I was a vote counter in the 2010 General Elections. Not the most glamourous job, I know, but the pay is very good indeed considering the highest qualification you need is to be able to count to 25. It can be quite uncomfortable being a counter, as while you're working, you're being watched like hawks, by the candidates and their various henchmen. Making sure no ballots accidentally go in the wrong pile, exclaming over how many they have, or complaining about how few they have. I'm digressing. Something that stuck out to me was that, in contrast to the Party-People, there was no noticeable press coverage. I know they were there, but they were keeping a low profile. I'd expected them to be all over us as well to find out how the vote was swinging, but there was barely a peep. At the time I wondered why that was. And now I'm going to explain it.
Electoral reporting for broadcast journalists is a hodge-podge of law, tradition, and regulation. Before we get too mired in the podge, it's worth a brief explanation as to why it's important that elections are properly reported.
First and foremost, journalism in the fourth estate of the country, we are (relatively) independent of a governing body, and as such we watch them, and protect the country from any potential threats to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Consider the government our guardians, and think on the old adage: "Who will guard the guardians?". or perhaps more appropriately, who will keep an eye on the guardians to make sure they stay out of trouble. Doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it?
This view is has been very relevant in the last few weeks with the election of the Police and Crime Commissioners. People have been elected who will help decide to way the police protect us and it is more important than ever to ensure that the candidates for the job keep everything above board, and that the people know everything they can to decide who they should elect.
Which brings me onto my second point. How do you decide who it is that you vote for? You would watch debates, perhaps go online to find out what information you can on what they do, watch the news to see how competent they seem to be in various situations. Any and all of the above, is provided by journalists. The vast majority of the public aren't going to truck themselves down to watch a debate, or Question Time or what have you. Instead they can watch it all from the comfort of their homes, because we bring it to them, through live broadcasts or Twitter updates, news packages. The list goes on. And as a result, people base their voting decisions on footage we have shown them. This is quite a power to have, and I'll now start to talk about how we absolutely cannot abuse it.
Foremost, and most obviously, if the public are using our coverage to decide their vote, we have to be sure that we are 'impartial' as is stated in all of the relevant codes, regulation and law. We cannot have an bias toward one body or another. This is at least what is true for broadcasters. Newspapers on the other hand can support whoever they please. This is a throwback to the early days of the press. When daily newspapers first became popular. There could be the capacity for so many, that it really didn't matter that they were biased, the public would simply read whichever one was closest to their beliefs. But with television (this is mostly if not all in the UK) there were so few channels that they could not afford to be unbiased. Let's say there was only two channels (which, believe it or not, was once the case), and both leaned toward a particular party then the viewer is bound to get a skewed view the day's news. As a result, news channels in the UK tend to be as unbiased as possible. This is possibly unnecessary today as there are hundreds of different news channels, and we're in the same situation for TV as we once were for print.
Of course now the situation is changing for newspapers, as they are publishing video content on the internet. Perhaps new precedent will be put in place, though wouldn't that potentially have to be internationally accepted. Jurisdiction does not technically exist on the internet, and while, IP addresses and other devices that locate an internet user and allow countries to enforce their laws, media regulation seems a grey area. But I'm not here to philosophise the ethics of the intangible force of the internet. Let's look at how tv news tends to cover elections.
Broadcast media in the UK has to follow certain guidelines in the run up, and execution of the elections. The BBC, for example, have to give the same amount of air-time to the major political parties. Indeed they would keep a detailed account, down to the second, of how much time each had had. They do this because they know damn sure that the political parties are going to be checking to make sure they're not being left out.
Of course, this gives us another problem, how do we rank the various political parties? It's easy to say that Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat are all major parties. But what does UKIP, Green party, BNP, even the Monster Raving Loony party fall under? None of them are major parties, some of them have much more support than others. Do they deserve the same amount of time as the others? At the end of the day that is exactly what it comes to. Broadcasters decide who deserves more time than the others. This may seem unfair, but it's unfortunately the way it has to work. If you only have two minutes in a package, you simply do not have time to cover them all. The decision over who to leave out, is pretty much down to whoever has more support. This is most noticeable in local news. As you would expect, they know who people want to see more of.
The exception to this would simply be aesthetics. If the Monster Ravers built a giant wicker man and invited people to toast marshmallows whilst Christopher Lee was campaigning for them, well, who wouldn't want to see that?
There is always a danger, during an election period, that you will end up defaming someone. Indeed elections have always been known to get somewhat vicious as voting day draws closer. A particularly gritty example of this was in the 2010 general election, with ex government minister Phil Woolas. Whilst campainging for a seat in Oldam East and Saddleworth. He published two false statements (one of them here) saying that his rival Robert Watkins, was 'wooing the extremist Muslim vote'. He won the seat but later, the result was declared void. The court ruled he was guilty of breaching the Representation of the People Act 1983, which says that:
Section 106(1) - makes it a criminal offence to make or publish a false statement of fact about the personal character or conduct of an election candidate, if the purpose of publishing the false statement is to affect how many votes he/she will get.
Section 106(5) - makes it an offence to publish a false claim that a candidate has withdrawn from the election, if the publisher knows it to be false and published it to promote or procure the election of another candidate.
Needless to say, be careful during elecions. There can be people who would like nothing better than to shoot the messenger.
Saturday 15 December 2012
Tuesday 27 November 2012
Channel 5 News bulletin criticism.
A brief summation of my initial thoughts, whilst watching Channel Five's 5pm news bulletin (in relatively chronological order).
The headline sequence is good looking, though I found it strange that after the flood headline, with the quote from David Cameron (not the most enthralling, but that's to be expected from the PM), there was quite a long gap before the next one, it works if the aim is to separate the top story from the others, but to a casual viewer, it seems like there is only one headline showcasing the entire programme.
The rest of the headlines, were a mix of public interest story (the Norovirus) and pop culture: Nadine Dorries relating to I'm a celeb; Bill Tarney of Corrie fame dying (admittedly there's more gravitas to this); and sports personality predictions. I'm not sure if I like the still and zoom of Chris Hoy, I'm of the opinion suspense doesn't really belong on a news show, though as the final piece it has something of an excuse as people will potentially wait longer to see it. I just don't think Chris Hoy's opinion is that much to be excited about.
The floods lead the entire bulletin, it was a very flood-heavy programme, which is reasonable as that is currently the biggest story in the UK at the moment. That said, the flood stories took up about eight minutes. On Monday's bulletin they even took up about 11. As well as having a flood special later on the Monday) and that could be quite a lot to ask of most audiences if they don't have much of an interest in them.
There were two flood packages today (three yesterday) both of which were introduced by a live OB with the reporter, and one of which returned to the OB afterword. I'm not sure how relevant some of it was, some provided updates on the stories, though they could have potentially been said by the presenter. That said, it made it look much more professional, especially from the point of view of Winchester News Online. We've had virtually no success with live OBs and to my mind it is one of the things that helps to look much more credible, on a technical level.
The graphic in the first flood story, looked very good (showing the UK behind the stats) though I had slight issues keeping up with the stats. I believe it mentioned the number of flood warnings and alerts, as well as the train announcements and road closures. A good selection to have, slightly hard to follow, but much better to have graphics than anything else.
The interview with David Cameron was great to have, it was a shame he didn't say much of particular interest, though not surprising. Some expo on what he wanted and hoped to happen.
The most noticeable feature of the second flood package, was the interview with a man trapped inside his house. with the reporter shouting questions to him as he leaned out of a window. Not only did it highlight the man's plight, but jumped out at as a very interesting part of the story.
The package also had some vox pops of flood victims, generally at WINOL we try to avoid VPs. However, in the circumstances it's a great way of gauging the problems ad temperament of the people affected.
The Norovirus story, as I said before, is a typical story formed around the public health interest. Health stories are always big and seem occur frequently at this time of year. That doesn't always make them too necessary. As far as I can tell, the story was simply saying that something that is always around, is happening somewhat early this year. The still image of the virus looked good, and I would have been surprised if there wasn't one. But the music underlay was perhaps a bit too sinister, it felt like the T-virus from Resident Evil was being unleashed. I'm not sure what the point of the music was, except to imply that the virus was something to be feared.The still of the virus, as well as the underlay were both used again at the end of the piece. It brought the story full circle, but also stood out to that there were apparently were no other pictures that could have been used.
