Breakfast a la World Cup!

Like I mentioned in my previous post, we produce breakfast shows, preview (forum) shows and the actual main show with the games. The mornings include presenter Scott Minto and Hayley McQueen who every morning greet the new day of football along with one guest. Over the time guests have come and gone, but still remaining here in Doha with us are Terry Venables, Graeme Souness, Trevor Francis and Glenn Hoddle. Prior todays date we've been joined by Ray Wilkins, Mark Hateley, Iain Dowie, Peter Reid, Gus Poyet, Graham Poll and many more... As I've never worked with 'famous people' before, this has been such an incredible experience. I never thought when I started university and decided to go into journalism that this opportunity would come along after this little time. One of my biggest dreams is of course to cover the World Cup, and now I'm doing it, and I can't quite get my head around it. Next step on the dream ladder, Olympics 2012.

But back to the Breakfast shows, which are very enjoyable, mainly thanks to Scott and Hayley who have been great together. Every second morning either I or V have been in the studio working with the cameras, the setup and making sure that everything is working out alright and that guest/s and presenters are all on time, that the set has been cleaned and that the breakfast is nicely presented on the table and so on... Our set role, which is camera man (woman), has included so much more than just being behind the camera. This has been great for both of us as we have not only learnt about cameras, as we kind of first thought we would, but also about other things that you would have to know as a floor manager. Bonus!

The mornings not inside the studio we have tried to sneak into the gallery - which is miles more disorganised than any other gallery we have seen, or that people working with us have ever seen - just to get a good look on how the director, vision mixer, producer and everyone else work during a live show. For me, who eventually wants to end up directing preferably live shows, this has been a great opportunity. And being amongst people who have spent years and years in the profession, I have managed to snatch some good contacts and with some luck it seems as if I have some good opportunities lined up once back in England.

In the studio there's a total of six cameras, including the jib, but at the Breakfast show four of these are fixed and only the camera pointing at the guest is moving, which means only me or V, and the jib operator. In the preview and match shows all but two cameras (mine and V's) are fixed which leaves us two doing the camera work. And, as I mentioned earlier, this seems to have been a bit controversial as the staff working over here at Al Jazeera are not used to female camera operators, and it's quite hard to know how to handle this from times to times, because you don't want to get on the wrong foot with the locals, as they (read a few of them) know English and are your only life line to the rest of the people working in the studio, with make up, lighting and so on.

But a brilliant experience, and a very useful journey to learn how to handle obstacles that we are not used to in Britain, and definitely haven't yet come across at university - such as massive culture clashes and language barriers. That being said, my first language isn't English either but at least I understand when somebody asks me to move a camera, or to find the Al Jazeera badges for the presenters and such...

World Cup kicking off - in Qatar!

My summer was to kick off – and so was the World Cup. Both events taking place in different locations but with one purpose – football.

This is definitely the most exciting, interesting and most busy summer for me yet. Usually when school, college or university approaches the summer break my plans tend to be focused on doing as little as possible for as long as possible. But this year I got an offer I really couldn’t turn down. To cover the World Cup for Al Jazeera Sport in Doha, Qatar. So on 9^th of June, off I went...

Me and V arrived in Doha in the afternoon (Mecca time) and found ourselves in the middle of a massive climate change. In the early morning we had left a 15ish degree ‘lukewarm’ England behind to be met by a 40 something degree boiling Middle East. Pleasant – but only thanks to all the air conditioning running on full speed. Also, I was completely thrown by the massive culture clash, and I still find it hard to deal with it sometimes. For me, coming from Sweden, been travelling a lot – but mostly in Europe – and seen a fair bit of the continent, still can’t get my head around what it can be like living in these countries, and especially what it can be like being a woman... But more about culture clashes later on...

