WINOL Week One, Year Three;

WINOL is back and this semester my role is part of the production and sub-editing team.

As I have been on the production team before, our return to the gallery wasn’t as daunting as the experience for the second years. Although we immediately notice a new piece of equipment – the Vision Mixer had been updated over the summer and seemed to have a gazillion new buttons and a jazzy screen on it. Day one and already there was an issue waiting to be solved and that was using the thing. Myself and Nicole managed to figure out a few of the buttons but still need to be trained properly to ensure a smooth output for the first bulletin.

Luckily everything else was as we left it and so I felt quite comfortable. Showing the second years how to use all of equipment has been Nicole’s main focus for the last week, and they are now able to use the equipment. We aim to have a full day practising, knowing this time how to use the new vision mixer, so that the new members of the team can become more confident with the equipment and so that those who have used the equipment before can familiarise themselves again.

There are already some other events happening in the next few weeks, these include the COMPASS meeting and the launch of the crime and justice centre, which the production team will be involved with the filming of.

WINOL week one;

The lead up to the first bulletin was daunting and quite stressful having been our of practice for so long and having second years making up the team.

I began the day by creating the headline and credit sequences for the bulletin, these look okay technically but the by-lines decided on by the group could have been more creative. Filming the headline VT went well, but like the bulletin there was a lot of waiting around for the script to be completed.

My role in the gallery for the bulletin was director, a role I enjoy. I knew it was important to have the script as early as possible so that the crew in the gallery could prepare and practice the bulletin with and without the presenter, just in case VTs cut out early or there were problems with the script.

The script was finished twenty minutes before the deadline giving us a short amount of time to practice. The time we did have was spent concentrating on the OOV with UPSOT so that we could concentrate on getting the timings right. I made the decision to go live at three, hoping that our producer Nicole agreed and the team felt confident enough to do so.

The bulletin went smoother than I could have hope for a first bulletin;

• Between the headlines and Harry coming into vision there was a black hole.
• The flu package had no sound at the beginning, meaning no top line.
• The from VT back to Harry wasn’t smooth – the VT remained in vision for a second as Harry came into vision. This happened again from the fraudster package to Harry in the studio.
• The OOV was the most problematic part of the bulletin; the sound of the presenter was lowered before the UPSOT, which meant Harry was cut off. This was the only part of the bulletin to be rerecorded.
• There was no sports VT cued up in the running order but was on the script – this threw us all off track but it was well recovered but the whole team.

Post production;

I helped Nicole with capturing and fine tuning the bulletin to be uploaded to the WINOL website. There was a huge change in the way the bulletin was uploaded. Half way through the recording in the gallery we took a break to change the tape so that the bulletin was in two parts.

This made capturing and editing out the black holes a lot easier & quicker. The bulletin was also uploaded in two parts to make it easier to hit the five o'clock deadline.

Though we didn’t make the five o'clock deadline. This was because the programme used to upload it to website changed to Dreamweaver rather than Youtube and the .mov files didn't work. The problem was solved quickly and once we knew what format was needed the upload was fairly quick and simple.