WINOL PRODUCTION: Week 1

For the second part of the semester I have started working on the production team with Winchester News Online. I am acquiring new skills, which adds to my ever-growing and impressive BJCT accredited skills. The prior skills I had before moving over to production include reporting skills, camera use, editing skills, etc and all of these are transferable skills to some extent, which have only helped me more quickly adapt to life on production.

The first week of being on production everyone's efforts were firmly focused on our live election broadcasting. Here I mixed production skills with basic beat reporting skills as we prepared for what is set to be our biggest venture on Winchester News Online to date. The first week I was assigned the task of going out and filming numerous constituency profiles so that on the night of the election we would have VTs to showcase the constituencies to provide background and political history of areas in the south. The constituencies I covered was the Meon Valley and all of the Portsmouth seats. I was particularly proud as my Meon Valley profile contained interview shots of which I had taken for my Gonzo journalism piece, and as it transpired George Hollingbery (the interviewee) won the seat for the Conservatives. In addition to this I was very pleased with all of my piece to cameras and general views, all of which were shot in interesting locations such as inside the Spinnaker tower or by the ferry port.

As well as profiling my assigned constituencies, I also helped Chanin film his areas. For this we pretty much travelled from one side of Hampshire to the other, which was rather tiring. We profiled Hampshire East in the east over to New Forest in the west. These also turned out very well as again we shot a variety of interesting shots, which included Chanin doing a PTC in front of Fawley power station.

After we filmed the footage, which was collated over nearly three days, we then moved over to production side and edited our packages. Depsite the fact that I had hours of footage, I often found myself short for decent GVs. AN example of this was my footage captured inside the Spinnaker tower, which despite being breathtaking shots, were often jumpy or the panning was too fast. These factors aside, Chanin and I were pleased with our work, which combined a good mixture of eye-pleasing general views with an equal amount of information, and history and heritage of all our assigned constituencies.

Fear and Loathing New Journalism

The godfather of Gonzo journalism and arguably new journalism has got to be Hunter S Thompson. His techniques are unmistakable, taking the reader through every stream of consciousness conceivable with such intricacy that the imagery can almost be smelt. The most notable of his works is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which embraced new journalism and smashed open the doors of Gonzo Journalism.

Though many perceive Thompson’s writing in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as frantic, restless, or overzealous, I must argue that as a narrative it is easily up there with any novel in the way it sets the scene so carefully through first person narrative with Raoul Duke’s analysis of events through facts and questions. One could even go further in admitting that he may not be to everyone’s taste but he does change his style at various points to add nostalgia and poignancy amidst his anarchic monologues, which only enhance his already brilliant descriptive technique.

It is particularly interesting how his utterances within his consciousness do constitute as journalism. “The race was definitely under way. I had witnessed the start; I was sure of that much." There is definitely no way one can challenge the factual information within this statement, which warrants it as viable journalism, it just isn’t written with the age old conformist journalistic technique… hence “new journalism” I guess.

I feel if it were not for the reflective, calm parts within the novel then many of Thompson’s fans would view his work as just mad ramblings, which lack any substance, however the reflective points add eloquence and finesse to a very formative and interesting journalistic approach. Despite the fact that these reflective points can be very opinionated i.e. the reflection of the 1960’s drug, I strongly believe that they only act as a catalyst in heightening the journalism by bringing it to life.