DOCUMENTARY RULES

Conventions of a New Package

Conventions of a New Package

News Package

A news package is the what is used on the news when they cut away from the studio, this is mainly reports that are located off site where the new is happening, this many conventions become a big part off a news package as they all follow simular trates.New packages are the main way new broardcasters deliver long storys in depth. A new package would be filmed with a completely differant crew due to the location not being in the studio with the main anchor, this would suggest that if it live or pre-recored that the news package is a VT to give the audience a more indepth knowlage of the subject being mention.

Field Reporter

The Field Reporter is the main anchor of the news package. He/She is the person who delivers the news to the audience, ususally the field reporter would be apart of the situation themselfs or they are an expert in the field they are reporting. Their costume, location and tone of voice would change depending on there field so that they look the part for the job. The reason they use this convention for News packages is because it is the most effective and interactive way of giving the infomation to the audience. By providing them with a knowladgeable, formal and clearly spoken narrator to the story it will convice the audience to trust the report as well as making them more engaged and interested in the story they are presenting.

Link to Studio

Link to Stdio is are the moments in a new report where the Field Reporter will interact with the studio. This focuses on the camera language of the reporter and how they feed the footage back to the studio to put on air. Ususally during a Live Report the Field Reporter will uses links to studio to discuss the situation they are in and awnser any infomation that the studio wants them to report. The key aspects of the convention is where and how do they uses the camera to capture the best footage for their story. The reason they use Link to studio is to give the audience a clear vision of the situation by showing them though the camera lauage or to tell the Field Reporter the infomation they need to report by asking them questions from the studio, giving the audience the requested knowledge.

Mode of Address to Viewer

Every News package uses a certain Mode of Adress to the viewers to delive the infomation most effectively and proffesionally. The mode of adress would change depending on the story as they audience would vairy and the reporters language would have to directed to the target audience. For example if the news package was about Football it would be less formal than a news package on politics. The reporter changes their aproch to the story to suit the audience and story the best. This would effect the accent of the reporter, languange complexity and if they where a fact provider, a person who delivers the facts of the story and is not involved much, or a Analysising Expert, a person who specialises the the reports field and is most likely to be impacted and involved with the story they are reporting, this would have more opinions and prodiction that the fact provider as they would know a lot about the topic therfor making them a fairly reliable source for prodictions as well as facts.

Interviewing Experts and Witnesses

During News packages it is common for a few interviewers with either a eye witness, effected citizen or a Expert of a section of the story to take place. They often stitch together the useful information from the interviews to produce what is actually shown on a new report. The reason why they only take a selective amount of information from the interviewers is for multiple reasons. Firstly not all the information is relevant for the story and the news would want to cut to the point without waisting time with unnecessary information. The second reason they only take a small amount of a long interview is to keep the audience engaged with the story as they would most likely lose focus on the screen, and same person was talking to them for 15 minutes about the same part of the story. raphics are use in interviews to label the interviewee relevant to their role in the story, giving the audience a clear identification on the individual who is being interviewed.   

Report Structure 

The report structure is how the report is ordered, displayed and what is contained within the report. This would include a sign in and sign out, which is when the field reporter states who they are and what the story is about, or concluding the story with the possibility of a prediction, if an expert. throughout the report a numerous amount of interviewers with and archive footage will be used to explain the story that is being reported, they use these conventions because it gives the audience a reliable and wide range of footage to believe in and find reliable. They use graphics, voice over and interviewers to put across the majority of facts during the report and use multiple summaries of subsections of the report to come to a understand of each section. Cut aways and noddies are used to brake up interviews and stitch parts of interviews together so they don't jump unprofessionally. The amount of time the presenter is on camera will vary depending on the type of report as some more dramatic and serious story would most likely need more archive and actual footage.

Actuality Footage

Actuality Footage is the footage that is taken live from an event, most of the time this would be recorded by unprofessional people who are bystanders of the situation. The quality of the footage usually lacks techniques and clearly is not done by a news team. This strangely is a positive for news stations as it has a huge effect on the way the audience reacts when a tragic story is being reported. This is because it allows the audience to feel more involved and close to the story itself even if their own lives has not been effect by it. By creating a deeper emotional impact towards the audience the news station would be able to make bigger situations more dramatic and meaningful. Another reason they use actuality footage is because it is literally impossible to capture the footage themselves. Because of spontaneous moments only people who where at the location of the situation when it happened, would be the only people who could have a chance to record it, making impossible footage obtainable to show to the mass public.

