WINOL: Critical Reflection. Term 1

WINOL Critical reflection: Term 1

For Winchester News Online this term I was given the role of Sports reporter, and, more specifically, Correspondent for Winchester City FC. throughout this term however, I have worked at Winchester City FC, Basingstoke Town FC, Eastleigh FC, AFC Totton, Basingstoke Bison ice hockey and Winchester Knights basketball, as well as producing a feature from Winchester Boxing Club, and producing news stories on funding for a wheelchair athletics club, and on Winchester's sports stadium being used as an Olympic training ground. It's fair to say that my role this year turned out to be as an all-round Sports correspondent, and this is something that I enjoyed, I feel experiencing different environments and atmospheres massively aided my development in producing packages for WINOL Sportsweek.

In week 1, I filmed Winchester city, as they beat Blackfield and Langley 6-0. Even with my Sports editor with me to help out, I struggled. My white-balance was poor, making the pitch look slightly blue at times. The bright, sunny day didn't help my poor understanding of camera lighting settings, but this is no excuse, it was something that I would have to work on. I also struggled to keep up with the match, particularly when zooming in, I found myself filming with the camera completely zoomed out for large parts of the match, which led to my final footage looking as though it had been filmed from far away, without a second camera to get close up to the action, this never makes for good enough footage. After filming I had to edit my raw footage down in to a 2 minute package, rediscovering Final Cut Pro was my biggest hurdle of week one, and even after editing my piece down with some help, I still didn't feel completely comfortable with this software.

In week 1, I was also asked to present the sports news in the main bulletin. I think that my part in this went reasonably well for my first time presenting, but the bulletin as a whole went out 15 minutes late, due to a lack of preparation from the team something that we all accepted could not happen again. I was told that my presenting was generally good, but Angus told me that it would have been worth pre-planning the handover between the main presenter and the sports presenter, the handover that we used was a very simple "thanks!", whereas some more colloquial chat wouldn't have gone amiss. This was the only chance I got to present, I would have liked the chance to present Sportsweek while I was part of the sports team, but hopefully this is something that I will get the chance to do in the second term.

Week 2 got off to a pretty terrible start, involving me missing a coach back from London, meaning that I would miss the Winchester City game that I was scheduled to film, fortunately another member of the sports team was available to take over from me. I therefore had to find a sports news story and have it ready in time for Wednesday. I found a story about Winchester sports stadium being lined up as a potential training ground for an Olympic team, I arranged an interview with Alex Trumble from the University and got some good, experimental shots of the stadium, our guest editor that week, Rachael Canter of BBC south enjoyed the piece and told me that this is the sort of news that would make it in to one of their bulletins, which is obviously the standard that I am aiming for, the problem that I saw with the story, was that despite the sports stadium being proposed as a potential training ground for Olympic athletes, it had so far recieved very little interest from any Olympic teams looking for somewhere to train. My main lesson learnt this week was to make sure that mistakes like missing coaches are not acceptable, and I was lucky to have somebody available to take over from me.

The following week gave me my most experimental piece from the first term as a sports reporter. We had been looking for some new sports to film, as we were concerned that Sportsweek was a little bit football heavy, so I made contact with Winchester boxing club, and went along to a training session on a Monday night. Before I went, I received instructions to get involved, and make the package a hands-on feature. When we arrived, the boxing club was little more than a shed, meaning that space was limited. I also didn't feel particularly welcome in the club, and this is where I needed more confidence to ask for interviews and not be afraid of getting in the way. I got some reasonably good shots of the training taking place, and eventually asked if I could get in the ring, and have a sparring session with one of the boxers. 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 punch bag 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. This could easily have been a fantastic package for WINOL, but I let myself down with sound problems. The gun microphone was not close enough to me, and in a building with poor acoustics, my piece to camera at the start sounded terrible, the framing of the shot was also not as good as it should have been. The piece was spiked from the main bulletin, but still made it into Sportsweek. I was advised to completely redo the piece, but I feel much of it couldn't have been recreated in the same way again, particularly not the punch at the end. The style of the piece however, is something that I intend to do again sometime. Brian pointed me in the direction of Mike Bushell's journalism for the BBC, as he often gets involved in a strange sport or activity; this is the sort of thing that I would like to emulate for WINOL when I get another opportunity.
The feature can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DV1nhYWIjg
Mike Bushell takes the "Ziptrek Plunge":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5huPOhAMK0
From this point on I was primarily filming football, and my camera skills improved weekly, particularly when filming with a HD shooting kit, I felt as though my packages were reaching the standards that were expected of them, on some occasions I helped colleagues by filming behind a goal with a second camera and this gave me good scope to experiment with different shots. My voiceovers were still a weakness, as I often left gaps and felt that my voice sounded too downbeat and at times sombre about something that I should have sounded enthusiastic about. My final package was filming the Basingstoke Bison ice hockey game, and this was something that really tested my filming ability as the game is so fast moving and action packed. My voiceover on this was better, and I feel I produced an overall good package. It was good enough to be used on the website of the Shropshire Star newspaper, which is a good industry standard level to be working at, particularly for my first term of filming sports. The sports team as a whole have all worked so hard, and made sport an important part of WINOL. We have formed good relationships with the clubs that we work with, they are happy that we are filming their games as it is the only chance that they get to watch their own performances. It feels like we are providing a service to people, and as journalists, that should always be our goal.

