Week 8: WINOL

Following on from Claudia's comments on the importance of contacts I got in touch with a connection down at court that I had worked with on a previous story. She informed me of a high profile case about a man who was convicted of 20 sexual offences; knowing about this in advance was a first for me, as usually with court it is pot luck with what case you may be sitting in.

When I went down to court the entire public gallery was packed with the victims, their families and members of the jury that had come back to see the sentencing. This was an extremely interesting case to witness as it was the first time that I had listened to the victim impact statements in full before the judges sentence. Often you hear that the victims statements are not read out, but a new code has been introduced where victims have been given the right to read out to the court how they have been affected personally by the crime. In this case, it was the barrister who read it out on behalf of the victims.

We are always told to think about the people affected by a story, and in this instance it was the victims, therefore I wanted to focus more on them by including quotes from their impact statements in my piece to camera, and my speaking to the officer in charge about the bravery of the victims who stepped forward. It was nice to interview the officer in charge of the case for once, as usually it is difficult to get hold of them, but following the length of this trial we agreed we were surprised there was not more press covering the case. She mentioned that Basingstoke Gazette interviewed her, but I am pleased to say that I reported on the story before they did when it is directly on their patch.

Due to the nature of this offence, there was a lot of hard-hitting quotes from the judge, this allowed me to script the story in a way that could really paint a picture of what his behaviour was like. Ian Anderson commented on the fact the piece to camera had colour and depth to it because it described what was going on inside the court, not only in regards to the defendant but also what it was like for the victims involved.

Ian Anderson mentioned that it was good to have a lead into the interview of us walking through the corridor, but if possible avoid boring backgrounds when filming the interview as it needed to have depth of field. But, he said that my package showed a logically process, and it felt neat from going from a PTC to an interview and returning back to a PTC to close it with the judges comments. Although court reports, especially those of a sexual nature, have very little images I feel I managed to tell the story in a way that painted a picture through words.

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