For the 600-word article, it was particularly difficult to find an original story that I could talk about and get quotes from. In the end, I decided upon doing a story about a few friends and colleagues from a high street bank about how they shaved their heads in solidarity with a colleague who has developed bowel and liver cancer.
They have raised roughly £1400 for Bowel Cancer UK, with their boss also braving the shave after the target goal of £500 was reached.
I spoke to Simon via text message to get the quotes that I needed to do this piece.
I also used the JustGiving page to obtain quotes from other people and get more information on the cause.
Overall I can’t say I enjoyed the process of making this piece, though I will say that the challenge was certainly there and has allowed me to better myself in this sort of field, not only in writing the piece but how I went about finding the story itself.
For the 10-slide Instagram piece, I asked my friends whether it would be okay to document them and their journey in boxing as a piece, which they were okay with.
I used footage from fights that I had been to myself and screenshotted moments from them which I thought looked good enough to be an image I could use text over.
I asked them if they could send me videos of themselves talking and answering questions I had previously asked them to answer. The questions were:
- Why did you get into boxing?
- Why do you continue to box?
- What is your end goal?
I then used the answers that they had given me and word for word quoted them over a screenshot of themselves fighting. I have then extracted the audio from these videos as proof and evidence that they did indeed say what I am claiming they did.
I didn’t mind this experience as much as the 600-word story piece, both presented their fair share of challenges, but this piece was more seamless than the other because I was already in close contact with them and already had the footage necessary.
Though the Instagram slideshow was a bit simpler to complete, I wouldn’t say that it’s necessarily a good thing as I didn’t have to push myself out of my comfort zone as much as I did with the 600-word piece.