Again in this piece, graphics were used, with an ER looking background, these looked very strong, and were a good way of rattling off figures without becoming too dull.
The Eon OOV was quite quick, and worked to break up the heavy packages, though I'm honestly not sure what it was about, compensation for customers who switched services (I think) and it didn't seem there was much of a story there. Probably the reason why it was an OOV in fairness.
The reminder after the break was expected, and a good way to both remind, and introduce people to the bulletin, and also didn't delay too long, so no impatience to worry about.
The Yasser Arafat story had it's place as a fairly important one in the world, though rightfully I think, it hadn't earned a particularly high place in the programme, as it is somewhat out of place with the rest of the packages
Bill Tarney's funeral was well and sympathetically done. and the shots and interviews of Corrie stars were well used.
I liked the crane fire OOV. It was something of a "bloody hell look at that!" story, without a great deal of substance, but it's the sort of thing that wakes up the viewer and get them more interested in the bulletin as a whole. As a device to get the viewers attention, it worked brilliantly.
It was excellent to have an Interview with both Chris Hoy and Ellie Simmonds. Both athletes have become very big in the last few years, especially so in the wake of the Olympics. I liked the vox pops with member of the public saying who they'd like to win. We generally try to stay away from them at WINOL but for something which is decided by the public vote, it works.
Throughout the bulletin I noticed that a lot of the reporters tend to have themselves in shot during interviews. I feel that seeing a small part of the back of the reporters head in shot is a little jarring. maybe because I'm not used to it. I'm not sure if this is an editorial decision that they should do it. Maybe the audience of Channel 5 News appreciates it. In which case, that's fair enough. Working off my own experience at WINOL, though, it's generally thought that the viewers don't come to the news to see the reporter. they just want to know the story.
Wednesday 31 October 2012
WINOL Bulletin 31/10/12
This is the latest of the local news bulletins produced by my journalism course at the University of Winchester. This bulletin contains part of a continuing piece on the Hampshire Police
Commissioner post; The closure of a Southampton Ford factory; A look at
the local effect of Storm Sandy in the USA; Football and ice hockey from the local Hampshire teams,
and a pub on wheels, now I know that's got your attention!
Any criticism or advice is more than welcome.
There's also much more to see on our site, have a browse!
http://winol.co.uk/
Any criticism or advice is more than welcome.
There's also much more to see on our site, have a browse!
http://winol.co.uk/
Tuesday 30 October 2012
Defamation & Libel 2.0
As part of recapping the lawful aspect of my youth, i.e. two years ago, we had a lecture discussing defamation and what it means for us (journalists).
For my point of view, which is to say a broadcast angle of the news. What you broadcast about someone is defamatory if it tends to (the wording is important here as, should a defamation case come to court, the level of proof only has to show that a statement 'tends' to do be defamatory. There's no "beyond all reasonable doubt" here):
And finally,
With film, it can be easy to accidentally defame a person or company if you are not careful with your shots. Often, juxtaposition of a shot, with another, or coupled with a voice over, can end up with what can be (and often will be) perceived as defamation.
Let's say you are making a package about dodgy retailers (or some such thing), and you have cut-aways of a high street with shop signs visible. You have potentially defamed these shops by implying that they are dodgy retailers (or some such thing).
An obvious thing to help prevent accidental defamation is to ensure that, when filming, you film the correct building that your story concerns; as well as this make sure you name the correct people involved in your story. in many cases, you can't have too much identification i.e: Name, age, occupation, where they live; above all: a picture! (just make sure it's definitely the right person!) This is especially true of court reporting, you don't want to risk someone else having the same name/ job etc as the person you're reporting on.
An important point to make about defamation is that you cannot defame someone who is dead. I'm not saying go nuts with it, but it is allowed. As a current example, look at what's going on with Jimmy Savile at the moment. Technically, calling him a paedophile now, is not defaming him as he's dead. Doing it when he was alive, would have been.
Now defamation is hugely important in libel. For something to be libellous, it must meet three criteria:
The easiest way to avoid being sued is to go through a checklist in your head. Perhaps most obviously:
Some fairly recent defamation cases worth at least googling include: Chris Jefferies and his treatment by newspapers during the Joanna Yates murder investigation; Charlotte Church; and Sussex tutor Luke Cooper.
Stay tuned for more posts on media law in coming weeks.
For my point of view, which is to say a broadcast angle of the news. What you broadcast about someone is defamatory if it tends to (the wording is important here as, should a defamation case come to court, the level of proof only has to show that a statement 'tends' to do be defamatory. There's no "beyond all reasonable doubt" here):
- Lower them in the estimation of right-thinking people -This is fairly self explanatory, if a normal person hears what you've said and thinks: "I now think less of the person who is subject of that report" then you have defamed the subject;
- Cause the person to be shunned or avoided - Once again, this should need little explanation. If someone is not generally shunned or avoided, and following what you broadcast, they become so, you have defamed them;
- Disparage the person in his/her business, trade, office, or profession - This would happen if you were to broadcast that your subject was terrible at their job, or was an unreliable person;
And finally,
- Expose the person to hatred, ridicule, or contempt -Let's use an extreme example here and say you've called someone a paedophile. I think it's safe to assume that will expose them to plenty of hatred, not to mention contempt and ridicule.
With film, it can be easy to accidentally defame a person or company if you are not careful with your shots. Often, juxtaposition of a shot, with another, or coupled with a voice over, can end up with what can be (and often will be) perceived as defamation.
Let's say you are making a package about dodgy retailers (or some such thing), and you have cut-aways of a high street with shop signs visible. You have potentially defamed these shops by implying that they are dodgy retailers (or some such thing).
An obvious thing to help prevent accidental defamation is to ensure that, when filming, you film the correct building that your story concerns; as well as this make sure you name the correct people involved in your story. in many cases, you can't have too much identification i.e: Name, age, occupation, where they live; above all: a picture! (just make sure it's definitely the right person!) This is especially true of court reporting, you don't want to risk someone else having the same name/ job etc as the person you're reporting on.
An important point to make about defamation is that you cannot defame someone who is dead. I'm not saying go nuts with it, but it is allowed. As a current example, look at what's going on with Jimmy Savile at the moment. Technically, calling him a paedophile now, is not defaming him as he's dead. Doing it when he was alive, would have been.
Now defamation is hugely important in libel. For something to be libellous, it must meet three criteria:
- It must have been published
- It must have been defamatory
- The subject must have been identified
- Justification - It's true and you can prove it.
- Fair comment - Honestly held opinion based upon facts or privileged material
- Privilege - Protection for journalists in court reporting.
- Bane and antidote - This is when the defamatory statement etc. is somehow shown not to be defamatory with context. The precedent for this was set in 1835 when a judge said that if in one part of a publication something disreputable to the claimant was stated that was removed by the conclusion, 'the bane and antidote must be taken together'.
- Apologies and clarifications - These must usually be made contemporaneously.
- Reynold's Defence - A series of points journalists must follow, to obtain common law qualified privilege. A full description of the points can be found here (scroll about halfway down to find them.
The easiest way to avoid being sued is to go through a checklist in your head. Perhaps most obviously:
- Who am I writing about, and are they very litigious?
- Is what I'm writing about potentially defamatory? - If so, ask your superiors (essentially pass the buck) or lawyers. You should always be scared of being defamatory, unless your defence is absolutely airtight.
Some fairly recent defamation cases worth at least googling include: Chris Jefferies and his treatment by newspapers during the Joanna Yates murder investigation; Charlotte Church; and Sussex tutor Luke Cooper.
Stay tuned for more posts on media law in coming weeks.
Saturday 13 October 2012
Copyright 3.0: Fair Dealing Strikes Back!
Firstly, I feel that I should explain that as part of my Journalism course at the University of Winchester, we are required to take two modules in media law. The first, in our first year of university, to give us a grasp of what not to do as beginner journalists. The second module starts in our third (and current) year, and is designed to bring us up to speed on any recent changes in the law, or any cases relevant to our interests. Most noticeably at the moment is the Leveson inquiry, which will almost certainly have a major impact on our working careers.
To bring you up to speed, last week we had a lecture on copyright by Peter Hodges essentially a dos and don'ts for journalists. Mr Hodges gave a similar lecture during my first year which I wrote about here, so I wont go into too much detail on the basics on this post. Instead I'm going to talk about fair dealing which is a very important thing to get around, and very useful if you know how to use it.
