Nietzsche, Freud and Marx

Lecture Notes

Frege - 'Sense and Reference' (1890's)

- The 'reference point' of the word 'deofinition' is 'sense' of the word which means its sense within the sentence. This is 'sential logic'.
Inidividual propositions do not have meaning, thye only have mkeaning in relation to other propositions. This is essentially relativity bought to logic.
Frege is the final rejection of syllogistic logic (Aristotle) as a path to truth.
When paradigm shifts occur, it is often in the field of logic first of all.

- 'No fixed meaning' - word emphasis can effect the meaning of what you're saying. Eg - 'I thought she was his wife'. Depending on which word you plae emphasis on, you could be saying something completely different.

- Without logic, all certain knowledge from reason, as opposed to pure sense data, is brought into question.

Friedrick Nietzsche
Source - Flickr: mansionwb

- Sentential logic - please understand and be able to explain this significance of these statements :-
(a) The evning star is the same thing as the morning star.
(b) The present king of France is not bald.
(c) There was nobody on the road.

Marx + Nietzsche + Freud = 'the three great skeptics' - they undermine the concept on enlightenment.
All 3 felt that truth always depends primarily on your perspective.

- 'Subjectivist Epistimology' - concerned with how we know things.
- Modernism = 'Nothing is certain'.

- Marx is the least sceptical and least subjective of the three.
- Nietzsche and Freud came in the following generation.

- Nietzche wrote in a series of outbursts, with particular use of 'Aphorisms'.
- Aphorisms are things such as :-
'God is dead'
'Dog bites man iisn't news, man bites dog is news'
'Mankind is a thing we must overcome'.

What lives on from Marx is the concept of alienation and of ideology. This is still alive and an important idea in social science, practical politics, journalism and in literary criticism.

- Frederick Engles - The origins of the Family State and Private Property and the subject of anthropology, assets that truth and systems of mroality are indeed subjecture and transitory.
- A key word in anthopology is 'taboo'.

Marxists argue that Freud lacks an anthropological basis for his theories, or a political framework.
 - Also that mental unhappiness often comes from issues around power and confromity/inability to conform to social norms - but he underestimates this social basis to subjective feelings and tries (and fails) to treat what Marx would think of 'alienation' as a personal, clinical medical problem.
Freuds 'talking case' is little more than people coming to terms with thier role in life.

- The ego fears death.
- Freud - triumph over the id 'self control' conformity, self realisation, constant psychoanaylsis and self-questioning.
- Nietzsche loves the ego and see's pride as a good thing.

- Nietzsche had a 'herd mentality', and saw 'resentment' as the 'one unforgivable sin'.

- 1885 - Zarathustra - the overman - 'Mankind is a thing that must be overcome'.
- 1895 - The Anti-christ - 'That which does not kill me, makes me stronger'

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Winol 5.0

Week starting 24/10/2011

Monday. Today was a slightly different debrief. Instead of focussing completely on the bulletin we looked at the overall quality of Winol, including the new Radio Station, as well as Winol Life, What's On and Sports Week.

Debrief Notes
What's On - If you have a big piece such as the launch of 'We Need to Talk About Kevin', then you should start 'Whats on' with that piece because it's a 'big deal'. And on a trip to London for filming you should try and get your moneys worth.

'Fair Dealing' - can be used for purposes of review, criticism and comment. Should use fair dealing for the film piece, instead of loads of clips from the film press conference.

Informal pre-scripting - Interview a guest beforehand to try and find out what she might say. 'Pre-interviewing' them will help make them more comfortable and rpepared, as well as you.

Tuesday. As usual we recorded Sports Week at around lunch time. Today I was controlling the auto-cue, which started with needing to convert the script into a file that would open on the auto-cue laptop.
Also today we had an extra task. Ewan wanted to record a piece in the studio for his 'Winol Games' feature. Again I was helping with the auto-cue aswell as monitoring the sound when we were setting up the microphones.

