A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending time with AVTV, the in-house TV station at Aston Villa F.C. A small team of just three, I got a first hand look at the day to day lives of being a sports journalist for a premier league club.
On my first day I was involved with the pre-match show talking about the upcoming game with Swansea and past matches etc.. I then went to Bodymoor Heath, the teams training ground for the pre-match press conferences. As many of you know I am a massive AVFC fan so this was an exciting prospect. But straight away I found the journalists and what was going on far more interesting than who was being interviewed. It's a bustling environment with journalists from all different platforms of media coming together with different question focuses and angles. This was interesting to see and highlighted to me how different journalists are from one another, showing me how important it is to have your own reporting style. One of the highlights of the conference was Tim Sherwood's chilled attitude towards the press and his ability to make jokes out of pretty much anything.
The Friday was much quieter with editing needing to be done before the big game on the Saturday. I helped out with this using final cut to edit together show reels of previous goals etc to be used in pre-match shows. This was valuable as I usually use Adobe Premiere so learning final cut adds another trick to my basket. I also love editing so was quite happy to sit and edit whilst drinking hot drinks.
Game day arrived and I was really excited to see what it was like to be a sports journalist during a match day. I arrived at the press area of the ground and was given a pass and made my way to the press lounge. All I will say is, if you want to be treated like royalty at a football match then be a member of the press. A roast dinner was on offer with any drink you could think of. At half time you could have a cup of soup to warm yourself up, nothing like being in a stand as a fan with a greasy pie and a diet coke.
I was involved in the pre-match build up giving facts and figures about previous meetings between the two sides and some information about acorns day live on air. I then witnessed a buzzing press box during the match with commentary coming from all angles. It was interesting to see the different styles of each commentator all as professional and successful.
After the match I went down to the tunnel for post match interviews and saw the fast paced rush to get interviews recorded and edited quickly to give the audience all the reaction as soon as possible.
Overall my time at AVTV was very enjoyable and I learnt a lot about sports journalism. It is definitely something which I would like to gain more experience with in the future as the fast paced nature of the profession is something which excites me.
Cheers
Alex :)