Fair dealing as described by McNae's essential law for journalists can be used 'for the purpose of reporting current events. essentially meaning that it is OK to use a small amount of copyrighted material if a news story needs it to help explain something. It should always bring something to the story, however, and does not count as fair dealing if it is simple there to bulk out a piece. Fair dealing can always be used for the purposes of criticism and review. This means that if you were reviewing a movie, a video game, or a piece of music; you are allowed to use a small amount of the copyrighted material. How much you are allowed to use isn't clear in the law, and it's easy to be put off by uncertainty, but this was something I expressed to Mr Hodges, who, as the former head of BBC Copyright should have a very good idea on what is acceptable.
He said that for the purposes of criticism and review, you can use an aggregate of two minutes for each subject. the clips can be long or short, but no more than two minutes.
Below is a short review show written and edited by yours truly. We showed this to Peter Hodges and he said it was absolutely safe in terms of fair dealing. It had no more than two minutes of footage for each game, and the details of the copyright holders are clearly displayed throughout. Essentially, this is what you have to do to be able to use copyrighted footage:
You'll have to excuse the dodgy puns and crappy audio mixing. It was my first attempt at something like this and if it makes you fell better, I cringe everytime I watch it. Think of it this way: visually and aurally, this is a bit of a train wreck; But as far as the letter of the law goes, this is excellent. Some other quick points that were covered in the lecture: When filming live events, you are not at fault if copyrighted music is audible as this is accidental inclusion; if however you then recorded the copyrighted material in a package, you could be in trouble. this can prove tricky when filming live events such as sports games and will definitely have to be thought about when editing.
Also, everything said about fair dealing above, does not ring true for photographs. You must always have the copyright holder's permission to use any photo. for example, do you see any pictures in this blog post?
No, you don't.
To bring you up to speed, last week we had a lecture on copyright by Peter Hodges essentially a dos and don'ts for journalists. Mr Hodges gave a similar lecture during my first year which I wrote about here, so I wont go into too much detail on the basics on this post. Instead I'm going to talk about fair dealing which is a very important thing to get around, and very useful if you know how to use it.
Fair dealing as described by McNae's essential law for journalists can be used 'for the purpose of reporting current events. essentially meaning that it is OK to use a small amount of copyrighted material if a news story needs it to help explain something. It should always bring something to the story, however, and does not count as fair dealing if it is simple there to bulk out a piece. Fair dealing can always be used for the purposes of criticism and review. This means that if you were reviewing a movie, a video game, or a piece of music; you are allowed to use a small amount of the copyrighted material. How much you are allowed to use isn't clear in the law, and it's easy to be put off by uncertainty, but this was something I expressed to Mr Hodges, who, as the former head of BBC Copyright should have a very good idea on what is acceptable.
He said that for the purposes of criticism and review, you can use an aggregate of two minutes for each subject. the clips can be long or short, but no more than two minutes.
Below is a short review show written and edited by yours truly. We showed this to Peter Hodges and he said it was absolutely safe in terms of fair dealing. It had no more than two minutes of footage for each game, and the details of the copyright holders are clearly displayed throughout. Essentially, this is what you have to do to be able to use copyrighted footage:
You'll have to excuse the dodgy puns and crappy audio mixing. It was my first attempt at something like this and if it makes you fell better, I cringe everytime I watch it. Think of it this way: visually and aurally, this is a bit of a train wreck; But as far as the letter of the law goes, this is excellent. Some other quick points that were covered in the lecture: When filming live events, you are not at fault if copyrighted music is audible as this is accidental inclusion; if however you then recorded the copyrighted material in a package, you could be in trouble. this can prove tricky when filming live events such as sports games and will definitely have to be thought about when editing.
Also, everything said about fair dealing above, does not ring true for photographs. You must always have the copyright holder's permission to use any photo. for example, do you see any pictures in this blog post?
No, you don't.
Tuesday 3 April 2012
WINOL Bulletin - Lighting Plan
Since our bulletin of 21/3/12 it's been decided that we have to put more of a focus on our lighting set-up. we only really started using lighting properly as of a few weeks ago, before that we pretty much relied solely on the house lights and a couple of the overhead ones (I'm not great on technical terms).
More often than not we were left with something approaching this:
Myself, Henry, Ali and Graham got lighting training at that point which allowed us to book out various lighting kits, the ones we use are the Satchler and Arri kits. The Arris are the more powerful lights which we use to illuminate the green screen curtain. The Satchlers are smaller lights which we use to light the presenters.
Here is a very simple layout of how we try to set up the gallery:
Needless to say, sometimes we may have to change the set-up for individuals for height etc, but only slightly.
In the first week we were still tinkering with how we were going to set them up. He had them in (roughly) the right kind of positions but we think the main light was to bright, as you can see here:
This is probably the best lighting we've had. There are still some shadows but those are pretty unavoidable and if you look, you can see them on the BBC and ITV presenters etc.
Here, the side of Aarran's face is being shadowed by the guest's body.
The guest's face is almost fully in shadow as we couldn't point any lights into his face without blinding him.
Even when looking forward, Rachel is mostly in shadow, since the lights were still set up for the guest looking to the side.
It might be best if we keep experimenting with lights as we go, until we find a good solution, at which point I'll update my blog with a floor plan and description (perhaps, actively changing the lighting setup between during VTs. For the meantime, if we have a guest in the studio we should maybe have the house lights on, as well as some of our other overheads, and satchlers/arris etc. This may risk under-eye shadow but, hopefully it will provide more light than we could otherwise plan for.
One extra issue we've found with using lighting, is that sometimes the arris lighting the green screen reflects green light onto the desk. The desk being a shiny surface means this happens quite easily. We've found that using diffusers can help this, but we've also considered having some kind of, for all intents and purposes, tablecloth for the desk.
------------------------------------
Since writing this piece, one of our bulletins had the best lighting for the news presenter that we've had:
As you can see we have virtually no shadow. For this, we moved the Satchlers to eye level, and added a few diffusers to try and stop there being too much brightness. The only problem we had was once we moved to the sports presenter:
As you can see, the face is too brightly lit, yet she didn't complain of being at all blinded by the lights. We think that we had one of the overhead lights directly on her. This is easy to remedy by simply turning down the light slightly.
More often than not we were left with something approaching this:
 |
| Notice the green halo around Tom |
Here is a very simple layout of how we try to set up the gallery:
 |
| (Redhead=Arri) |
In the first week we were still tinkering with how we were going to set them up. He had them in (roughly) the right kind of positions but we think the main light was to bright, as you can see here:
 |
| The left side of her face is noticeably brighter than the other |
To remedy this next week we bought some diffusers from the loan counter to bring down the intensity of the main light.
 |
The main problem we came across when filming 21/3/12 was the setup we'd settled on, wouldn't work, as Aarran would be talking to the in studio guest. This meant they would both be looking along the desk towards each other, resulting in them looking directly into the side satchlers. Effectively blinding them. To attempt to remedy this we moved the satchlers further away and added extra diffusers to them and several more of the lights. This worked from the point of the presenters, but not from the cameras POV:
The guest's face is almost fully in shadow as we couldn't point any lights into his face without blinding him.
Even when looking forward, Rachel is mostly in shadow, since the lights were still set up for the guest looking to the side.
It might be best if we keep experimenting with lights as we go, until we find a good solution, at which point I'll update my blog with a floor plan and description (perhaps, actively changing the lighting setup between during VTs. For the meantime, if we have a guest in the studio we should maybe have the house lights on, as well as some of our other overheads, and satchlers/arris etc. This may risk under-eye shadow but, hopefully it will provide more light than we could otherwise plan for.
One extra issue we've found with using lighting, is that sometimes the arris lighting the green screen reflects green light onto the desk. The desk being a shiny surface means this happens quite easily. We've found that using diffusers can help this, but we've also considered having some kind of, for all intents and purposes, tablecloth for the desk.
------------------------------------
Since writing this piece, one of our bulletins had the best lighting for the news presenter that we've had:
Friday 23 March 2012
Seminar paper - Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-philosophicus
Wittgenstein (W) was born in Vienna in 1889, into a large and wealthy family. After being home schooled until he was 14 he attended Realshule at Linz, with contemporaries such as Adolf Hitler.
