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.

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.

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!

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.