When we turned up we were faced with a few problems, firstly Winchester boxing club is basically a shed, meaning that space was limited, I felt as though we were in the way at times so this did limit the shots that we were able to get. Added to this, there were several under 18's present, so we had to be careful who and where we formed.
I did an opening piece to camera in front of the ring, which turned out to be the downfall of my package, the sound quality was poor and in no way fit to be used for the main bulletin, lighting was also not great. I needed to use a radio mic for this piece, or have the camera trained in closer to my face and hold the gun mic underneath me, rather than having the gun mic rested on the ring, out of shot. I got a few nice shots of people training, but with a short package was unable to use a lot of these. I realised that unless I got involved this could turn out to be a complete non story, so I asked one of the boxers if I could spar with him, he obliged.
Sparring with an amateur boxer wasn't fun, he punched me a lot, and it hurt, but it made for great footage (although wearing a helmet may have been a good idea). I was also completely unable to keep my guard up, which probably added to the entertainment value of the feature. As I was finishing with a piece to camera, with a boxer on a punchbag in the background, he punched me in the back of the head, which really added to the light hearted fun, gonzo journalism aspect of the feature.
The feature was generally well received, but the sound problems really let me down, I was told to completely redo the package as it was, but the punch at the end could not be recreated, as it was spontaneous and I wasn't expecting it. I may do another piece at the boxing club, and completely take part in an entire training session, and include a sparring session (with a helmet and a radio mic.)
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