Our third bulletin went quite well. I was unfortunately not involved in the final output, but from watching the bulletin, it looks as if we are doing better and better from week to week, but there are still small things to pay attention to, to make our work the best possible. The presenters this week was our ‘standard duo’, Claire Ijsbrandij (news) and Tom Otrbeski (sports), who always do an excellent work!
Overall, the bulletin ran over quite some time, instead of our scheduled golden 10 minute slot. I am not quite sure why this happened, as I was not in class for the actual debrief after our output on the Wednesday, but when I was scripting last semester I was told to closely keep an eye on the 10 minutes as you can never go over or under a time slot in a TV schedule.
The headline sequence was ok, but could have been polished as Julie Cordier did not look quite sure what to do or where to look when she was in shot, she would probably have needed some guidance on this before we went live. The running order could have been slightly changed – personally, I would not have lead with an investigative story. This type of story can usually be published in a bulletin at any point, and is not as sensitive to being published straight away, as breaking news are.
So the leading story of the bulletin, Jack Courtez’ piece on homelessness in Winchester and how they will be affected by the cuts that the government announced, was like I already mentioned sort of an investigative piece. I enjoyed seeing and hearing the guy in the piece playing the guitar, nice actuality, but I am not sure whether he is a homeless man or if he has got anything to do with the story at all. The interviewees were both good and adding to the story, but could have been framed a bit better, zoomed in on. It is also important to pay attention to things that might seem unimportant, such as buzzing noises in the background, because they do add to the experience of the viewer and they can easily be distracted by this. Also, it’s worth remembering, for everyone, to get enough general view shots when out filming so that you don’t run out of shots and end up with the same pictures twice in one piece!
Following this our finance reporter Julie Cordier appeared in the studio as studio guest, giving an update on the situation with tuition fees and how this will effect students at the University of Winchester, the University of Winchester and students around in UK as a whole. It would have been nice if the studio discussion would have either been after or just before a news package dealing with this subject to big it up even more.
Our third story was a court report delivered by Andrew Giddings from Winchester’s Crown Court. This was a strong story, and obviously hard to turn into a package due to lack of pictures. It turned out well, even though most of it was just a PTC (piece to camera) from outside the court, maybe a bit too long.
Julie Cordier’s piece focused on the increase of train fares and could have done with more than only one vox pop, to make the view of the public fair. When doing PTC’s it is important to pay attention to your surroundings, especially when it is windy outside. Preferably bring someone with you who can keep an eye on sound levels and also keep the headset on to recognise any sort of existing problems with the sound, as the microphones are very sensitive and will pick up anything, even the slightest wind, that comes their way.
I haven’t yet spoken about the links, because I think most of them actually worked quite well this week, but when Claire read Stuart Appleby’s link leading into his news package she seemed to struggle. Whether or not this was because of the links complexity, I do not know, but it seemed as if she was struggling more than she did for the links leading into the previous stories. Also, the story seemed a bit rushed but I liked the alternative way of introducing the news story, diving straight into the action and the interviewee.
Sport was as always good, starting off with some football action from our reporter Karen Purnell. This was a nice up-tempo piece and a cheerful ending with Karen handing over a bottle of bubbly to Winol’s Man of the Match. This was followed by a graphic, which then lead into James Fraser’s basketball piece which basically consisted of the one interview and cutaways of the team playing basketball. It would have added to the piece if you could have actually heard the guys playing, running around and shouting at each other when the pictures were shown, would have been nice with the actuality coming through as the interview was ongoing.
Finally Michael Connolly finished off the bulletin with a puff piece which contained an alright interview although the camera should have been set up in eye line, and not tilted down at the interviewee. Also we have to remember to not use too many zooms while shooting general views, as the human eye is not used to this movement and therefore it can confuse the audience’s eyes when watching it.
After everyone’s goodbyes in the studio, we offered our audience a preview on our feature teams autumn fashion trends package, which looked really good and fun, and this is definitely a great way to keep the viewers at our site. As Chris Horrie always says, the audience comes for the news, but stay for the features.
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