How well did I fulfil my role?
This semester I took on more roles as I progressed. I started out as Director and Producer for WinchXtra, then I was assigned role as Producer of WINOL, and I finally took up the role of Producer and Presenter of The Tate and Zeena Show. I feel I have been very ambitious this semester, but I took it as an opportunity to expand my overall experience and to take advantage of the course as a whole before specialising next semester. On top of this, Chris and Brian expressed at the beginning of the year that Third Year Students are expected to do higher quality work, not necessarily every week, but we should take on ideally two roles, but three would also be great. I feel I took this on-board totally and aimed as high as I could, and exceeded my own expectations of myself.
WINCHXTRA
WinchXtra was a project that Lucy and I created. Although it took time to organise the formatting of the show, it turned out successful. We initially wanted to create a show like last year’s Access Winchester, but with a The One Show feel.
As Director and Producer of WinchXtra, I contributed heavily to the ideas behind the putting together of the show as a whole and helped the show come together each week. I produced a feature package for each of the episodes, and I felt I improved a lot over the semester.
I also produced content for the show, my packages being the Winchester Comedy Festival, London MCM Comic Con, Winchester Bonfire Night, and Battle of the Foods. In comparison to my previous news packages I produced last year, features was a challenge as you have to be more smart with the content and editing to create gizmos/gimmicks with the not so hard hitting footage. A great example of this was the Battle of the Foods package – the Winchester Christmas Market is covered every year multiple times, and we all know what a Christmas market is, so why walk around and film the same thing again and again? I focused on one aspect of the market and decided to make it exciting by putting the food stalls up against one another, and I have been told that it was genuinely entertaining, which of course is the ultimate goal.
I used Canon 650 DSLR cameras this semester, and there is a huge leap in film quality that improved my work tenfold. In my first Comedy Festival package the images were somewhat grainy, however if you compare it to the pictures later on in my Comic Con and Battle of the Foods packages, it is clear that I now understand the cameras and can use them effectively and successfully. I also ventured into hand held camera shots, which I believe work well in most of my packages as opposed to static shots.
Overall, I felt I fulfilled my role as Director and Producer of WinchXtra very well and to the best of my ability, especially since I had two other roles as well as this one. I helped create a new show and kept it going, and I produced quality packages for it.
WINOL
My role as Producer of WINOL consisted of very different responsibilities compared to my contribution to WINOL last year. I have been able to see the other side of the news broadcast, which to be has been valuable to understanding the workings of WINOL and news broadcast as a whole, rather than from my isolated view as Health Reporter.
Prior to my role implementation, WINOL seemed to have a missing link in communication and organisation between the newsroom and the gallery, and so my role consisted of correcting this. This was recognised after my week of standing in for Midoriko and Nicole, the two most valuable people on the features team. I agreed to stand in as director, but also unknowingly took on the role of production editor and producer. This meant that not only did I set up the studio, create the headlines, and collect packages, but I also directed the show and mixed it together at the end to upload it for five o’clock. It was very challenging and stressful, and it was a great decision by Chris to have a producer of the show to make sure things run smoothly and to concentrate just on headlines and putting it online, as well as keep the communication between newsroom and gallery.
I have improved in my knowledge of creating headlines, which I completely underestimated as the health reporter. I started off not having a complete clue as to how to make effective headlines, but then grew to understand, especially after Ian Sherwood, the Sky News Editor, sat down with me and discussed how to put together the images and sound. I also made decisions such as changing the sting image in between each headline clip from the woman on the camera to the WINOL logo. As well as this, I also mixed together WINOL and corrected anything that went wrong in the gallery.
I did odd bits here and there too for WINOL such as help and teach the second years, help others film such as Megan’s badger piece to camera, rework packages such as the Sajid Javid package in WINOL 151, and I also presented the episode with most unique IPs, WINOL 152.
RADIO
Tate and I took it upon ourselves to create a radio news show as there was a massive hole for one that was crying out to be filled. This was a massive skill builder, as I hadn’t ever done a radio news day. Tate and I formatted the show, with help from Annette, so that it would be a mix of BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 4. We took the target age, upbeat music, and language style from Radio 1, but kept it newsy and somewhat more serious like Radio 4.
The purpose of the show was essentially to make a show where the Masters students could showcase their packages, and so it was a perfect platform for them to do so. They took turns in being news editor which also included writing and presenting the bulletin and headlines.
We took it in turns to take on the production role and the scriptwriting role. So for example, if Tate produced the show, I would write the script. The production role consisted of collecting the packages, playing them while we were live, controlling the mixing desk, and to do all that was needed in post-production and put it online.
You can hear a clear difference between the first and last show, and we both improved incredibly. Problems I had at the beginning were that I had my ‘tv presenting voice’ and had to adjust my tone and volume to suit radio, and relaxing in the script and trying to make it more casual. I overcame both of these by the end, but of course there is also tweaking to be done.
I feel that taking on radio was a fantastic opportunity and choice, and also brought the MAs into the WINOL circle which will ultimately help with the show next semester as they now know and have worked with the second years.
Was WINOL / WinchXtra / Radio any good?
All three shows were fantastic and absolutely full of valuable teaching points.
WINOL improved greatly compared to last year due to the growth in volume of the team. More reporters meant more variety of news stories to choose from in the news conference each week. It also meant there was more space for people to specialise in more specific areas, such as graphics. There were incredible stories and interviews, such as the interview with Nick Clegg and the coverage of the Southampton house explosion. Unique IPs have grown, although it fluctuated towards the end, and by the end of the semester we moved up on ‘Alexa’. Also, Sport was incredible as they concentrated on the stories at the match rather than just covering each match.
WinchXtra went very well, with some great content and interviews such as Lucy’s Jacqueline Wilson, and radio was a great success although it will be improved and changed next semester.
What could be improved?
WINOL – As said above, WINOL has improved a lot and the views have generally gone up. However the age-old issue of target audience is always present. Especially this semester, we branched out and blurred the lines more so, especially with the Ferguson coverage, which while it was impressive, we had no reason and there was no chance to localise the story, however the Ebola story was successfully localised with an app that was made in Southampton.
WinchXtra – As it was a new show that was formed this semester, there is a great deal that can be improved – the next logical step would be to take the concept and form a features show that would go hand in hand with WINOL as a sister show. It would give the features department more of a link with news, and we could build a bridge over that gap that formed this semester. Also, it would give the feature packages more of a point, rather than packages that are aimlessly filmed with no story to them.
Radio – We need to make it more joined with WINOL so it compliments each other. If there are stories that don’t have opportunity to have pictures, then it can easily be done as a radio package.
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