Well this week was our return to actual University work. I've been around for a few weeks just lazing around or going to work so I thought I was prepared for the trials and tribulations of WINOL. I was not. Monday was a shock to the system for more reasons than the 9 o'clock start, the briefing we were given set us up for the next year of our lives and the next two days gave us a sense of what being a working journalist could be like. It was tough at times but an amazing experience to be part of a news team that put out a half decent news programme, better than I expected considering we second years had never done anything quite like it before. We were thrown in at the deep end to an extent but we learnt to swim pretty quickly and we had the third years there to give us some inflatable armbands and, yeah. I shouldn't extend this metaphor any further.
We can only get better and amongst the constructive criticism we received there were a few high points. Chris joked that we were better starting the year than some had been at the end and whilst we all laughed there was a sense that even hitting our deadlines and getting the broadcast out on time was an achievement of sorts. OK so the packages weren't perfect yet but we're students, not professionals and it was an all second year news team who in two days had to go out and find a story, secure interviews and film it all to be edited together and put into the WINOL broadcast. Two days in which we experienced how tough it's going to be over this year.
When it came to the actual WINOL broadcast I was sat in the gallery on the Vision Mixer, a machine I had only learned how to use the day before. Suffice to say I was nervous, or as the cool kids say, bricking it. Just 10 minutes before we were due to 'air' we realised that the OOV for Ali's piece on train prices was actually the wrong video. Normally, we would probably have all entered into a panic but kudos to Ali who was calm and simply walked into the newsroom, got the correct piece of video and put it onto the VT machine just in time. I think the overriding theme of the day was probably calmness. Perhaps it was because it was a dummy run, with no one but possibly the First years seeing it. (By the way, if you're a first year reading this then I ask you to be merciless when Brian tells you to point out the mistakes. We did and yet we made the same mistakes in our first WINOL this year. Learn from that and note down every cock up so you can make sure you don't make the same mistakes). Or maybe we're just that awesome? I think perhaps the first option but it would be great to think that the atmosphere we had in the gallery and the studio will be something that will continue.
I think perhaps when WINOL gets up and running properly, I might leave some of the debrief comments on here and also start posting a few tutorials on how to do certain jobs on WINOL.
