Video assessment (Evaluation)

My primary focus for this part of the module was to set up my choice of interviewee and get my footage well in advance of the actual submission date.

As opposed to my audio work, I actually managed to organize my material well in advance, however there were a lot of other problems with the material and the concept in general. When I started out I hoped to produce something similar to a restaurant review, however as I progressed with my interviews and footage I realized that my original idea wouldn’t be newsworthy enough to qualify as a “news package”. Also, since the restaurant I had chosen wasn’t particularly linked to any news story, I wasn’t certain if it would qualify at all as a news idea.

So since I had to change my idea midway, things got a little hard to organize. However I think the main problem was that I hadn’t researched and developed my story line prior to actually shooting and organizing my footage. So after I had already finished with my practical work I realized that I actually needed additional footage and there was barely any time left to get it.

I think my final package was fairly newsworthy because it discussed a business that hundreds of people take up every year in the hope of making a successful entrepreneurship out of it. However, I don’t think that the way my news package is structured gets the point I am trying to make across quite as well as it could have. For example, my package focuses more on the restaurant I went to, as opposed to the actual concept I am trying to investigate into. I would have ideally also interviewed one more expert on the matter so my package would have a wide variety of opinions on it, thus automatically making it more newsworthy.

I was also rather unhappy with the material I had managed to gather. In retrospect, I should’ve perhaps done a couple of test runs with the equipment I had been given before actually filming. I found that most of the video I had managed to shoot was unusable and I had grossly misjudged a lot of the little technical details that I shouldn’t have taken for granted at all.

I was, however, quite happy with what I learned about Final Cut Pro. I think it’s a very useful software and despite the fact that it does seem rather hard to get it right the first time , after a couple of trials I got the hang of it. So I’m fairly happy with my editing, despite the fact that most of my footage was unusable.

Overall, I enjoyed the video part of the module, however paying more attention to detail and finalizing my story before going out to film would definitely help me the next time round.

What makes a restaurant work?

The restaurant business has always been known to have one of the riskiest business cycles in the industry. This entire sector is characterized by uncertainty and a huge amount of luck. So what, in today’s day and age, makes a restaurant work?

In my news package I will be looking at one particular restaurant: Abracadabra, a Russian restaurant in London. Known for it’s unusual decor, it makes it to quite a few lists as being a “Unique restaurant in London“. However, as mentioned in my package, it has also received some rather critical reviews.

The point of this package is to take a look at one of the more expensive restaurants in London, analyze it, and document how, in order to make a restaurant actually work successfully one needs to have a lot of factors in place first.

 

Video work (Documentation)

Browsing the web a while I ago I found this article on  restaurant I had visited about 2 months ago. Abracadabra, a Russian restaurant in London, was an experience I had a lot of things to say about, good and bad. This article basically trashes the restaurant completely.

That got me thinking about how I’ve never actually considered the restaurant industry as a proper business and how some entrepreneurs spend their entire lives trying to get such a business started.

So I decided to do my news package on this, while focusing on Abracadabra, a Russian restaurant in London. I chose this restaurant because I had visited it previously in the past, and had noticed how, despite the spectacular amount of effort and money that was put into its interior design and decor, it never quite made it as one of the relatively successful restaurants.

Evaluation (Audio portfolio)

When I started out with my audio assessment my primary focus was on finding interesting newsworthy stories for both my podcast and my interview.

For the podcast I was fairly happy with my concept and idea, but I think that putting a little more thought into the overall presentation of my footage would’ve worked in my favor. I was originally hoping for it to be something like a serious newsy podcast but realized later on that it would work much better as a lighter educational one. By the time I figured that out, I had already got most of my recordings and had to re-edit them to make them fit into the structure I wanted them to be in. Hence, deciding early on what exactly I wanted to do for my podcast would’ve made it a lot easier to do a better job. I found myself with limited time by the end of it, and that really affected the editing process. Another thing that I think I should’ve added, and had originally planned to add, was music. I neglected all the other sound effects that I could’ve used along with just my voice and my interviewees voices. Hence unfortunately, I don’t think I took full advantage of the fact that in a podcast you can include whatever sound effects you like to make it interesting.

For the interview, I think I picked a fairly newsworthy idea. However, as was the problem with the podcast, I didn’t set about arranging my interviews in time. I originally wanted to interview a media scholar in India about the changing face of the media in that country, but couldn’t arrange the phone interview in time. So again, time management was an issue. However, I was fairly pleased with my final choice of interviewee as he gave me another side of the journalism debate, which is what I set out to look for. Although I feel that this one was probably edited better than the podcast, I believe that I could’ve come up with better questions instead of the slightly more predictable ones that I ended up asking.

I think both my podcast and my interview worked fairly well. Had the editing process gone slightly more smoothly than it did, I would have been a lot more satisfied. Regardless of which I learned how to use Audacity to make basic audio edits, I learned about how important it is to think about and organize your interviews in advance, and how most stories are actually “newsworthy” if you know how to edit them appropriately and present them well to the listeners.

 

Video first try

Audio interview (Documentation)

I read this blog a week or so ago, and considering how I am studying journalism, I thought it would be a good idea to look deeper into this topic.

There has been a lot of speculation on whether conventional journalism will soon be obsolete thanks to the coming up of latest technologies that have enabled anyone who is at the right place at the right time to call himself a ‘citizen journalist’.

So I decided to speak to Dr. Daya Thussu, a media expert, on what the thought on the topic. I think that the current state of media is always a newsworthy subject to discuss and have opinions on.  He seemed to be of an opinion that was c0ntrary to most opinions I have heard that are fairly cynical of the future of journalism. That is why I thought it would be interesting to include his thoughts in my audio portfolio.

Audio podcast idea (documentation)

I was browsing through the BBC website sometime in late January when I saw this article about how the queen is delighted over the Diamond Jubilee celebrations planned this year to commemorate 60 years of her reign. I found myself quite surprised at how I had absolutely no knowledge about the Queen or her reign over this country.

So when it came to an idea for an audio podcast, I thought it would be a good idea to look around the city and ask Londoners basic questions about King George the VIth as this year also marks his 60 year death anniversary. I thought it could be sort of a light educational podcast on how little people know about what’s not just happening around the world right now, but what happened in their own country less than 60 years ago.

I didn’t want it to be a very serious podcast, as my topic, despite being fairly relevant, wasn’t of any particular priority. Hence the tone of my podcast is fairly light and isn’t intended at being a “hard news” podcast but merely an educational one.