W read Russell’s Principles of mathematics, and through doing so, became acquainted with Frege, whom he eventually met, and following his advice, studied at Cambridge under Russell.
After living a solitary life in Norway, he enlisted for the Austrian artillery after the war broke out in 1914. During his time in the military, he devised a series of philosophical thoughts, which, during his imprisonment, he turned into his only philosophical book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The book was published in Germany in 1921, and shortly afterwards in England, translated into English, with an introduction by Russell.
W’s book was the start of a type of rational thinking called logical positivism, greatly thought of amongst members of the Vienna circle, which I will return to later.
Kenny, in Philosophy in the Modern World calls Tractacus “short, beautiful, and cryptic.” It is written, not so much as a philosophical argument or theory, but simply as a series of statements. It is broken up into seven, short, declarative chapters, most of which are accompanied by a large number of footnotes. Chapter one, for example, states that: “The world, is all that is the case.” This is a relatively simple idea, that can be followed easily in terms of a cursory reading, but for any kind of logic to apply to it, we have to know what is meant by “the case.” chapter one, for example, is followed by several footnotes, including:
1.1: The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11: The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12: For the totality of facts determines what is the case and whatever is not the case.
Etc.
The footnotes are used to expand each idea, attempting to explain each opening statement. But in most cases the additional footnotes require more explanation themselves, this can result in there being over 50 footnotes, as there are for chapter three, each trying to explain the assertion that “a logical picture of facts is a thought” and often requiring that when a footnote explains another, it may not explain the assertion, so much as create more questions surrounding it. For example
3.12: I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional sign. And a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.
W is then forced to further explain his definition of a proposition, as without being truly defined, there can be no true logic.
3.13 A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense, but does contain the possibility of expressing it (The content of a proposition means the content of a proposition that has sense.) A proposition contains the form but not the content, of its sense.
Clearly this has not fully explained what he means, and is followed by further and further explanation, resulting in the aforementioned 50 plus statements, which are then followed by further chapters designed to help explain the previous ones.
Chapter three, ends with:
3.5: A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.
Chapter four picks up from this, and starts to explain what a thought is (A proposition with a sense). And chapter five discusses what proposition is. Chapter six moves somewhat away from the language side and begins to look at mathematics and logic as a way to explain a proposition:
6: The general form of a truth function if [p, E, N (E)]. this is the general form of a proposition
In this, P stands for all atomic propositions, E stands for any subset of propositions, and N stands for the negation of all propositions making up E.
Supposedly this says the same as a theorem produced by Henry Sheffer, that a logical sentence can be derived from a series of NAND operations concerning the totality of atomic propositions (a NAND operation being a logical operation on two logical values, which produces a value of true, if at least one of the prepositions is false)
Later in chapter six, W changes tack somewhat. Having spent most of the book attempting detailed definitions and explanations on almost everything he has discussed, he claims that there can be no proposition of ethics, as: “propositions can explain nothing that is higher.” he says that there is no way to put ethics into words, they are “transcendental” there appears to be some disagreement here as to what exactly W means by this. It is possible that logical positivists would argue against his assertion that any attempt to discuss them a meaningless endeavour. A logical positivist may argue that anything can be discussed can be defined. In “The new Wittgenstein” it is argued that W means, in a similar fashion to Kant, that if ethics are used in empirical sciences, they are destroyed. And they are also destroyed if attempted to use with synthetic, a priori judgements.
W begins to veer toward religious considerations. He talks of will, and its relation to ethics; as well as death, and what happens to the world after it: “…at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.” “death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”
It seems to me that in the final few statements of chapter six, W has given up any attempt at explaining each of his statements. It appears more as if he is simply jotting down thoughts that he cannot explain: “How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does reveal himself in the world.” By “higher” he may mean God, in which case he is saying that God does not care about anything that happens in the world. This may explain the strange way the book ends. After explaining in great detail, his version of, essentially, how to think. He says firstly that there are things that cannot be explained, and that these are “mystical.” and then, that once you fully understand what he means, you will see that it is all senseless “He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.”
He ends his book with the bizarre chapter that consists of the single line: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Perhaps he is saying that he has covered everything of importance and nothing else is worth speaking of. Or that, once recognising that everything he has said, is senseless, there is no reason to talk about it anymore.
The Vienna circle was a group that followed much from W. they had a shared attitude of philosophy that revolved around what became referred to as logical positivism. Taken from Tractatus they asserted that all knowledge should be set to a series of rules using a language of science and rational reconstruction which replaced ordinary language with much better suited equivalencies. They claimed that logic and mathematics, along with science, were the universe of meaningful judgements, and nothing else was of any relevance, ethics, aesthetics etc. The influence of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle (coming from Tractatus), has spread across the world due to eminent philosophers having dispersed as a result of the second world war. The resulting work from those of the circle has contributed to advances in language (Ayer) as well as redefining the scientific method, with the verification principle which ensured a statement could either be analytic or capable of being verified. This was later discredited with falsification, which demands that to be scientific, a hypothesis must be able to be contradicted e.g. all swans are white, can be falsified as it is possible to find a swan which is not white.
Despite the apparent insistence by W that logical positivism was a misreading of his book, it is undeniable that the effect his book has been used as a focal point for many of the great jumps in philosophy and science of the twentieth century.
W read Russell’s Principles of mathematics, and through doing so, became acquainted with Frege, whom he eventually met, and following his advice, studied at Cambridge under Russell.
After living a solitary life in Norway, he enlisted for the Austrian artillery after the war broke out in 1914. During his time in the military, he devised a series of philosophical thoughts, which, during his imprisonment, he turned into his only philosophical book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The book was published in Germany in 1921, and shortly afterwards in England, translated into English, with an introduction by Russell.
W’s book was the start of a type of rational thinking called logical positivism, greatly thought of amongst members of the Vienna circle, which I will return to later.
Kenny, in Philosophy in the Modern World calls Tractacus “short, beautiful, and cryptic.” It is written, not so much as a philosophical argument or theory, but simply as a series of statements. It is broken up into seven, short, declarative chapters, most of which are accompanied by a large number of footnotes. Chapter one, for example, states that: “The world, is all that is the case.” This is a relatively simple idea, that can be followed easily in terms of a cursory reading, but for any kind of logic to apply to it, we have to know what is meant by “the case.” chapter one, for example, is followed by several footnotes, including:
1.1: The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11: The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12: For the totality of facts determines what is the case and whatever is not the case.
Etc.
The footnotes are used to expand each idea, attempting to explain each opening statement. But in most cases the additional footnotes require more explanation themselves, this can result in there being over 50 footnotes, as there are for chapter three, each trying to explain the assertion that “a logical picture of facts is a thought” and often requiring that when a footnote explains another, it may not explain the assertion, so much as create more questions surrounding it. For example
3.12: I call the sign with which we express a thought a propositional sign. And a proposition is a propositional sign in its projective relation to the world.
W is then forced to further explain his definition of a proposition, as without being truly defined, there can be no true logic.
3.13 A proposition, therefore, does not actually contain its sense, but does contain the possibility of expressing it (The content of a proposition means the content of a proposition that has sense.) A proposition contains the form but not the content, of its sense.
Clearly this has not fully explained what he means, and is followed by further and further explanation, resulting in the aforementioned 50 plus statements, which are then followed by further chapters designed to help explain the previous ones.
Chapter three, ends with:
3.5: A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought.
Chapter four picks up from this, and starts to explain what a thought is (A proposition with a sense). And chapter five discusses what proposition is. Chapter six moves somewhat away from the language side and begins to look at mathematics and logic as a way to explain a proposition:
6: The general form of a truth function if [p, E, N (E)]. this is the general form of a proposition
In this, P stands for all atomic propositions, E stands for any subset of propositions, and N stands for the negation of all propositions making up E.
Supposedly this says the same as a theorem produced by Henry Sheffer, that a logical sentence can be derived from a series of NAND operations concerning the totality of atomic propositions (a NAND operation being a logical operation on two logical values, which produces a value of true, if at least one of the prepositions is false)
Later in chapter six, W changes tack somewhat. Having spent most of the book attempting detailed definitions and explanations on almost everything he has discussed, he claims that there can be no proposition of ethics, as: “propositions can explain nothing that is higher.” he says that there is no way to put ethics into words, they are “transcendental” there appears to be some disagreement here as to what exactly W means by this. It is possible that logical positivists would argue against his assertion that any attempt to discuss them a meaningless endeavour. A logical positivist may argue that anything can be discussed can be defined. In “The new Wittgenstein” it is argued that W means, in a similar fashion to Kant, that if ethics are used in empirical sciences, they are destroyed. And they are also destroyed if attempted to use with synthetic, a priori judgements.
