13 May workbook
COMPETITION WORKBOOK
Delina Petiros
—->WEEKS 2 AND 3
We need to apply for a journalistic competition we’ll enter with original content and in the meanwhile we need write about all our progress here.
IDEAS
I want to apply for something relevant to my interests and career plan. I was thinking about a video project, short feature or multimedia piece. I would also like to apply for something that will give me the freedom to choose the topic or at least I want to apply for a competition that explores a topic of interest for me such as a social/cultural one.
——>WEEKS 3 AND 4
LOOKING FOR COMPETITIONS
I found many interesting awards in the broadcasting fields, however they all require a portfolio I’m not able to provide them with, and others were only out of deadline. I also discovered a website called “studentscompetitions” but none of their competitions were appealing enough for me so I finally decided to turn over the links we were given by the university on moodle.
Here I found a very interesting competition that caught my attention quite immediately. The ……. offered amongst many other categories a section dedicated to photojournalists. I decided to go with that because visual storytelling is something I want to get into and build a career in. In addition to that I realised all my strongest pieces were indeed videos/images so I thought it would be more realistic for me to compete in this field rather than a written one. The entry requirements were quite easy to fulfil and I also had the freedom I was looking for to decide what story I wanted to tell.
——>WEEKS 5 AND 6
STORY
I’m looking for ideas of a story I could tell with images and a few words. Is quite hard to narrate something without actually saying something but by only showing it so I know I’ll definitely have to pick something easy to understand and quite immediate to pick on.
Meanwhile I’m working on my dissertation project and because I did a lot of research on that I’m thinking about intertwine those two project but without repeating myself as in the end I do have to present an original piece of work. Whilst looking at all projects I’ve developed over the past couple of years here at university to look for inspiration I found a competition I’ve entered the past summer with Michael and Nick for Natgeo on immigration.
I think that’s the key for the development of my story. Immigration is a topic very close to my topic and I’ve realised I’ve been covering it a few times in different shapes. For Natgeo we had to present the link between immigration and new technologies so how and why do migrants use social media or internet in general for their purposes. Finally for my dissertation project I talked about second generation immigrants so the children of migrants. I think my aim has always been to portray migration under a different light. I just don’t seem to agree with the stereotype of media showing immigrants always looking in an awful state, which yeah is the reality but I also feel like the audience should also learn to look at migrants once they’ve integrated and become “westerns”. Instead of seeing slim bodies, fatigued by the journey through the desserts or the sea I want to show wealthy and healthy bodies of people who live well and aren’t struggling to survive. Instead of seeing sad or terrified expressions on their faces I’d like people to see happy smiles on their faces, as now those people have built new lives here and started families.
FINAL ENTRY PROPOSAL
I finally decided what to focus my story on. I will portray “settled immigrants” who have come to London a long time ago and I will compare their status to old photos of themselves from when they were back in their countries or from when they just got in the UK. I will meet with them and their families to capture their images which I believe would be westernised but I also want to photograph them paying tribute to their culture, in fact I firmly believe if we compared the image of two people wearing traditional clothing, for example, we would able to tell which one of the two lives in the country and who has moved out of it. So in conclusion my photos will tell the story of people who have migrated here and how that has changed them. I think my work would be original because integrated migrants are not often represented within the media, instead as audience we only tend to see migrants fleeing their countries in a miserable state.
——> WEEKS 7 AND 8
FEEDBACK
After submitting my proposal I was happy to get my feedback back as my lecturer approved it and assigned me with a 300 words short feature to be accompanied by 20 photos. I’m quite happy with my decision on the competition, however I’m now scared 20 photos could be more than I’m actually able to get. I’m quite scared I won’t be able to actually get 20 photos all different from each other as my connections and resources are not that wide.
—-> WEEKS 8 TO 12
EXECUTION
I need to develop a plan of action before I even start working on the competition. Ideally I need to get access to families of well integrated migrants but also charity or organisation that help migrants integrate as it would be interesting to sort of look into the integration process and see how volunteers help them with that and finally how being integrated drastically changes them, in regards of their physical aspect but also mental.
