bulletin till the last minute. Now I know that even before choosing my people for the video package I have to be aware of all potential interviewees for all next news in bulletin.

Additionally, what I was pleased to see was, even though my story from last week about 3rd Local Transport Plan didn’t make our dummy bulletin edition 2, my fillers and cutaways of trains for that package was used in other story this week.

As an overall we still had some sound issues but it was one of our best bulletins so far. The whole team worked incredibly hard, helping each other as usual to effectively, produce good quality news bulletin for WINOL. Catherine did an amazing job as a presenter this week and Tom proved again what a fantastic sports presenter he is.

Winchester News Online is starting its successful and certainly long lasting career as a geat local news provider for Winchester produced by students.

Winchester News Online, wk2 - this time story did not go on air!

Winchester News Online week 2, Dummy edition 2
Despite the fact that it was only our second attempt to produce the News bulletin, the news room felt like a tense workplace with the strictest deadlines in the world.
This time our team of reporters produced a higher variety of Video News packages which was an incredible achievement. The atmosphere felt tense but professional, editors had everything under control. We took the previous weeks feedback onboard and began showing more understanding and appreciation towards each others’ roles. Everyone turned up on time and editors could rely on spare reporters covering breaking news or support for other departments.

“We can do more for less” – 3rd Local Transport Plan launched for Hampshire



This time story did not go on air!


This week I researched a topic from a press release about launching a 3rd Local Transport Plan on 2nd November 2009. I decided to find out whether the plan is looking to bring a successful changes to Hampshire transport, what sort of improvements were going to be proposed and how would the council ensure of reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions to not only improve the quality of life for residents but also maintain environment preparing for the climate change. In order to find the answers I Video-interviewed Hampshire County Council’s Executive Member for Environment, Councillor Mellvile Kendal.

I found it quite challenging to find a right angle to produce a good Video package for our bulletin and I believe that, it effected in the story not being put on air. This week I was also competing against quite a few better stories and eventually I didn’t win my time on air and my story was turned into a 20sec nib which was read by a presenter. A valuable part in my package was excellent cut-aways and fillers of trains which I filmed on the purposes of producing a package.

The idea from the previous week about Figures of Unemployment in Winchester was edited by my colleague Maddline(investigative reporter for WINOL) and also turned into a 20sec nib. Both the nibs took part in the bulletin, however due to technical problems neccesary cuts had to be done and a lot of material was lost when putting it onto the website.

My first experience of having to put a lot of effort and time to producing a Video package and turning out not to be strong enough to be fully on air was quite a valuable lesson. In a week full of good stories we have to be fully aware of the strength of our story and be able to “sell it to our editor” gaining as much time on air as possible. However, also although the story may not be strong, the package was ready within the deadline and waiting as a backup just in case something goes wrong- and this sort of Video packages are also important even though, eventually they will be turned into nib or not used at all.

Disappointment and hurt pride will hit quite strongly but that is how the weak stories will be dealt with in the real work place so we need to learn how to face it and find further motivation to carry on despite the failure and prove to deserve a place within a team next time and learning from past mistakes. Working in a newsroom demands incredible stress management skills and always leaves room for improvements.

Winchester News Online experience- Week 1, Dummy Edition I

My role: Reporter for Hampshire County Council and Winchester City Council

WINOL created an amazing new experience which connected students of year 2 and 3 BA Journalism students at the Winchester University. Being part of an authentic atmosphere of the News Room makes a great work experience. It is an incredibly intense, challenging and highly valuable experience for all the students.

Hard work and professionalism of third year plays vital role in WINOL experience.
Everyone present from year three was willing to help, give advice or give a hand with editing. They are all giving us important lessons for the future.
Our Video interviews should be usually finished relatively early to give us sufficient amount of time for editing, and then preparing written versions attached with pictures as well as links for the News presenters in addition to our Packages. Our articles will be uploaded to Joomla where they will be edited and published onto the website.

In week one I took inspiration partly from City Council’s and Hampshire County websites and also from my own research:

1. More people were set to qualify for Housing and Council Tax benefits from November 2nd, was unfortunately to early to be investigated on and had only small impact on the community.

2. Small businesses in time of recession on example of The Winchester News Café which was accepted to go on air as a Video package I made that went onto the bulletin unfortunately, because of technical errors on WINOL production side the bulletin was not recorded.



3. Unemployment figures falling, what plans did the Council have to improve it further, which was postponed and not used in week 1.

News Editor, James Kenyon, managed to put together most effective stories and keep our spirits up till our very deadlines. Omar Mussa was of great help in editing. James made a decision to leave to film a story which shouldn’t have happened as there should have been enough reporters to send out when needed. However as we could see Rich Taylor and Ben King tried their best to handle the situation well in his absence. Despite an inexperience, Claire and Tom did really well in the roles of presenters. Sport Reporters team seams to stay on top of the news quality and reflecs their great potential.

All the team worked incredibly hard to fulfil their roles, however there was also few students that approached our task of first edition rather light, with lack of passion and engagement. An issue also lied in student’s low attendance, as we realised later all of us should be available and willing to help in whichever area it is needed.

Some of us experienced difficulties from the side of getting through the Press Officers which can certainly be an issue that could ruin our plans for the story and effect in missing the deadline or even not completing the Video Package at all. Some of the students found it challenging when it came to editing part and other even finding a story.
Our deadlines seamed incredibly tight, yet as we all found out they were loose for the production team and directory to work on the script and prepare better News bulletin.

In overall, there were both good and bad points that effected our bulletin however, with the joined efforts of the whole team we managed to put our first Dummy Edition of WINOL News bulletin together with valuable lesons for the following editions.