WINOL Week 2

This week a few stories I was working on fell through, but by the end of the week a joint package Nadine and I was working on made the headlines.

Hampshire Police and Crime Panel Meeting
This week Spence and I went down to the Council Chambers to watch the debate of the preferred Chief Constable. This was an extremely interesting experience, we sat in the press dock and made extensive notes on the councillors questions and responses. This was in preparation for the announcement of the new chief constable.

Court
As usual I went down to court in hope to find a newsworthy story. I began following a breach of sentence regarding a Southampton player who was assaulted, I was present at the court in Novemeber when the suspended sentence was received and was therefore familiar with the case. However, despite my efforts to get in touch with the club and speak to the victim I found there were too many legal issues such as the addresses, which stopped me from progressing and broadcasting it. I knew that it would probably be unlikely that the victim would want to speak to me, but I wanted to try something new this week and try get the angle from the victims point of view. Without it, there was minimal visuals, and therefore decided to axe the story and look for something more creative this week. On my second visit down to court there was reporting restrictions on the case.

By this point, it was Tuesday morning and I was storyless. I tried to do something constructive such as an OOV belt to add an element to the bulletin that we didn't have in the first week. 

OOV 
Nadine and I got together a few possible ideas for an OOV such as the 200th year anniversary of Pride and Prejudice. She drove us down to Chawton in Alton to visit Jane Austen's House Museum, whereby we got permission to film inside. Unfortuantely a lot of the footage was pretty dark as the lighting was dim inside. But we got many GVs so finding a few shots to use in a 12 second OOV was not a problem. I found that the OOV itself was quite 'promo' for the museum therefore struggled to make it a 'news' story.

An OOV between two was not exactly anything to be proud of, and as a reporter that aims to be in the bulletin every week I felt I had let myself down. But with a call from our news editor Ben, regarding a campaign that was launched and a possible interviewee, I was excited again and ready to produce a package - even if it meant turning the story around and editing it all the morning of the bulletin.

The story was a follow up regarding an accident that happened on Friday where a young boy was hit by a bus. I was luckily walking down the high-street where Spence and I noticed ambulances and police cars. We knew it would be a pretty big story as the police cornered off the area and Press were already down there. I took some photos from the scene of the crime on my iPhone as this was the only device I had at the time, and thinking it would only be a text story I made the mistake of not taking any moving footage. Note to self I am working for TV, always take a video, not just still. It unravelled in the week that a campaign on Facebook was launched in response to the danger zone, therefore we set up an interview with the founder of this campaign: Andy Salter, who was happy to talk to us.

Nadine and I scripted the PTC which we decided she would do as she wanted to gain more experience on screen, whereas I had little experience conducting interviews and therefore wanted to use this opportunity to do so. With the chance to produce a full package, rather then a court report which never has any visuals, I ensured we had some sequence shots so when it came down to editing it we would have plenty of shots to choose from. We also used the stills that was taken on the day of the crime to show what had happened, but the important part was the new update on the story that the market stalls had been closed. Nadine got in touch with the council to investigate what changes they were deciding to make, and therefore found out that had suspended that area of the market for the foreseeable future. She did a walking piece to camera from the area where the market stalls would usually be which visually displayed the difference, she did a great job and it looked really professional. When we got back to the newsroom, we began to edit it together, and realised that the first PTC that she did needed to be re-recorded as we had put pictures over it, and therefore need to script to pictures rather then the other way round. Therefore it was re-scripted and recorded in the Radio studio. We worked well as a team, and was extremely happy with what we produced, we cut it down to a few shots for the headline clip, and we had secured our place as the second top story. Here it is:

WINOL 30/1/13 

Personally this week I felt WINOL was extremely successful, we had a great range of news stories with a range of both hard and soft news. We had coverage of royalty, crime, court report on bomb hoax, wind farm update, government grants, elderly people, sport and cute animals. Despite the slight delay in broadcasting the bulletin I thought production did really well, and the bulletin flowed nicely and looked professional. Harry Parkhill our news anchor also did a brilliant job of presenting, looking extremely comfortable, something I aspire to be able to do myself in the future. Watch the full bulletin below: