Fashion First!

So after a fantastic summer of sun, sea, and long evenings with wine, I'm back at uni and working on the famous WINOL, Winchester News Online. It doesn't quite compare to sunbathing on the beach with a piña colada and a good book, but I must say my first week has been a great success, surprisingly!

When I was told I woud be working on features, I was so pleased! It was exactly what I wanted and after producing my first feature, I'm now excited for the next! I didn't know what to expect when I came back but after Katie, our features editor, explained everything we needed to know, it all became clear. Producing a feature to a deadline every week, I must admit, did sound worrying at first but Katie couldn't have been more helpful. I wasn't sure whether I would have enough ideas or even if they would be any good but now I already have features planned in advance and I can't wait to get filming them!
Chris also stressed a point that I now keep telling myself! He said that mistakes are actually good and the only people that don't make mistakes, are people that don't do anything at all. Well thank goodness he mentioned this!

Our first feature we decided to produce, was a fashion feature on Autumn trends. As the weather gets colder, fashion changes and so it was a perfect time to see what styles you were hitting the high streets in. Becky and I produced the feature together and it was a topic that interested us both so we thought it would be a brilliant feature to get us used to filming.

Once we were out in Winchester with our equipment, we found that everything that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong. On the day we set for filming we didn't even get any filming done.

Problem number one: Microphones.
We got into Winchester high street at 12pm, set up our tripod and camera and connected the microphone frequency to the camera. At that point we realised we only had one radio mic, and we needed two! Not such a great start, so take this tip: Always check your equipment first! We walked back up Winchester's own Mount Everest to the university and by the time we got back into town, it was nearly 2pm. We set all the equipment up again, this time ready to go!

But welcome problem number two: Sound. 
With a lot of time wasted standing infront of a camera shouting 'hello' into a microphone with an audience waiting for something spectacular, we found that the headphones were not picking up our voices. The audio levels on the camera were moving, brilliant! The radio mics were all set up to the same frequency and their audio levels were moving too, Super! But nothing was coming through the headphones. So, after a couple of hours of tantrums and a McDonalds, we phoned Katie who cleverly suggested that we try the headphones in a mobile to see if they work. How had we not thought of this?! Hoping to blame it on the headphones and find that they don't work, strangely they did! With no cause to our problem, we couldn't decide whether to risk it and film our piece in the hope we had audio when we got back.

But that was problem number three: Time.
It was now nearly 6pm, shops were shutting and Winchester was almost dead so we thought we would leave it for another day. A whole day and we had no film.

Thankfully when filmed on Monday and everything went well, ready for our deadline on Tuesday. We found ourselves spending the day filming and the evening editing. Our commitment really showed when we found ourselves editing in the newsroom until 1am with a KFC and a shared hot chocolate to keep us going.

Tuesday morning we arrived at the newsroom looking like a pair of Zombies off a set from a horror film. We still had sonme editing to do and our deadline was extended until wednesday. Once our package was finished, the results were definitely worth it all. Everyone was impressed and we recieved the feedback we wanted. We still have a lot to improve on as we realised the radio mics are on camera so next time we will be sure to clip them onto our interviewees and keep them out of shot. I'm so glad everything went wrong when it did as it has prepared us better for next time!

So take a look at this week's fashion feature and come back for next week's!