By Lee Clow
11 February 2021 | University Work
For the Time To Talk day event I was placed in group 3 and we came up with the theme of 'Community Care'. In our group, there was a mix of the first years and second years, so it was mine and my fellow second year colleagues to take some form of responsibility over the group.
A few weeks before the event, as a group we discussed potential ideas to cover, however we were quick to nail down on 'Community Care' as we all came up with a variety of stories which came under that umbrella. Following this, we began handing out roles to each member of our group as we wanted the work balance to be evenly balanced. I was quick to volunteer as editor for the whole group as I had good editing experience previously and this is where my best qualities would show. Everyone was very happy with myself being editor and designer for the event and from that point, I was determined to put everything into it so I could repay the faith my fellow course mates put in me. Even though I was really happy being assigned the editor for the group, I wish I volunteered for another role or even do two roles. As a trainee journalist, I want to improve my skills regular and in hindsight, this time was the perfect opportunity. In the next even we hold, I will certainly put myself forward for other roles therefore I can show my range as a journalist.
In the following weeks before the event, we continued as a group to come up with potential story ideas and how we would present them. As a whole course, there was some confusion on how we would present every group's packages and I felt that affected us a little. This is certainly something I would have liked to be improved from the whole the planning of the event, as we did not have much clarification into a week before.
In terms of the packages we recorded, I felt our team excelled. Everyone in our group contributed to at least one interview and they all managed to get the point of 'Community Care' across. I think another strong part of our team's packages is how much content we managed to get. We arguably got too much content, however that was a good thing for us as we could decide on the best pieces of content to use.
With the editing side of the event, I felt I showed my great qualities. I managed to create a unique design for the whole package and I was able to clip together the best parts of each interview. When editing, I had to be critical in my cuts as I only had a 20-25 minute window for our package. Some of the interviews that I was given to edit were 15 minutes, so at first it was a struggle to cut as there was good content, however after many discussions, I managed to get the best clips to use for the package. When we received feedback on our packages, I did receive some constructive criticism, such as the use of music, on my edit. Even though I was disappointed, this was good for me as I could learn and make the final edit better for the event. Constructive feedback in key for me as next time if I am to edit again, I know what works well and what does not.
In regard to social media, I feel we shared our content really well. We clipped our best content and tagged the relevant people and this allowed our clips to reach good engagement. For example, my clip that I uploaded reached 5683 people and was viewed 724 times. This was great see and it really helped spread our message across. The hashtag we used, #TimeToTalkDay, also helped massively in sharing our content across social media.
Overall, I feel our Time To Talk Day went really successful, especially in our group. Considering we had not worked with the first year's before, I feel we worked extremely well together and we created a great package. We all contributed in our own way and I would be more than happy to work with the group again. I hope our next event is as successful as this one.
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