After coming back from a long winter away, there was no time for slowly getting back into the swing of things as we dived straight into working and contributing to WINOL. Out of the positions and jobs that were available on the project, I opted to be on the Production team as I feel that with my past experiences on production sets I could bring the most to the table in that particular department. I also decided that I would contribute to features as well, as that would also give me a chance to write and submit articles in the time that I would not be needed on the production team.
WEEK ONE:
In the first week, we decided to do a dummy run of the WINOL news broadcast with a couple of older news stories and whichever new ones the news team would be able to do. As a dummy run, the pressure wasn't fully on for everything to be new and fresh, but there was still some encouragement for it to be the best that it could so that if it went right, in future weeks we would have set a good example for ourselves to follow.
The first couple of days, we got ourselves together into our respective teams and discussed our aims for the project and for that week in particular. The production team that I am a part of also aimed to start producing an Entertainment and Lifestyle show to accompany WINOL and the Sports news bulletin SportsWeek on the WINOL online portal. So we started mapping out some ideas for that, as well as getting accompanied with the Gallery and Studio areas which we would be working in on the Wednesdays for the broadcast.
As for the Features team, we decided that everyone would contribute articles on a regular basis that they feel are accustomed to writing in a good and interesting style, and I opted to submit film reviews and a film guide on a regular basis, as well as Sub-Editing other peoples work regularly so that it can be published on the website.
The next day, we went over some fo the technical aspects of the Joomla! Web Hosting site and how to properly sub-edit articles using HTML so they appear in the correct format, and how to correctly upload photos into the articles we sub. As well as this, we went over the house style and how articles should be written so the punctuation and grammar are all correct, i.e. unless its in a quote, "it's" and "wasn't" should be "it is" and "was not" in all articles.
On the actual day of the dummy broadcast run, we started encountering a lot of technical difficulties throughout the day which needed to be sorted before we could go out on air. Among these problems was the correct format for exporting the video packages for the bulletin so that we on the production team could run them throught the VT viewer. Another problem was with the greenscreen, with the studio lights and the house lights conflicting with each other and creating issues with the visuals of the greenscreen and the foreground lighting. This was something I took note of in order to sort out the issues as soon as possible.
Although we ended up postponing recording as-live at 3 o'clock until closer to 3:30 in order to sort out the various technical difficulties, when we did manage to do a run through and record it, the broadcast ran through fairly smoothly with only a few re-takes needed in order to put the entire bulletin together. In hindsight, it is probably did everyone better in the long run that these kinds of problems and mistakes made themselves apparent in the first week so that we could learn from them straight away and make all the future bulletins run that much smoother after knowing what went on.
In the De-Brief on Monday after the previous first week, we went over a lot of what went wrong and what was good about the bulletin. My role in that first week (and for quite a few of the future weeks) was to be on Sound and Lighting in the studio, and the sound on the mics needed to be improved only slightly so that it was possible to not hear the rest of the studio floor when the VT's were running. I decided I would study the sound board more in my free time and learn more about the studio set-up, as well as getting professionally trained in the Lighting rig in the studio as well in order to eventually give the lighting on the bulletin a more professional look.
It was decided that the SOQ's on the news packages needed more uniformity, and the production team had to create some new headlines after the previous ones could not be found. As for the bulletin overall, the first week was a dummy run and as such was excuseable for a lot of the mistakes as long as we recognised what they were and improved on them in the upcoming weeks.
WEEK TWO:
After the weekly Monday Morning De-Breif, we went about our meetings for the week so that we could establish the aims of the upocoming few days. In the production meeting, we decided to work further on the Straplines for the news packages and get the to all look the same, change the graphics for the backgrounds slightly, get the music re-worked for the titles on WINOL, make sure that the Script for the bulletin is clearn and concise for the Autocue, and that all the headline slips and straps are consolidated onto one Hard-drive for the gallery so that everything gets run off from one place, helping everything to run smoothly.
The new aims for the second week's bulletin would be to set up an Outside Broadcast (or an OB kit) in the news room so that during the Wednesday bulletin we would be able to do a live cut-away to the news room to get breaking news from the news editor. Because this came under a technical aim, it was my job to learn about the OB kits and how to set them up, as well as my own personal aim of improving my knowledge of the studio sound functions and the lighting rigs.