W begins to veer toward religious considerations. He talks of will, and its relation to ethics; as well as death, and what happens to the world after it: “…at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.” “death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”
It seems to me that in the final few statements of chapter six, W has given up any attempt at explaining each of his statements. It appears more as if he is simply jotting down thoughts that he cannot explain: “How things are in the world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher. God does reveal himself in the world.” By “higher” he may mean God, in which case he is saying that God does not care about anything that happens in the world. This may explain the strange way the book ends. After explaining in great detail, his version of, essentially, how to think. He says firstly that there are things that cannot be explained, and that these are “mystical.” and then, that once you fully understand what he means, you will see that it is all senseless “He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.”
He ends his book with the bizarre chapter that consists of the single line: “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Perhaps he is saying that he has covered everything of importance and nothing else is worth speaking of. Or that, once recognising that everything he has said, is senseless, there is no reason to talk about it anymore.
The Vienna circle was a group that followed much from W. they had a shared attitude of philosophy that revolved around what became referred to as logical positivism. Taken from Tractatus they asserted that all knowledge should be set to a series of rules using a language of science and rational reconstruction which replaced ordinary language with much better suited equivalencies. They claimed that logic and mathematics, along with science, were the universe of meaningful judgements, and nothing else was of any relevance, ethics, aesthetics etc. The influence of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle (coming from Tractatus), has spread across the world due to eminent philosophers having dispersed as a result of the second world war. The resulting work from those of the circle has contributed to advances in language (Ayer) as well as redefining the scientific method, with the verification principle which ensured a statement could either be analytic or capable of being verified. This was later discredited with falsification, which demands that to be scientific, a hypothesis must be able to be contradicted e.g. all swans are white, can be falsified as it is possible to find a swan which is not white.
Despite the apparent insistence by W that logical positivism was a misreading of his book, it is undeniable that the effect his book has been used as a focal point for many of the great jumps in philosophy and science of the twentieth century.
WINOL bulletin 21/3/12
It was a pretty ambitious week for everyone in this bulletin. We haven’t attempted a live OB using Skype since Tom’s last term. Which is to say that no one on production had much of an idea of how to go about doing it.
Needless to say we tried to get set up as early as possible, which wasn’t helped by neither Dave nor Corin being around too help us out. We eventually found Stu in Fred Wheeler building who showed us the ropes and I’m now fairly confident we can set up a Skype call input without any assistance. We also planed on having a test run as early as possible with Lou in the field. As early as possible meant it was at about 2pm which, when we’re thinking we’ll be needing to go live with Brine at about half past wasn’t great in terms of troubleshooting.
As time went on and the Skype calls with Lou kept cutting out, it was decided that we wouldn’t risk an attempt at a live call. Instead we set up a phone line in the radio suite and captured Brine answering a couple of questions. This was then overlaid with a screen cap of Brine from a previous bulletin. The thing to learn from our first real attempt at a Skype call was that whoever is in the field needs to prepare more. If 3G won’t provide enough of a signal to keep a connection, try and find somewhere that can. This essentially comes down to prior planning, leaving a bit earlier etc. I’m not saying Lou did anything wrong with this, we were all a bit unsure of what to do and now we have a much better idea for next time.
As it was, we got the makings of a package from Lou over Youtube and pieced it together in the Newsroom, which was fine, the sound quality could have been better, but I understand there were restrictions with camera quality. This was then followed by our phone call with Brine, and then back into the studio with Chris Pines, who was to provide our balance. I think most of this has been summed up already, but to generalise: we have to better prepare our guests for what they’ll be able to do/say etc. Pines clearly thought he was going to have more time than we gave him, we could maybe have given him more but we would have to be as close as possible to the amount of time we gave Brine; otherwise we would have been imbalanced.
From a technical standpoint, this week was pretty successful, the main onscreen issue we had was a miscommunication between director and vision mixer, so we ended up with a rather put out looking Pines as we panned over to Aarran. This is fixable in post production, and was only down to the usual lack of practice. Other than that, we were lacking a credit sequence and had to stitch it on in PP, I understand that the Mac crashed as it was being made and as such wasn’t put in in time. It shouldn’t have been left that late to begin with and that’s my fault as I usually put it together, but I was distracted with OB shenanigans. I might have to delegate the credit sequence to someone else to try and avoid this happening again.
But other that the above and a couple of hiccups that occurred (vis a vis Dan's face and a drop in sound at the end) during PP; this bulletin was pretty smooth. Headlines are looking much better - there was a bit of a mix-up with what was being put into the headlines script, so next week, whoever is writing the script should check with me or Tom as to the running order. Other than that, well done everyone in the gallery and studio, and thanks to all the non-production people that continue to lend a hand, it is very much appreciated.
Only two more bulletins to go!
Power trip over.
Monday 19 March 2012
WINOL Bulletin 14/3/12
Well, this week, was not exactly our best effort so far, I thinks that's a fair statement to make. For the first time since our practice runs we overshot the 3 oclock deadline, which, let's face it, is never going to be a good thing. Obviously it was technical trouble that was the main reason it went a little tits-up: sarah's radio mic stopped being picked up, it wasn't something we've seen before as the soundboard was still showing her levels, we just weren't hearing it. As the guest editor Tom Evans said, this could have been relatively easily fixed if we just had spares ready to go. Therefore we will from now on have spares of anything we can, ready in the studio. Whilst this was the main reason we delayed, in the spare ten minutes we had, there was an amazing amount of other problems to try and fix. Not having a credit sequence being a major one, but for the most part, we had no real practice time and as a result, we were a bit stuffed in terms of simple confidence.
I keep saying it but much of it doesn't seem to get through. I need people to take headlines much more seriously than they currently are. If headlines come in late (be it vt or script) then the entire bulletin gets delayed, as we can't start practicing until they're done. There was a little confusion on Wednesday for Hettie's as we were trying to put Stephen Fry in it and there was a bit of miscommunication. When we come to. Having the written headlines, bear in mind, if you're writing them that they have to match the pictures. Ergo, if you're writing the headlines then you have to see what the pictures are. Since we were using a picture of Stephen Fry, we had to reference that. I know that George came up with a great headline, but it didn't fit with what we were going to have on screen so we couldn't use it. It's a bitch when that happens, but you have to just deal with it and keep going.
To summarise this part: headlines are a lot more important than many of you seem to realise, they advertise the entire bulletin and the sooner we get them done, the better the quality of the overall show. Basically, get headlines done as soon as you know what you want to go in them, the rest of your package can wait. We won't need your package until at least an hour after we've gotten your headline clip so I don't want to hear that you have to do something else first. Headlines first. Package second.
The general rule for scripting is that whoever is presenting, should write it, since this can change every week, I want to remind whoever it may end up being, that we want a script for the auto cue, long before the paper script. The auto cue script cannot have the boxes and grids etc that the paper one does, as they do not work on the auto cue. It also has to be saved as a 95.doc (I think. If in doubt, ask Tom) as the auto cue laptop is a relic from a past age. This week after we'd filmed the headlines we were sat around in the studio for about 20 minutes waiting for a script, which isn't really good enough.
As a whole the packages are much better from the gallery's point of view, more and more often we're getting natsot at the start and end of them, helping greatly with vision mixing etc. So great job on that, keep it up.
After I called our 10 minute delay and we fixed our audio issue, we had another one when we started in using the wrong mic. This was again, a slight miscommunication between myself and Ali and was a result of the previous technical error. Essentially, whilst Ali was getting us a new mic, we swapped George's mic to Sarah and then didn't tell Ali afterward, George then receiving the new mic. Is resulted in understandable confusion on his part when he put up the new mic, thinking it would be Sarah's. A silly mistake, and one that can easily be avoided in future as we'll already have spares to hand.
After this we restarted and had a pretty much flawless run. The only real mistake being that the OOV on NUS strikes wasn't queued and so we just had the camera on Sarah talking. Not the end of the world really as it still looked fine. Other than that, the credits could have been better timed, but that was down to us not having much practice time, and having better things to practice when we did have some. So, technical issues aside, this week was a pretty strong performance for production. We can only work with the time we're given, and all things considered the bulletin looks pretty good and with only minor post production jiggery pokery (especially compared to the previous week's bulletin).
