This January London360 welcomed a new set of in-house reporters to their production team, as the TV show enters its twelfth series. Six young media hopefuls, including myself, were selected to propel the capital’s youth led news specials show into a new era and a successful 2017. I am excited to be joining five focused and driven women, as the token male reporter… call me ‘solo Joe’?

Together we will produce and present packages for national television which will air on London Live and the Community Channel, amongst other distributors, this summer. Before we begin on production, we are taking informative masterclasses with top media professionals and we’ve already had some expert advice.

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been armed with some of the essential skills needed to create good television, preparing us for our ever-nearing starting pistol, with production kicking off in February. To achieve this, the media professionals have come in to coach us and help us understand the foundations to making great content. News extraordinaire Vivien Morgan, photographer Richard Pascoe and videographer Nigel Gregory were among these key speakers.

London360 reporter Afia Kufuor practicing filming technique with Nigel Gregory

Below I’ve picked out some top tips from these media geniuses…

Vivien (News)

• Remember to bear in mind the ‘so what?’ factor. Getting a story is a good start but ask yourself whether it is actually worth telling, do people care?
• Fact checking and good research is crucial. Assume nothing and question everything.
• Planning is essential; television production requires 90% logistics and 10% creativity.
• For longer films, change the gear of your report every couple of minutes, otherwise interest may dwindle.

 Richard (Photography)

• If you use your camera effectively you can ‘freeze time in a click’, saving memories that could otherwise be lost.
• Second hand quality cameras are often much better than brand new junk.
• Your camera is a weapon, so use it wisely.

Nigel (Videography)

• The human eye automatically knows what is white but a camera must be told. It sees colours in reference to white so if its white balance is off, all colours will be.
• The neutral density filter on a camera drops light, he says it’s like ‘sunglasses for your camera’!
• Always film more than you need when starting out. Consider a 20:1 ratio, for every 20 minutes filmed, you’ll likely only use 1 minute.

More expert advice and tips coming soon!

A London360 Camera (The SONY X5E)

This piece is also published at www.london360.org/author/josepha