5th WINOL

It was dull and unmemorable. That's the main criticism to take away from the debrief - most of which was actually on Wednesday than today. We need to write to our pictures, be catchier with our language; clichés aren't bad, they're a technique to make use of. Don't try to be over-clever with news reporting or you'll miss the target. Not that they're saying we can't be creative at all (I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong), but you have to walk before you can run (there's a cliché for you), and at the moment we're barely making two steps before tumbling over.

I was in charge of the NIBs this week, as for reasons out of my control I couldn't organise to have a package. The NIBs, all together:

Purple Flag, Streetlights and Strikes. PF and Strikes were the stronger of the two, so I put them at the start and end and the visually awful Streetlights in the middle. Looking back I should have put Strikes in first, as Julie's piece had the best pictures. My pieces were quite shoddy in comparison. I did try to write to my pictures this day, but I found that I didn't have nearly enough images. This led me to realising that I needed a picture for the words 'Purple Flag' - I ripped the logo off their website quickly, it could definitely have been done better. It also made me realise just how little footage I actually had for Streetlights. The script I ended up writing, which I don't have but will pull from the bulletin later, included words and phrases that lent themselves to pictures I didn't have, such as general shots of town centre. I only had streetlamps.

What I found was that to write to my pictures, I need to have filmed to my words. It's circular, but it comes down to being better prepared, something I hope to be this week: I've already written a rough script for the Occupy Bournemouth package I'll be filming tomorrow. Hopefully it will feed into what I film, which will feed into what I write.

A Healthy Dose of Existentialism and Politics

There's not much I can say in-depth today, but there is a lot I want to say - it will have to come in greater density later. I do feel the need to say something now there.

Freud

Sigmund Freud is one of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, though he would have baulked at being called one. He thought himself a scientist, but as he didn't apply the scientific method to his theories, he was a very poor one. While he has had a lot of influence in the field of psychology, his own theories are viewed more as historical artefacts than things of solid bases, and those psychologists to have followed him - including Carl Jung, who we'll apparently learn more of later - have pushed psychology in more progressively useful directions. But Freud had a significant impact on the culture of the 20th century, and in that respect he is more philosopher than scientist.

There are three highly important theories of his that remain current in our culture today: the subconscious, the mental triumvirate of the Id, Ego and Superego, and psychosexual development.

The Subconscious

This is perhaps Freud's most important theory, as it moves us away from the Enlightenment idea that we are fully in-control of ourselves. The subconscious is a part of our brain we have no control over and that is the foundation of perceptible consciousness. This fundamentally contradicts that Enlightenment idea that the universe - and by extension, a person - is one complete and perfect clockwork. One argument for the subconscious is that there are physical aspects of our body we have no control over: we can't stop ourselves from breathing (imagine if we could? some idiot would do it for a dare and die, then the nanny government would impose breathing regulations), our sensations - touch, taste, etc, but perhaps most importantly pain - are involuntary, and we all have some physical ticks, like tugging our earlobe when we're nervous or tapping our leg when bored. Even the act of crossing our arms is often involuntary.

Freud helped to propagate the idea that we aren't in full control of ourselves, which leads us to the science of psychoanalysis and is easily incorporated into the existential philosophy of the 19th and 20th centuries. Though we still haven't learnt much on the topic of existentialism, I can certainly make connections from what little I know. For example, that famous Nietzsche quote, "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you," is applicable with Freud, where the subconscious is the abyss. In this quote (I believe) Nietzsche was warning his readers from becoming the monsters they fight, and in the mental battlefield Freud describes, that abyss would by the Id, our primal instincts, which Freud believed were harmful.

The Id, Ego and Superego

The Id, as I've just defined, is our primal instincts. Eat, poop, sex, sleep, survive. The Id pushes us towards instant gratification, and someone whose mind is ruled by the Id has low self-control.

The Superego is the opposite of the Id; it suppresses, usually through the usage of guilt. It aims for perfection within the ideals set by culture - so the Superego's manifestation varies not just from person but from place to place. If you eat too much when the Superego's idea of perfection requires you to eat less, it will punish you by making you feel guilty. Someone who is controlled by their Superego, says Freud, suffers from melancholy - depression - due to not being able to satisfy their perfectionism.

The Ego is the realistic of the three, acting as a balancer of the Id and Superego. Someone led by their Ego is more balanced than one who is ruled by the other two and is better adjusted as such.

