The Last Blog

So here we are: the day before world's end. A scary, scary thought - everything you once cared about, obliterated, gone. Forever. It isn't even a punchline to a joke. It's the punchline to a calendar.

Obviously that's all the evidence we need to assume that December 21st is the day that everyone and everything gets obliterated. You can cry all you like about not seeing your hamster again, you'll also be dead so what difference does it make? In fact, I'll go as far to say that you'll be a similar size pile of ash or gloop as the little critter by the end of it, in your smoking shoes, of course.

Everyone's had long enough to prepare and even marketing sections of major corporations have got involved with Lynx promoting their 'Final Edition', and who knows, maybe the DFS sale will finally end? But how have you prepared? You haven't? Well, luckily I've prepared for four possible eventualities, and you're more than welcome to tag along and join my clan and help repopulate the world (blokes need not apply, you can do one).

Zombie Apocalypse

The first port of call for any horror fan is this classic scenario: the dear are rising and your great-grandparents, who used to seem so friendly and welcoming with that 'old person' smell, want nothing more than to eat your brains. If you see your beloved childhood pet charging at you, don't give it one final stroke, because that's what it will be.

Not on my watch. Twat them round the head with a shovel, punch them square in the face - just do whatever it takes to get those undead beasts to leave you alone. If zombie films and games have taught us anything it's that they're lumbering creatures who have a default speed of 'slow', so it should even be quite easy to outrun them in your car, or even your child's scooter.

If worst comes to worse just surround yourself in a zombie's mortal enemy: the fence. There's no way past it. Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go round it. Apocalypse survived.

Nuclear Explosion

Now this is the biggy - it'll cause unimaginable anarchy, incredible mutations, horrific scars and scorching burns, but you'll be fine.

Testwood Sports College in Totton has a stage - under this stage is a small area where people who read this blog can chill out and let what happens outside happen, as, if rumour be true (and let's hope it be...), you're safe from absolutely anything. I'm not sure why the safest place to be is under a stage in a school, but I have a good feeling about it.

Clearly this isn't going to work without supplies, so the group will nominate someone to arm up with some fireworks and a few sharpened stage planks to go hunting. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I'm exempt from this as it was my idea. It's a dog eat dog world out there, so it's every man for themselves. The person must be as cunning as they are brave and as brave as they are stupid. Any politicians volunteering? Repeat until I'm the last one left. Apocalypse survived.

Tidal Wave

Everyone knows that the overwhelming majority of the Earth's surface is covered with water, so there isn't a lot you can do in way of prevention here, but that doesn't mean all is lost. Every beachside town and every gift shop in the country is full of inflatables, buckets and kids fishing rods. All you have to do is pitch in a few quid each with your family members (or not if you can't stand them), buy these essentials and tie them together with some rope.

By doing this you'll have something to float (live) on, buckets to do your business in and keep food (separately) and fishing rods to catch fish with. I dare say that animals such as cows and pigs won't be quite smart enough to do this, so there'll be plenty of them for the taking if you get fed up of fish and chips every night. Apocalypse survived.

Planetary Collision

Granted, there isn't a lot you can do about this one, I mean, this catastrophe would be on an astronomical scale, but what's the harm in trying to survive? All you have to do is jump onto this other planet as it smashes into us. Grab hold of a rock or something. That way you've avoided the initial impact by jumping and you can still survive because the rogue planet will be in our atmosphere. I'm a genius. Apocalypse survived.

So there you have it... The easiest ways to survive the impending apocalypse. Experts say that there's a one in infinite probability that it will actually happen tomorrow, but nobody cares about experts. At least you can be safe in the knowledge that if they're right and nothing does happen we'll be able to go to the DFS sale wearing the new Lynx fragrance: Survivor. You heard it here first.

Critical Evaluation - WINOL (Semester 1)

My first semester on WINOL went a lot better than I could have expected and that’s largely due to the fact that, as a team, everyone works efficiently to produce an incredibly high quality product, and nothing shows that off better than the Alexa rankings.

