It is an understatement to say that the nation is buzzing after England emphatically qualified for the 2010 World cup in South Africa. Fabio Capello’s men were drawn in a tricky qualifying group, which included Croatia, who decimated England’s hopes of qualifying for Euro 2008. However, the three lions sank their teeth firmly into their fledgling challengers in group 7, finishing top with 27 points out of a possible 30.
But can England make our summer dreams come true and bring the World cup back home? Despite the way Capello seems to have rejuvenated a previously stale side, I fear we will once again return home empty handed. My reason for holding this pessimistic view is that we are serial chokers, lacking the nerve to pull through in the difficult penalties. England have lost on penalties in five of their last seven major tournament outings, showing that when it comes to the crunch England never fail to crumble.
Many people have said that under Capello England are a different beast to what they were under Messrs McLaren and Eriksson. But many forget that England’s embarrassing 1-0 loss to Northern Ireland was the only defeat in three qualifying campaigns under Eriksson’s stewardship. So with virtually the same players that we had starting for England at Germany 2006, is South Africa really going to throw up a different ending? Since our World Cup triumph in 1966, there seems to be one record that has been constantly on repeat- England qualify with a bang and go out with a whimper.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Television Evaluation
What I Did
Each member of the team played a significant part in making our one minute TV package a success, and none more so than myself. As a group, we agreed before hand that I would be one of the people to do a piece to camera. The topic of our television package was about Christmas shopping, but we felt as a group that we should take an original angle on our piece, as the majority of other groups concentrated solely on the recession.
As I was doing a piece to camera, I was required to write a script, so the angle I took was from a student’s perspective. This meant discussing the lack of shops for young people in Farnham and the possible construction of trendy high street retailer’s, such as River Island, in East Street. The rest of the group thought that this was a very good angle to take, and therefore became the general topic of our mini project. It did take a few times to shoot, but in the end I managed to complete my piece to camera, and I was fairly happy with the end result.
When Jack was in the radio studio completing his voiceover I went and sat with him in a kind of “sub editor” role to check if anything needed to be changed. I suggested making a few minor alterations to the script, but to be honest what he had written was excellent, so I was only a bit-part player.
What We Could Have Done Better
Despite the fact that I think our end product was excellent, there are some things I would have changed. Firstly, I did originally film my piece without a script and I completed it in one take without any mistakes. However, an “ignorant” passer by walked straight in front of the camera while we were filming, ruining the whole piece. This was a shame, as I felt I performed very well on this occasion.
I definitely think that I could have performed better on my “final” piece to camera. I didn’t feel or look as comfortable trying to remember my script, so that is something that I definitely have to work on for next time.
I feel I contributed slightly to the editing side of things, but I feel that I could have given a lot more. I put forward a couple of ideas, but a lot of the time me and Jack were busy sorting out other bits and pieces, such as voice overs. This meant Emily and Grady had to do most of the editing, which I give them great credit for.
What I Did
Each member of the team played a significant part in making our one minute TV package a success, and none more so than myself. As a group, we agreed before hand that I would be one of the people to do a piece to camera. The topic of our television package was about Christmas shopping, but we felt as a group that we should take an original angle on our piece, as the majority of other groups concentrated solely on the recession.
As I was doing a piece to camera, I was required to write a script, so the angle I took was from a student’s perspective. This meant discussing the lack of shops for young people in Farnham and the possible construction of trendy high street retailer’s, such as River Island, in East Street. The rest of the group thought that this was a very good angle to take, and therefore became the general topic of our mini project. It did take a few times to shoot, but in the end I managed to complete my piece to camera, and I was fairly happy with the end result.
When Jack was in the radio studio completing his voiceover I went and sat with him in a kind of “sub editor” role to check if anything needed to be changed. I suggested making a few minor alterations to the script, but to be honest what he had written was excellent, so I was only a bit-part player.
What We Could Have Done Better
Despite the fact that I think our end product was excellent, there are some things I would have changed. Firstly, I did originally film my piece without a script and I completed it in one take without any mistakes. However, an “ignorant” passer by walked straight in front of the camera while we were filming, ruining the whole piece. This was a shame, as I felt I performed very well on this occasion.
I definitely think that I could have performed better on my “final” piece to camera. I didn’t feel or look as comfortable trying to remember my script, so that is something that I definitely have to work on for next time.