Wednesday. Today began by setting up the gallery so it was ready for the days recordings. This meant switching everything on, and setting up equipment such as the auto-cue and checking the lights.
Myself and George set up the tricaster ready for the broadcast. You can see a guide to setting up the tricaster(as well as the OB kit) here on Dom's blog.
One of my jobs for today was to make all of the straplines for this weeks packages. This week the straps were fairly straight forward, apart from a few late additions, including one strapline that I needed to sort out within half an hour of going live. It turned out I had already made the strap but Uldduz had forgotten and was on a different machine, so I simply had to uploaded to to the mac she wa snow on, and place it on the package for her which only took a few minutes.
For this week's Winol I was working on sound, a job which I quite enjoy. It's a lot about finding the right balance in volume as well as timing it so that you hear the packages at the right time and also the presenters. It becomes a bit more tricky when it comes to oovs, because some have soundbites from interviews which need the volume high at the right moment. Also, while some oovs have no sound, some have ambient sound such as football matches in sport oovs. This means you can hear some cheering from the crowd whilst the presenter reads what has happened.

I felt the overall quality of this week's news stories was a bit weak, but it might have just been a slow news week. We were still able to provide a good amount of stories, and George's first time as director wen't fairly smoothly other than a VT that wouldn't work when we were live, and we were left in a bit of an awkward situation. But we overcame it, and simply dropped that piece for the uploaded bulletin.
Once again we learnt a lot from our mistakes this week and will continue to improve and provide top quality bulletins.

Debrief
- Need good pictures.
- Your best picture should be at the very start of your piece.
- In production, if you reach a problem while live, you should just role with it.
- Avoid lazy wording, remember 'Fresh Fish Sold Here'.
- In TV and Radio it's very important to constantly keep your audience's interest.
- A newsbelt could be used in the future, this features all of the best quotes from the bulletin. This would encourage reporters to find better soundbites.
- Make sure thier are no black holes in packages or headlines.
- Remember subject verb agreement :-
Singular = is
Plural = are

This Week's Bulletin (26/10/2011)

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Sigmund Freud - Seminar Paper

Sigmund Freud

Freud was an atheist that thought of himself as a scientist, and he felt that his ideas on psychoanalysis were the invention of a new science.

He was born in Moravia in 1856 into an Austrian family, but the family moved to Vienna in 1860 and this was where he trained as a doctor before moving to Paris 3 years later to study under neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot.

Jean-Martin was very interested in ‘hysteria’, what seemed to be a mental disorder with physical manifestation, and he believed it was hereditary and caused by a weak neurological system. He felt that a hypnotised state had similarities to hysteria, and therefore used it to study his patient’s symptoms. However, this wasn’t to help cure them, merely to study. This to have some early influence on Freud’s ideas, as he published a book on Hysteria in 1895, but it had his own original analysis of mental illness. He also used hypnosis, but in comparison to Jean-Martin, he used it as a method of treatment.

He slowly stopped using hypnosis, and instead started using psychoanalysis, which is simply the patient and doctor exchanging words. He would encourage his patients to speak their mind while on the couch. The reason for this method was that Freud believed hysterical symptoms came from repressed psychological trauma.

Freud was also very obsessed with sex, and particularly (when it came to repressed trauma) infantile sex. It became the centre of his theories. He felt that psychological traumas dated back to infancy.

Freud believed in psychosexual development which consists of multiple stages during infancy where we should satisfy our sexual drive.

The stages are as follows-

-          The Oral stage - This is linked to the mouth.  Breast feeding is seen as the first human relationship both biologically and psychologically.

Oral Stage fixation can result in you chewing a lot of gum or the end of your pencils, and can make you immature, gullible and manipulative according the Freud.

-          The Anal stage - This is the time when you are toilet trained and represents a conflict with the id, ego and superego. Freud believed that if a parent is praising of their child in this stage and rewarding them, then they will pass through this stage. However, punishment or ridicule then they can become both really neat and organized (anal retentive) or reckless and careless (anal expulsive).

-          Phallic – This is between ages 3-6 when we develop physical curiosity, and learnt the physical gender differences. These experiences can alter parent/child dynamics and can lead to the Oedipus complex.

-          Genital – Once a child reaches puberty the sexual urges reawaken. Failure to get past an earlier stage can have an effect on this stage. Freud felt it could lead to impotence and unsatisfactory relationships.