So after arriving safely in Doha we were, together with four other people who were to work for Al Jazeera as well, transported to our hotel where we would spend the following five weeks of our lives. After a well deserved dinner we all got informed that the following day would provide us with more information about our stay as we would go to Al Jazeera to meet up with the rest of the crew and also have a look at the studios we were to work in.
As this is my first real work experience within TV, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect – but whatever I did expect it was not this. People who work with TV back in England say this is nowhere close to as professional everything is being run back in the UK. Here it’s all a bit ‘hakuna matata’, ‘take it easy’, ‘there will be time’, ‘don’t worry’, ‘there is always a day tomorrow’ kind of approach. If you want something and want it now, forget it. Nothing happens quickly. Unless you can make it happen quickly yourself. This was one of the first things to learn how to tackle without letting it affect your mood. How to get people (locals in the studio who obviously are used to their ways) to work with you and more effectively together, when they thought what they did was good enough. Another massive issue was, and still is, the language barrier. A few of the guys in the studio know some English – but the ones who don’t seem to not even be bothered about trying to explain or understand so when worst comes to worst, problems can easily appear from nowhere. Also, as the studio crew over here are basically consisting of 100% men, it’s quite hard to come in, as a woman from the Western parts of the world, trying to tell them what to do.

Throughout this World Cup, I and V worked in the studio mainly as camera men, but partly doing everything else as well that you need to do in the studio, such as making sure guests are at the right place at the right time with makeup and microphones ready to go, count downs from breaks, positioning of chairs and tables at the different sets and so on. I have learnt a lot from this, and as I didn’t see myself working with anything like this only a few months ago, my experience has made me a lot more secure and confident in what I can actually do, and what I would like to do in the future.

Over the time we have covered all but two games each, every breakfast show and also so far two forum-shows which mainly has focused on the guests, their opinions and views on what has happened so far in the tournament, and what might happen in the next round/s. As a football lover I have enjoyed every second of this tournament (even though Sweden didn’t manage to qualify!) and I have come to realise that I would definitely much prefer to work with sports and other live events from a studio rather than in the middle of all the action. I hope to find myself as a director one day, and probably working as a vision mixer before hand, as I believe it is important to learn how the vision mixing works before you tell people how to do it...

So far an incredible experience that isn’t quite over yet. I will update my blog and tell you more about everything, such as guests, culture, Qatar, language and of course football, as soon as I possibly can.

Until then, enjoy the summer and the football!

WINOL week 12 and Vision Mixing

This week was a rather slow news week - especially compared to last week when the ideas came in from everywhere and gave us good, quality stories. But as our guest lecturer and guest editor Andy Steggall said, you do learn so much more from these weeks when you need to actually think hard about how to angle the things you've got to get a proper story out of it.

Production wise everything worked really well this week, which was a relief for us as BJTC came to visit our university to have a look and talk around, making their minds up whether or not the course should get accredited or not. I think, and truly hope, we made a good impression as this course definitely deserves to be accredited. It is absolutely brilliant! In our run through - about 30 minutes before going live - we realised the running time was actually 46 seconds over the 10 minute golden limit - PANIC! - but everyone managed to stay calm even though I think the majority of us panicked quite a bit inside and pull it off to a spot on 10 minute bulletin. Kudos to Glenn Hutt and Catherine Hayes for working efficiently with the reporters in the news room to cut out seconds here and there and make it all manageable.

Overall the sound of this bulletin was a bit all over the place. Even though we seem to have sorted out issues with cameras, white balance, focus and framing, there is still an issue with sound that we need to work on. Not only do the packages vary in sound levels, but so does also the audio within a single package on its own - so in the future we definitely need to pay more attention to sound levels and how to get a nice audio level all the way through the bulletin.

Headlines this week were quite alright. But, another weak point is our links. Everyone are producing links for each and every week for their own packages - so the reporters should know what their stories are about and what sentences to use to link into their own packages - but still some of the links are quite dull and not capturing the viewer, making him/her wanting to watch the next story.. so it's definitely something we need to work on - it's our headline, this is where the audience decide whether they want to stay tuned or change channel!

