Friday 15 June 2007

The Stirrer

An update on my possible Guest Editor role at The Stirrer. Having not heard back from the editor for a time, I recieved a telephone call this morning. It seems that he is still interested in letting me take control, but has been a little busy lately with his wife expecting a baby. Which is fairly understandable!

So, once everything has settled down in The Stirrer's household, we will sit down and discuss the role. Despite my being in Reading over the summer, I believe that we can come to some arrangement, particularly as he claims to have another person willing to cover the local aspect. This would lead me free to edit from afar!

Until next time

End of Term

So it's been a while since I last posted...I do have an excuse of sorts. I have been tied up with exams, assignments and moving house which leads to the Internet being cut off. Its never the best.

So I have completed the Online Journalism module, the reason for setting up this blog though I intend to keep it going. The main reason for this was finally getting access to the net and seeing my hit counter which had doubled despite no new postings. Our interactive went quite well in the end, Neil and I being in charge of the video section. The videos that I produced were...

Speedway explained:



Speedway Clips:



An interview with Brummies star Ulrich Ostergaard:



An interview with father of Brummies racer Aidan Collins, Les:



An interview with Brummies boss Graham Drury



I also had an interview with the club secretary Brian Buck, but unfortunately the wind was so loud that it could not be heard.

I had several problems creating the videos. Having never completed a television module I had little experience using the cameras and so on the Les Collins interview the sound quality is very poor. With the Ulrich Ostergaard one, it was a little dark although I managed to brighten it up somewhat in Movie Maker.

Ultimately, our flash interactive never made the UCE News website for a number of reasons. The file size was enormous, over 500mb, which meant that it was far too big to upload. We did not know how to make it smaller. This was probably due to the intricacy of the piece, with seven videos, an audio slideshow and around 14 pages to it, all interlinking. As lecturer Paul Bradshaw noted:

I decided to teach 'forms' (e.g. slideshow, video gallery) rather than 'skills' (frame navigation, audio) this year. It was the wrong decision.


This meant that whilst the individual pieces were good, we struggled to put them together and upload them to the website. This was unfortunate as I was particularly proud of our groups effort, as I had to work very hard to complete our groups flash interactive on deadline day.