There is also Latency, but Freud didn’t think this stage needed much attention as it contains no new stages of sexual development. It had relative stability. Freud was always fixated on human sexuality.

This theory was controversial for many reasons. One being that he said the female sexual desire was that they developed ‘penis envy’.

One of Freud’s most famous works was ‘Introduction to Psychoanalysis’. Freud states there are three signs of the unconscious – trivial everyday mistakes, reports of dreams and neurotic symptoms.

Freud also wrote about ‘parapraxes’ which are things such as ‘a slip of the tongue’, struggling to remember names and misplacing objects. He believed that these weren’t necessarily accidental, and could have hidden motives. He believed that sometimes you may express your unconscious views in the sense that you may not mean to express it publicly.

Sigmund Freud was in isolation from medical colleagues, and continued his practice in Vienna. By 1900 he had published what would be considered one of his most important pieces of work – ‘Interpretation of Dreams’.

Once again, he focused on sexuality, saying that dreams are a coded expression of repressed sexual desires. He saw dreaming as route to the unconscious, and contained our wish fulfilments. Although, Freud didn’t believe that everything in a dream was a symbol that had a specific significance.

A year later he published ‘The Psychopathology of Everyday Life’ and started to gain some pupils such as Alfred Adler and Carl Jung. He also worked with Wilhelm Reich. Reich felt that humans were overall good people and saw sexuality as good, and that sex was a measure of happiness. He did agree with Freud that sexuality was important to our unconscious and that we had no control over some areas of our mind.

Sigmund Freud
Source - Flickr: mansionwb

In 1923, ‘The Ego and the ID’ was published, and was seen as presenting a new view on the anatomy of the unconscious mind. It highlights internal tensions between the id, the ego and the super ego, as well as between love and death.

Freud believes that the mind has three processes – the ID, the Ego and the Super Ego.

The ID is there from birth, and is a number of instincts aimed at gaining pleasure and avoiding pain. Although Freud didn’t like to consider himself a philosopher, the idea of getting pleasure and avoiding pain was a big philosophical viewpoint.  Sex and aggression are the dominant part of the personality and are fused in the ID.

The ego (also known as the ‘self’) is the least powerful part of the personality – the voice of reason. It is where we get our common sense but is often overpowered.

The Super Ego is the ‘policeman in your head’, and is totally irrational. Freud believed that it develops after birth through socialising. It also makes you have irrational hopes and unreachable expectations.

Sigmund Freud saw the answer to psychological problems as analysis. He felt his method of psychoanalysis (with his patient on the couch) is needed to access the ID and in some ways to control it. It is also needed to strengthen the super ego.

In January 1933, the Nazis took control of Germany and Freud’s books were among those that were destroyed. Psychoanalysis was banned and Freud was forced to migrate to England in 1938 when Austria was taken over by Germany. His time in England was short as he died a year later when he got his physician to give him a lethal injection of morphine.

While Freud is unlikely to be studied by todays psychologists, his ideas can’t be completely ignored. Psychoanalysis is still a common way of finding out what is troubling someone unconsciously, and very often problems date back to childhood. However, people such as Wilhelm Reich could expect more praise for their less negative approach to the unconscious and human desires. Often referred to as ‘the father of psychoanalysis’, he made popular the idea of the unconscious and symbolism in dreams.

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Sigmund Freud - Lecture Notes

Sigmund Fred was an incredibly ambitious man, trying to explain everything he could, but this lead to him raising some very controversial views.

He was born in Vienna and died in London. His ideas were a challenge to the enlightenment (alternative to rationality).
Freud was seen as a sexual renegade - damaged our idea of ourselves as noble people.
He admitted he was pessimistic, his ideas had very little light to them, they were quite a dark vision of humanity.