OB KITS - The aim of the OB kit is to be able to do live cut-aways from the studio and have it streamed from the camera set up straight into the gallery. There are three different OB boxes within the vicinity of the Gallery - in the Newsroom, in the Multi-Media Centre and outside the back of the studio. For this weeks bulletin, I leanred how to set up an OB kit by setting one up in the Newsroom. Putting together the OB kit requires the use of different cables to go from the equipment in the kit to the OB box in the wall which effectively extends the studios vision to whichever OB box you decide to use. As part of the OB kit, you can set up a visual screen which outputs whatever video is running from the Gallery and a crew intercom headset to communicate with the production team, effectively allowing someone in the Newsroom (or wherever the OB kit is set up) to see and hear what is happening in the Gallery, and allow the Gallery to see and hear the broadcast from the OB kit.
SOUND - After taking it upon myself to study into the sound set-up for the studio more, I found some useful tips to remember when operating the sound board. Firstly, when doing sound checks and setting levels, its always best to bring the fader on that mic up to zero, and then set the levels using the GAIN at the top so that all the mics on the faders stay in the same place and give you room to move them slightly if there are sudden loud noises or if their voice levels dip down. The levels should peak at about zero on the levels above where that mic is on the sound board, or between 5 and 6 on the master output levels. The PFL/SOLO button above each different channel stands for Pre-Fade Listen, which isolates that one channel through headphones so you can listen to that one channel by itself whilst multiple different channels are running, allowing you to set the levels before fading that channel in to the master fader. The Master Fader, it should be mentioned, should always be set to Zero as well, as that way each channel comes through at the same level in stereo, and one side is not louder than the other. It also makes good practise to keep track of which channels you are using, and remembering to fade each of them down when they are not needed and be ready to fade them back up when they are needed.
LIGHTING - Moving on to the Lighting rigs in the studio, to start with the DMX switch in the Racks room must always be ON when you use the lighting. When using the lighting board on the studio floor, all the lights must be down when you switch the board on, and then bring the Grand Master switch up. There are test buttons underneath each of the light faders to test whether they are working or see their location in the lighting set up. The Blackout button kills all the lights for a short amount of time if there is a problem, which gives you enough time to bring the lights down on the board if you need to. The "On Air" switch in the Gallery kills the house lights whilst also switching on the On Air light outside the doors. After learning more about the set-up of the lighting rig in the Studio, I took it upon myself to draw up a floor-plan of the Lights in the studio, and a rough guide for the directions each of the lights you use should be pointing in and how strong they should be in order to light the Primary Position for the bulletin in the correct way. I intend to make more of these when other positions around the studio come into use so that other people know which lights are best to use in order to light different areas properly. This floor-plan is pinned up in the Studio above the lighting board, as well as a Troubleshooting guide for the lights also of my own creation. There may also be one which I soon make for the Sound in the Gallery as well.
When it came to the bulletin in Week 2, everything went a lot smoother after the difficulties from last week being considered and appropriately avoided early. The headlines were all recorded in time and the bulletin was recorded on time at 3pm. As for the bulletin itself, the packages were of a much better quality and the technical difficlties from the week before did not become a problem this week. For production in particular, the sports graphics were much better than the previous week.
In the bulletin de-breif the following Monday, the aims for the third week were to create more ambition with the packages and the production of the bulletin, extending what we can do to encompass new ideas, checking through the website on subbed articles more for older articles, correct ordering and correct spelling in each article.
WEEK THREE:
In the third week, the focus was firmly on creating a way of doing an outside broadcast from the back of the studio so that the Sports report could be done from outside near the sports field. This meant setting up an OB kit outside the back of the studio in the OB box with enough reach for a camera to stand near the field. A personal goal of my own would be to have a set lighting plan for Sportsweek and the Bulletin for the week that I could then write up into a floor-plan as a set guide to the lighting placements. I feel, looking back on this, I achieved this personal goal to the very best of my abilities. Another goal for the week was to go through the website and take off any old news articles on the front page that had been up for too long and re-do the new news stories to go up instead, which also got achieved by the team.
