Reflecting on Broadcast Journalism 2

I really enjoyed Broadcast 2 as a unit, but I felt I let myself down in the major assignment. I had some real problems with my footage, which turned my story around as I couldn't use one interview or any other footage I shot at a second music venue. I also found it really hard to get vox pops, as I tried in 3 different spots for 2 1/2 hours and only got 2 people who were willing to be interviewed, and the second person then had nothing to say on my topic. All in all I was really disappointed on how I did, I thought I could have done much better but relied too heavily on getting good vox pops after my first footage was not useable. Ideally I would have gone back and reshot, or gotten another music venue to interview, but by the time I saw the footage I had to return the camera the next day, and had no time to organise another interview.

Other Things I learnt from the BJ2 Video Assignment:

- Always always ALWAYS shoot 4-5x more footage than you need. It might be too dark, it might turn out terrible and you will always get home and think 'why didn't I shoot that'? and want to scream.

- Before interviewing someone who isn't used to being interviewed, ensure you prep them really well. Not tell them what you are going to ask, but things like 'make sure you look at me and not the camera', and 'seriously, just look at me, don't look at the camera.' Especially 'DON'T LOOK AT THE CAMERA, LOOK AT ME!'

- There are two types of people- those who see a video camera being set up and get really interested, and those who see a video camera set up and run for the hills.

- It's really awkward to tell people that they should answer a question themselves, and not let someone else call out the answer from the other side of the shop. Especially when the other person said they didn't want to be filmed under any circumstances.

- Always have some back up questions/story angle incase your first set of questions and angle doesn't work out.

- Make sure you get some cutaway shots- I forgot to do this except for a badly shot 'noddy'

- Try and get some shots with something happening in them- at the time I was filming at Smith's Alternative Bookshop, and there were almost no customers, so I couldn't film a sale taking place or anything apart for one man standing at a shelf staring

- Editing is really, really, time consuming.

- I don't know anything about my round, Arts/Entertainment. I found it really difficult to find a story that hadn't been done a million times, and even them my story idea (of music venues) had been done before, I just tried to put a new spin on it.

All in all, I enjoyed the unit, and the major assignment was a crash course in what to do and what not to do. I think even after only doing it once, I could do a much better job now.