Freud had a disciple called Wilhelm Reich. But they shared slightly different view points. While both many had theories heavily based around sex and that sexuality was important, also that thier are areas of our minds that we aren't in control of. But Reich believed that we are ultimately good people, and that sexuality was a good thing. He was a sexual radical that believed in an unparalleled significance in sex, he saw it as the ultimate measure of human happiness. Opponents of Freud follow Reich because he would encourage pateints to express thier feelings openy, it is a direct attack on the Freudians who tought people to 'control' thier feelings.
Freud followed Plato's idea of the tripartle self - reason, spirit and desire. However, thier were differences in thier views.
Plato believed that reason could rule 'the others', but Freud thought that reason was the weakest becase people are irrational. He felt we are driven by desires that are beyond our control.

Fred also shared conflicting opinions with Karl Marx. Marx' belief was that we are eading somewhere, and wanted a communist society. He believed in the infinite potential of human nature to develop and evolve.
Freud believed this too be too idealistic, our basic needs are not benign. Our deepest needs are aggression, the wilful desire to hurt others and ultimately to seek our own destruction in the 'death wish' (even wanting to ultimately destroy ourselves).
Sigmund saw the reality of human nature as pain and suffering arising out of his own psychic alienation and the painful interaction with other human beings.

Sigmund Freud
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sigmund_Freud_LIFE.jpg

Psychoanalysis - He felt that this technique heled discover the truths about the unconcious that were never known before.

Freudian Personality
One of Freud's key theories was that the mind was divided into 3 distinct processes that are in constant conflict with eachother - The Id, the Ego, and the Superego.

Id
This is part of you from birth, and is animalistic. Freud considers it to be a bundle of instincts aimed at gaining pleasure and avoiding pain. 'The reservoir of the unconscious'. Sex and aggression are fused in the Id and they dominate the personality, even though we have no idea how dominated we actually are.

Ego(or self)
The voice of reason. This is the reality principle - the least powerful part of the personality. It is where we get our moderation and common sense. It is hopelessly embattled and besieged.

Superego
Referred to as the 'policeman in your head'. It is the irrational part of your mind. It internalised rules of parents or society. The morality principle, it develops after birth through socialisation, and is effected by your surroundings.
It makes you think irrational, unreachable expectaions of yourself., and has an internal ideal - impossible standards of perfection.

It is a picture of the personality in conflict - divided within ourselves.

Pain
1 - our own decaying body, nature.
2 - the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
3 - the greatest pain of all is our everyday interaction with other people because it is loaded with pain.
People are out to get us, to hurt us - but we (as irrational beings) are inclined to hurt others.

Freud see's the answer as analysis, it is needed to strengthen the ego. Freud would also access the Id and in someways control it. But this isn't open to everyone, the masses will continue on thier destructive path.

Although, Freud did suggest alternative coping mechanisms :-
- Chemical Solution - intoxication, but is only temporary.
- Isolation - Temporary, and only works for a few people.
- Sublimation - Finding sexually acceptable releases for our aggression. Such as sport, or being a workaholic. But these are only mild satisfaction.

'Civilisation is a collective superego' - imposing moral limits on the Id.
'Men are not gentle creatures - they are aggressive forces'.
'Man is a wolf to man'.

The battle between the 3 distinct proccesses can result in -
- Repression - Censorship and defence mechanism.
- Sublimination - Turn sexual energy to something (such as art or sport).
- Displacement - Shameful thoughts, turn into something else.
- Projection - Send feelings onto someone else.
- Regression - Returning to earlier stage of development.

Freud saw dreams as a way into the unconscious.
He also believed that aggression would never be eliminated(meaning we can never escape the unconscious).
Freud Controversy
- Science has no way to vaildate his theories.
- Freud was too vague for it to be protected.
- Many would say that he didn't discover the unconscious, he merely made it famous.
- The unconscious, repression, childhood, regression etc were all discussed in academic circles in the 19th century - pre-Freud.

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Winol 4.0

Week starting 19/10/2011

Monday started with the usual debrief of last weeks bulletin.

Debrief Notes
- A good way to start a package can be with natural sound.
- Using a prop for a piece to camera can be a good idea(and can help you feel more relaxed with something to do with your hands) but you should be holding something thats relevant to what your talking about.
- To make your piece to camera easier you should just focus on 3 key points, it it then easier to remember and say.
- If you use a still (picture) in a package you should give it movement(such as a zoom or pan from left to right)

Facts = Your Voice
Comment = Thier Voice

We then had our production meeting to assign roles and organise what we'll be doing. This week will be a busy one, as we are going to film Winol, Winol Sports as well as Winol Life.