Top story this week was Stuart's well found story about councillors rejecting a new housing development in Winchester, which had a bit of audio problems but a well made story with good interviewees and some great footage. Steggall said that this would usually not be a top story, but seeing what a slow news week this has been, it made sense to put it up there anyway.

Following this piece was Grant's story regarding the crime rate in Winchester, and how it has decreased. The link itself did not sell the story, but Grant's PTC (piece to camera) definitely did. The story in itself had to be more relevant to the actual people concerned - the people of Winchester - and it was a bit too vague, not addressing this issue properly to our audience - so we have to remember to localise the story even more and address it properly, clearly to our target audience. Also, when using library footage, make sure you either write 'library footage' (which may look a bit dull) or mention in your VO (voice over) that it is previous recorded material, by saying 'last month' or such.

Next up was James' piece on a Walk to School - this package should definitely have started with the 3rd shot in the package, which was his best shot. This way it would have drawn the viewer in right from the start. Also, since this package handles children you need to see them, and hear them since they are the main subject of this story. So, when the interview is with the adult, you should either put up the kids on the adult level so they are together in the shot on the same eye level. Or take the kid out if he or she is not talking or making a point in being in the shot.

Sports followed and this week we actually had some pictures. It started of with Jason's coverage of athletics. An absolute cracking opening sequence with a gun shot starting off one of the laps, which made the viewer jump and get straight into the piece and into the action. Unfortunately the link didn't sell the story but the opening sequence luckily did.

Followed this piece was a lovely World Cup coverage by Josh. A really good edit, with some fun added to it but it could have been even more fluffy and fun with interesting beer facts about how much lager pubs are expecting to sell in a PTC outside a pub - to make it a bit more factual, but still keep a fun twist to it, and to add some colour. The captions should have been kept longer, as the average time for a caption is 4 seconds, for people to be able to realise who he/she is and what they're doing in your piece.

And finally, Chanin brought us a piece on an art exhibition at the Discovery Centre in Winchester. A cracking link (!) with great camera work that showed off the art in a good, fun filled way - where this could actually, with the wrong footage, been quite a boring piece. The framing for the interview was a bit boring, considering all that great art was around him, and he was just placed against a wall that said nothing.

This week I was assigned the Vision Mixing role in the gallery, which means pressing the right buttons at the right time to make sure that the right content goes out live. It looks complicated, a big box with quite a few shiny buttons and black wheels to twist around, but once you get the hang of it, it isn't too hard, as long as you keep listening to the director for orders for when to change cameras or go into a VT.

Basically what you do is deciding what you want in the foreground, and what camera or VT you want to go with it. When using camera 1, 2 or 3 in the studio - which happens to be button 1, 2 and 3 (top line - foreground) - you have to combine this with button 9 (second line, green screen, background) to make sure you get the lovely WINOL live at 5 backdrop.

When going into a VT (a package) you have to press double 4's - that means button 4 (top line, foreground) which will show your package - and button 4 (second line, background) to make sure that the green screen won't show through and discolour your package as it is broadcasted.

Lecture Notes - Exam Revision

So, it's that time of year again - exam revision. Hopefully these notes can help you understand Chris' lecture a bit better, or just give you some additional information that you might not have picked up during the lecture.

Here goes.

The first topic discussed; whether or not Nietzsche was a Nazi. Due to the fact that Nietzsche was already dead when Hitler and the Nazi movements were active, you could not really say that he was a Nazi.

But why is it then said that he was a Nazi?

Even though the Nazi movements didn't start until 30 years after Nietzsche died, anti semitism was already widely spread over Europe - Germany, Poland, Russia - but not necessarily in the form of hatred of Jews. Nietzsche does not like any kinds of religion, it's a bad thing, and he says that people needs to eradicate religion from their lives to become free. Due to him being such an enemy towards religious people and religion itself, plus his famous statement 'God is dead', Christians tend to say that Nietzsche is a Nazi - they don't like him, and he doesn't like them.