At the start of term WINOL had slumped to a level around the 1.8 million mark, the website’s lowest ever ranking. This was because it had not received any attention over the summer, nobody is going to look at a dead website with no new news. Raising it back to where it belongs was always going to be a challenge but with a combination of great news stories, well-filmed sports highlights and fantastic features. WINOL now sits in the top 500,000 in the world and in the top 10,000 in the UK; it’s the highest ranked student output in the country, and also has a higher Alexa ranking than The Hampshire Chronicle’s website.

WINOL’s primary output is news and over the course of the semester the stories have improved massively. In our first bulletin there was a story on bottle collection which was important to a few locally, but it does not have massive amounts of news value. However, in later bulletins there have been stories of national importance that we have adapted to work locally, such as the ash tree disease.

We were also lucky to have national stories developing locally – the closure of the Ford factory in Southampton is a great example of this, and with interviews with people at Ford and trade union representatives we made sure that balance was maintained.

On a technical level the stories have also improved. Early in the term there was no use of natural sound but recently this has started to shine through. In particular, there’s a story on new jobs being created in Southampton which is full of natural sound of machinery. The most striking of which is at the start of the VT where a circular saw is being used.

It isn’t just the VT’s that have improved greatly – the presentation of WINOL as a whole has kept up with the high standards set by the reporters. One way that this has been achieved is by using a coming up belt; this isn’t just a tactic to make the broadcast seem more professional, it’s a device to keep the viewer interested by advertising some of the stories that are still to come. It also serves as a reminder to people that we also cover sport.

Another way that this has been achieved is through OOV belts which add slickness to the broadcast and also show that we have other stories that are newsworthy. We also experimented with a highlights reel at the end of the bulletin to create more traffic for our website.

During the course of the semester there were three huge successes – the Hampshire Police Commissioner Debate, coverage of the American Elections and 99 News.

The HPCD had a total of 101 viewers watching it live on uStream, along with another 250 who filled the auditorium. These are incredible figures for a vote that had a notoriously low turn out.

The coverage of the American elections was dogged with problems from the start, but you wouldn’t have thought this if you watched it live on uStream. Obama had already been declared the winner before we went live, so that lead to constant changes to packages in a small amount of time. My involvement in this was making graphics – I made a motion one for a package on the swing states where it zoomed in and out of the map, with different states flashing when they needed to. Only some of this made it to the final edit. Other graphics I made didn’t make the final cut, including one involving a green screen and a map for foreign affairs. It was the first student broadcast to do live interviews across the Atlantic and it made the front page of Journalism.co.uk.

99 News was the first daily student news broadcast in the country and was something that I was involved in – I made the main graphics for it, including the countdown in the bottom corner. I was also my debut as a presenter, a role that  I enjoyed. The project as a whole gave WINOL a boost and the bulletins have around 500 combined views.

The sport team worked incredibly well together, always helping each other out when they needed it and this shows in the output. Every week there would be highlights of football, ice hockey and a sports news story or feature. Some of the sports news stories would make it into the main news bulletin – this was largely down to how well they were produced and how relevant they were to the local community.

The main issue for the sports desk wasn’t how good it’s output was, it was the circulation that Sportsweek received. Despite promoting it on social media, football websites and the like, the number of viewers is significantly lower than they used to be. I believe that the reason for this is competition; we simply don’t get our highlights packages up quick enough.

AFC Totton have someone else down there filming their games who gets the highlights up on the same night. The quality isn’t anywhere near as good but as long as football fans can see their side’s goals they don’t care. We need to be beating this competition and stealing their views. It’s worth noting that our student competition don’t have a separate sports show and their sports coverage is very limited, so this keeps the WINOL platform head and shoulders above them.

One suggestion I have to improve the viewing figures for Sportsweek is to do it in a Match of the Day style where there is analysis after every game, rather than just a quick link into the next package. We could even do a live stream version at some point as well.

Certain features drew more traffic than others; the highest flier of the semester was an interview with the wrongly convicted Paul Blackburn, which has over 500 views. It’s this content that helps WINOL keep ahead of its rivals, and with fierce competition from other student broadcasts such as East London Lines, the output had to be consistently brilliant.

Another feature that worked very well was an interview with Hitler’s neighbour. I feel that the reason the hard-hitting, confessional interviews drew greater viewing numbers than any gonzo pieces is because they are generally more invigorating. I’d much rather watch a confessional interview than someone play an ‘odd sport’ because I’ll learn more from doing so.