Tuesday started off with a 9am start as we prepared the studio for recording Winol Life. The day started with us carrying sofas across the uni into the studio. Then we needed to start setting up all the equipment. Unfortunately, it became one of them days where nearly all of the technology goes wrong. We had problems with sound(such as the microphones not working properly) and needed to use boom mics to pick up some of the sound. I worked on the auto-cue, but as the presenters were in a more casual broadcast, they were able to glance down at their scripts to remember the questions to ask. The only time the auto-cue was essential was when the presenters faced the camera at the start and finish, as well as leading into the start of a package.
We also had a guest for Winol Life - Sarah Crawford.

In the afternoon, we needed to record the links for Sports Week. As well as this, the sports team had arranged for a guest to come into the studio for an interview. It was the player/coach of the Basingstoke Bison - Steve Moria.
For this part I was on the video mixer which meant changing the camera angles throughout the interview to get different perspectives and give the interview more of a flow.

Wednesday was (as usual) a busy day. Without a guest editor this week, we needed to be prepared for a few twists and turns along the way towards this weeks bulletin. One of my key jobs this week was to collect both the headline clips and the finished packages, as well as helping out wherever else I could.
We had a brief production meeting at 9:30 to check with roles and make sure we all knew what we would be doing.
This week Julie managed to get a 'Winol Exclusive' by using the Freedom of Information act. For this package, we needed to pre record her doing a piece to camera with a graphic in the background to highlight her points.

This week's (week 4) broadcast

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Winol 3.0

Week starting 10/10/2011

Monday started off with just reading the papers and online news as we prepared for the 10 O'Clock debrief regarding last week's news bulletin.

Debriefing Notes

For website write ups-Write headline that fits layout.
- Try to make a person the 'who' in your top line.
- Always remember(the method) who, what, where and when. - A 'simple summary intro'.

News Story Layout (Basics)
Paragraph 1 - Who, What, Where, When
Paragraph 2 - Why
Paragraph 3 - Quote
Paragraph 4 -Detail (Not always though)
Paragraph 5 - But (Balance)

Bulletin Debrief

- Fair dealing = you can use footage for something for a few seconds in circumstances such as reviews or comment etc, but should only be used within reason.
- Don't be too technical/expert in what you say. Assume no knowledge.

Keep the fact and comment seperate
- Journalist = Facts
- Interviewees = Comment
- You need 'Fact Fear' - check, double check and triple check. Make sure its correct before using it, if your not sure, just get rid of it.
You can also use phrases like 'they claim' to be safe if necessary.

Source Protection
Never use a blind source unless you really have to.
Even so, if you offer them protection, you need to remember that thier is nothing to defer them from lying. Source protection should only really be used if in extreme cases such as protecting the source from violence, it shouldnt usually be used to preotect someone from being fired.

If you agree to protect the person, you must protect them to the grave, and should be prepared to go to jail.

'Off the record' interview = waste of time. It should only be used as a journalistic technique so they brief you regarding the story, and sometimes to try and convince them to go on the record with a certain comment.

Tuesday. Today we started off by trying to learn how to set up the OB (using the OB kit) in Tab9. Thier were a lot of wires, but i tried to take down rough notes of the layout out to try and remember it all ready for tommorow when myself and the rest of the production team will try to set it up ourselves. It was a very complex set up, and we required a technician to help with a few minor pieces such as setting up the microphone so it would work, it turned out it wasn't connected correctly and needed an extra wire which was in the box.

After we had finished packing away the OB kit, it was time to prepare for filming the links for Sports Week. My job in the gallery for this week is to control the auto-cue, this also includes typing up the scripts for both Sports Week and Winol. A times the auto-cue can be a frustrating piece of equipment, the laptop occasionally struggles to work, and the autocue software sometimes decides not the to work. Other than that, its not too much of a problem, aslong as the text is a good size and it is travelling at a comfortable speed for the presenter. Even though they should have scripts with them incase the autocue fails when live, it is obviously a lot more helpful and comfortable for the presenter to have the autocue in front of them. It also helps the broadcast to come across more professional instead of having the presenter constantly look down at a piece of paper to know what they're saying.

