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:

Notice the green halo around Tom

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:

(Redhead=Arri)

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:

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.

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.

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:

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

WINOL Games Bloopers Episode

A collection of outtakes, bloopers and general silliness that accompany every episode of our games review show: WINOL Games.

Christmas WINOL Games

I think the title says it all...



You're welcome ;)

WINOL Games 3: Game Harder!

Another WINOL Games episode!



As always folks, comment and criticism is very much appreciated!

WINOL Games: the second show!

My Second Games review show, this time discussing Goldeneye 007 Reloaded, Modern Warfare 3, and Skyrim.

It's a little outdated now but any constructive criticism will be greatly appreciated.




Thanks for watching!

First WINOL Games

A new review show that I'm doing for WINOL. Co-presented by Graham Marshall.



Do let us know what you think with comment, criticism, and general hatred.

Cheers

Fresher Life - My First Package.

Last week, as part of my transformation into something approaching a journalist, I went out and made my first package. It took far too long, and suffered at the hands of my apparent inability to edit in a short space of time. Nevertheless, it was finished, and here it the written version for you perusal:

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Freshers’ Fortnight. A hectic affair in which new students begin their university experience in a new city, in a new house, with new people. It’s a whole new chapter of their life unfolding before them. No more parents to take care of them, and complete independence is a must. What could go wrong?

We set off one bright afternoon with one goal in mind: seek out freshers, and quiz them on their university life. However, finding freshers turns out to be more difficult than anticipated. Two house were too busy celebrating 21st birthdays to talk to some purple-haired, second-year journo, rocking up with a camera bag and a tripod expecting some goofy stories. We were also spurned by more houses, who were either “too timid” to be interviewed, or otherwise occupied with taking one of their housemates to hospital (Now that would have been the right kind of interview).

Eventually, we found a fresher willing to be subjected to interrogation. Dayo Hammed, a student from Nigeria led us into a remarkable clean, if somewhat bare, kitchen (understandable as it takes more than a fortnight to build up a respectable collection of group photos and/or pictures of models with which to adorn the walls). At present, there are only two decorations, souvenirs of the freshers fayre, one befitting any respectable student house “Drink vodka and get drunk.” Standard fare, really. After an awkward few minutes trying to set up the camera. We set to asking our carefully chosen questions about money, food, and what’s been going on. He tells us that university is his first experience of being truly independent. As an international student, it’s fair to say that Dayo is a little more out of his element than most people starting further education, and that although he hasn’t had much chance to go out, he is very much enjoying the experience.

We say goodbye to Dayo and carry on our search for the (apparently) elusive fresher. After being refused two more times our luck begins to pick up. The more people we talk to, the more trends begin to emerge. Many of our freshers, it seems, have yet to fully appreciate a true university shopping experience. A hefty majority are surviving on care packages from parents and many have yet to even do any washing. One fresher, Tess Buckley said that her biggest worry was that her washing would come out either bright pink, or ridiculously small. I can relate to washing procrastination, as, when a wash can cost you upwards of four quid, you tend to get into the habit of wearing certain items inside out. And back to front. And deodorant starts becoming your best friend. All in all, there is great motivation to try and last as long as possible, even to the point of going home to get it done. For some however this is not much of an option. Melodie Hornsby-King, although English by birth, lives in Spain during the holidays, and so, will find it difficult to visit, other than at the term breaks.

Homesickness does tend to take its toll on the fresher population. Ali Izatt said that: "If at home, you want to talk to someone, you can, here you can't do that, it's like: I want my mum!" She did say that since she had her boyfriend with her at Winchester, it does make everything, much easier to deal with.

Verdict. Despite all the issues that university life throws at them, our freshers are taking the bull by the horns, and seem determined to see it to the end.

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Thank you very much, reader, for seeing this through to the end as well. A post will shortly be up with the actual film. Until then, why not check out www.winol.co.uk for more work from my course at the University of Winchester.

WINOL 3/11/10

The latest WINOL bulletin showed a marked improvement in sound and editing, with nothing that I considered to be particularly glaring.

As far as the stories are concerned:

• I think that beginning with the student jobs story was a very good move as it is a big worry for anyone at uni.
• The prisoners story was very well presented, and while not directly relevant to students, I think it is a story that affects the entire country, our close proximity to a prison notwithstanding. 
• The parking story is relevant as many students live in that area, or will be next year, it brings thought as to how to handle bringing a car to uni. 
• The Southampton redundancy story was well chosen as it is not only a troubling problem, but it relates to the student employment story. Perhaps the two could have been linked somehow, more than they were. 

As far as the rest of the bulletin went, I'm not sure how necessary the text was at 5:23, as the reporter says exactly what is put on the screen. It seems somehow wasteful.
During the break between the main bulletin and the interview, I thought that use of the Innocence Project was very clever as a poignant way of letting people know about it, and simply as a way of breaking up the segments without using advertisements or simply a cut.
During the rundown of what is happening in Winchester, it may have looked better if it had included stock footage of some kind, simply because watching someone speak with no accompaniment is not very interesting to watch. although I believe there was a time constraint (?) so maybe it would have been very difficult.
At the start of the interview, the presenter looked away from the camera and there was a very noticeable pause, perhaps this was something to do with a camera mix up, or being distracted. Either way, it did not seem particularly professional and if it was a camera mix up, then that should have been clear before filming began.
While the interviewer had some very good questions, she seemed very nervous (understandably) and maybe it would be worth trying to talk to whoever is being interviewed, beforehand and try to establish a rapport of some kind. Of course, not being there I don't know what the situation was. And talking to celebrities is not easy. I remember when I met the Chuckle Brothers.

All in all a very impressive effort, and is showing great improvement compared to the very first bulletin. Keep it up guys!

WINOL Bulletin Criticism

After Watching the latest WINOL bulletin in my first instance of a critically minded journalist peer. I think that in general, it is of very high quality, in terms of editing, presentation, and professionalism. This is not to say that it was flawless however. The first instance of what I considered of poor quality, was the sound of the section filmed in the multimedia centre, discussing pass cards for international students' entry into clubs. Of course, this could be an equipment related issue, in which case this may be something the media department should look into as it spoils the flow of dialogue.

I was very impressed by the performance of the presenters who, apart from some minor slip-ups, were very eloquent and on a par with many professional anchors. That said, the in-field reporters could have been a touch more enthusiastic, especially in the case of one of the sport reporters. If I'm not mistaken, the roles of the WINOL team are continually rotated so as to maximise the experience in different aspects of Broadcast journalism. However, if you happen to be given a role is not necessarily your favourite, you should try and at least make a pretense of not being bored with the whole thing.

In the case of the stories covered in the bulletin, the first two stories were well considered in that they directly affected the target audience: Students. While the first was more directed to international students, rather than the main populace, the second concerned almost everyone attending or soon-to-be attending university. In that respect I think they could have been reversed so as to provide a better hook to non- internationals who could well stop watching if the initial piece doesn't affect them. The Housing and Queen stories were les important in my opinion and were therefore well placed in the midsection. The final story concerning the BJTC award was very well presented and all of the footage piqued my interest (clap clap, by the way), with any luck I'll be able to do the same in a year or two.

A major mistake for which I believe the editor took a lot of flak, was a spelling mistake in the score sheet during the sports section, misspelling some of the names of sports teams. You wouldn't expect such schoolboy mistakes from what is otherwise a very competent piece of journalsm.

All in all I was very impressed with the slick editing (except for one instance during an interview within the tuition fee story, where it seems as though someone was cut off midsentence) and very proffesional appearance of what I would call a top-notch broadcast