Winol 23.02.11

This week's bulletin was a success once again. I am proud to say that our ambitions were higher than last week's and the production team has definitely reached the target we set on Monday morning. We decided to try an Outside Broadcast for the sport's presenter. The field outside the building seemed perfect to us. Having Drew perfectly setting it all up for us made the whole process much easier. Thankfully, the sound didn't play up in the actual bulletin like it did during the rehearsals.

Let’s start from the beginning. Most of us came in at 9.00 am, all confident and ready for another hardworking day. Everything seemed to be going well till about 11.00 when the tension started building up in the news room due to the lack of the script writer- Cara, who was late. However, she did an excellent job once she turned up and after the scrip system completely crashed which meant doing the script on Word Document. Therefore, the headlines were delayed by 3 mins, which made us all even more stressed out. I could just see how the bulletin falls apart. Instead, we all got extremely organised- as long as we work together then everything is going to be good. Everyone had a set job and everyone knew what they were doing. We all got on with our jobs and got it all done on time, which was great and relieving.

Hana and I pre- recorded a conversation about the Polish bulletin that I produced a day before. That was a part of our news bulletin today. Afterwards, we finally recorded the headlines, which went smoothly. Hana has a beautiful and clear voice. She was confident in front of the camera which made the whole recording easier.

Unfortunately, as usual, we had some technical problems- 5 minutes before we were supposed to go live! The VT machine completely crashed and we lost all of the packages on the system. Luckily enough, instead of panicking I took a deep breath and calmly reopened the system and put all the packages back on there. By that time we had 1.5 minutes to go live and everything was working just perfectly well.

For the OB we used a great iPhone application which allowed us to have an auto-cue outside the studio. That was simply fantastic. I absolutely love what the technology can offer us these days. Jake has done an incredible job, considering that he didn't have a talkback.

My aim this week was to make an ending sequence with music and credits at the end of the bulletin, which I think went well.


I think we can comfortably say that this week’s bulletin was highly successful.

Well done everyone!

Winol Goes Polish- Special Edition

Like I promised a while ago, I started my new project on Monday morning. I decided to finally get around to do what I planned to since we started back after the long Christmas break. My project involved translating the last week's news bulletin to Polish. It went very very well but was extremely time consuming. Translating 11 minutes worth of pure speech took me 12 hours- That's how I spent the whole Monday. Surprisingly it wasn't as easy as I thought because, of course, the structure of sentences in Polish is completely different. Also thinking of appropriate and professional words was quite hard as I didn't want to make any legal issues. I was very pleased once I've had lots and lots of pages of Polish speech. I recorded the links in the studio on Tuesday morning- that would be why my eyes look so tiny! Then I only had to record the voice overs and put it all together. It came out very good. I think it looks and sounds possessional. I am extremely happy about it and I will definitely try to do more Polish bulletin in the future, especially that I received plenty of positive feedback from my lectures, friends, polish watchers and my parents. Presenting is such an incredible experience, I really do enjoy it :)

Unfortunately, I didn't put any subtitles but that's only because the Polish bulletin is a pure translation of the last week's Winol's news bulletin.

Still, hope you enjoy it! :)

Success on Winol!

As the second week of being in the world of Winol went on, we all started preparing for the second news bulletin. We started planning and preparing straight away on Monday starting from the Production meeting where we all put together all the ideas we thought of over the weekend. To make our Wednesday much easier we decided to record the Sports Week on Tuesday, which allowed us to play with the equipment in the Gallery as well as sort out the lightings and the green screen.

On Wednesday morning I had sorted out the headlines sequence, as well as the headlines music and the sports graphics. It all looked good enough to me. I tried to push all the deadlines back so they are an hour earlier which I thought would help us go live on time, but unfortunately no one was ready to hand in their work, so for this week we left the deadlines as they were supposed to be right from the start. Thankfully, there was no need for it as we went live exactly at 3.00! By that time we managed to have plenty of run throughs and practises of handovers. This week, the Gallery was very calm and extremely organised. We all work well as a team, the communication was clear, so everyone knew exactly what to do. The presenters did an extremely good job, especially Mikey, who had presented for the very first time!

