TV

For the TV day, I filmed a package with one of my colleagues. The package was based on a statistic released by the Dorset Police that day, which stated that twenty Dorset drivers are caught without seatbelts every day. It was appropriate for the bulletin because of its localised topic, and enabled us to converge with the radio news team by using their interview with a police officer alongside the footage. Once the package was completed, we passed it onto the online news team to be put on the Buzz website. Creating this package helped to highlight the benefits of converged journalism.

After completing my package I helped the rest of my team overcome any editing problems. Our TV lecturer and Final Cut guru was absent on this day, so we encountered more editing issues than usual and took slightly longer to overcome them. Generally these problems involved the inclusion of text and graphics in TV packages and we managed to use our collective editing knowledge to deal with them.

I feel that the team worked together well. We arranged roles and organised ourselves prior to the day via a Facebook message stream which helped us to get underway quickly. Unfortunately we were hindered by the lack of sufficient TV cameras, which meant that reporters had to take turns in filming their packages, and the absence of our TV lecturer also meant that we struggled in transferring the video and the auto-cue to the studio. As a result of these issues, our packages were slightly rushed and the bulletin itself didn’t go particularly smoothly. However, I’m happy with the final product considering the circumstances – our packages covered a wide array of news topics, the script writing was strong and concise, and the presenters both retained a professional appearance throughout and read the script clearly and confidently.