Thursday 09/03/17

After having a play around with writing scripts, presenting and producing, today we finalised our roles. I am going to be the sole presenter. We decided not to have two presenters but instead to have lots of reporter voices dipping in to help me. The main reason for this decision is that our audience is a 25-55 (my age demographic) with a slight female bias. We then spent the afternoon looking through the news for different stories to build on and treat in a different way for our show.

Thursday 16/03/17

We spent the week researching and today we bought together our ideas. We came up with 7 strong stories and talked to Matthew about how to treat them. My idea is ‘A Brexit Bucket List’ which came from an article I read in the Guardian. The idea is to do an illustrated two way with clips and possible small interviews or vox pops to make it interesting. We may open it up to social media to answer and have it top and tale the show. It is meant to be tongue in cheek but is still in line with our show briefing.

Tuesday 21/03/17

We had a group meeting to discuss our plans for the features and packages. From this I decided to contact the journalist who wrote the Brexit Bucket list article and see if he would do an interview. He has replied and the interview I have scheduled and interview. I have also written the questions. It has been suggesteed that the Brexit Bucket list could also work as a mini package or feature.

Thursday 23/03/17

We did a 15 minute show on the Westminster Bridge terror attack today. The main thing I learnt from this practice show is that as presenter I need to be prepared. This means thoroughly reading the scripts through and making any edits. Making sure the words flow as if I was saying them not reading them. Having back up scripts. I wasn’t happy with the way it went so will take the things I learnt forward.

Tuesday 28/03/17

Today I interviewed Leo Benedictus. I have 30 minutes of audio around the points of the Bucket List but need to have a think about how to make it interesting at the moment it is a bit bland and rambling.

Thursday 30/03/17

We did a pilot of the pilot using just the raw audio that we had. But we also had an OB and phone interview set up too. I had the scripts in time to read through and all in all for a first proper run it went quite well. I felt comfortable with the scripts and guests and OB. The only thing I thought was that I was just reading the script so need to work on making it sound natural and comfortable.

Tuesday 04/04/17

I have worked the ‘Brexit Bucket List’ into a one minute countdown piece to coincide with the triggering of article 50 and the countdown until Britain leaves the EU. This is ready for the pilot on Thursday. Everyone in the team is working to get the audio, cues and scripts ready and tight for the pilot, and in time for me to practice and tweak them.

Thursday 06/04/17

The pilot went extremely well I thought. I didn’t feel nervous because we were prepared. So preparation for the final show is what I need to focus on this week. The things I now have to work on is just scripts, scripts, scripts and more scripts. I need to make sure I have read through and edited them to sound like me. The groups job for the next few days it send me the final scripts so I can work on them.

Week of the show!

I have spent all my time rewriting the final scripts. I have practised reading them. We have a draft running order in place and I have written links and cues. I have also written a few extra so that if I need to fill time I am prepared.

Show day!

I believe the show went well. I was over prepared and so was not nervous. I feel generally happy with my performance as presenter. The hardest thing was managing the time of the live call in interviews. At one point we were running over so I cut an interview short but then we ended up under and with a minute to fill. Luckily I had thought about this and did manage to fill the time (although that was a nerve racking bit) and the show finished exactly on time. I’m extremely proud of my group as they worked hard to make me feel supported on the day.