I must say, this Wednesday we had hardly any technical difficulties which was just fantastic. I think we have done a very ambitious bulletin. One of the news stories fell through; this meant that we had to come up with Plan B to fill out the 50 seconds of the gap in the bulletin. We decided on an OB from the News Room. Karen found a great story for Julie to talk about in front of the Camera of the News Room. I was really worried that it could be the only technical difficulty we could have had today. Although, it went nice and smooth, providing the information we needed.

The only technical problem that we experienced was the black hole right at the end of headlines when it was cutting to the presenter; therefore we had to re-record that bit.

As the director, my role is to make sure everyone in the Gallery as well as the presenters and camera people in the studio know exactly what they are doing and what is generally happening with the bulletin. I need to time perfectly the length of packages so I know when to shout CUE to the presenters downstairs as well as give a shout to the person on vision mixer to change the background. Compare to last week’s bulletin, I think I gave everyone enough attention and everyone knew their job well. I was very impressed with how smooth the bulletin went. I felt amazingly great directing it today. After the successful bulletin, everyone went off to the debrief while I edited the bulletin and put it on the website with Chris.

Once again, very well done everyone! We’ve all done such a great job!

Here is the full news bulletin. Enjoy!

True Love In Middle Of Winter- Happy Valentine's Day!

The 14th February is supposed to be the festival of lovebirds across the world. It should be seen as a special day when you feel like you want to do something nice and completely different for the ones you love. There are so many beautiful ways to show them the way you feel. Of course, I think if you love someone you need to show it to them all year long, but it's still nice to be taken out for dinner or be given a bunch of roses on that one special day. However, some people see it as just another pointless and commercialized day where the shops attract us to spend more money. The Valentine's Day has a lot of traditions and history behind it though.

Here are some fun facts about the Valentines Day, taken from

http://festivals.iloveindia.com/valentines-day/valentine-day-fact.html, you can read more on the website:

1. The modern day celebration of Valentines Day is believed to begin in France and England.
2. Cupid (symbol for Roman God of love), doves, love birds, roses, hearts and arrows are all symbols of the Valentine’s Day celebration.
3. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D.
4. In Great Britain, Valentine's Day began to be celebrated around seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes.
5. In Medieval times, girls ate bizarre foods on St Valentine's Day to dream of their future spouse.
6. There was a belief in the Middle Ages that the first unmarried person (of the opposite sex) you met on the morning of St. Valentine's Day would become your spouse.
7. The first Valentine gift was sent by Duke of Orleans to his wife, after he was captured in 1415.
8. 73% of Valentine Day flowers are bought by men, whereas women buy only 23% of Valentine flowers.
9. Around 3% of pet owners prefer to give Valentine gifts to their pets, as they are more grateful than humans.
10. In oden times, some people believed that if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine's Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a millionaire.
11. The heart is the most common symbol of romantic love. Ancient cultures believed the human soul lived in the heart and its red color is though to be the most romantic.
12. The red rose was the favorite flower of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Since red stands for strong feelings, red rose is a flower of love.
The first Valentine's Day box of chocolates was introduced by Richard Cadbury in 1868.
13. In Wales, wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on Valentine’s Day. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favorite Valentine decorations on the wooden spoons that meant, "You unlock my heart!"





We've had a lot of Valentine's love in the News Room today. Everything seemed to be working perfectly well, even the computers were so nice to us! It was a highly productive day for me. I've been trying to get all the technical matters ready for Wednesday so we don't have to run about like headless chickens 2 hours before the bulletin trying to get the headlines music!
I managed to produce a new headlines music. It is different to what we had last week, as I know Chris wasn't really keen on it anyway. I think it's more news-like and sounds more professional now. I've also managed to get the sports graphics to work which is fantastic as in the last bulletin the graphics had a primary school standard! At least we won't have to worry about those for the next few weeks till we decide it is time to change the template.
I was also very proud of myself after I sub-edited my first two articles, which went really well.

