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Friday, 3 December 2010

TV Broadcasting Week 10

Despite harsh weather conditions and a shut down University the day before, we all managed to make it in for this lesson, and this week we were covering the subject of News Links.

To get us started, Angus gave us some scripts of a BBC news programme so that we could study how their links were put together, what the sentence structure was like and how they formed each of the sentences and gave the delivery of the information in the lead up to the news stories.

It was definitely interesting to see how the delivery of the information was structured so that it was given in a certain way. Reading through the scripts was also very useful as we were able to see how the cues had been written in and structured around what was being said, and how they corresponded with the video tapes at the same time.

After this, we had an attempt at writing our own links into a story about the harsh weather conditions and their effects on the country. This is how mine turned out:

"Britain is still experiencing the worst winter conditions it has for over 10 years. With the snow conditions showing no signs of letting up and bringing disruption all across the transport board, shutting down Gatwick for 2 days, the conditions could be costing Britain's economy £1 billion per day. Robert Hall reports."

It became clear, after reading it out and discussing the structure of the link, that my middle sentence to the piece runs a little long, and could do with being simplified. This can be achieved more by breaking down the information and delivering it slightly differently without the sentence running too long and becoming too much of a barrage of information. I also realise now the word "conditions" is used twice in one sentence, and although they are far apart enough that they don't really get noticed, I could still take one of them out and replace it with something else.

After this, we went on to discuss our assessment for this module in greater detail. We are now to produce a one and a half minute long news package about a local news story, along with a link script and a shot script, showing evidence of structure, framing, sequences, editorial value and journalism. I personally am likely to take a story revolving around the closure of schools in the South and go to some of the schools locally to me that have shut due to the harsh weather and see how they are being affected by this. With any luck, I will be able to complete this and have it edited in time, alongside the other major projects that we have running parallel to this one.

Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Radio Broadcast Week 10

In the final run up to our last weeks of the semester, this week we started putting more focus on the packages and reports that will eventually go into the group radio programme broadcast in the final week of the semester.

After a very successful production meeting led by our producer Kieran, we all had a very secure idea of where we would be heading with each of our individual subjects and areas of focus for the programmes packages. I personally am dealing with the Arts and Entertainment side of the programme which will be a Review of the Year style show about Winchester. As such, I have a few specific areas in which I will be focusing for my input to the show.

Firstly, there is the Winchester Hat Fair, which is a big annual festival, which i will hopefully be able to talk to someone about for this year and find out how successful it is and why its been such a big deal all these years and what it means to Winchester as a town. i have also decided to do some speech about the Discovery Center, the Barnstormer's Comedy Club and the Railway Inn venue and get some people to talk about those as well, and that should all come together to create one package about Winchester and what successful things have been happening through 2010.

The second thing that I will hopefully be producing is an interview with Frank Turner, a folk/punk sensation who was originally from Winchester and has just completed a mammoth tour of the US and is now back on home soil to do a UK tour. I will hopefully be able to talk to him about growing up in Winchester and how he found it, and how successful his 2010 has been and what will happen for him in the year to come.

With any luck, each of these will come together to create an interesting and listenable addition to the group project as a whole, but the next step is to go and gather together interviews and material to edit together to start creating the packages...