TV Masterclass - the do's and don'ts...

So, just a few important points made at the TV Masterclass

Overall:

contact book - contacts, relations - not only phone calls, face to face contact will give you more information and more detail straight away

targeted audience - think WINOL land - 500 viewers would be the golden target

be more ambitious than last year since were a bigger team - team work absolute vital!

Generally: sport - men, feature - women (balance)

Bulletins:

put work in before monday morning - always bring at least two stories - it's about people not an issue

press officers will not help you and call you back and won't be helpful

talk to the affected people first - for example the Union if job cuts - then council

hit problems and overcome them = success

no need to explain how we've done things or haven't been able to do something

we are journalists

persistance!

right place right time!

you need to write text stories and have photo to go with it this semester and publish on the site alongside with the VT

Harry Evans book! to get the style right

take still photos when you're out and about

fight for your stories to get them in the bulletin and justify why you want it in there

prep before output - watch and scrutinise daily TV bulletins - half hour every day

running order - why to put which story in what order - think of your audience (1,2,3 story)

organisation of bulletin

balance

reporters - hero reporter/presenter that you respect, story crafter

deconstruct, interpret and use in your own work

listen to links (!) - worst aspect at minute - ours are being overlooked at minute - not least important - explain it in link prior to it

*start piece with natural sound - not through reporter

*conflict = story = angle

*develop a story

*soften things - it makes things more natural

*humanise/personalise the story

*change camera around to get different angles for same shot (sequence)

*framing - we shoot in thirds

*best picture first to engage people in your story

*don't start with PTC (piece to camera)

*no guilty signs

Phrases to ban:

I couldn't find a story/feature (- lots of stories going all the time)

I want to do a story about the ... recession (worse than 1)

you have to talk to actual real people, most read papers - especially local ones, listen to radio stations, bulletins

I couldn't do the story cause they didn't ring me back - you can't be passive as a journalist

too little too late - don't use

remains to be seen - don't use

I spoke to (name)... / I'm at (place)... - don't do - use captions

Targets:

women sport and other sports (not only football) better mix

not rely on highlight packages every week

one featured team from campus in bulletin each week

cultivate sport

Production:

a bit more ambitious with production - especially since we've got the tricaster now so use it more from outside the studio (OB's preferably 1 a week etc)

work on projects, not only the bulletin, such as updating the intro, the look at the show, green screen

team has to get trained in using Joomla (CMS - content management system)

and also some Flash training to be able to make headers and such on website

Features:

a lot more pictures, photography, think visually!

feature program to go on back of WINOL bulletin

booker - someone to book guests etc - maybe a first year student?

need to be more fun and eye catching

cross pollination between departments to promote each other

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!

A quick debrief..

Monday morning = Debrief morning

We had quite a good bulletin on Wednesday, we're definitely getting better and better. Considering we are continuing to try on new roles within the media team, it feels more safe and secure now with s knowing more what is expected from us. 

The stories are getting better as well as the news team seems to focus more on what the actual story is and how to put this forward in the most interesting way to the audience. Chris gave us some good and interesting tips on how to write links and voice overs, and also how to get the crucial quotes from the interviewees that are needed to create a strong news story. As a journalist, your job is to tell the story with your words and your voice to give the background information - we don't want to hear any background, facts or figures from the interviewee, they are our object for quotes. We want them to give life to the less interesting facts and liven it up with views and opinions, what they think and want to do about the subject being reported on.

Wednesday's stories covered a seasonal bug's outburst in Winchester's Hospital, a court report, students and their parking problems, Trinity Winchester and a lighter story about a one woman band performing at the University of Winchester. There was also a few sports reports covering rugby and non-league football. An alright mixture, but a few too many heavy, hard stories that might not concern our main audience as much as it could.

As always, when covering court reports, legal issues are a big part of it and it must be handled with extreme care, so that no one can accidentally get identified when not supposed to. This weeks court case met all these standards, and was meeting all the legal requirements for being broadcasted live.

Technical issues will always exist, and every week there's something new that decides to mess up in the last minute. This time the green screen caused a lot of hassle before we finally got it to work, and  the auto cue did once again stop working on us. But with issues like these we learn to work under pressure and cooperate as a team to explore new ways of coping with the difficulties - just as we will have to do in real life. 

Traffic was better this time, almost twice as many hits, which is very good news as it inspires us all to work harder to gain an even bigger audience for this week. I think a big part of this has to do with us keeping the website up to date all the time even when it is not Wednesday's and live bulletin days, cause the people interesting in our news would most likely visit our site more often and rely on us more if news, sports and small features would pop in all the time to keep a consistent flow of new material coming in.

Overall we are growing stronger as a team, and I am convinced this week's bulletin will be even better!