After coming back from the long break, I can fully say that so far I am enjoying my new role more than I did last semester. Currently I feel like a part of the News Room, whereas last semester I never spent a minute in there because I was out filming and editing my features. This semester I can feel the friendly, although sometimes tense atmosphere that flies in the air of the News Room, and I love it! Working on the Production side is definitely what I would choose to do after graduating.

Anyway, to all of my lovely journos and everybody else, especially Cait and Sybil and those who read my blog.. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! :) Lots of love to you all!

Keynesian Economics

Keynesian economics is an economical system made by John Keynes. It was his theory to explain what caused the Great Depression, which was a worldwide economic recession that happened 10 years before the World War II. It began in United States and spread throughout the whole globe. One of the reasons for the Great depression was the loss of many jobs in the USA, unemployment reached 1/3 of the workforce. Industrial production and constructions partly stopped in some countries, such as Poland or America. After farming suffered the most in those devastating times, everything started becoming more stable in 1939.

During those 10 years, all the main economists were expected to know the causes as well as the solutions for the Great Depression. John Keynes, however, was the most influential. He declined the theory of classical economy, which in Keynes views was the reason for unemployment that still rose, as well as taught that money is irrelevant but allows trade to occur. Keynes theory, however, was based on circular flow of money. He thought that in classical economy when you spend money, it becomes Someone Else’s earnings and when Someone Else spends their money it becomes his earnings, and that’s how it flows. However, when something goes wrong, for example, when Someone Else loses his job and has no more money, that’s when you stop earning too. And that’s what happened when the Great Depression hit the world. Keynes tried to find a better way of developing the economy, where you can avoid another Great Depression from happening.








Keynes came up with a theory that describes an increase of saving, consumption, investment and production. In that theory, the interaction of aggregate demand and aggregate supply establishes the level of output and employment in the economy. He tries to explain that instead of making x number of products from which you don’t know how many are going to be consumed, you need a further planning of production. The target is to find out the costumers needs (aggregate demand) and plan their products in months or even years in advance. This way it will be easier to make profit.

He also believed that fiscal policy should be activated. It is taxation and government spending. The classical approach was to regulate only the bond market and therefore the interest rates (the price of money itself). The fiscal policy then was to regulate the aggregate demand.

Keynes answer to unemployment is always to reduce the cost of:
1. Wages
2. Money itself

These are just my basics notes on the subject. There is a lot more to talk about in Keynesian economics, which I am sure we will be able to do in the seminar.

The sources I used to help me understand this theory:

Notes form the lecture, by Chris Horrie,
www. wikipedia.co.uk
www.wisegeek.com

Winol WInol Winol. Our First Bulletin. 9/02/2011

Our first bulleting is far behind us. It certainly was a good experience full of mad roller coasters that taught us many useful lessons. We started the day with opening the gallery and the studio. The News Room was surprisingly quiet and relaxed, it was almost worrying. Everyone had their own job and they were trying to complete them before 3. We, the production team, started off nice and easy with recording the Sports Week which went amazingly well. We didn’t have a single technical problem. The lighting and the sound were perfect. This made us more confident about the bulletin. However, somehow everything started falling apart soon after we finished recording the Sports Week. When we decided it was time to record the headlines, we realised that we didn’t have the template or the music for it. It took us a while to sort it out. After recording the headlines and when I went to edit them I realised that there was nothing on the tape, which means nothing was recorded even if Dominique is more than sure she pressed the record button. Therefore, we lost more time trying to record the headlines once again. Just before the bulletin all the technology started playing up. We couldn’t sort out the green screen on all the cameras. Because it was our first bulletin, no one really knew how to sort out the lighting to make the green screen better. That’s when we missed our deadline. It was 3 in the afternoon when we were supposed to go live but instead we were all panicking and stressing over unhelpful equipment which was just getting worse minute by minute. At some point the talkbacks of the presenters decided to turn themselves off so we couldn’t communicate. 15 minutes later after trying our best to make everything look perfect (which it didn’t anyway) we went live without having a single run through. The presenters did an incredible job, considering the stress and the lack of practice. The interview Cara and Andy had was great and smooth, the questions were nicely planned. The news and sport reporters also did a great job, the pictures were just brilliant; all the scripts were well written.
Unfortunately, the uncontrollable chaos in the Gallery made everything worse. I, as a director, became confused about what my role really was, as I had Charlotte the editor, giving me jobs and telling me what to do, as well as making the decisions I was meant to make. Towards the end of the bulletin, just after the handover to Gareth Charlotte told people to stop and to rerecord that whole section, which we obviously couldn’t do because we were Live! We carried on going though and while I was editing the bulletin for the website I cut that section, thank God we have Final Cut Pro!