Also, the person I was helping this week was Tom Morgan. We travelled to Southampton University to film interviews and other footage for his news story on the lecturer strikes. To get a balanced story he interviewed both the UCU and the students union so that he could get both opinions.

Wednesday was as usual a busy day. It started by opening the gallery and switching on all of the equipment. This week I was assigned to collect the straps and make them ready to go on the packages. Thier weren't too many issues this week in collecting the names and positions of the interviewees. After introducing a new logo last week, we continued to tweak the stap design. This time I added a line to seperate the name of the person and thier role/position.

New Winol Strapline

This week we also included straps in the headlines.

Debrief
This week we had a guest editor - Rachel Canter from BBC South Today TV.

- The headlines in the broadcast need to be punchier, the language needs to be tightened.
Should start off overboard(tabloid) and then slowly bring it down to a good level

There should be more people in the oov's, instead of just buildings etc.

- Favouring - this is a technique where you move the gun mic towards yourself when asking a question if you want that to be included in the package. Otherwise if you include yourself speaking, it sounds too distant and can be hard to hear.

- Don't use phrases such as 'only time will tell' or 'it remains to be seen' when your signing off at the end of a package, it seems lazy.

- Make sure you're at the same level as the person you are interviewing.

- If you are going to have 3 oov's in a row, you should have them flowing simultaneously with a transition such as a white flash between each one. We are going to now try and have a 'news in brief' every week.

- Can simply end the broadcast wiht something like 'that's all'

This weeks(week 3) Broadcast

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Tabloid Nation

For this weeks HCJ seminar, we were looking at Chris Horrie's book - 'Tabloid Nation'. It looks at the 'Rise and Fall of the Daily Mirror'. This was a quite a different book to what we've become accustomed too in HCJ. The focus has been very much on philosophy. This book certainly wasn't like The Communist Manifesto or J'Accuse. I certainly found this book a lot easier to take in, and have actually found it very interesting and will finish reading the rest of it over the next few days.

Thier are a number of newspaper techniques mentioned at the beggining of this book that are still used today by many of the top newspapers to try and gain bigger sales, and a higher circulation of thier paper. Things like sexual content, sensationalised stories, big bold headlines and exclusive pictures are all still used by newspapers like The Sun, The Daily Mirror and The Daily Star as well as magazines such as OK! and Hello.

Another is the 'free gifts' idea that still continues today with the chance to win cheap holidays, cars and more. Back in the early 1900's the offers included homeware, encyclopedias, a complete collection of Charles Dickens. Also £200-worth of life insurance a offered in Northcliffes first publication 'Answers' ('Answers to Correspondents On Every Subject Under the Sun').

The Daily Mirror saw its readership both
decline and increase over the years
Source - Flickr: Valerie Everett

One thing I noticed is that at one point 'the mirror' seemed to go in a bit of a circle with who they were targeting for readership. It began as a female targeted audience before a change of plans were made by Northcliffe.

[More will be added to this blog soon]

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Winol 2.0

Week starting 03/10/2011

Monday's debriefing was a great way to pick up more advice on how to improve video packages and a news broadcast as a whole.

It began by looking at the UK Today pilot that can be found here. We spoke about using a 'brief exposition' which is when you explain what people think during your package. If this is used, it is best to place it at the end of your piece, and definately not at the start. Generally, things aren't explained in too much detail on tv, it is usually only in written form. This is mainly because of the target audience that television normally has.

Chris Horrie also spoke about pieces to camera, and how to come across as more comfortable and confident. One technique is to walk around during the piece, usually towards the camera, or along the camera with it panning with you. This also helps to solve the problem of what to do with your hands. You should use your hands to add emphasis to what your saying, this prevents them from being in your pockets or just keeping them at your sides. Another way to avoid this problem is to have something in your hand, such as a piece of paper or an item that refers to your news story. That way you can point to it, or simply show it to the camera while you're talking.