Good job guys, let's keep it up for the last few weeks!
Power trip over.
Tuesday 28 February 2012
WINOL Bulletin 22/2/12 Overview
This is a slightly belated review of our latest bulletin from a production point of view.
Our main problem this week was not getting the packages early, and not getting them into the gallery in good time. There’s obviously only so much we can do about when we’re given the packages. But there was far too much of a kerfuffle with getting them into the gallery. At one point I think there were four or five HDDs/ USB drives with all of the packages on. For next week, we’ll set one HDD to have the packages, and as soon as they get into the gallery they have to be put onto the desktop so that the HDD can be taken out again.
The OB helped communicate with the newsroom somewhat, though the messages tended to be a little garbled. It may be worth simply making sure someone is near to it but not necessarily sitting on it. And also if, there is a specific person the gallery wants to talk to, simply put them on. No more second hand conversations.
The filming went pretty smoothly in my opinion, we had a couple of hiccups from missed timings and changing sound levels, but they weren’t too bad. The credits at the end having no sound as my fault as I just forgot to add it.
There was a bit of a glitch in the headlines where Hettie pronounced “Winchester” in a rushed way. We should have spotted that before that point and dealt with it. Somehow we all missed it and it got cleared up in post-production.
Overall, probably our best bulletin so far, we had a fair amount of practice time which allowed us to get to grips with the VTs and allow the presenters some breathing space.
This Wednesday, I think we can do the best so far. I can’t stress how much we want headlines to come in long before packages. Both early would be great, but the earlier we can get the headlines done, the sooner we can start practicing the main bulletin.
Let’s make this a leap year to remember!
Power trip over.
Our main problem this week was not getting the packages early, and not getting them into the gallery in good time. There’s obviously only so much we can do about when we’re given the packages. But there was far too much of a kerfuffle with getting them into the gallery. At one point I think there were four or five HDDs/ USB drives with all of the packages on. For next week, we’ll set one HDD to have the packages, and as soon as they get into the gallery they have to be put onto the desktop so that the HDD can be taken out again.
The OB helped communicate with the newsroom somewhat, though the messages tended to be a little garbled. It may be worth simply making sure someone is near to it but not necessarily sitting on it. And also if, there is a specific person the gallery wants to talk to, simply put them on. No more second hand conversations.
The filming went pretty smoothly in my opinion, we had a couple of hiccups from missed timings and changing sound levels, but they weren’t too bad. The credits at the end having no sound as my fault as I just forgot to add it.
There was a bit of a glitch in the headlines where Hettie pronounced “Winchester” in a rushed way. We should have spotted that before that point and dealt with it. Somehow we all missed it and it got cleared up in post-production.
Overall, probably our best bulletin so far, we had a fair amount of practice time which allowed us to get to grips with the VTs and allow the presenters some breathing space.
This Wednesday, I think we can do the best so far. I can’t stress how much we want headlines to come in long before packages. Both early would be great, but the earlier we can get the headlines done, the sooner we can start practicing the main bulletin.
Let’s make this a leap year to remember!
Power trip over.
Thursday 16 February 2012
WINOL Bulletin 15/2/12 - What went right, where we went wrong, and why is this title unnecessarily long? That rhymed.
Well overall I think this weeks bulletin was a pretty convincing affair, well done to everyone for performing well under the scrutiny of the dreaded BJTC.
However, from my side of things there were definite wrinkles in the system that we need to iron out. Most importantly we had major issues with scripting, this was brought up somewhat in the debrief but I'll go over the problems again because I like the sound of my own typing: Essentially, it's taking too long, and more often than not, the scriptwriters don't know enough about the packages. what I think we're going to try and do is make sure that the reporters write links (where possible) on tuesday, maybe with a summary of the story, so that we don't have to back and forth all the time.
The biggest scripting problem we had was in the headlines. Captions not matching what's being said etc. Plus it took so long to write the headlines that we were behind on getting them filmed.
More stuff for the reporters, make sure that you're packages have a second or two at the start and end of your piece. If we don't have that then it makes it very difficult to vision mix smoothly. For an example of this, check out the start of Lou's piece, as well as Flick's. Flick, I know you tried to get one in and thanks for that, but it has to be done when you're filming you're PTC/ voiceover. That said, some of the problem on Flick's was a slight mistiming on the gallery's part (We have to make sure that the VT is rolling before we change inputs or we're left with an awkward freeze, again, check out the start of Flick's :P)
Thank you to everyone in the gallery and studio for helping out, the only real problem we had once we got going, was in sound, we have to make sure that we kill the mics when a VT is on. I know it only happened because there was confusion with the headline VT so that shouldn't happen if we have more practice time (fingers crossed for next week!).
Thank you to Ali for redoing the straps, they look much tidier now. Hopefully soon we can get some fancy ones made up with bevels edges and posh stuff like that. But as it stands, they are a huge improvements.
For anyone I haven't moaned to yet I was in tab9 until about 8pm on Wednesday because we were having so many issues uploading it. Some is down to our Macs being old and broken* and some down the file somehow ending up as being 3.3 gig. Part of that may have been me making a mistake somewhere in the post production process, but I think we'll need to seriously consider setting bar on how long the bulletin can be. I'll bring this up with Tom and Lee on Monday.
And finally we need to try and keep the WINOL2012 twitter feed free from random chat and what is essentially patting ourselves on the back which looks bad from a viewer's POV.
I think that's everything, if not I'll mention it on Monday.
Power trip over.
****In an effort to fix our broken "technology", on Monday (20/2/12) we will be doing a systematic cleanup of all the Mac desktops (with certain exceptions). Anything saved on them at that time will be deleted so if there's anything you want to save, get it onto a hard-drive. You can book them out for a month at a time and keep renewing them so there's no excuse.
However, from my side of things there were definite wrinkles in the system that we need to iron out. Most importantly we had major issues with scripting, this was brought up somewhat in the debrief but I'll go over the problems again because I like the sound of my own typing: Essentially, it's taking too long, and more often than not, the scriptwriters don't know enough about the packages. what I think we're going to try and do is make sure that the reporters write links (where possible) on tuesday, maybe with a summary of the story, so that we don't have to back and forth all the time.
The biggest scripting problem we had was in the headlines. Captions not matching what's being said etc. Plus it took so long to write the headlines that we were behind on getting them filmed.
More stuff for the reporters, make sure that you're packages have a second or two at the start and end of your piece. If we don't have that then it makes it very difficult to vision mix smoothly. For an example of this, check out the start of Lou's piece, as well as Flick's. Flick, I know you tried to get one in and thanks for that, but it has to be done when you're filming you're PTC/ voiceover. That said, some of the problem on Flick's was a slight mistiming on the gallery's part (We have to make sure that the VT is rolling before we change inputs or we're left with an awkward freeze, again, check out the start of Flick's :P)
Thank you to everyone in the gallery and studio for helping out, the only real problem we had once we got going, was in sound, we have to make sure that we kill the mics when a VT is on. I know it only happened because there was confusion with the headline VT so that shouldn't happen if we have more practice time (fingers crossed for next week!).
Thank you to Ali for redoing the straps, they look much tidier now. Hopefully soon we can get some fancy ones made up with bevels edges and posh stuff like that. But as it stands, they are a huge improvements.
For anyone I haven't moaned to yet I was in tab9 until about 8pm on Wednesday because we were having so many issues uploading it. Some is down to our Macs being old and broken* and some down the file somehow ending up as being 3.3 gig. Part of that may have been me making a mistake somewhere in the post production process, but I think we'll need to seriously consider setting bar on how long the bulletin can be. I'll bring this up with Tom and Lee on Monday.
And finally we need to try and keep the WINOL2012 twitter feed free from random chat and what is essentially patting ourselves on the back which looks bad from a viewer's POV.
I think that's everything, if not I'll mention it on Monday.
Power trip over.
****In an effort to fix our broken "technology", on Monday (20/2/12) we will be doing a systematic cleanup of all the Mac desktops (with certain exceptions). Anything saved on them at that time will be deleted so if there's anything you want to save, get it onto a hard-drive. You can book them out for a month at a time and keep renewing them so there's no excuse.