Overall, considering that it was our first bulletin without any help of more experienced 3rd years I think we did an incredibly good job. The bulletin is up on the website ready to watch. The fact that we missed the deadline is bad BUT we could have missed it by hours while it was only 15 mins, which I think is reasonably good.

Things I have learnt and I will try to improve next week:
~We are going to prepare the headline template on the Tuesday, so we don’t have to worry about it on the day, because it consumes a lot of time.
~We are also planning to record the Sports week on the Tuesday, as well as create the sport graphics and the strap lines for both, sport and news packages, This way we can only concentrate on the bulletin on Wednesday,
~Wednesday mornings will be the time to sort out all the technical matters so everything is ready for when the presenters are ready to practice.
~From now on I know that the Gallery is my place and I am the one making all the decisions.
~We are going to work on sport graphics to make them more professional.

You can watch the bulletin on www.winol.co.uk
Well dione everyone!

New Semester, New Ideas, New Winol!

Winol is back on after a long Christmas break which allowed us to refresh our minds and prepare for yet another exciting and hard working semester. Each of us have a different role, some of us have more than one role due to the lower number of people in the news room, as of course the 3rd years are now working on their final dissertation. This leaves us in charge of Winol, which I find extremely exciting!

I must admit I have never felt like such a geek before. The amount of excitement I went through after today’s de brief and all the meetings is incredible. I definitely feel strong and confident enough to execute and accomplish all the projects that I am setting for myself this semester. During the de brief today it was decided that Winol’s news agenda should move on from only around campus and within Winchester news to something bigger. The reporters are now going to produce packages which will include news from Winchester as well as from other places around it.

I am planning an ambitious semester this time. I am hoping to put even more effort into my work than last semester. I am a part of The Production Team and my main role is Director, which includes broadcasting anything recorded in the studio, such as weekly News Bulletin, Sports Week, What’s on in Winchester and any entertainment show we decide to produce. I will, of course, swap over with other members of the production team so everyone can have a go at everything. Other than that I have been asked to be a sub-editor because we are extremely short on them. I reckon subbing the articles could be fun and it shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ve known English grammar ever since I started learning English as a foreign language. I am also planning to produce a Winol Special new bulletin in Polish, for those many Polish people living in Hampshire as well as my family and friends from other parts of England. The plan for this has not been made yet but of course today was my first day back so I will have plenty of time to produce this show. I already have some basic ideas, I just need to sit down and put all of them on paper to get an outline of what I want to do. The last thing I am also involved in is still features. Every so often I am going to continue producing Challenge Justina features because like Chris said, it’s funny and quite affective. Therefore, my next feature is going to be based around having a budget again. I will try to get an accommodation with having just £300 a month, I will try to see how long I could stay in a very expensive place, then in a average flat and in a cheap place. Again, I hate to plan it properly to see what it’s going to look like.

Like I said before, it is going to be productive and affective semester and I am highly looking forward to it. We all know it is going to be tough but we are all prepared for it!

Also, here is the last feature I produced before Christmas. Enjoy!


Let the new term begin!