Some Debrief Notes

If you use a categorical fact, you must:-
a) Check it
b) Have a soruce for it.
You should either check these facts or simply leave them out. A categorical fact without a source is just an opinion.

- You need a 'balance' in stories, which means getting an opinion from both sides.
- Whenever the public sector is spending money on something, there will always be people viewing it as a 'waste of money'.
- You should avoid doing too much expo(exposition).
- Don't forget who, what, where, when. (and why for 'second paragraphs').

On Tuesday we recorded the links for the first Sports Week of the new academic year. At 9am, I arrived and we had to set up the gallery and prepare it for sports week and a special morning recording. This meant making sure everything was switched on and working fine. I also had to set up the auto cue so it was ready for the sports week links that we would be recording.
While sitting in the gallery, I had some time to briefly read a guide to the different things in the gallery and it explains how to set them up. I can see this being useful in the upcoming weeks when i'm asked to set up other pieces equipment, it became a useful guide when I was working out what to plug in and switch on first when i was setting up the auto cue.

For this week, I was working on the auto cue which required me to type up the script. And adjusting the speed and size of the font. At first the font was too big, and meant that the presenter couldn't view enough text at the right speed. However, after some adjusting, we soon found a good size (being size 18 Arial font). After this, the speed and amount of text on display was able to keep the speaking at a good, comfortable pace.

Today I also helped Ali Al-Jamri with recording for his news package for this week. His story was about a cut in buses around Winchester, with buses no longer available after 9:30pm. At around 1 O'Clock, we went around town in Winchester to film some buses, particularly the number 1 which is the main bus involved in the story. After walking around getting a number of shots, we returned back to Tab at the university to prepare for an interview he had arranged for 4pm to interview a councillor about the story. We went outside to the place he wanted the interview, and began setting up the camera. This involved finding the right spot to film, checking the white balance, the iris and also the sound from the microphone. Ali then went to meet the councillor, but unfortunately he didn't arrive and the interview had to be postponed until Wednesday morning. At that point we were left with very little options for the day.

Wednesday was a very busy and stressful day. It began quite calm. I arrived at around 9:00am and as I stepped through the door Ali asked me if i could help him film his interview with the councillor that had been moved to today. We then set off to the spot where he wanted to film, and i put together the camera, tripod and microphone while he went to meet him. We managed to film the interview without much trouble, other than a lawn mower making some noise at one point in the interview which meant we had to wait a few moments for it to pass.

After the interview I returned back to Tab9 where i started to help wit the production side of things, this included helping some people with editing. Also, we were assigned to create the straplines for this week's packages. We had made a number of them, before being told that we now had a new logo, and that the straplines would need to be re-done. This put us a little behind schedule, but fortunately, it didn't seem to greatly effect the pace of the day as we were making the staplines early enough in the day.

We soon had to collect the packages so that we could transfer them to the gallery, woever, thier was some waiting around whilst some reporters finished editing thier pieces and rendering them so they were ready. While we were waiting, we did some sub editing on articles we had been given. I've discovered that sub editing can be a lot more stressful and difficult than i originally though. Many of the pieces we have been handed so far, have needed quite big changes made to them, such as the opening and finishing lines, and in some cases whole paragrpahs he had to be changed or removed. If some of the articles that I have seen went up on the website without being looked over first, the quality simply wouldn't be good enough, and in some cases could encounter other issues. I now see why a sub editor is so important in ensuring the quality and 'safety' of published work.

The gallery was very messy this week, I'm still not certain what the main cause was for this. It could have been bad organisation, bad communication or simply bad luck with the technology. None-the-less we didn't go out at 3 like we should have, and all i feel i can blame for that is bad preperation which meant that we didn't fit in any rehearsal time when we should have. Rehearsals are meant to begin at 2pm, and yet we didn't evncome close to one until around 2:45pm.

Friday. Myself and the other sub editors were called in today to look over the news reporters written copies for thier news stories. We had to make sure they were sutiable to publish. This meant using Joomla to edit and publish the stories, and set them to the house style.