Saturday 11 February 2012
8/2/12 Bulletin Feedback - Don't You Talkback to me!
Okay, looking at the debrief of our last bulletin with Mike Smartt as our guest editor, we were giving a pretty thorough look at each of our stories.
Starting at the top, Eddie’s coverage of the Harry Redknapp trial was a great achievement and gave WINOL something more of a national look to it so well done Eddie and Nathan for getting that sorted out. It’s possible that the piece to camera was a touch rushed and somewhat unnecessary I.e. “I’m here at Southwark crown court…” but I think considering everything it was a triumph. From the production side of things, it’s unlucky that the footage was stretched off the screen. I think this was down to the footage being MP4 instead of a .MOV. Also, it’s worth remembering that we borrowed sound from (ITV?) for the Redknapp clips, something that is perfectly allowed and could be very helpful should we want to do something similar again.
The Sea City, housing, sport and giraffe packages were all very well put together and in good time. The Brine piece was, according to Mike Smartt not really a story, and although it did have a pretty good quote “Education, it’s not damn good enough” he has a point, Tory has a crack at Labour isn’t anything new, and in future we should be sure that we have something definitively newsworthy. We’ve got the contacts, so lets wring ‘em dry.
I’m not going to go into too much detail on each packeage as Tom has already been through this on his blog. I will say that most of you are becoming much more confident with editing and this can only improve. Everyone was really excellent in terms of meeting the Tuesday deadline and if we can keep this up every week, we’ll be putting the BBC to shame! Obviously some stories were still going on the Wednesday, but only really because others had fallen through or extra balance is needed. This is exactly why we ask for them to be in on Tuesday. It allows extra wiggle room without the whole bulletin collapsing. So don’t worry if that’s the case. If however you have all of you’re footage together on Tuesday, there’s no reason it can’t be done before Wednesday.
For the production team, our major issue was the script. It took far too long to get a script together, both for the autocue, and hard copies. This should be easy to take care of as long as we can come up with a system for producing them. As a last resort back-up I may start using my iPad as a script for the presenters to use, so that they can practice without having to wait on file conversions, printing etc.
I liked that most of the packages had straps by Tuesday, whilst it is a very simple thing to make it saves us that little bit extra time on Wednesday. On the same vein, we have to make absolutely sure that each strap is correct, we had a close shave on Wednesday when we had a misspelled headline strap which got past us until just before we filmed the headlines. Not acceptable, I understand it was only human error, but we’re better than that.
Our talkback also conked out halfway through the bulletin, most likely because of dead batteries, so that’s a pretty simple fix, we just have to be sure to check.
Very well done to Nicola for directing you‘re definitely getting into the swing of it, one thing I’d suggest is to make sure that you are constantly talking to everyone in the gallery and in the studio. Nothing will, or should, happen without you’re telling them.
Thanks very much to Sean for helping out two weeks running, you’re definitely becoming a real asset and hopefully we can find more interesting roles for you than babysitting a camera in a freezing studio!
Sam had a lot of patience with what was an annoying headline to film, from a sound point of view, so thanks for being a good sport. And no problems at all during the bulletin.
Ali did well in filling in several roles during the day which I know was very stressful, but honestly you need to calm down a little as you can get very flustered. Sometimes just take a step back to think things through.
All in all well done to everyone and thanks for all of you’re help, especially Graham, Dan and George for stepping in to fill in spare roles despite already having a hectic day.
Oh and cheers Henry. As with last week you were really useful in simply being there to solve various problems during the day.
I really hope I haven’t forgotten anybody…
Oh well. Power trip over.
Wednesday 8 February 2012
Long Lost WINOL Games!!
I was rooting through the corpse of a bandit when I found a strange key, this key led me to a Dwemer artifact called an "External Hard-drive" in which there resided an episode of WINOL Games thought lost foerver. Our heroes, Ewan and Graham play Skyrim... with a twist.
Monday 6 February 2012
Post Bulletin Malaise - 1/2/12
Okay it's been about three and a half hours since we were supposed to start our first real bulletin of the new order. I say "supposed to"because we missed our three o'clock deadline and due to a variety of difficulties, we didn't get going until 10 minutes or so later. but let's start with the basics, what went wrong before...
Well firstly I think it;s obvious and fair to say that, as a group, we've never produced a bulletin before (at least not from top to bottom), and despite mine (Production Editor) and Tom's (News Editor) decision to make Tuesday evening the deadline for packages (with the exception of stories that needed interviews etc on Wednesday), there were several unfinished packages that, altogether, held up the bulletin. think of it like a car on the motorway, the car at the front of a long line of other cars, stops and the car behind him brakes as does the car behind him, until the guy at the back ends up stopping for 25 minutes as a result of everyone else's accumulated stop time. I'm not going to say that every late package was a diabolical error on the author's part, it's just that every little thing builds up. Frankly if the same types of problems occur again, then the guilty packages will not be put into the bulletin. We just can't wait for them every week.
The biggest setback we had was that we didn't have the time for a full run-through of the bulletin. That is really terrible and means we have issues such as incorrect autocue script, and a general lack of practice for the presenters. If we can get the packages in on Tuesday, we can get the straplines done quickly, and then we can get the headlines done as early as possible. which means more practice, and a better end product.
-------------------
As of the Monday debrief, extra points to consider have come up.
Firstly the opening sequence will need to be replaced/ redone, as done the voice of god clip. Also everyone will need to doublecheck the grammar of their scripts and written pieces most importantly when it comes to subject-verb agreement (especially the 'case' of a phrase) and using collective nouns. There were also some black holes in the bulletin which I think were down to miss-timings of the VT and Vision Mixer machines. However they should have been clipped out in post production which was my mistake for not seeing them.
From a news package side. We apparently did not have consent for some of our clips, as consent cannot be given when the subject is drunk. Also, the was a point when someone appeared to give a rude gesture (involving certain fingers), which was very bad. In reality it was not a rude gesture, but if an audience member thinks it is, then we're going to look bad.
The best thing to do at this point is learn from our mistakes, and be better. Our bulletin on the 8th February will be our first with a guest editor judging us, and we can't afford to look bad.
Let's step up our game and crack on this week.
Power trip over.
Well firstly I think it;s obvious and fair to say that, as a group, we've never produced a bulletin before (at least not from top to bottom), and despite mine (Production Editor) and Tom's (News Editor) decision to make Tuesday evening the deadline for packages (with the exception of stories that needed interviews etc on Wednesday), there were several unfinished packages that, altogether, held up the bulletin. think of it like a car on the motorway, the car at the front of a long line of other cars, stops and the car behind him brakes as does the car behind him, until the guy at the back ends up stopping for 25 minutes as a result of everyone else's accumulated stop time. I'm not going to say that every late package was a diabolical error on the author's part, it's just that every little thing builds up. Frankly if the same types of problems occur again, then the guilty packages will not be put into the bulletin. We just can't wait for them every week.
The biggest setback we had was that we didn't have the time for a full run-through of the bulletin. That is really terrible and means we have issues such as incorrect autocue script, and a general lack of practice for the presenters. If we can get the packages in on Tuesday, we can get the straplines done quickly, and then we can get the headlines done as early as possible. which means more practice, and a better end product.
-------------------
As of the Monday debrief, extra points to consider have come up.
Firstly the opening sequence will need to be replaced/ redone, as done the voice of god clip. Also everyone will need to doublecheck the grammar of their scripts and written pieces most importantly when it comes to subject-verb agreement (especially the 'case' of a phrase) and using collective nouns. There were also some black holes in the bulletin which I think were down to miss-timings of the VT and Vision Mixer machines. However they should have been clipped out in post production which was my mistake for not seeing them.
From a news package side. We apparently did not have consent for some of our clips, as consent cannot be given when the subject is drunk. Also, the was a point when someone appeared to give a rude gesture (involving certain fingers), which was very bad. In reality it was not a rude gesture, but if an audience member thinks it is, then we're going to look bad.
The best thing to do at this point is learn from our mistakes, and be better. Our bulletin on the 8th February will be our first with a guest editor judging us, and we can't afford to look bad.
Let's step up our game and crack on this week.
Power trip over.
Thursday 26 January 2012
Production Post - Big Changes Are Afoot!
