Digital News Evaluation
Producing this news package within the 4 week timeframe resulted in a harder task than I had originally envisioned, the past few weeks we had established many hurdles that I had not expected, despite this, with each challenge I have learnt from this and hope to take to take on as experience for future pieces of work.
Our news story originally was meant to revolve around the subject matter of radio and how listening trends have changed in recent years with the combination of the rise in the podcasting trend. Despite this being a good story to delve into, it didn't meet the requirement of being 'news' worthy, so instead, after researching into current news stories, we decided to look into the new legislation being brought in by the government about the restriction of tobacco products, and try and find a new angle to direct it in. I had the idea of looking into how this correlates with vaping and the popularity of vape products and how this could potentially be effected by this new legislation. From completing my news package analysis of an ITV News story, I decided to follow the same style and conventions used by ITV to formulate the news package, as I believe this fit more conventionally with the type of story we were narrating.
Our initial plan with the story, as shown within my storyboard, was to begin the news report in a conventional way to that of ITV or the BBC. This typically begins with a PTC in studio with a green screen background with the use of graphics, then once the story is established it usually delves into interviews with contributors, cutaways, VO's, etc. So with our piece, this was the plan; it was to open in the studio, transition to Maidstone Town Centre with Vox pop interviews with local residents around the issues of vaping (to gain an unbiased perspective of the issue), then we were due to interview a doctor for a professional opinion and to gain a primary source. Despite this being the plan with the production, once it actually came to the point of beginning production, like mentioned previously, a lot of issues were encountered. This first started with the dynamic of the group, Travis had fallen unwell the week of production, and some of the group failed to meet the agreement of the group contract and contribute in the way they had agreed; which resulted on having to take the plan back to the storyboard. On the filming day, Jo and I sat down and began to restructure our story with the limited production team we had. We reworked our story to be largely based in the studio (in front of the green screen) and then the plan was to transition to the interview with the GP and then interview some vape users so we could display each side of the story. Alongside this we were to record some cutaway footage of Maidstone Town Centre and include graphics of statistics related to vaping issues I had found from research.
After restructuring our plan I wrote a script for teleprompter; Myself, Jo and Wes got to filming. Initially we were due to follow this with a 1-1 interview with a Doctor that Wes had contacted, this interview fell through and he was arranging an alternate one, to which it resulted in just being a voice note we recieved from the GP instead. This just being a voice note made it difficult to integrate into the story, But editing it in I tried my best to make it fit in the way conventional to a news package whilst also aiding the narrative of the story. Following the PTC green screen and interview was cutaway footage, but this was only obtained by Travis and Jo 2 days before the deadline due to issues within our group, as the footage originally captured did not meet the standard needed for the edit, so I had limited time to work this in.
When filming the PTC in the green screen room, this went well and was probably one of the most smooth sailing aspects to the project, Wes received help from Ferg with setting up the camera and checking the focus, whilst Jo directed and ensured the lighting and sound were perfect before beginning to record. I do believe ultimately without Fergs assistance with this we would have struggled to complete everything successfully due to the lack of attendance and support from other members of the group.
To add a contributor to the story I did attempt to contact Elfbar for a comment but never received a response to my email, I decided to mention this in the report regardless as their lack of comment arguably speaks for itself. For an alternative contributor Travis did attempt to get permission for an interview with a local vape shop but they also declined.
Additionally to the footage, I had planned some graphics to be made of statistics I had sourced and written into the teleprompter script, I had asked Zach to complete this, but after not receiving them after asking multiple times Jo and I took it upon ourselves to complete these instead so we could get them into the package to get feedback on our rough cut before submission.
Largely, my role was due to be the presenter and editor, and despite all the setbacks of having to take on additional roles due to poor dynamics within our group, I do feel I did my best with my set roles, from creating the teleprompter script to recording the PTC, despite talking on camera not being my strong point, and although I would like to think my editing skills are to a good standard, completing a news package edit was completely new to me and out of my comfort zone, but from the research I completed it aided my ability to edit to the conventional way ITV and other big news organisations do.
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