Example 1:

Field Reporters

In this news package, there is not much footage where the field reporter is shown. This is mainly due to the tragedy of the situation, and therefore footage of the event would be more important to capture for an early report on the disaster. But the field report still follows the conventions typically used. There is one field report during the full news package, shown at 4:12 to 4:35, where the reporter stands in front of a crowd of people who are trying to get a bus home during the destruction. They use this background as it is completely relevant for what he is reporting. A field reporter would usually contain the topic of the news behind them, as he was talking about how the people are stuck due to delays and cancelations of trains and buses. Behind him, you see many people stuck around a bus stop and a train station when panned right at 4:25. The reason the background reflexes the story is so that it has more of a direct impact onto the audience and emphasises more on what is being said, when the report speaks about the train being suspended at 4:23, the camera pans to the train station with the reporter shortly following back in to place of the camera with the new backdrop it sight, giving the reality of the situation due to visible proof. The reporter is dressed suited for the situation. He is wearing a shirt and trousers like the majority of news reporters wear, showing that he is suitable to deliver information to the audience. The major difference about him to anchors in the studio is that he is wearing a puffer jacket. The reason for this is to make him best suited for the environment for his own safety and comfort. Because it is the middle of the night, clearly shown at 4:17 with the night sky in the top left side of the screen, it would be very cold outside, therefore he would need to wear a coat to keep warm. No graphics where used to introduce the field reporter as it was not a major concern of the time due the urgency of story, but the woman who does the voice over introduces him before he is shown on screen at 4:06. The reporter seems rather detached from the story even though they are located in the event. This is because of his mode of address. He is clearly from a British heritage and is a white middle class man. He does not look exactly fit in with the rest of the population there, as they are Japanese citizens. This would not majorly effect the report's strength and would possibly improve the quality to some degree, as it would be an unbiased report due to the reporter not having any personal connection to the disaster.

Link to studio

The communication between the anchor in the audio and the field reporter is made though the use of being signed on with a description of what the field reporter is about to talk about. At 4:06 the anchor in the studio who is doing the voice over says, " The BBC's Tokyo's correspondent, Roland Buerk, witnessed their desperation." This allows the audience to understand what the field reporter is about to talk about, which is clearly the desperation of the citizens during the disaster. Most commonly the footage in a link to studio would be live but in some cases this is not possible, such as this one. the reason they use live footage is so the studio can ask the reporter on show about the situation as the News station deems fit. but because of the sudden event, the footage had to be filmed ever so slightly ahead to allow real time footage of in the location the problem was happening. They put the reporter in the crowd of Tokyo so that the realism of the situation would be put across to the audience in a much more direct way, instead of just hearing the news. While the report went on the camera remained as a long mid shot, where the camera shows the reporter body from the head down to the waist. This is done deliberately so that the audience and witness all the major expression the reporter may use, such as hand gestures and facial expressions. The link to studio segments are often rather short due to them cutting straight to the point of the story, giving the news more time to expand on the rest of the story, the video above's link to studio only lasts a total of 23 seconds between 4:12 and 4:35.

Mode of Address to Viewer

The mode of address from the presenter is critical to how effective the new report will be. As this is a BBC new report the presenter has to have a clear British tone of voice with well spoken english, preferably a accent that is not directed at a specific part of Britain. The reason of the presenter had to have this tone of voice, even though the report is about Japan, is because the audience watching the report would be from a british heritage, making it easier for the viewer to understand what the presenter is saying, as well as making it more relatable for the viewer to the presenter. At 0:55 the presenter uses simple language complexity. The reason the presenter uses such simple words such as shook and trapped, is because the story is a very serious topic, making it a priority to give the audience a good knowledge of the situation. The presenter on this report is only a fact provider, therefore making her less connected to the story herself, boosting the chance that she will not be bias because she has no personal connect to the disaster. She is shown as a fact provide though the whole of the report, such as at 1:36 where the building is consumed by the tsunami, the presenter literally reporting what is being shown on the screen. This is because the report must be simple so the majority of viewer will find it easy to follow.

