Last weeks WINOL went extremely well in some aspects, in fact some would say the most important aspects as we got the broadcast out on time with no legal issues. We had no guest editor on the fourth WINOL but we were run in a more hands on way than usual by Brian and Angus. Brian took control of the newsroom, spiking any stories that weren't good enough to be broadcast on the BBC and cutting most things to OOV's because they weren't quite good enough but weren't bad enough to be spiked. I had a slightly less stressful job than the week before, back on the straplines writing headlines which is always fun, (favourite was Princess and the PC, wish it was me who'd written that, well played George). We used a different format script this week when it came to WINOL time, one more like the standard you'd get on an actual news show. It looked very much like the scripts I saw on my trip to Al Jazeera last year which makes sense really as Angus took control of it and directed from the gallery, showing us production people how it should be done really.
The week didn't begin with WINOL however, on Tuesday we filmed the first WINOL Life of the year. A One Show style programme in which our presenters are joined by a guest, usually related to feature production, and talk to our features team after being shown their efforts. The guest we had was Sally Churchward, a local journalist on the Southern Daily Echo and a features writer primarily. We had so many technical difficulties in the run up to the actual show, the vision mixer was just impossible to get working although eventually one of of tech friends managed to work their magic just in time for us to get a rehearsal in before the actual recorded broadcast. Unfortunately however, one of our questions suggested that music features were Sally's specialty and in Ewan's package about girl gamers he may have suggested girls only want to play games with unicorns and flowers. Sally is also a vocal feminist. This made things a little awkward to say the least. We persevered though and got a decent broadcast out and with the sound issues we had to deal with, Justina did amazingly to make it sound as good as it did in post production.
Sportsweek went as well as it always does. It's such a fun and easy thing to film and it's great experience for people who want to direct on the Wednesday so they can do it without the pressure of being live. It also gave a George a chance to do what he loves, speaking terrible French phrases to Julie.
When we finally made it to WINOL on the Wednesday we were feeling pretty confident. We'd had a few decent weeks and the production schedule that Dom put together a few weeks back had been great for us on production and I think helps the rest of the team to keep on track as well. I wanted to be on vision mixer again as for some reason, even though it can be stressful trying to set up green screens and making sure the camera changes at the right moments on handover and there are no black holes between VTs. I also took charge of the hard drive for another week on which we collect the headlines and the packages for the bulletin. I personally find that job really stressful but I had all the headlines ready in time to record them and I had the packages ready long before rehearsals started so I should really calm down. The stories themselves weren't particularly strong. Technically our news team is getting better week by week and we've ironed out a lot of issues that we encountered in the early editions. We're still pretty new though and that side of things will keep improving. The stories themselves however are different. We need to all be thinking about stories, reading local papers and asking questions, listening to local people and going to meetings in the hope of securing a story.
All in a all a good couple of weeks on WINOL. I'm going to add a bit more to this blog during the week as I misplaced my debrief notes. Once they're found I'll mention a bit more constructive criticism.
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