13 May Workbook Entries Pascal Kempson
28/1
The first week back after Christmas was mainly about voice training.
We learnt in groups different ways to breathe and how to hold yourself when delivering a speech or piece to camera. It was an interesting experience with lots of useful information about stretches you could do to open your airways. She also taught us some phrases to find out what kind of sounds we struggled with pronouncing.
4/2
Week 2 was voice coaching again, but this time in pairs or small groups. I attended with Shola and Charlie in the studio with Vanessa. We were given news scripts to read and she would help us with what we were doing wrong. She told me that I ‘read beautifully’ but could with putting some extra emphasis on certain words, keywords, that the user would need to understand to understand the overall story. This was helpful, and as I read it again I improved. I was also slightly tailing off at the end of sentences, so need to enunciate those more clearly.
I was unwell for the rest of that week and the start of the next.
11/2
I was still unwell but had already completed my voice coaching the week before, so was able to rest.
I was able to start thinking about which competition I was going to enter after the workshop on that Wednesday. I was brainstorming about which my favoured type of competition would be and where I would be strongest and potentially be able to win.
I wasn’t able to attend the audiogram session but read the notes on moodle. I see quite a lot of audiograms online, on twitter for example, so had an idea of what they were. I didn’t quite understand how useful they could be, and looked at the website Michael had provided from home to see if I could work out how to use it.
18/2
I had to go home this week to Bedfordshire but I heard from classmates that the task was to film some mobile journalism. Being able to create content from your phone allows you to report from almost anywhere, so it’s a highly useful skill. I’ve done this in the past and have to a mobile editing suite called Rush from Adobe where I can edit together short GVs and PTCs to create an overall package that could be worthy of using in a production. I also missed the NSS trip but heard it was a great time all round, I did the survey at home and gave my course a glowing review which I’m sure, if any of my tutors could read it, would be delighted with.
25/2
This week I started writing notes for my reflective essay for my project. LJ told me it could be just 500 words as I was doing the hybrid, so had to cram as much information in to as little words as possible. It went alright in the end but if I had the full 1000 I’m sure it would’ve been better.
I decided on the competition I wanted to enter, which was the Wasafiri New Writing prize in the category of life writing. As life writing can be a form of journalism it was applicable, and it allowed me to tell a good story. I knew that I wanted to write something about my family life but wasn’t yet sure what exactly it was going to be about.
4/3
I spent a lot of this week preparing for the final submission – project and research paper. This meant that I wasn’t’t really in class. It is a shame that I missed this week, which consisted of International Women’s Day, but I had lots of important things to be focussing on as well. This actually, in it’s own way, taught me about time management. If I had spent more time int he beginning with my project and paper, I would have been able to do more in class stuff around this time. Unfortunately I found the essay and article more important, but this was a valuable lesson.
11/3
See last week. I heard about the man from Wikimedia coming in, and I created an account on Wikipedia but missed the talk. The team put on a culture kind of show in a new format which sounded reasonably fun but also slightly cliche. I sent some things in the group chat that could be talked about, being an editor from afar? I honed in my idea for the competition, which I decided was going to focus on the effect my grandparents had on me when I was young and as I grew up. I had time to really think about the things that they did for me and how they took me and raised me for a lot of my childhood. I thought about the things that we used to do together.
18/3
The assessed live news day. I got in to class and heard that there were no real teams or roles and that we would assign our own teams to the potential stories. I worked with Theo on the Stop Child Exploitation Awareness Day. I did a lot of research on the event and what different things council have been doing to help. This research was couple with Theo trying to get in touch with the Cllr Evelyn Akoto, unfortunately she was ill so we couldn’t reach her. After sending stuff off to Nicola regarding the story, Theo and I went to the council building to get some GVs for background in the show. We got a good few and some pictures and returned to the newsroom to send them over to Nicola/Fran. I feel like the research is definitely a transferrable skill, as well as the ability to film GVs for the specific story.
25/3
This is when I really started to focus on the competition even though I had a resit due not long after. I started to take notes on things that I would write about, remembering that I had to get it in under 3000 words and to meet the rest of the requirements. I did some preliminary research of small anecdotes that would be helpful when writing my piece.
29/4
We started talking about the end of year show and I considered what I’d role I’d like to have.
I began work on the competition entry, the writing process began.
SYMPOSIUM
I’d prepared a couple of days before, almost writing a speech and then condensing it in to notes. I’m happy to talk in to a microphone or camera, but I struggle a lot more when presenting to a live audience, this is something I would really like to work on in the future but I think the only way to truly improve is to it more often. I also found it difficult to talk for a period as long as others when I had two written pieces to present. I think I got to 4 minutes which is classic me but I hope that I got across enough relevant information. It felt like I did. Mostly. Even though I prepared for this presentation more than previous, I still found it difficult. I was anxious. Next time I would like to be more confident in the idea that people will like what I have to say.
6/5
No class on the Monday due to the bank holiday and Wednesday’s final class was brief. George, the executive producer of live show, assigned Shola and I the role of Presenters on the night, so we will be presenting every half hour as the night goes on. We’ll show clips of other peoples work and do some interviews. We’ll cut to reporters in the field. Should be fun, I’m looking forward to it. We began work on the script and will complete that in the coming weeks. Shame that it was the last class, made me a bit sad inside.
Also I wrapped up my competition entry and tried to add some finishing touches to get it ready for the deadline.
Research for my entry
Jimmy Young
London Brick Company info
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Brick_Company
Stewartby to London
Info about Bedfordshire
https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Bedfordshire