Saying that, the gonzo pieces are especially important to WINOL’s output as they reach out to the primary target audience – students. Although this is a hard audience to target, as their attention span is usually low, I feel that we drew them in. The feature on wrestling has 182 views, most of which are from the student demographic. This has worked well because wrestling usually draws large student audiences, so the idea was to draw them in with content that they are familiar with. By having a go myself it added a slightly comedic effect, whilst also acknowledging how difficult it is for the athletes involved, something that students will understand.

Social media has also played a part in WINOL’s rise to the most-viewed student broadcast in the country. By using Twitter and Facebook to plug stories a new audience is drawn in of a winder demographic. WINOL has something for everyone to enjoy.

My role as a sports reporter was to film football matches and gather sports stories whenever I needed them. I feel that my work improved a great deal over the course of the semester. The first football match I filmed I was worried about zooming in too far, so I shot wide to be safe. The problem with this was that it was much harder to see the ball, so from then on I stayed up close to the action, aiming to immerse the viewer in long-ball football.

There were four VTs that I feel especially proud of, but I also know that they can be improved upon:

The first is a news story on AFC Totton purchasing a defibrillator; the first of it’s kind in English football. I used a drop intro where I started outside St. Mary’s stadium and ended up in Totton’s Testwood Stadium. The problem with this was that it seemed a bit gimmicky – it didn’t add anything to the piece other than a visually nice start. Another issue with this VT was that it featured a guilty building due to a lack of shots. Although I haven’t done many of these stories this was the first thing I got rid of. Having approved images of Fabrice Muamba allowed us to name-drop. I reached out to his agent on numerous occasions for a comment but eventually he stopped replying.

Another VT I felt worked well was when I followed AFC Totton to Bashley for the return of manager Steve Riley to his former club. I did a piece to camera on the pitch with the players training behind me and also grabbed interviews with Steve before and after the game. I tried to get some vox-pops from Bashley fans on their feelings towards him, but nobody wanted to speak to me. The main issue with this match was that there was no high vantage point to film from, so I had to film on pitch level. This still looks okay but it wasn’t ideal and the game didn’t look as good as it could have had their been an option.

I also covered the ‘WINOL Derby’ between Totton and Basingstoke. To do this effectively I had to find a link that would appeal to both sets of fans and luckily there was one: Stefan Brown scored the fastest hat-trick in FA Cup history whilst playing for Totton, but he now plays for Basingstoke. I played on this at the start of the VT by starting in one changing room and finishing in the other. The only problem with this was that the away room didn’t have any shirts hanging up so it looked a bit plain. I used WINOL archive footage of the hat-trick and interviewed Stefan before and after the game. I had four cameras at the game, two behind the goals and two up the top. I feel like I under-used the tight shot camera but there wasn’t a reason to as the highlights wouldn’t have suited it.

My best package of the year was a piece of gonzo journalism where I went wrestling, but this wasn’t without faults: I didn’t dive into the action quick enough, I dwindled around outside the training warehouse for too long, the interview wasn’t as interesting as it could have been, and I wasn’t allowed to be slammed because I couldn’t land safely. I have similar ideas lined up so I aim to improve on this. There are areas where it works really well: I actually got to practice some skills and I got really good natural sound and used this to punctuate sentences whenever possible.

One thing I did try that didn’t work out was a piece to camera with the players entering the pitch behind me, but you couldn’t hear my voice. The issue was that the camera records straight into a mp4 format so I couldn’t edit the individual sound channels. After hours of enhancing the audio I couldn’t use it. I tried to dub it but this just sounded worse because it knocked out some of the atmosphere.

I also spent one Wednesday as sports editor, a role that I found very challenging, especially as sport was two minutes too long and had to be cut down. I also had to make a fat minute out of a polo package, which was difficult as I had none of the actual footage, so I had to use what was there already and make it shorter without losing any of the narrative. It looked a bit shoddy as I only had ten minutes to do it but I’ve recently edited it further and it now works much better than it did.

WINOL has succeeded in it’s aim to reclaim the top-spot in UK student journalism and if the output quality continues to improve there’s no reason for it not to stay there. However, innovation is the key so the ideas need to keep flowing, and with a multi-format website there’s no reason for them not to.