WINOL 14/11/2012

Overview
A good week for stories, just technical things that still need working out, and also the amount of knowledge and research you have for your stories. You should have more interest in them, and spend more time on them. Also written stories need to be coming in more frequently


Individual Feedback

Headlines
The headlines were pretty good this week. Some of the more visually interesting headlines so far this semester which is a good sign.

Faith
I really liked this package. I asked you to look on Youtube to find some footage of ford striking that we could use, and you did that within a few hours, and it looked great at the start of the package.You also did great to get an interview with Steve Brine on Tuesday afternoon, and it helped lift your package. Without the strike footage, you would have struggled visually so if you want to continue with this story, you will need to continue to think of creative ways to carry your package visually.

Tom
Visually it was a difficult package, budget cuts are hard to visualise, but the archive footage was put to good us, except for the shot of the council building. If it's something you can film yourself, then there is no reason to use archive footage of it, especially when your filming of it would look better. You got the right interviews, which had opposing ideas,

Lou
A very solid package. Your profiles are now done, and I think you did a great job, and it's been rgeat to know I could rely on you each week. You seem to always have a technical problem when interviewing George Hollingberry, this time it was the colouring/lighting, but I think you did a good job of saving it, and it ended up not looking too bad. You also kept the text in the graphics up longer after feedback from the last one, which was a lot better. The sign off was very good as well, and you made the fact you were in London a big thing, which was great.

Flick
I liked the PTC at the start of the package, and thought the shot leading into the Thornber interview was very good. The cutaways and other shots in the package were good, making the most of the wind turbines, all relevant, and they're just visually interesting. A good package that we should definitely keep track of.

Ellen
Your voice over still doesn't sound right. I'm not sure what it is, maybe you're speaking too close to the mic? You had the chainsaw at the beginning, and I'm sure you agree that it looked great at the start of your package. Your PTC was fine, but seemed out of focus.
The Uldduz part of the package was fine, but obviously carried the usual problems of skype calls. The cutaways that you used during that part were way too short and needed to be longer, they disappeared within seconds.

Christina
Good to get the mug shot, and also the reconstruction added something different to the package. Your becoming very good at these now, this was a very nice court story.

Emma
Even though your package didn't work out, you were still able to get me multiple oovs that I could use which I was grateful for, because we were in need of some oovs. Although if you find out soon enough that your story is falling through, you should try and take on another story for a package.

Emma
I was happy to have this package in the bulletin, I expected it to be in the sports part of the bulletin, but when I found out it wasn't, I was happy tot ry and find room to squeeze it in. I really liked it. A nice light way to follow on from the sport.

Karina
It was a good 'and finally', but your picture quality was very poor, and on another day i might have spiked it. However, we worked on trying to improve the colour and general quality which helped a bit, but was a bit grainy. You did a good job to tell the story, and the coming up you did was perfect, although it unfortunately had to be dropped in post-production because of timing restraints.

Amy
You tried to get your package to work this week, but it really needed that interview to be able to get into the bulletin, and with us back to so many reporters  you really need to fight and go the extra distance to push your story into the bulletin. Not a bad week, but just need to have a bit more confidence to go that extra mile for your story.

Jack
I was disappointed that you came to the news meeting with basically nothing, that's never really acceptable. You should have a story, even if it means going off of your patch.

Harry
I know your story was the same as Amy's, but you should still have back-up stories, even if they're not always on your patch. You got given a different story late on Monday, and had to go to a meeting for it. But didn't, so theirs no real excuse for not having the story. You needed to work hard this week, I'm pretty disappointed that you didn't.

Spence
Your package wasn't terrible this week, it was just way too much of a promo piece, I dropped it into an oov, but it eventually got cut in post-production for timing reasons. Filming was fine, just remember to radio mic someone if you decide to film them from more of a distance, and if you do that, they should ideally be actually doing something instead of just sitting around.

Notes for next week

30 Second Pitch
This Monday, in the news conference, I'm going to be testing out something new, inspired by the talk from Claudia Murg. You will each get 30 seconds where you should be able to convey all of your story, including the top line, who you're speaking to, who it affects, what shots you plan to have, and some general facts about the story. I will explain it in some more detail on Monday. But essentially your story should be heavily researched, and you should be able to talk about it solidly for 30 seconds(which will be a way of knowing if you've just lifted it from the daily echo or actually put some work into it).

Camera zooms are now banned
You've been told in the past by Angus that the camera shots should reflect what the human eye does, and our eyes cannot zoom unfortunately. Also it's normally a messy shot when you use a zoom, and it can be difficult to get a good speed. It also usually means that you don't end up holding shots for long enough so this should hopefully help. You can still do pans etc... but if you want to move closer onto something, you should do it through a sequence. This will look much cleaner, and help you in the edit.
The only zooms allowed in this upcoming week are for still images.

Earlier starts on Wednesdays
On Wednesday, most reporters weren't in until 10/10:30 which isn't acceptable. Nobody had a finished package, and I know that because i didn't sign off any of them, which means they're not done. And if you don't come in until that late, it means everything clogs up. Production are in for 9am on Wednesday, and so should the reporters. It's not fair that we slow down the production team by coming in more than an hour later than you should be.

Voiceover Audio
The original plan was to use the sound booth that Angus has mentioned for a couple of weeks. Me and Graham went to get it, but it turns out we need training. So we tried a couple of areas, and this week we settled for the studio, and wrapping the curtain around you. It sounded better this week, and more consistent. But I don't think it will be the permanent solution, but it is something we can discuss on Monday.

Links
The links for your packages need to be in much earlier. Tuesday evening you should at least have a draft handed into the script writer/presenter each week. Your link should also be longer than one sentence. We should have a basic idea of your story even before your package is shown.

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