In the features meeting, we decided that we should get some more regularity to when the new features articles appear on the features page rather than just going up whenever they get written, much in the same way the news articles go up with regularity each week. There was also a goal to create some more diverity with the features articles in order to get a larger female viewership. It was also decided that this week we would record an alternative Polish version of the WINOL bulletin from the previous week to be put up on the website, in order to expand viewership.
When the bulleting came round this week, everything went smoothly again, and the production team did well in keeping things running. During the de-brief, it was said that the news stories in this weeks bulletin were a lot weaker than previous weeks and had very little hard news, but was very strong on the sports instead. The grammar in the script had to be looked at a little more closely, as terms like "off of" were used when "off" would be enough. I was decided that the term "... has more" is now banned from the links, as the links into the packages have to intice people into watching them without giving away the story, and so saying "someone has more" suggests you have already said most of what the story is about. As well as this, there should be less "pointing out the obvious" in packages through using terms like "I'm here at..." or "I spoke to..." and instead writing these things in different ways in the news packages to create a better script.
The balance of the news stories is important in the bulletin, so the placing of each news story has to be carefully thought through as it makes all the difference. In this bulletin, we changed the final sign-off so that it was recorded in the Gallery to promote the Polish version of WINOL which we now record each week as well. This was tricky to handle, but it was suggested that it could have been handled differently by cutting back to the Studio, but it was done in the best way possible for what it was and added a different dynamic to the bulletin.
WEEK FOUR:
For this weeks bulletin, there was some confusion about doing an off-site outside broadcast from Eastleigh football ground, so it was eventually decided that the idea should be scrapped due to lack of information over technical compatabilities with the equipment at the ground and our own equipment and a lack of interesting background to give the piece the quality it deserved. Instead, we decided to use the green-screen to display a league table alongside a presenter.
The production team also began plans for an entertainment and lifestyle show to run alongside WINOL and Sportsweek, eventually named Good Morning Winchester. In the Monday meeting for this show, we came up with plenty of ideas for our first ever broadcast on Shrove Tuesday and the second show celebrating St Patrick's Day. After coming up with all the ideas for the first show, we went about making preparations for the shooting day in just over a weeks time - writing the script, organising the guests and props and creating any packages that would be needed.
For the Features Meeting, we wentover the structure of the website page and how to make it look better through re-organisation and taking down any old articles which are out of date. I also contributed a run-down of The Oscars for that week, and the weekly competition managed to start off as well.
This weeks bulletin only hit a few bumps in the road, one namely being a last minute change to the shooting script which meant that the recording of the "as live" bulletin had to be postponed by 20 minutes in order to make appropriate legal changes to the news story so it didn't conflict with court law. Other than that, the only other slight mistake on the broadcast was not running an OOV on one news story, but instead staying on the presenter. The rest of the bulletin went very smoothly and was generally a success.
In the Monday de-brief, we went through the bulletin step by step. Editorially, it was the strongest bulletin we have made yet, making more use of technical tricks like OOVs and underlays to add style to the bulletin and make it visually more interesting. Even though the bulletin made it to the website at 4pm as it should normally do, the fact that we were 20 minutes late in recording it was something to be discussed. As such, it is now a discipline that 3pm HAS to be the deadline for the bulletin, and if a story has to be changed at the last minute without much time to change it before going to air, it should simply be dropped from the agenda instead. In the end, its better to stay to a deadline than to keep in a story that needs to be changed that close to air.
It was discussed that the Headlines might occasionally need jazzing up a bit more. The headline "A former resident of Winchester wins an Oscar" isn't a very exciting way of getting people interested in the story, and should ideally make more of an impact. We're going to eliminate black holes after the headlines by leaving the headlines to run longer so that there is time to cut to the presenter before the visual leaves the screen as well.
And lastly, all cut aways should be done so that they are relevant, or enhance the story somehow and aren't thrown in for the sake of having cut aways, and there should be no need to introduce vox pops in the news pieces.
And that rounds off the first month of being on WINOL. Come back again soon when I'll have the next few weeks, and coming up I'll have the delevoping features, the progress on Good Morning Winchester and of course a weekly rundown of the WINOL bulletins.
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