As part of my role as a producer of the liveblog/news website, I was to keep all social media accounts that were linked to the news website updated on any new developments in stories, news articles and promoting other City programmes including TV, radio and podcast.
On the group’s WhatsApp chat, I pitched an idea for a social media video to the other producers and began researching more on a coronavirus vaccine myth-busting video. Celebrities including comedian Romesh Ranganathan, singer Beverley Knight, actor Adil Ray and Sadiq Khan addressed cultural challenges and concerns around the vaccine in ethnic minority communities. After the 9:30 am briefing, I started getting footage for my video. Despite multiple attempts at changing my password and David resetting my account, AP video did not let me log in and access any footage. I was helped by the other producers who sent me the footage I needed via WeTransfer. If I were to do this role again in the future, I would ensure that I had access to Associated Press the night before the Newsday so that I would not have to rely on other people to send me videos. This would make the production of social videos better, easier and more efficient.
As I was waiting to receive the footage from Acacia, I looked at the WordPress site and drafted tweets from posts that the reporters were putting into the backend. I sourced images, used relevant hashtags and made a call-to-action to make ensure that the tweets had an as good engagement as possible both on Twitter and Instagram. I think this was an effective use of my time as I was able to man the social media pages as the other producers were producing their packages.
I used Premiere Pro to edit my social video together, using the original myth-busting video, AP footage, appropriate music and graphics. The video was around 1 minute long and as I exported it, there were technical issues. I waited for 30 minutes for the video to render however it was still not working. I liaised with the technical support staff through Teams, but still, there was no luck. I researched online and watch tutorials to rectify the exporting issues I was having. I spoke to my team on Zoom and explained my situation with David and my editor, Mia who both were very understanding of my situation. If I was given the opportunity to this role again, I would have another laptop available to use if mine was to have some technical issues. I would also use different software if Abode Premiere Pro was not responding, perhaps iMovie to edit the clips together. I was disappointed that I was unable to showcase my social video on the Newsday as it would have been a good addition to the liveblog stream on Arena.
Despite the technical difficulties ruining my social video, I wanted to support my team so I formatted videos from the other producers to upload to the social media accounts. Acacia’s video was 1m44s which is too long for an Instagram post so I decided to use IGTV to upload the full video. However, I had some issues as the video was square and IGTV is a portrait, the video was not able to be seen in full. I decided to upload 1 minute of the video as a post to rectify this problem.
If I were to do this Newsday again, I would make sure to look for any latest developments in stories that were being written for the website so that there was always new, fresh information in the articles, as some of the stories were a day old.