WINOL - Week 2

This week was a bit of a disaster for politics. It started off strong but it very quickly all went downhill.

I had managed to get myself and Alex Delaney (Political Correspondent) invites to UKIP’s announcement of their MEP (Members of European Parliament) candidates. This would have made a very strong package as we had a guaranteed interview lined up with Diane James, and there was a good likelihood that we would have managed to grab Nigel Farage as well. I had the whole package laid out in my mind, I knew exactly what shots I wanted and how to structure them. I was feeling confident that this would make a great first package to prove my worth in my new role as Political Editor.

It seemed to be going far too smoothly, so I was less than surprised when I was informed on the evening before that the event was cancelled. I immediately got on the phone to Christina Michaels who was our News Editor for the week and began apologising.  

On Tuesday morning I then began chasing down other stories, but we couldn’t find a strong enough story to make a package on such a short deadline, so instead Alex and I got on with making an OOV belt. I followed the UKIP  story through as they announced their MEP candidates on their website, so I used my archive footage from the Eastleigh by-election and created a graphic to try and make my OOV as visually interesting as possible.

The WINOL bulletin overall was very good this week and clearly demonstrated that the second years are flourishing in their new roles.  Ian Anderson gave a lot of constructive criticism, such as don’t use words or terms that you don’t understand. If your interviewee starts using technical language ask them to explain it in layman’s terms otherwise the viewer will get confused and tune out.  The schools package was very good as they had managed to get into a school and work around the problems of identification, however it could have benefited from a wider range of creative shots, for example using soft focus. The main point he stressed was that you should be certain of your top line when you approach your story, and you should always have your top line before you write your script. If you don’t know what your story is, how can you expect anyone else to understand it?