http://www.shropshirestar.com/sport/2011/12/12/highlights-basingstoke-bison-v-telford-tigers/

In an attempt to recreate the success of last year’s third years, we decided to broadcast live coverage of the November 30 public service strikes around the country. This was always going to be an ambitious project but it was one that we felt capable of achieving. The presenting took place in a union building in Southampton, and we had correspondents following the action in Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and London, as well as reporters from John Moores University in Liverpool. I was based in Basingstoke with Lee, a member of the news team and two first years who were acting as runners. I also had the task before the day, to pre-record a package on the police, and what their tactics would be if things got out of hand. Unfortunately, no one from the police was willing to speak to me and I had to make do with a statement. I paraphrased the statement in a piece to camera standing in front of the Hampshire police headquarters. For a first proper piece to camera I thought it was okay, I even got moved on by the police which means I must have been doing something right. The main problem was the lack of content in the piece, due to nobody being willing to speak to me.

The day of strikes was an overall success, and as far as we are aware, it was the most watched student broadcast ever, which is obviously something quite special. We had a few problems with microphones and cameras, but that was out of our control, everybody worked hard to make it work as well as it did. The main downfall of the day, was the lack of action, I think that to an extent we were expecting a repeat of the student demonstrations earlier in the year, which would have made for better footage, the protests were all relatively peaceful and well policed.

In terms of WINOL and WINOL Sportsweek as a whole, I think it has been a good term, in that we have all improved so much from week one, but they are still far from perfect, every week there is something that can be criticised, and it would be great if we could come as close to industry standard as is possible with the resources we have at our disposal. There are occasional black holes in packages, sometimes shots are still badly framed and the sound levels are often inconsistent throughout the programme. The present stories that people are been getting however are of the highest that I have ever seen from a student news programme. We beat all of our competitors and this is reflected in our consistently high viewing figures. On the main WINOL website, sport is trailing behind news in viewing figures, but sports has a whole different audience on Youtube, Sportsweek often reaching over 1000 views, on top of those who watch sport in the news bulletin, and those who click the sports tab on the website. We have a real audience of people interested in local sports.

As well as WINOL, I have also been a member of the radio society this year, and throughout December, Sound Radio was granted a temporary RSL licence. I was asked if the weekly show that I presented with a friend could take place on a daily basis whilst we were broadcasting on 87.7FM and I felt like this was an opportunity that would be silly to decline. The show that we presented was previously a show promoting new and 'under the radar' music. Being on FM during the day, we had to change our show to a wider audience, we were now on community radio as opposed to student radio meaning primarily playing pop music, this was tough at first, because our main discussion point previously was the music that we were playing. Instead, we bought a newspaper daily, and discussed amusing news stories, this generally worked quite well, but doing a 2 hour show five days a week, we sometimes lacked things to talk about, due to a lack of outside content. I feel as though my style on the radio is quite good, I'm quite relaxed, and able to think quickly in difficult situations. We were following OFCOM regulations at all times which meant we had to be careful about what was said at all times, thankfully we avoided breaking any of the regulations. A high point of the show was arranging an interview with singer-songwriter Dave Giles, who is set to be performing in Winchester in February. The interview sounded professional and It was a good, relevant feature for community radio.