SciFest Diary - Day 9 (The final round-up)

As promised, my official last entry for Scifest and a final round-up. Jude gave us a few questions to think about and here they are:

What did you learn about multimedia journalism/ recording during Scifest 2007?

Planning
From my experience, planning is everything. If you know what you are dealing with and you have an idea of what it is that you want to get. You need to have a clear angle before you go out and gather your news information. Planning is more than merely doing research as I learnt during the "Cut the fat, Makana" package. I conducted quite a lot of research beforehand but failed to narrow my angle down and, as a result, did not know exactly what information I wanted to gather. From a multimedia perspective, Hayley and I did not sufficiently storyboard and write audio scripts, so we were often ill-equipped technologically to record audio and take proper photographs. This is especially evident in our "Hypnotism: Theatrical Therapy" and "What you going to do with all that junk?", where I remember getting to the venue and having my questions for my article prepared, but looking at the camera and mini disc recorder and thinking to myself: "what now?"

Newsgathering Perspective
The newsgathering process was time-consuming and for Hayley and myself, trying to tackle issues from an Eastern Cape and Grahamstown perspective, the Scifest lectures were a starting point for us. But, with time constraints I don't feel like we were able to attain the depth of information that we wanted. The pressure to get news out inhibited in-depth coverage, but I do understand the need to publish articles and packages on deadline. Similarly, Hayley and I had a fair balance of multimedia skills in terms of newsgathering, although our photography skills were lacking and this showed in our end products.


Teamwork
Hayley and I approached the packages on a fifty-fifty basis, with each of us doing half of each story. This approach had its advantages and disadvantages. It was advantageous in the sense that there was always that other person there to bounce ideas off of and sharing the work load did make it easier to a certain extent. On the negative side, it did feel like we were each covering four stories. We also tended to slip into production line mode where I would conduct interviews and write up articles and captions and maybe taking a few photographs, while Hayley concentrated on recording audio and taking photographs and editing the final photostory. As a result, I don't feel like I got sufficient experience in editing photoslides and audio. Hayley and I were both equally involved in each story, so none of the stories are completely and entirely mine.

What did you not know about conference coverage that you didn't know before?
I think establishing a relationship with the person conducting the conference beforehand is essential so that you know exactly where you stand with regards to being allowed into the venue with sound equipment and using flash photography. It also helps to meet with them beforehand to get an idea of what the conference is about, so that you know what to expect and can angle your story accordingly. With regard to the boys vs. girls lecture that Hayley and I attended was not what we expected and we were forced to scrap the article. Maybe we would not have wasted our time and thought of a better article topic earlier, had we met with the lecturer beforehand. Also, many conferences only happen once and if you do not have a clear idea of what you are covering, then you may miss important information/ photographic opportunities. This happened to us in our "Hypnotism: Theatrical Therapy" package. The photgrapher we were forced to use (due to our lack of technological planning), was unable to get dynamic photographs that could have added to the quality of our photoslide show and did not have a second opportunity to take photographs.

General
On the whole this was a great learning experience that has been essential in showing me what I know and what I still have to learn before I am released into the real world! It is one thing to sit in a theory lecture and be told what and what not to do when covering multimedia stories for the web, but until you are thrown into the practice, you don't really understand. Thank you to all who have so faithfully read my blog (thanks Jude!) and wil post again soon.

I am now off to PE for a working holiday

Ciao for now

MEG*