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.