Report Structure

The report structure of this news package is made up of only a few main conventions, such as; a lot of  actuality footage with facts reported over it by the presenter, such as at 3:00 where the presenter mentions what is happening on screen of a Japanese news report. This is done so that the audience would be able to understand the urgency of the situation as they can get real footage of the disaster. This is important for tragedy story such as this, as it make the structure of the report become serious and to the point as it would need to be for a latest news report story. Due to it being a latest news report, interviews are not yet possible for to obtain with ease or usefulness as their is nobody who would be worth the news team time to interview, and Vox pops would be time consuming as all the interviews would have to be translated so that the British audience could understand the Japanese citizens. Once again the field reporter is only shown once during the news report due to the actuality footage being the main focus of the story, with a bit of archive footage. The piece to camera used was to see how citizens who are trying to travel home from Tokyo are coping, shown at 4:12, and even then it is a short, straight to the point lecture. Cut aways are used though the graphics to detach the story from each over such as at 1:20 where they show a title stating the next section is about the tsunami as well as a picture in the background. This makes the report structure much neater and easy to follow for the viewer. Other reasons cut aways would be used is to cover up jumps in a interview but there where no interviews in this news report.

Actuality Footage

In the BBC report about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan uses a lot of actuality footage that is either filmed from the local residents during the disaster or the Japanese news teams. They use the footage that is from the countries citizens instead of the BBC's footage because firstly they just could not capture the live action inside buildings and streets due to the event being unexpected. At the start of the video at 0:08, actuality footage is used where they have taken footage from a local bystander that was recording the disaster. The actual footage is really badly recorded as it is constantly shaking and blurring the footage, also shown at 0:32 . This was not a big deal when it came to using the footage as it makes the recording feel more real and compelled to the audience because the use of the core emotion that the citizens in the footage are dealing with, the audience gain a more inside look from the citizens point of view, therefor making the story more compelling.   Using the Archive footage of the Japaneses citizens will make the audience feel more compelled to the story due to the footage looking unprofessional and therefor the footage looks more real and touching. Because the situation is very serious and important to get across to the audience how bad it really was, actuality footage is critical to have plenty of as it will allow the audience to embraces the tragedy. During the 2nd hand Archive actuality footage, the presenter speaks over the footage explaining what is happening in the footage, such as at 1:41, where the woman who is doing the voice over explains what the images from Japanese TV mean.  The reason they do this is because it allows the audience to make more understanding of the situation on the screen, as it is not the BBC footage, instead they used the Japanese TV footage which therefore would become confusing for a lot of the english speaking residents in the UK. The majority of this news report is made up for Actuality footage and archive footage as it would be impossible for the BBC to capture all the footage shown as they where not expecting the disaster to strike and most likely did not have permission to from Japan to use their helicopters to report the news.

Example 2:

Interviewing Experts and Witnesses

Graphics are used in interviews to label the interviewee with the relevant title that fits the story. For example at 3:20 a man starts to explain how successful the train transport has became. He is labeled as in the graphics with his name and then the job title of Spain's Railway Operator, which is relevant to this news report as it is about the revolution of trains. The reason the graphics are important in interviews such as this is so the audience knows that the information being obtained is from either a every day citizen or an expert in the field, such as this interview. By Gomez-Pomar being an expert makes him much more reliable for information about the topic but also slightly bias as he is promoting his own companies success. Due to the counteracting effects of reliability and information, the audience can make their own opinion on the interview. Cut aways are used for the editor to stitch together bits of interviews so that the report only contains relevant information. this is clearly shown later in this interview at 3:42 as the discussion is still on the same topic but jumps to a different point as a cut away to a train is put in so the footage of the interview does not suddenly jump, making the footage look much nicer and run smooth without any rough cuts. The location of the interviews are often made to fit the topic being talked about but are not usually a big impact on the story itself, as at 3:22 you can see the railway operator is on a train platform with a train behind him, setting the sense of the topic, creating a slightly bigger impact on the story. But at 1:26 you can see that the location of the interview does not fit the charter or the topic as it is clearly set in a local park, but they are discussing trains and his job role is being a professor of a London collage. This does not take away any emotion from the report and therefore proves that the location does not make much of an impact but is usually somewhere private where they do not get disturbed.

New conventions