The Five Stages of Psychosexual Development

The Oral Stage is the first a child goes through in its earliest stages, when it develops an obsession for putting things in its mouth, beginning from breast feeding. Freud warns that children who are under- or over-stimulated at this stage will turn out dysfunctional - those under-fed by their mums will grow into manipulative adults, constantly seeking to get the oral stimulation denied as a child; those over-fed won't mature and will try to stay in this childish, taken-cared-of phase for all their life.

The Anal Stage is characterised by potty training, and is when a child learns to distinguish between instant and delayed gratification - do I poop my pants, or wait to poop in the proper place? A difficult question some people never learn the right answer to. Those who get caught up in this stage, claims Freud, develop personal traits such as orderliness, a need to control, pedantry - otherwise known as being anal.

The Phallic Stage is where the craziest part of Freud comes in. This is when the child begins to identify as 'boy', 'girl' or otherwise (though Freud wouldn't have recognised more than two gender-identities in his day). The child begins to experience their first subconscious sexual desires. For boys, says Freud, this is manifested towards the mother, and a jealousy grows in them against their father, their rival. But, says Freud, this then turns from jealousy to emulation of the father, as the child is instilled with a subconscious fear that if they challenge their father, he will castrate him. This is the infamous Oedipus Complex: you want to have sex with your mum and kill your dad. Freud never did manage to apply it properly to women, though Carl Jung coined the term 'Electra Complex' for the female version.

The Latency Stage, spanning from mid-childhood to the onset of puberty, is the period of time when the child begins to develop or resolve the psychological issues begun in the previous three stages. A more concrete picture of who this kid will become appears in this time.

The final stage, spanning from puberty to death, is the Genital Stage, which is similar again to the Phallic Stage as it is ruled from downstairs. But where it differs is that at this point, the Ego - in a well-adjusted person - rules, and manifests the genital desires in interpersonal relationships, from friendships to sexual relationships.

And That's That

Freud's ideas are all a bit ridiculous, to be perfectly honest. The great problem with his theories is that they are completely unfalsifiable. If I say "Well hang on, that's wrong, I've never wanted to have sex with my mum," Freud will just say "You only think you've never wanted to, but deep down in an area locked away to everyone but myself, you really, really want to." You just can't apply the scientific method to him. However, his ideas have embedded themselves into our culture, and it would be true to say we live in a Freudian world. We describe people as anal, we talk about our subconscious and we all make Freudian slips. Freud has had a massive effect on artists, film makers and writers. And by bringing sex to the fore, he broke us away from the Victorian culture that inhibited it, leading eventually to the sexually free culture that would spring out of the post-war, cold war era.

4th WINOL

Fourth WINOL this year, third WINOL for me.

It went quite well. I couldn't produce a news package due to personal reasons getting in the way, but I was the fireman for news in case of anything breaking, and news presenter.

I admittedly didn't really expect to have anything to do as fireman - a naive idea. Tuesday came, it was noon and I was having a lie-in when Becky called me: I had to be down in Southampton for 2 PM to film Princess Anne entering a police station. After my initial disorder, Lee and I were down at Southampton Police Station - at 1:50 pm, I'll add, a good 15-30 minutes before the Meridian news team arrived. It wasn't the most exciting thing, but we managed to film Princess Anne getting out of her car, shaking hands with the police chief and walking into the police station.

As we didn't have access inside the police station, we had to use Meridian's footage, and first that meant getting the footage. BBC South was also using Meridian's footage so it was a matter of waiting for Andy Giddings to drop it off - at 8 PM, leaving me with little to do between getting back from Southampton and then. I was amused to find that the Meridian footage - at least that taken outside the station - wasn't much better than mine. In fact I had a bit of a mindscrew at one point watching the rushes, as they were so similar to mine I thought they were. I edited the OOV and thought that was done.

My footage:

Wednesday came and the stress was as high as ever. I wrote a script for the OOV, fiddling around with it a bit as I tried to improve it. When our editor decided the Anne OOV should be a package at noon, it all got a bit insane. The script writers wanted the new script in immediately, while I had to write and record a voice over and extend my 20 second OOV to 60 seconds - a feat I didn't manage, coming in at just under. On top of that, I would be needed from around 1pm on for bulletin rehearsals. I did manage to get the package together in the hour I had and give a script in, but it was incredibly hectic. I was having difficulty doing three things at once.