I started asking everyone I know that could help me with getting photos taken or that let have some family photos and I think I’ll definitely have to use some of these so I can show what they look like now compared to what they used to look like back in their countries or when they just got here. I have also looked up at charities, camp, organisations, etc that could help me interview “experts” on the subject but also meet people who’ve recently moved to this country.
Because this is such a personal story for these people I decided not use any professional or fancy equipment in order for them to feel completely at ease with me and instead I decided to use my iPhone 7 to capture them.
CONCLUSION
Completing the entry for the competition was definitely harder than I thought because the photos don’t look professional or well taken at all, but at this point I’m just happy I could succeed in showing how different can an “immigrant” look compared to the image society would normally associate a migrant with. Unfortunately on the down side I wasn’t able to get an expert opinion because although I contacted a few charities and one in particular (Action for Refugees in Lewisham, SE13 5ES, 02082974111; www. afril.org.uk) they all told me it would have been really hard for me to take photos as many of the refugees had only just arrived to the centre and therefore were still working on their asylum requests. Therefore I decided I would only use photos of my contacts but still use the charity for my written feature.
NEWS DAY (18.03.19) —->WEEK 8
On the assessed news day with Vanessa I was a reporter.
Me and George were assigned with the story of the inauguration of a painting at St Thomas Hospital.
The artwork titled ‘Song of the Nightingale’ was created by artist Ted Harrison to honour 10 year old Ella and others who have saved lives by donating organs.
Ella Thatcher, from West Sussex, suffered from severe epilepsy and was treated at Evelina Children’s Hospital, before passing away last year. Her donated organs helped save the lives of two children and three adults, one of whom wrote to Ella’s parents. Ella’s initials are engraved into the artwork and the artist who received a kidney donation in the same hospital 30 years ago said: “The nightingale is the theme of the artwork – not only because of this hospital’s historic links with Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of modern nursing, but also because in nature the nightingale sings a beautiful song of new hope even when the night seems to be at its darkest.”
We conducted some research in the newsroom before heading out and could only find southwark news as source to use so after carefully reading the article and taking as many informations as possible we went down to the hospital to check it out. Because I was the camera operator I booked out a microphone but decided to use my iPhone because, as discussed with Vanessa, showing up to the hospital with a camera wouldn’t have been ideal and also because although we tried to get any details on whether we were allowed to film or not we agreed a smartphone would have been less intrusive considering the locations. Once we got to the hospitals it was quite hard to find the artwork itself as surprisingly not many staff members were aware of the new installation so we finally decided to just head towards the Evelina sector (children hospital) where we managed to get information on the exact location of the artwork from a nurse. As we were there I immediately realised it would have been impossible to film inside the children hospital as firstly most people there were underage and those who weren’t were families of the minors, or patients themselves. To avoid any sort of problem I asked at the information desk if it would have been permitted for me to film the outside of Evelina and any sign or piece of art within the corridors. After getting permission I started filming, as agreed, around the corridors and outside of the permit but didn’t film any Vox pop or interview. Luckily the artwork was in one of the corridors of the south wing so I was bale to film it and get a few GVs.
On our way back to George as we were looking at the clips I told him we would have had to rely on music, text and mainly voiceover to put our vt together so George started to work on the voiceover whilst I worked on the editing. I found a copyright free song called Nightingale (like the artwork) and used it to sort of time the voiceover and the text. With the vt we wanted to pay homage to organ donors too.
As per the show, I also helped out with setting the cameras and coordinating the floor.
For this day I’d say I used my multimedia skills for my role as reporter but also leadership for my contribution to the show.
——>WEEK11-12
SYMPOSIUM PREP
On the 2nd of May we had our symposium with LJ, Michael and second years.
In preparation for that I decided to write down a sort of script after going through my proposal and research. A few days before the symposium we had to write down a sort of brief summary of what was our project on to give the second year an idea of all our stories, so I decided to start my presentation from there. I wrote down bullet points to help me talk through my project from start to end. I finally went through the slides from interactive journalism of week11 and took note of everything I needed to touch on, such as improvements, possible advices, etc
On the day of the symposium despite having everything written down I was a bit nervous and just started talking forgetting to check my notes but because it was indeed something I’ve worked on for months I had plenty to say. I could have probably be more specific of what went wrong and what went right but overall I think I delivered a good presentation.