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Modernism

A new year of HCJ is upon us, but this time it has a slightly diffeent feel. No longer are we studying Romanticism, we have now moved onto Modernism.
During the lecture, Chris explained the difference. Modernism is very much about 'relativity', whilst Romanticism deals with Change.

We looked at a number of different works of Modernism, and a number of points that have been made.
- Thier is no centre to the universe.
- The void - At the centre of everything is nothing.
- Angst : fearful, unhappy, discontented.
- Modern particle physics - Nuclear Fission, Decentered Universe, Relativity.
- Modernologists don't believe we are 'on a journey'.
- Sigmund Freud - An Austrian neurologist and a psychoanalyst.

An example of Modernist art
Source - Flickr: Chiara Marra

Chris Horrie also spoke about the de-evolution of the species, with the weak being kept alive and able to pass on thier genes.
He brought up two possible solutions to this issue:-
1) We can evolve through technology and knowledge. This can be achieved with better medication and robotic body parts, 'camera eyes' for the blind, and much more. This would be considered the more realistic future for us to evolve.
2) We can 'kill off' the weakand 'breed' fit, healthy and multi-talented people with the aim of producing only the 'strongest' people. This is known as Eugenics(controlled breeding).

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Winol 1.0

Week starting 26/09/2011

This week was my first time as a full-fledged member of Winol [Winchester News Online]. I began my first role as a sub editor and part of the production team.

Monday was very much about settling in and understanding what my role would require, and to speak to the people i would be working with. I spoke with Jack, Dom and Justina about the production aspects, and also spoke with Aimii about the sub-editor role. I felt more ready for the week ahead.

Tuesday was very much a day of learning about the gallery in preperation for the Wednesday broadcast. After creating my video piece on the gallery at the end of year 1, I had some idea of what to expect. But the third years were very helpful in explaining the properties and controls for the different pieces of software. Myself and the other members of the productipon team learnt a bit about the video mixer, the sound mixer and the auto-cue. It was soon decided that the sound mixer would be the first thing I try to master.
We had hoped to start learning how to use the joomla system, but we were unable to log in, but Aimii gave us a briefing on what it involves. She also gave us a few outlines on how she wants the posts to look. The hope is to have a picture with every article this year.

Today I was also asked by Louis O'Brien to help him film some of his news report. This involved going into town to record some shots for his package, aswell as his piece to camera for the report. We travelled to a road directly related to the news story, and I feel the background fitted fine with the story and wasn't too plain.

Wednesday was a great day, I really enjoyed the busy atmosphere. It was nice to see that despite being under enormous pressure, everybody around me was very calm and kept a clear mind.
Myself and the other members of the production team were assigned to sort out the taglines for this weeks bulletin. This involved speaking to each of the reporters and finding out if they had interviewed anybody, and if so, what thier name was, and the relevance to the story (ie:- job or position). This became difficult when one reporter was unsure of the name of thier interviewee. After looking at her Facebook page, we were still uncertain if she was using her real name. The package didn't end up in the broadcast, but if it had, we would have had very few options other than to just include a first name.
George managed to land his first sub-editors job, editing together a piece by Lee. While we were waiting to get to work in the production side of things, i was watching him edit and tried to assist where i could. I started to see the importance of editing once we noticed problems in places, such as the closing line. Thier was no real reference/justification to what was being said, but after speaking to Lee, he was able to provide a good source to back up his claims. By the time it was finished, it looked like a good quality piece of journalism.

While my current position is behind the camera, I did still pick up some useful advice from the lecturers after the broadcast, particularly from Angus Scott, mainly involving the reporting side of the broadcast.
Starting a package with a piece to camera is something that should not be done.
If you are qouting somebody in your package, it sounds better when you get somebody else to read it out, otherwise it will sound a bit odd jumping back to your voice afterwards.
Tr to take as many different shots as you can, because then you have a more wide(and therefore better) selection to choose from. You only want the best shots in your piece. You also need to avoid shooting a persons face when getting certain shots.

I would consider this a successful first week considering that it was all achieved in a very short time after only just returning back to university, and I'm sure it will get better and better.

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