Digital News: Moroccan News Report Script Workshop

The Task

For today, we were set a workshop task which consisted of creating our own interpretation of a news article which we were given. We had to come up with two interviews as well as introducing the
report, as you can see below:

What was the article about?

The article we were given was the story of a British civilian being arrested for 'sexual activity' in a foreign country, due to the acts being illegal in the country (however being homosexual isn't). The victim's privacy was invaded by the foreign countries police causing him and his friend to be arrested due to evidence from messages and pictures on the site being illegal. This therefore is a very controversial matter as you can argue it challenges gay rights as well as the matter as to if it was actually a crime or not e.g. it isn't in England, however is arguably in this country.


Unlike the previous workshop task (the GCSE food and nutrition article), we weren't given an article to base our work on. Instead, we had to research ourselves to find the right information for our interviews and generally for our report. So as a group, we decided to look on the internet to find out who exactly we could interview, whilst remaining realistic. For example, we wouldn't be able to interview the two victims as they are both in jail.

Gay Right's Campaigner

Instead of instantly jumping straight onto interviewing his relatives and friends, we instead decided to look for someone whom has more power and is likely to challenge this 'crime'. We eventually found a Gay Rights campaigner whilst looking through an article - this would be very effective as it would promote strong views thus helping to keep the audience not only engaged, but also helping them to get involved and creating social interaction.

Location: N/A - this isn't entirely important for this. Perhaps it could be in a location to show his dominance or power. Nonetheless, the purpose of this is to focus on the campaigner's voice and what he is saying.

I was assinged to write the script for the gay campaigner. The questions I was given were:

1. Do you think that this is a crime and that the victims should be punished?
2. Should people's private life be invaded, even if it is for the greater good?

My answers were:

1. It's ridiculous how British tourists can be convicted for this 'crime'. We respect the laws and regulations of the 'x' state, however the growing success of an 'x' pro-political party should not be allowed to convict British tourists for their sexuality.
2. It's also very degrading that people's privacy are now even being intruded via social media. Yes, I can understand why it may be perhaps for something more serious, but for something minor and controversial like this? We use these sites to converse with others and purely for entertainment purposes. This shouldn't be intruded, especially used as evidence for this poor excuse of a 'crime'.

One of the victim's Son

So after finding this for one of the interviews, we decided to interview one of the victim's son. Although this contradicted what I previously said, it is important to interview a close relative or a friend - purely due to the relativeness making the interview seem stronger. For example, interviewing someone who didn't know the victim wouldn't be very strong, as there is no relation.

Location: Outside of the father's house - this will allow the audience into judging whom the father may be like, just from his house and it's location.

SOT/Interview (Sound on Tape): We decided to use this purely for the fact it adds emotions into the story, as the audience can visually learn and hear the son's distress, as his father is in prison. We also decided that we would add in cutaways showing images of video clips of the father as he has only just been introduced.

The Reporter

As for our reporter, we decided to locate him/her outside where the two victims are kept (the jail). This purely is used to allow the audience to understand the environment on which the story is located, making it seem more suited. We wanted to keep the story interesting and more importantly the audience engaged, so we planned to make the reporter walk towards the camera, which hopefully would also allow the camera to gain a pan of the prison behind the reporter.

Location: Outside of Prison (as previously mentioned)
2 Way (reporter to presenter): The reporter will report from outside the prison, back to the presenter. This allows the news story to flow with more clarity, as well as allowing the reporter to wrap up the story.

Conclusion

Once again, this workshop was quite a challenge! However I'm feeling more confident in terms of adding clarity to the script and the news story itself i.e. making sure that are audience are getting what they want to hear, and that there isn't any parts which make you think 'So What?' 

It was mainly quite difficult as we only had around 2 hours to research, prepare our scripts and then film everything. It makes it even harder especially when we are being the interviewer's are self - basically acting instead of what we should be doing. However its all part of the experience!