The final package:

Finally for that day, I was presenting sports. Here we had difficulties again, as my talkback wasn't working, and halfway through the actual bulletin Aimee's talkback broke down - we were effectively cut off. Though I think I presented well, we had to deal with only being able to guess when we were back on camera, never being quite sure. This wasn't anyone's fault, but it did lead to some awkward moments on my part - lengthy silences where I didn't realise I was back on, and one jarring moment where I thought I was on about 5 seconds before I actually was - I look away for a moment, realise my mistake and start over again. It's sloppy, but again it was no one's fault.

Overall it was a good week for me. I did more than I thought I would - which was good, better than not being productive at all - and although there came a moment where I felt myself crumbling under the stress, when my OOV was to become a package, I managed to keep my cool throughout.

WINOL the Second

I'm quite late on reviewing WINOL. This will be focused mostly on myself. I got my first real package done - not just an OOV like in the first practice WINOL. It was on the oncoming bus cuts and quite shabby. It was boring and aimless, but I've learnt from it. First of all, angle is more important than I thought - that is, I should prioritise having an angle. I was unsure as to how I would spin the buses story and left it too late to have one. That is, I kept thinking "I'll wait until I've got everything together before I think of an angle," which is just the wrong way to go about it. I know that now though, so by keeping it in mind I might be able to aim for more excitement in my packages right from the start.

I was unimaginative with my footage - it was all just passing-by buses. I should have gotten some empty bus stops, people walking home. Perhaps I could have walked off a bus and begun talking? Dan Mackerel was helping me with camera work, so it was entirely within our ability to do so.

My piece to camera was atrocious - I had to do about thirty takes to get it 'right', and by then I was wildly exaggerating my voice and physicality. I never brought it back to a more 'sober' level.

Another issue was the framing for my interview, a technical issue that should not have come up. If I had just spent a few more minutes with the camera I could've easily sorted these issues out. The final problem was that the camera was faulty, and I didn't realise until I came to edit all my footage. Had I checked when I'd taken it out, I could have traded it for another. I still got my package together, but the camera problems cost me about 2 hours and I couldn't hand my work over to production until 1pm. Our news editor Becky warned me that on another week that would have just had to have been dropped, the leniency would stop.

Though there were other problems, these were the main ones and what I'll work on. It was hectic, and I got no approval from my lecturers for it - though I'd've been stunned if they did approve, it was an awful package overall. One thing though - Angus said I had a bit of Robert Peston to my piece. Though I can't fix the technical and journalistic issues until I come to do my next package, this at least gives me something I can work on my own.

A Cursory Update

So, short post. First of all, I've changed the email address associated with my blog. I'd originally signed up on Fresher's week using my brand-spanking unimail address, but I'd like to move away from that and towards a more permanent, perhaps more professional, address, ali.mn.aljamri@gmail.com. That brings about a few changes - due to the cumbersome path of changing emails on blogspot, I now need a new mugshot and according to the website, I haven't contributed to any of the articles on the blog. And since I deleted my old unimail-based account as an admin, I suppose that means I now have to go through and re-follow everyone with my new one. Silly stuff, but hopefully there's more changes under way - positive ones. Besides this trivial matter, I've ordered Chris's Tabloid Nation and hope to dig into that. I'd almost entirely forgotten about the HCJ2 reading, such is the workload of WINOL. And I still haven't balanced reading for HCJ and researching for WINOL and myself. I'm still getting used to 2nd year, though I'm beginning to get into the flow of things. I don't want to sound too optimistic though - don't want to sound stupid if my story falls through in the next few days and I make a fool out of myself.

On another note, I've been reading some of the 1st year blogs (went through and subscribed to most of them earlier tonight), and there's some interesting stuff there. Will definitely be reading them more to catch up on law and such. I was going to leave individual comments but would've begun repeating myself if I had - overall, good stuff, but you guys should watch your punctuation, spelling and presentation. There's a couple wear's instead of where's, there's instead of their's, uncapitalised first-person 'I's, and a few badly-spaced blogposts that come out as walls of text, impossible to read on a screen. And update often! I'm more than happy to trawl the blogs and leave comments, but that (hopefully constructive) criticism needed to be said, though how many of you will even see this blog is another matter.

As for me, I'm off to dig into Hampshire: The County Magazine, The Countryman and other such magazines. Excitement abounds!