Thursday 28 October 2010

Directing WINOL for the first time

This week I directed the WINOL news bulletin for the first time ever. I wasn't expecting it to be easy but it was a lot more stressful that I thought it would be. The main problem was the lack of time for rehearsals. This was no one in particular's fault as the news reporters had to keep adjusting the lengths of their pieces due to other stories falling through and I appreciate that but having no news packages at 3 o' clock for a bulletin that's supposed to be recorded at 3 left me just a little bit panicky to say the least!

When we eventually had time for a rehearsal the main things that I wanted to practice were the handovers so both the camera operators and the presenters were happy with them. Chris Ship (ITV's Senior Political Corespondent) was the guest editor for this weeks bulletin and was really helpful in the rehearsal stage of the bulletin. In an ideal world we would have prerecorded the headline because then they would be 100% correct and as Chris said, if the top of your programme is wrong then why would the viewer want to watch the rest? We got the headlines spot on in the last rehearsal and they looked really slick however in the live bulletin I cued the news anchor, Jake too early and he spoke over the soundbite in the headline. I did think when I got the headline with a soundbite in it was a bit adventurous. When there are soundbites in the headlines there needs to be a lot of attention to detail because they have to be spot on, unfortunately due to time constraints we didn't give the soundbite the necessary attention that it needed.

As far as the rest of the bulletin went, I think it went really well. Because of the lack of stories we were quite ambitious and had a live link to Joey in the newsroom during the bulletin which I think worked well and looked really professional. We also had a live studio guest, Guy Butters, the manager Winchester FC which also went well but as Chris Ship said it did look a bit like a game of musical chairs!

The handovers went really smoothly and the presenters knew exactly what camera they were looking in to at all times. There was only one bit where I forgot to get camera 1 to get a close up of the sport anchor, Karen, and then when she introduced the Totton highlights the camera was still on a two shot and the guest was still in shot and this looked very silly.

I don't think I gave the vision mixer, Jon, enough direction during the bulletin as it was his first time doing that job and I was more concerned with VT's and the presenters and making sure they knew what was going on and Jon just had to follow me and this is why there were a few black holes in the bulletin. Luckily we were able to remove them in post production though. However the main problem that caused the black holes was yet again the timings. My role for the last two weeks had been PA and I had a massive problem with the timings then and this week it seemed a lot worse. None of them were correct and this is why I had to keep a close eye on the VT's so I knew roughly when to cue the presenters. This is something that could have been addressed had we had more time to rehearse.

Next week I hope for a much more technically better bulletin with no black holes and rehearsed so well that it looks highly polished and professional. The main thing that I want to get right next week are the timings because if the presenters are given an accurate count down from 10 then they will be less likely to panic and feel a lot more comfortable about when they are to start talking.

Finally, I would like to thank my team in gallery and on the studio floor and the presenters who all did a brilliant job of bringing the bulletin together in a very short space of time. WELL DONE TEAM!

Here is the WINOL news bulletin for 27th October 2010:

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