Today I have been filming a news package covering the events going on at Uni to raise money for Children In Need. Controversially I have broken away from certain VJ'ing rules and had a bit of fun with it... this is afterall a fun charity event!

For example, our Student Union president, Jimmy Weighell was performing a 24 hour sponsored silence. I decided to do an interview with him, starting with a voice-over where I said "we went to speak to Jimmy Weighell, but he didn't have much to say..." I shot a few seconds of him looking around and opening and closing his mouth and looking rather lost purely for comedy value. Obviously I got a real interview too, but by putting this in the package I thought it would be a good device to add humour to the day, a day which was never invented to be too serious.

Also whilst recording my piece to camera I had Pudsey stand with me dancing with his arm around me!

I recorded voxpops of staff dressed up as clowns to keep the silly theme going and filmed leg waxing, karaoke and other shenanigans so hopefully Monday will see me enjoy my editing instead of tearing my hair out as in previous weeks.

Remember to donate generously for Children In Need and get yourselves down to Children In Need Flirt tonight at The Vault if you have no other plans!

5 days until Winol...

Beyond The Stars...

Tonights blogpost is undoubtedly going to make me sound like a lunatic but rest assured it's just the week I am having! The theme?

Aliens
Extra Terrestrials
Martians...

whatever you want to call them

From a young age I have had an interest in alternative life forms, I think this is mostly due to the fact that my godfather was somewhat of an oddball and he had a passion for everything space. He once told me that when he was very young he saw a UFO whilst playing in the garden and he remembers being dragged in the house by his mother in fear. I have no idea if this is true... the guy loved his scotch afterall.

I always thought of all the hundreds of thousands of millions of planets, how could it be that this tiny planet was the only one that held life. Well I think it is very naive for anyone to think we are totally alone in the infinate amounts of space. If I point my finger now, am I pointing at the object directly infront of my finger? Am I pointing behind the object at the wall? Am I pointing beyond the wall? What about beyond the stars? Have you ever stopped to think if you point somewhere and you followed the direct line, what would you fine billions and billions of miles away?

Who is to say that on another planet, in another universe, lightyears away there isn't an exact replica of planet earth. There could be another YOU taking a different route in life.

I had never ever thought that extra terrestrials had made contact with us. Even when reading about Roswell and other such stories when people had apparently had a close encounter or been 'abducted'. I thought "haha, funny hoax!"That is until this week...

I can't tell you why but this week little green men have been on the brain. Last night I had the most disturbing dream that this alien, tall and slim with hollow eyes and an antenna (what do you want from me... I've never met one have I?!) kept following me everywhere. At first I thought I was imagining it but then I started seeing it hide behind tree's when I whipped my head around. Then it got braver until it was playing grandmother's footsteps about a yard behind me. In the dream I calmly got my phone out to phone the government, but it stole my phone. Then I woke up... and quickly asked myself if I had taken up marijuana the night before...

I think this has all freaked me out because talk of Uni at the moment is Adrian Hicks, the Winchester based MP who recently claimed that back in January/February time of 2004, he saw an extra terrestrial strolling the Winchester high street. Ok his basis for his conclusion wasn't sound... (he claimed he knew she wasn't human because she walked funny, had very large eyes and her arm movement was strange). But it made me think. How do we know that direct contact hasn't been made? Crop circles are rife in Winchester... are they just massive hoax's or are we missing something?

I will leave you with this thought...

Humankind has been exploring space for years. Moon landing in 1969 and now even sending shuttles to Mars to explore. If there were life form on these planets WE would be aliens. Why are we ignorant enough to believe it is just us? Do we really think we're that special?

Behind the scenes of a news package...

I'm sure all my readers are fellow students on the course and know all about what I am about to write about but I felt after my experience on Saturday night filming, I had to talk about just what goes on behind the scenes when trying to put together a decent news package under pressure.

Last week I was assigned to go out and cover the Winchester Roundtable Fireworks night. I was told I had an interview with the Mayor all set up and asked to cover the piece from a charity angle... (how much they expected to raise, who they were raising money for, had they exceeded last year's donations? etc). I worked on the package with Colin Jeffery from the third year. We knew the procession would be beginning at 6pm outside the Guildhall so we arranged to meet at 5pm in order to meet each other for the first time and discuss our ideas for the news piece. I started this project on Saturday feeling confident and chirpy but have been reduced to a stroppy, moany mess... here's why.

Problems encountered

1. We arrived at the Guildhall and set up our perfect shot that would catch Mr.Mayor making his way down the stairs to wave to the crowds of people gathering with torches, but instead of walking down the way we anticipated when setting up our shot... he walked right over to us.

2. When we had filmed the footage of the mayor we needed we had to make a dash down the high street to reach the Buttercross monument in order to get height to get a shot of the procession moving down the road... as the crowd was getting large we decided to take a 'de-tour' by going down the back roads, so we ran off- camera and tripod slung over my shoulder I might add- down a road and across the cathedral grounds, having to climb over spikey fences (sooo not glamourous).

3. We arrived at the cricket ground where the bonfire and fireworks were taking place and got split up, one of us with the camera and the other with the tripod and missed the vital lighting of the bonfire by the mayor!

4. When we were having our interview with the mayor and Julien Clegg we had a bunch of over-excited school girls screaming at us to film them behind us... we soon shut them up by agreeing to interview them later if they could be quiet.

5. When we came to edit... we nearly finished the piece and then the computer crashed causing me to lose everything- or so I thought. Restarted the whole thing then found the 'lost' footage.

Moral of the story

God hates Journalists- anticipate for the worst as whatever can go wrong, will go wrong!