Nietzsche's main philosophies contain all the elements of (extreme) individualism, which can be easily found in his book 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' (Humanity must be overcome!) where we find a Superman - some sort of übermensch and untermensch like in the German Nazi movements, which is thought to have been taken from Nietszche's philosophy, but not necessarily meant the same thing. Maybe Nietzsche was the total opposite to a Nazi by being a complete individual and not subsiding his own individual ideas... Maybe he is misunderstood by authoritarian organisations, the church and such as a Nazi?

Conclusion from Horrie was that there is no right or wrong, yes or no - judge for yourself. Was Nietzsche a Nazi?

Other famous people who Nietzsche referred to as super people/supermen were for example Da Vinci, Beethoven and Wagner.

More info about Nietzsche:

Mentally disorientated and unselfish

Zarathustra has once again spoken
God is dead - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Further on we discussed existentialism (1940s until early 1960s), especially from the point of view of Albert Camus and his novel 'the Stranger'. Existentialism is quite a tricky -ism to pin down. Existentialism kind of means that you live now, right now. Yesterday is history, and history is like fantasy, fiction. No one knows anything about the future and therefore it may not happen, it's not there. (Existence precedes essence - Jean Paul Sartre).

Like in the book, existentialists say there is no purpose of life, life is temporary, brief and it has no value cause you are going to die anyway. You might even take it one step further and consider suicide - but then it takes an effort to commit suicide and is it really worth that seeing as it doesn't mean anything whether you are alive or dead... cause everything is pointless. This is usually referred to as Existentialism Void.

In the book, our main character Meursault commits a crime, kills another person. Earlier on his mother has died. Even though both these actions should have affected Meursault's feelings, it didn't and because of this Meursault ended up in prison... (See previous blog)

From a journalistic point of view this book is written kind of in the way that we journalists are getting taught how to write news stories. Short, simple sentences where the subject is followed by the verb in a 'crunchy kind of bored observational way'.

More info about The Stranger and Albert Camus:

Emotionally Detached?

After this subject the discussion moved on to more contemporary, new journalism and focusing on how our history and past have come to shape today's style of journalism into something that is more comparable to a novel, a 'story' than a raw fact news piece. An article today, so called a story, is similar to a non-fiction novel. This intellectual trend seemed to move towards presenting news as fiction - even though the people in the stories are very much real. Tom Wolfe was one of the journalists that highlighted this so called new journalism more than many others, and in his work 'The New Journalism' he shows on different examples of new journalism, such as gonzo journalism, through an anthology of articles. Wolfe's big heroes that inspired him were among others Emile Zola and Charles Dickens, as he we can see traces of within the new journalism as Wolfe uses methods of 19th century literature.

New journalism focuses on being subjective whereas 'old' journalism smacks up the facts in a quite boring linear way of presenting the news - objective. With the movement from 'old' journalism, the storytelling went from being digetic (telling) to being mimetic (seeing). Gonzo and fly on the wall journalism is definitely related to the mimetic side of journalism, aka new journalism.

• Throughout this period existentialism (Camus) becomes the 'normal thing' in society and writing, the norm.


• Psychoanalysis (Freud, Century of the Self) becomes popular and its all about listening to people and analyse them. This is in clinical terms regarded as rubbish, but in literature - brilliant! With psychoanalysis you can get close to someone and make them open up to you by following them around (gonzo). News is news, the Freudian way of approaching news is the opposite.


• ME-generation! Everyone should be happy! This movement in New Journalism is a total individualism movement (Nietzsche). If it feels good - Do It! (Nike). All about self fulfilment, sexual freedom and pleasure - even if it leads to STDs or babies it doesn't matter, as long as it's a pleasure. Hippies, drugs...

Wilhelm Reich, extremist sexual freedom, mentions that you become physically ill if you don't have pleasure sex all the time.

More information on Wilhelm Reich:
Proper orgasms to the people!!

After this movement, something called the Vienna Circle followed and the followers of this listened to Moritz Schlick and they rejected all philosophy, such as metaphysics, nations, classes, abstractions and so on, and relied only on science. Their main point was, if you cannot verify a proposition individually - then you can't trust it, cause you cannot verify it. They would never say that something can not be true, instead they would say 'it could be true, but we can't verify it'. This is called the Verification Principle.

