Digital News Production: PTC Script Workshop

Yesterday we were given a workshop to work on in our groups. Aaron, Sam and myself were told to build a short news report by coming up with our own interpretation of an event. Beforehand we were shown a 30 minute News Report which gave us some very interesting insight into the creation of news pieces.

The event we were given to report about was a controversial story concerning a British man who was arrested in Morocco for his homosexuality, this is illegal over there so we had to talk about the incident and write about it. I was able to read about this on The Guardian's online website of which I read on a daily basis.

Below are some questions I originally wrote for our news report in response to an interviewee. During the filming of the interview, I asked these questions in the pose of a news anchor whilst Sam Babington portrayed a gay rights spokesman.

1) Don't you feel the Moroccan authorities going through his social networking is a massive invasion of his privacy?

2) Do you feel their official laws are acceptable in the year, 2014?

3) Do you feel this will result in a boycott of the country from tourists?

The most important thing about this workshop was that it gave us a chance to take up different roles in the production of making a PTC. Because there were only three of us we took turns at being a cinematographer, sound operator as well as being in front of the camera.

Overall I feel like I learnt a lot from the experience and learning about how this kind of news reporting works. It also taught me about the immense pressure than can be on the writers as well as the news anchor. I felt like it was able to prepare me for doing interviews because its very important to always be prepared and have a back-up question if necessary to encourage a different answer.