I feel I contributed slightly to the editing side of things, but I feel that I could have given a lot more. I put forward a couple of ideas, but a lot of the time me and Jack were busy sorting out other bits and pieces, such as voice overs. This meant Emily and Grady had to do most of the editing, which I give them great credit for.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Radio Evaluation
For this unit, I was assigned the task of teaming up with some of my fellow peers and creating two pieces of audio that would be suitable for broadcasting on the radio. The first piece of audio that myself and my team recorded was a vox pop (Voice of the Public: getting the public's opinions on a particular issue) on Remembrance Day, and the second was to unearth two local news stories each and record them in the radio studio. As well as myself, my group consisted of Sam, Dan and Jamie.
What I Did
As I mentioned above, the first piece of audio that we were required to record was the vox pop about Remembrance Day. This meant going out onto the streets of Farnham to understand the thoughts of the general public. But before my team and me could begin our vox pop, we had to think of a question that would set a spark off in people and get them talking passionately about the subject.
I would say that I contributed heavily in finding "the question" that we were going to ask the public. I felt that, as we are young people ourselves, we should ask the older generation if they thought that the younger generation today still had the same respect for Remembrance Day as youngsters in yesteryear did. Obviously, we had to play around with the wording of the question, but we all agreed that this would be a successful approach to take.
When out on the street, we each had to ask one person the question using the recording equipment provided. When it finally came to me recording my vox pop everything went according to plan. The recording equipment picked up everything my interviewee said perfectly and I also received a really good answer to my question.
When it came to editing the vox pop sound bite, we decided that we would edit it collectively as a group. This way, everyone had their say on what should be changed and I think that we came away with a very good piece of audio as everybody bought different ideas to the table.
For our second piece of audio, I picked two stories that I felt were different, but would still gage the interest of the public. The two stories that I picked were about the arrest of a man from Maidstone who had committed four serious crimes in Surrey and Kingstonian football club being knocked out of the FA Trophy. I believe these two stories fitted in well with the context of our radio broadcast, and because all of us had prepared our stories in advance everything ran smoothly.
What Could The Group Have Done Better
I can honestly say that I do not think there was anything major that either myself or the rest of my team could have done any better than we did. The only thing I think that I could improve on next time would be to do some more editing. I did contribute some key ideas with regards to the final edit of our pieces of audio, but I do feel that I could have mucked in a little bit more.
But all in all, I do feel that my contribution to the team was a key factor as to why our pieces of audio were successful. I also feel that myself and the rest of my team worked extremely well together and that everything we did was very productive.
What I Did
As I mentioned above, the first piece of audio that we were required to record was the vox pop about Remembrance Day. This meant going out onto the streets of Farnham to understand the thoughts of the general public. But before my team and me could begin our vox pop, we had to think of a question that would set a spark off in people and get them talking passionately about the subject.
I would say that I contributed heavily in finding "the question" that we were going to ask the public. I felt that, as we are young people ourselves, we should ask the older generation if they thought that the younger generation today still had the same respect for Remembrance Day as youngsters in yesteryear did. Obviously, we had to play around with the wording of the question, but we all agreed that this would be a successful approach to take.
When out on the street, we each had to ask one person the question using the recording equipment provided. When it finally came to me recording my vox pop everything went according to plan. The recording equipment picked up everything my interviewee said perfectly and I also received a really good answer to my question.
When it came to editing the vox pop sound bite, we decided that we would edit it collectively as a group. This way, everyone had their say on what should be changed and I think that we came away with a very good piece of audio as everybody bought different ideas to the table.
For our second piece of audio, I picked two stories that I felt were different, but would still gage the interest of the public. The two stories that I picked were about the arrest of a man from Maidstone who had committed four serious crimes in Surrey and Kingstonian football club being knocked out of the FA Trophy. I believe these two stories fitted in well with the context of our radio broadcast, and because all of us had prepared our stories in advance everything ran smoothly.
What Could The Group Have Done Better
I can honestly say that I do not think there was anything major that either myself or the rest of my team could have done any better than we did. The only thing I think that I could improve on next time would be to do some more editing. I did contribute some key ideas with regards to the final edit of our pieces of audio, but I do feel that I could have mucked in a little bit more.
But all in all, I do feel that my contribution to the team was a key factor as to why our pieces of audio were successful. I also feel that myself and the rest of my team worked extremely well together and that everything we did was very productive.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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