As for example in religion; Nietzsche said: 'God is dead'. The Verification Principle would not accept this cause they cannot verify what he is saying is true. Therefore, they stay open minded about God and decide not discuss it cause there is no answer- this statement cannot be tested and therefore not individually verified as right or wrong. The things that this movement discussed were only things that can be verified.

This sort of applies to journalism today as well. You need to be certain of something before you publish it for it to be a fact, you need to be able to verify every separate fact and make sure it is accurate. If not, that is if not able to verify that that certain something to be a fact, it is comment (bollocks) and therefore not mentionable for a journalist in a news piece as news is fact, not comment.

Verifiable = fact (such as spelling)
Non verifiable = comment (religion)

Religion, poetry, metaphysics and so on are all non verifiable propositions - therefore not discussed by the Vienna Circle. (Wittgenstein was heavily influenced by this group.)

Faults
Karl Popper died in the 1990s and was one of the biggest philosophers in the world. He was against this verification principle because he said that this verification principle cannot verify itself whether it is right or wrong - falsification principle. Popper destroyed the verificationists with this argument. He argued that things are only true if the opposite is also true. If you cannot do the opposite, the proposition cannot be true in itself.

According to this theory Freud, Marx and Hegel's philosophies were all destroyed due to not being able to verify their theories.

Last but not least we discussed John Maynard Keynes (1930s) and his approach on the economical climate. He rejects all economic theories of that time such as free market. Steinbeck claims that unemployment is impossible in a free market system. Today the situation is that the government gives benefit to unemployed people in society, therefore they won't go back to work - they will stay on benefits. Instead, get them working (even if it digging holes and then filling them back up) for them to get a salary and then being able to spend money and get a circle of economy flowing. "Capitalism produces nothing except destruction for themselves."

Cut wages + remove social spending = cures unemployment.

Even if your wages get cut you have to keep spending, cause when you keep spending the company will be able to keep their employers, and within time being able to emply even more people and eventually wages can go up again and things return to somewhat 'normal' - but if you start cutting your spendings the employees at that same company might have to go due to under spendings and not enough money in circulation. Therefore expand and spend your way out of trouble. (More information in Hayek's book Road to Serfdom.)

Documentary Making - the Blitz

For one of our modules we are supposed to make a documentary. We had a brilliant idea. I, Veronica, Catherine and Grant were going to focus on Veronicas background, and venture to Poland to spend a few days at Auschwitz and get an interview with an ex-prisoner. Veronica is from Poland, and her great grandparents lived there during the Second World War and Veronica was interested in finding out more about her roots...

The trip was going to take place during our Easter holiday. I, Veronica and Catherine were assigned to go, as Grant did not have a valid passport and could therefore not come along. The time before our journey was about to begin we spent several hours, days and weeks investigating in the history of Auschwitz, the Second World War, Poland in general, Veronica's family history and so on. We also had to spend many, many hours getting all sorts of permissions for filming, the camp and its exhibitions, through Auschwitz. Luckily, with Veronica knowing Polish, she was able to sort this out and get an allowance to film the exhibitions that we would like to highlight in our documentary.

We also managed to rent the cameras out for a longer period than we are usually allowed, which helped a lot as the trip would take about five days. Also, since Veronica's parents still live in Poland, we were to stay at her parents house over there which also meant it would get quite a lot cheaper than it would if we were to take in at a hotel or hostel somewhere.

With all the information required, all the research printed and read through, we were all being very excited about the adventure ahead of us. Then, it all went wrong. The volcano ash cloud swept over the UK, Poland and the rest of the world and we were stranded, unable to get our project done. We tried to find alternative ways of traveling, such as buses or ferries, but it took either too long time, or turned out to be way too expensive. After all, we are all working on a student budget...

