WINOL Week 7

This week was an unusual week for me compared to normal, the court report I was working on was open to a wider issue, which I felt was important to cover to add depth and scope to the story. The sentencing was an arson attack which was instigated because her 999 hoax calls were ignored. The issue of prank hoax calls is an extremely common occurrence which needed to be addressed, therefore I arranged an interview with the South Central Ambulance Service, in order to add an element of comment to my piece. I was in touch with their press office who arranged for me to come down to their office in Otterbourne and speak with the Area Manager of North Hampshire, this was a good experience, and it was a relief to have someone help film as I could have a comfortable conversation with the interviewee before hand. I also got to go into the control room where the 999 calls take place, and these GVs added a more interesting visual feature, introducing the interview quite nicely. Although the background interview was shot against a white wall, this was because the acoustics in the control room were too loud and there was risk of echo; so for sound quality purposes we went ahead with a quiet room. When It came down to editing I found a few sound bites which addressed the issue straight away "matter of life and death", in addition, I interviewed him on what he thought about the sentencing at the law courts relating the wider issue back to the current report at hand.

With court reporting the hardest issue is always pictures, however this week I thought it was a visually pleasing report. In addition to the interview and GVs of the control room, I had a mug shot from the police, a reconstruction of someone dialling 999, and a PTC on location of where the incident took place. When we arrived in Southampton the weather was certainly not on our side, it was pouring with rain, and the wind was ruining any hope of clear sound. We attempted a PTC near the road but this was picking up all the loud buses driving past, so we moved round the corner which was quieter but still had the flats in vision. When we came back to the newsroom it was clear that it had been rushed, the sound quality was good, but the framing and positioning of me could have been more central, but this is me being hypercritical so I'm told. With the help of the final cut pro colour balance tool I didn't look so blue in the end and it served the purpose of being at the scene which I wanted; compared to outside the law courts. I also used the lip mic to record my voice over for the package and to introduce the interview. I was told the piece on the whole had a sense of authority which I was extremely pleased with.

In addition to my package this week, I worked with George to cover the Jamie Dack trial, he went to court which established that there was reporting restrictions on the case, as it is now being re-trialled. I was in touch with the officer who sent us police photos, a mugshot of the defendant who confessed to murder and a photo of the victim. When I was in Southampton I filmed the location of where the body was found in a wheelie bin on Empress Road. This solved the issue of having no footage to illustrate the OOV. Here is this week's bulletin:

The guest editor this week was Ben Mitchell from the Press Association, who gave me some extremely valuable pointers on scripting my piece. As a man with many years of experience in court reporting he gave me some great advice on how to structure my written story, which I have taken on board. Here is what he had to say about WINOL-