BBC School Report - March 2015

The BBC School Report team were invited to the BBC offices in Southampton on Thursday, 19th March.  Five students were available on the day and Mrs Collinson and I accompanied them on this trip.  We took the train to Southampton where the BBC offices are only a few minutes’ walk from the station.  Our contact, James Ingham, was there to meet us and start our tour of the newsroom.

Patrick H, Y7, worked with Alexis Green, the weather presenter, as he had been selected to make a short presentation about the solar eclipse taking place the following day.  They wrote a brief piece together, with a limit of 30 seconds, and Patrick started to practise his lines.  He didn’t have much time before we went to the studio to record.  There he was shown where to stand, had to swap ties with another student as his tie had a green stripe in it, which doesn’t work against the green screen, and then recording started.  He took about four attempts, all without autocue, until the director was happy.

Once he and Sam R had swapped ties again, we went on a tour of the newsroom, talking to various people, seeing where all the pictures and film are uploaded, hearing them decide which stories they would be running, and visiting the radio broadcasting areas, which are built on a special floor to avoid any vibrations from the nearby trains.  James had set up a conference call with weatherman, Alex Deakin, in London who gave us an excellent talk on his role and took questions from us and another school in the Midlands.

We had time for a quick drink before going to a gallery near the main studio to watch South Today go out live.  All the screens were explained to us; we could see various camera views from the studio, one was the live screen and another was for autocue.  Talkback was also switched on so we could hear all the instructions from the director to the studio, in addition to others who were advising on timings.  Not long before the show, James felt the wording needed to be changed in the headlines, and this was done very calmly.  Once the programme started, he also realised that there wasn’t a proper link into Patrick’s piece, so that was also sent though quickly. 

It all ran very smoothly, we learnt so much about broadcasting, including lots of technical terms (eg. OOV – out of vision, MCU – medium close up), and all too soon it was time to catch our train back home. 

We will all watch the News in a different light now and are grateful to the BBC for providing this opportunity!

Mrs Hutton and Mrs Collinson
Ethan U, Ben K, Ben V, Sam R and Patrick H