This is a short blog explaining how some of the how-to videos on the BBC College of Journalism website can help me during my time on WINOL and as my time as a sports reporter this semester.
I watched three videos on the website and have identified some that will be useful for me whilst on WINOL and how I can use them for my role as a sports reporter.
The first video I watched was about writing to pictures, presented by BBC News senior producer Mark Georgiou. The first tip given on the video is to look at the pictures before writing the script. Although this is something drummed into us on WINOL, it was good to see how top BBC journalists such as Nicolas Witchel go about their business, the example of the royal wedding in 2011 was used. From watching the BBC COJO's video, I have seen how professional journalists do it and will be able to write to pictures better. A point that Mark Georgiou makes is this, "it's the pictures that inspire the memorable lines". In my view, this doesn't just apply to producing news packages, it also applies to producing football highlights packages. Say for example a player scores a fantastic goal, but whilst watching the game through the lens of the camera, you don't get time to appreciate how good the goal was. By watching the footage back you can see how good the goal was and it should inspire you to think of a great way to describe the action.
Another tip given in the video is that sound is as important as vision. This applies mainly to news packages, but also the football highlights packages. From watching the programme 'The Football League Show' (a programme we have identified as one that is good to look at for inspiration), I have seen just how important natural sound is in a highlights package. For example, if a goal is scored, the person commentating on the action doesn't talk over much of the goal and celebration. He lets the natural sound speak for him, he doesn't need to tell us that the stadium has 'erupted' because we can hear the crowd cheering.
The third tip given is to talk to the picture editor. We do everything on our news and sports packages, including filming, editing and scripting, but when I am going through the rushes, I am asking myself 'what shot should I open with', 'would it work better if I switched that sentence around?', according to Georgiou, these questions are the same that reporters ask picture editors all the time. I can relate this to the sports package I was editing today. I had to make the sequence a bit shorter in order to accomodate the length of script I had written.
Georgiou talks about reporters talking to themselves whilst writing their scripts to make sure that what they're writing sounds OK. I have made the mistake before of not reading aloud what I have written down and then recording it. This meant I had to re-write the script in a short space of time.
The second how-to video I watched was about how to ask simple questions in an interview. I've watched the same video before and I tried to follow the video and ask simple questions during interviews last semester, but by watching the video again I can apply it to my new role as sports reporter. Whenever I have to interview a football manager or player, I will ask simple questions, because from what I saw in the video, you're likely to get better answers. A question that Jeremy Paxman asks a prisoner is "how do you find it?", the prisoner then gives a simple yet effective response. When an interviewer asks a long winded question, it might put off the interviewee and confuse them slightly. When interviewing managers before or after football matches, I will make sure to ask simple and direct questions, hopefully this will give me some good quotes.
The final video I watched was about how to get interviewees to open up. I found this quite difficult last semester as a news reporter, especially trying to get councillors to open up on issues like why they had chosen to charge motorists to park in a car park or if they were defending their high earnings (just two examples of challenging interviews I faced). In terms of my role as a sports reporter, I will have to ask questions that get managers or players to open up about e.g. how their team did after a defeat or after a refereeing decision he wasn't happy about. More often than not, managers like to talk about a game they have won, but not so much when they lose, so this is something I will have to get around.
No comments:
Post a Comment