Okay this is my first official blog post as the latest production editor of WINOL. I'm essentially responding to our first effort at making a bulletin, which was pretty disastrous. However this is excellent as we now how a much greater idea of how to not be disastrous next week (when, come whatever may, we will be going out live).
Perhaps the biggest change will be the decision to only have one presenter for the entire bulletin, as opposed to previously having one for news and one for sport. Part of this is down to some of my own concerns about how it may look odd once we've introduced our “Voice of God” element. But as well as this, it will be much easier to film as we wont have to worry too much about multiple camera angles and potentially crap talkback. During our dummy-run, we attempted using two reporters with the stories alternating between them. This was a complete balls up and, for the time being, we won't even be considering this. Once we become more adept as a production team, we can look to branching out and being a little more adventurous.
Other problems can be just as easy to prevent, simple things like checking the equipment we'll be using as soon as we get into the studio (hopefully about 9am on bulletin days) to avoid delays later on in the day.
I've made a mock up of a potential new opening graphic which you can look at here.
I'm aware of how crap it looks, obviously it will be made to higher standards for an actual bulletin.
I'm aware of how crap it looks, obviously it will be made to higher standards for an actual bulletin.
As well as a new graphic sequence, I'd quite like to make a new theme for the bulletin. The current one works well enough, but it is proving tricky to edit, ideally I think we'd need something with much more of a consistent bed for the headlines. If anyone has any skill in music tech, or knows anyone who does, feel free to make up a sample, if it's good enough we can use, and credit it.
For the time being we'll probably keep graham on as our Voice of God but obviously we may need to rerecord it for a new script line, or if the presenter changes etc. If so, simply put it in garageband and mix it with voice reflection, turning off the track echo, and the chorus.
If it's possible with our tech, I'd like to try and use a moving green screen background, possibly the graphic used for the very first part of the above sequence (without the pictures obviously), so this is something else to look into.
I also think we need new straplines as the current ones don't really look professional, if something can be made using Fireworks, this would be perfect.
Also we'll need to WINOL logo (again made up with fireworks) to use in the sting graphics with the spinning globe between each headline.
My last point is aimed at the news reporters and news editor. I think that there's no reason packages can't be done on tuesdays (the exception being if you have an interview etc. on the wednesday). I'll have to talk with Tom about this. But last term the production team spent far too much time chasing stories and headlines.
Okay power trip over.
Cheers everyone.
EDIT: WE MAY NOT IN FACT BE GOING LIVE NEXT WEEK. BUT LET'S JUST ASSUME WE ARE.
EDIT: WE MAY NOT IN FACT BE GOING LIVE NEXT WEEK. BUT LET'S JUST ASSUME WE ARE.
Wednesday 25 January 2012
News Writing Practice - We may have made a booboo....
As part of a BBC writing test, we had to write an OOV of a fictional news story in real time, as updates were coming in.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the group made a colossal cock-up, as we wrote that a member of a rock band had been arrested as it had been on commercial radio. Since we were not informed via the police, it was unconfirmed and therefore libellous. If the police had confirmed it. we would have been right to report it, only if we make sure to say that the investigation was ongoing, and if we did not create any contempt of court.
If you're curious about these writing tests check out this link and make sure not to make the same mistake!
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the group made a colossal cock-up, as we wrote that a member of a rock band had been arrested as it had been on commercial radio. Since we were not informed via the police, it was unconfirmed and therefore libellous. If the police had confirmed it. we would have been right to report it, only if we make sure to say that the investigation was ongoing, and if we did not create any contempt of court.
If you're curious about these writing tests check out this link and make sure not to make the same mistake!
Friday 20 January 2012
Television/ consumer society: Media 1920-2010
At the start of the 1920s, the availability of technology such as the radio was dependant on meeting the ‘necessary conditions’ model making it viable as a consumer product. The three parts of the ‘necessary conditions’ model (in this case, for the radio) are: Technology, and the affordability of radio sets; Demographics, having reduced costs experiences a boost to profitability of American media; Law and regulation. In the UK, the BBC was able to keep a monopoly on broadcasting rights up until the 1970s (resulting in pirate radio, most notably depicted for my generation, in the fun-time film “The Boat that Rocked.” and who says I’m not familiar with popular culture).
It is interesting to note the different paths that radio took in the UK and USA. Since the BBC had such a death grip over the airwaves of Britain, and since the BBC only dealt with “up market” content (wouldn’t want one to sully oneself now would we?) the newspapers were left alone with the popular agenda. This meant that there was no competition between the two forms of media. In the States however, there was no such monopoly as the BBC and as a result the radio was much more commercial. This resulted in the two medias competing with each other and since radio is much cheaper to set up and produce than the press, American newspapers were (for all intents and purposes) killed off by the 1950s/60s.Obviously the biggest factor in the demise of the newspaper industry was the lack of advertising in favour of the radio. Britain had no such problem (refer to BBC death-grip mentioned above).
The 1950s Keynesian based economy of Britain was currently embroiled in paying off the nation’s war debt. According to Keynesian economics it’s better to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in, as opposed to them being unemployed. At this time, there were plenty of ‘holes’ to be filled. Southampton for example.
The vast amount of government spending taking place during the post war period, resulted in a massive consumer society. Everyone was busy spending all their money, and advertisers were doing their darndest to get that money for themselves, TV being more popular than newspapers, the advertisers moved to the more fertile grounds. The money advertisers gave to commercial stations resulted in a rise of pop. Programmes such as Sit-Coms, sport, and Soap Operas. Advertisements fuelled popular programming as well as essentially brainwashing the public into buying completely useless rubbish, depending on what you believe, on a completely separate note, my purple hair dye worked really well… something else that advertisers do is follow the majority. The ‘baby boomers’ of the post war period being this majority. Whilst the Mirror trenchantly followed the parents of the boomers, the Sun (the TV paper) went after the boomers themselves and followed their particular wants at the time (for example as they’d all be in their 60s/70s, they might be more inclined towards news of health etc.). by the 1970s the Sun had essentially crushed the Mirror in circulation, and by the ‘90s, newspapers were dying, the same way they had in the USA. Here cometh the undeniable rise of the television as the most prominent media. And since America is now what popular media is based on. Anything popular is taken directly from America I.e. Rupert Murdoch.
Here endeth the (out of practice when it comes to blogging my notes) lesson.
It is interesting to note the different paths that radio took in the UK and USA. Since the BBC had such a death grip over the airwaves of Britain, and since the BBC only dealt with “up market” content (wouldn’t want one to sully oneself now would we?) the newspapers were left alone with the popular agenda. This meant that there was no competition between the two forms of media. In the States however, there was no such monopoly as the BBC and as a result the radio was much more commercial. This resulted in the two medias competing with each other and since radio is much cheaper to set up and produce than the press, American newspapers were (for all intents and purposes) killed off by the 1950s/60s.Obviously the biggest factor in the demise of the newspaper industry was the lack of advertising in favour of the radio. Britain had no such problem (refer to BBC death-grip mentioned above).
The 1950s Keynesian based economy of Britain was currently embroiled in paying off the nation’s war debt. According to Keynesian economics it’s better to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in, as opposed to them being unemployed. At this time, there were plenty of ‘holes’ to be filled. Southampton for example.
The vast amount of government spending taking place during the post war period, resulted in a massive consumer society. Everyone was busy spending all their money, and advertisers were doing their darndest to get that money for themselves, TV being more popular than newspapers, the advertisers moved to the more fertile grounds. The money advertisers gave to commercial stations resulted in a rise of pop. Programmes such as Sit-Coms, sport, and Soap Operas. Advertisements fuelled popular programming as well as essentially brainwashing the public into buying completely useless rubbish, depending on what you believe, on a completely separate note, my purple hair dye worked really well… something else that advertisers do is follow the majority. The ‘baby boomers’ of the post war period being this majority. Whilst the Mirror trenchantly followed the parents of the boomers, the Sun (the TV paper) went after the boomers themselves and followed their particular wants at the time (for example as they’d all be in their 60s/70s, they might be more inclined towards news of health etc.). by the 1970s the Sun had essentially crushed the Mirror in circulation, and by the ‘90s, newspapers were dying, the same way they had in the USA. Here cometh the undeniable rise of the television as the most prominent media. And since America is now what popular media is based on. Anything popular is taken directly from America I.e. Rupert Murdoch.
Here endeth the (out of practice when it comes to blogging my notes) lesson.
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