So, with heavy hearts we decided to postpone this project and hopefully be able to do it over the summer holidays instead of now, as we have other modules at University that takes up quite a lot of time, and which we cannot miss due to exams, hand ins and similar things. Instead we had to refocus and decide on a new subject to be able to cover in a relatively short space of time. We had many ideas including fox hunting, a seance (ghost whisperer) at a castle in the middle of nowhere, the holocaust in Britain and such but nothing really sparked that little bit extra as Auschwitz and Poland had. In the end we managed to decide on an idea after hours of scouring the Internet for anything at all. We came across information about the Blitz and realised that it is now 70 years ago that major attack struck London. We wanted to angle the documentary from an inspirational point of view and highlight the fact that the fire fighters fought for over a hundred days for their fellow people, and see how this is still being remembered in the UK today, within the rescue services and so on.

At the moment, and it's all in progress. Veronica and Catherine are in London at this very moment, joining in in a Blitz tour, taking the through London, pointing out what happened where and when and how, and hopefully being able to get some great footage from that - I am sure they will, they are both absolute stars with the camera. On Monday further recording will take place as we will have an interview with a young fire fighter about his inspiration from the Blitz, and to get a better understanding if it is an inspiration for the younger generation today or if this is just something we have thought up...

Not quite sure how it will turn out, but I am sure that we will do our best to make a nicely looking documentary about one of the most remembered attacks of London.

Updates will follow, and eventually, the documentary itself.

WINOL Debrief - May 12th

Last weeks live edition of WINOL was probably one of the slickest, best looking and most news worthy bulletin we have managed to put on air so far. The stories were all in on time, luckily there was not many technical problems in the studio, or out on the field, and everybody knew what they were doing and everyone gave 100% in doing so. I think mostly this was thanks to the live general election coverage we hosted the week previous to last, when we all worked producing live television for hours and hours, and thanks to everything we learnt this evening, it was easier to put together the 10 minute WINOL bulletin than it has been before. Overall, the bulletin ran over with 10 seconds, which is the best running time so far - and I am sure it would have been spot on if the VT-computer had not frozen at the start of a package. Sound is still a hard nut to crack, and it seems we might need to focus on this issue in our practice run on Wednesday to perfect this, and as director it might be worth shouting even louder for the sound guy to hear what is going on.

The traffic was unfortunately not very high, only just under one hundred people watched it on LiveStream, and as Chris pointed out that we need to promote ourselves better with leaflets, social networking and other ways to promote what we are doing. One thing that might help is bringing back 'Date of Fate' which attracted quite a big audience every week, and maybe develop other similar type of shows that can attract an audience which might stay around our website to not only watch this, but also read our text stories and familiarise themselves with who we are and what we are doing every week, and hopefully want to keep coming back to our news service.

"Symmetry is boring"

Chris Horrie

Some technical details... Chris mentioned that we should not keep the presenter in the center of the camera, as this is very symmetrical ... and boring. Play around with the angles and get a more interesting and asymmetrical shot so that the audience can be a bit more entertained... Also, we should zoom in tighter on the presenter to give a feeling of him/her telling the news in your face, like a friend would. Additionally we have to get better at writing the scripts. At the moment they are alright, but they need some polishing and we definitely need to simplify them. We are telling the news. Simple. Not features. Complicated. So we need to keep the language structure simple so that everyone can digest what has been said first time around, cause you will not hear it twice. A more factual, less poetic script!

First package on air this week was Stuart's which, as always, delivered an excellent piece - this week about Winchester's own Conservative candidate Steve Brine and his first day in Westminster after the coalition had been made official. Potentially, there could be some juxtaposition going on in the piece when speaking about a former member of Parliament as the same time as the Cromwell statue is being shown - Cromwell former member of Parliament? Throughout the package the scripting improved and towards the end it was excellent, and the piece the camera was spot on perfect.

Secondly Grant provided a very well balanced package with an almost perfect script. As a pay off we all have to improve though, and cannot keep saying "wait and see" and such, it needs to be more concrete and definite! Like Chris said, a "near perfect package"!

