Winol Week 1: Reflection

My role this year, as part of Winchester News Online, is correspondent for Winchester City FC. I see this as almost an ideal role. I know each week in advance what I have to do, I can get there by foot, and I love football. Perfect. But that doesn't mean that my role is by any means easy, for a start my camera skills are not great (yet), and climbing wobbly ladders is rarely an enjoyable experience. Winchester City FC are, fortunately, very accommodating to the WINOL cameras so I am able to film from the top of their main stand, which will hopefully result in some good coverage.. Eventually.

The main problem I had this week was simple technique, the white balance was not perfect, due to the harsh October heatwave that left the sun sitting annoyingly behind one goal. I also found it difficult to keep track of the action when zoomed in, which left me filming most of the match from what looks like a considerable distance. There were 6 goals and a penalty in the match, so the laws of averages meant that I did catch some of the goals quite well. The high scoring game also allowed me to get away with leaving out one of the particularly poorly shot goals from the final edit.

Editing was, what I can only describe as, a nightmare. Final Cut Pro did everything it possibly could to stop me being able to edit, tapes wouldn't work, computers froze and electricity was turned off, and apart from the remembering the basics of editing, I learnt very little except for how much I hate technology at times. Eventually, things worked out, but I'm far from content with my final piece, there is so much to be worked on, much of which I'm sure I'll be able to put right this week.

The football package for Sportsweek was not my only contribution to WINOL this week. I was also asked to present the sports for the main bulletin. Unfortunately we had some technical issues that we were unprepared for, making the bulletin 15 minutes late to air. This is something that can not happen again. I feel as though my piece went reasonably well for a first time presenting. One tip that Angus gave was to work on the handover between the two presenters. This is something that we hadn't put much work into, but is something that will hopefully come with time and practice.