War Horse Launch

 Today myself and Emma Jefferies attended the launch of War Horse at the Mayflower theatre Southampton. 

I was kindly given this opportunity when the press officer for the theatre invited me. I have also been given tickets to the English National Ballet in two weeks time and The Nutcracker on Ice. 

I love the theatre and to be given this opportunity to report for our course's What's On show has been excellent. 

Plus the Mayflower theatre is beautiful too!

War Horse was outstanding. We heard from the Puppeteer Director Jimmy who gave us an in depth speech about how the horse puppets work. 

It's much more complicated than you think. And that is the art of pupperty. You believe the being is real. These horse puppets made for the show are very life like. 

They perform horse noises and they can even gallop and trot. The puppet mimics exactly what a horse does. 

The puppeteers have been trained in depth. They have even spent time with horses to understand their movement. 

After hearing all about the horses we amazingly got to meet Joey. The main 'War Horse.' 

He walked from the back of the theatre up to the stage. The puppet is worked by three men. One for the head. One for the front legs and one for the back. 

This truly is an art. 

At the end of the launch me and Emma were able to go on stage and interact with the horse. 

We also interviewed the three puppeteers and we interviewed the song man Tim who sings throughout the stage show. 

I couldn't tell you and everyone enough how amazed I was by these puppets. 

Today we got a tiny glimpse of how amazing the stage show is. And there is without any doubt that I would like to see this when the show is on at the Mayflower Theatre Southampton in February next year. 

The video for our what's on 'Access Winchester' show will be up tomorrow. Just you wait!

Access Winchester Week 2

Access Winchester Week 2: 

Here is our second Access Winchester of the semester. This week the show covered War Horse, Musician Ben Goddard's coffee house sessions and Liam Garraham joined us with 'The Top 5 Student Apps review.' 

The presenting by Jack Webb was spot on with how we want this show to look. It's much more relaxed and jokey and the walkie talkie style is successful. 

I particularly like the graphics used this week. It establishes the style of the show and makes it different to the news bulletin. We have established that our approach to making this show should be a features approach rather than news. 

War Horse VT feedback: 

In terms of 'access' I received some great access from the Mayflower Theatre when they allowed me and Emma to watch the launch of WarHorse which will be coming to the theatre early next year. The shots we received from this were fantastic. The puppet horse moves just like a real horse and with our front row seats we captured some great footage. The interviews we received. were also successful we got to speak to the puppeteers and the songman. 

Emma Jefferies PTC: Emma's ptcopens the vt at the Mayflower theatre. I asked her to do this as I think she is very confident in front of the camera she walks with her piece to the cameras. This is something I need to attempt. We have banned the term 'I went to' as the opening to our vt's. In news a summery introduction is used but in features we should always use a drop introduction like 'Lets take a look' 

My voice over on the War Horse VT could be improved. I understood that my voice over needs to be over the pictures to explain it. But I did too much explaining. The facts must be in my voice and the opinions should come from our interviewee's. We need quotes such as 'It's a dream' in the interviewee's voice. Never in our own voice. 

In my interviews at War Horse we showed too much of the interviewee. We needed to put our cut-away's over the top. This would of given us the chance to show off our best pictures of the horse. The interviews also needed captions to say who they are. (we shouldn't let the interviewee say who they are) 

There are many things that I need to work on in terms of editing the package. But I was happy with the access I received this week its just piecing together the package that I will be working on. 

Access Winchester now has its own link on the winol website. This makes the show more accessible.