Following these two political packages, Joey contributed with a well balanced piece about a race row that broke out at the University of Winchester during one of the BOP nights. Even though the angle was good, it might have been possible to have made it even more distinct. It was technically not excellent, but the script was simple and very good for a news package.

Last one of the more heavy news packages on the agenda for the bulletin was Claire's report on teenage pregnancy in Hampshire, and how it's risen throughout the last years. Unfortunately this was more of a featury package than news one, but a very good one. There was also quite a lot of comment going on, which tends to lean towards feature as well, since you are not allowed to comment in news.

At this point sports should have made an entrance, but this week we didn't have very much at all, except for Josh talking for a minute about rugby and what will happen later on this year. This basically due to the football season being over, and the sports team not being able to find very much else going on in and around Winchester.

Finally, Paul added some flavour to quite a heavy bulletin with his story about award winning tea - even though it was good it missed a bit of balance, and also that sting that makes people more interested in it. A nice puff piece to finish off one our best bulletins so far, which we all were very pleased with.

Hopefully, with BJTC coming around for an inspection this week, we can produce just as a good bulletin again!

___

If you found this interesting, you might also enjoy this:

Election Night goes LIVE Gonzo Style

Question Time at the University of Winchester

DNA profiles, blood analysis and CSI

Forensic Science – Science as applied to a court of law

On May the 14^th all the first, second and third years journalism students were given the fantastic opportunity to spend several hours with Nigel Hodge, consultant forensic scientist, who explained, discussed and encouraged everyone to ask as many questions we could think of having to do with forensic science. The scientists are experts in different areas, and Nigel’s expertise is within DNA profiling, blood pattern analysis and crime scene investigation.

Nigel explained that as a forensic scientist you do not examine evidence with the main goal to decide whether the suspected is innocent or not, you investigate and critically value the evidence with one single purpose, to make sure they are or are not strong enough for a court hearing, and report their findings to the court. Their job is not, what many might think, to challenge things – this is up to the defence.

Within our society today, forensic scientists work privately – so just like lawyers they compete for clients and contracts with other private science companies. Nigel added that you will find that the police work with forensic science, but this seems to be more of a fashion thing (to have a forensic science laboratory within the police station) as most of them do not actually acquire a degree in any kind of science whatsoever.

“To give evidence is quite fun ... my job is to get the evidence across”

If the evidence that the scientist has put forward to the court gets questioned, the scientist him/herself will act as a witness in court. To be able to focus on the evidence without being biased, Nigel explains that you have to stay impartial, and his way of doing this is never to meet with his clients, not see any photos, not forming any kind of opinion about them, as this will make it harder to focus on the solid evidence in front of you.

“My duty is the truth”

DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) profiling has been used since 1986 and it got its big breakthrough in the Colin Pitchfork case. Since then DNA profiling has developed immensely and it still does, every day as technology moves forward faster than ever before. One of the most recent methods is called Low Copy Number DNA Profile (LCN) and Nigel explains it is a very good method to use as it is “incredibly sensitive”. Thanks to this we can pick up DNA from small, small amounts of material that have earlier been harder, if not impossible to find. But there is a downside – it is incredibly sensitive, which means the small amount of a given material might give us the DNA profile of the suspect – along with a hundred odd prints that has been touching the same area... It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

Nigel also explained that to be able to reopen a case, if the convicted still pleads innocent, you have to be able to prove that there are new evidence for the trial, either evidence that has an importance to the case but have not been reviewed in court before, or evidence that due to new technology now can shed new light over already used evidence.

Once you are found guilty, you are legally guilty.

No matter how much time you spend on a certain case, looking at evidence from new angles, in a new light you will not find the answer unless you ask the right questions.

---

TIP: You might also find this interesting:
Proper orgasms to the people!!
Emotionally detached?

TIP: Why not check out:
Andrew Gidding's blog for more information on forensic science
James Kenyon's blog for information on Jeremy Webb, Editor in Chief, New Scientist