Before it wears on into Christmas itself, I thought I’d better drop a quick note as to how things are going. In the protracted final stages of editing some SFX to video, largely because audio/video encoding is something I’ve only done a few times before and I’m still having a few teething problems. I’m still hammering out a new feature with few close friends of mine – we’ve yet to record anything final – and I’m working on creating enough material to give making a regular honest-to-goodness podcast a try.
The week’s work experience at BBC Hereford and Worcester was really enjoyable. Seeing how the bulletin readers and the production teams produce their work was both instructive and inspiring, although my favourite part was being taught how to use the software there (they use Radioman for editing, mostly) and then being tasked with using it to cut together pieces for broadcast, of which I managed to do quite a few.
Going out and doing vox pops was intimidating at first – quite a few people treated me as if I had a particularly visible and offensive disease (I thought the BBC brand anorak was rather tasteful myself) – and I’d never thought I’d see the day when a man walk away, disgusted, after I asked him his opinion about life in general. Still, I got the hang of it, and I got that same buzz from taking a large amount of material (about 20-30 minutes of audio at a time) and whittling it down into something both brief, vivid, and representative of the bigger picture.
A geeky aside: whilst conducting the various vox pops I thought up how a “vox pop taking” simulation game would work. You’d be given a top-down view of the city. You’d have to approach people (arrow keys) and sound them out on an opinion (a button) before attempting to record them (holding the b button). There would be two bars in the top corner of the screen. The first would be a “faith in humanity” bar which would act as your health, becoming lower if you talked with rude or really depressing people and recovering when you talked with someone friendly or found someone with something meaningful to say. The other bar would be a timer, counting down how long you had left in the level. Your job would be to find ‘good’ people to interview, and, as soon as you felt you had the required amount of material (varying in length from level to level) you’d have to decide whether or not to exit back to the studio. You’d score bonus points for finishing quickly, but be heavily penalised if you didn’t have enough stuff.
I also had some time with the website team – not only did I see how the content management system works across the BBC regional websites but I got to write and research an article which was put up on the front page. You can still find it here, if you’re interested.
Speaking of which, I got my copy of the Old Edwardian’s Gazette in the post today. I was very pleased with the result (not just because my articles were in it!); the Editor has turned the whole thing from a bulky purple monstrosity into something very sleek and very interesting – and it’s been a great experience helping him to do it.
Finally, if you’re still looking for a present for someone over the holiday season, this fellow gives an intelligent, in-depth overview of board games, most of which you’ve probably never heard of.
