12 Dec Jada Scott – Critical Explication
Date of Broadcast: 22nd November 2019
Word Count: 1099
For this Critical Explication, I have decided to focus on the YouTube show that was broadcast on 22nd November 2019. For this show, I filmed and edited one of the VT packages and created the opening and closing credits for the show. I also presented the live show alongside my partner Alessia.
The reason I chose this show, is because I feel it was the smoothest show that our class has collectively managed to produce since we started the year. I will be focusing on two areas; the reporting and the video production in packages.
Journalism.London is our weekly programme broadcast on YouTube and aimed at young students in London. Looking back at the last 6 weeks’ worth of live shows that my class has created, I feel as though we have done well to ensure that the show adheres to its target audience. The stories we select are both informative and engaging for our target audiences, the set layout and design were organised in a way that appeals to the target audience and the overall format of the show is very informal and relaxed to further interest and attract the audience.
The floor layout of this weeks’ show can also be considered as one of our best yet. The plants and arrangements helped to brighten up the scene and the lighting really tied things together. The social media segment of the show was not as well-lit as the rest of the show, but it was still definitely an improvement to other weeks.
The running order of the show was structured by News Editor Juliana and was done so that each of the hard news stories that we featured, were separated by a softer piece of news. The charity sleep out VT was followed by the news bulletins, the hunger strike VT was proceeded by the live guest and the Student Finance story was followed by the social media bulletins.
During the broadcast, I was one of the sofa reporters presenting the show. Myself and Alessia read through the scripts as soon as they were ready and made any changes we deemed necessary. As this was our first live show with a live guest, we made sure to introduce ourselves and make the guest feel comfortable before the show started.
My group focused our VT this week on students having to turn to other sources of income as a result of low student finance. This is a story that we have heard increasingly more and more of in recent years and is now affecting us as university students. We decided our angle would be “Are student loans high enough for students in today’s society”. I sought out about finding an interviewee and began to research financial advisors when I came across Finance Journalist Paul Lewis. I reached out to him on twitter and once he agreed, proceeded to arrange the interview. As our piece was about students, the rest of our VT was filmed outside of a university. This ensured that our target audience would be heard through Vox pops. As we were filming both audio and video and would be off premises, we needed to ensure the equipment we booked out would be able to adhere to all of this. As a result, we booked out a Canon XF100 Camcorder.
On Wednesday, I (cameraman) and the reporter headed to LSBU to record the piece to camera, Vox Pops and GVs.
On the topic of student finance, I immediately recognised that we needed to gather interviews/vox pops that expressed a variety of opinions and were not biased. This is because Journalism.London is a non-biased channel so needs to deliver equal/fair coverage when it comes to certain topics.
On reflection, I believe that our VT was not as unbiased as I had intended it to be. I feel as though this was because all the people, we featured in our VT were students. Possibly, if we had secured one or two people who were not in or had never been in education to give their opinions, the VT would have been a lot more balanced overall.
Moving on to the video production skill, I believe our report did have quite a few strengths. I ensured all the shots were framed correctly and alternated between different sides. I also ensured that the audio was set up correctly and the microphone was on the correct frequency. I did this as we were filming by a busy road and didn’t want any of the noise from the street to be heard on the footage. In addition, we were filming quite late at night which meant that the streets were dark. We did well to disguise this as the package in itself was fairly well lit so you would not have been able to tell that there had been a previous issue with lighting.
In the week previous to this VT, my group had issues with the camera not working and in the week before that, we had issues with the microphone not working. To ensure that this did not happen again this week, I familiarised myself with the equipment and ensure all of them were in working order before filming. This completely resolved/prevented the issue.
I do believe that our video package would have been improved if the shots were more varied. All of the shots I took minus the interview, were wide shots and did not create the successful edit that myself and my group were hoping to achieve. I will ensure that I alter the camera shots and angles in order to prevent this happening again.
I also need to ensure that whenever possible, the footage I gather for cutaways is relevant to the topic being discussed at that moment as I feel the cutaway used in this interview were not fitting to the subject. After a session in Vanessa’s class last week, I became more aware of “picture-led” and “story led” stories and their differences. I knew that the story my group had chosen would have been a story led one and as such, I should have then thought more about the visual images that would help to tell the story to the audience.
Next time I would think about gathering shots that help to connote as a story rather than ones that fill a hole. I would also think carefully about the shots I use as a cutaway. As I was also editing the VT this week, I remembered what we had learnt in class and decided to place GVs with a voiceover at the beginning of the package.
