A week of filming

The past week I was able to witness filming by some major television stations. The first one I tagged along to was at the Shenton Park campus where ABC was doing a feature story about a unique rehabilitation program that is run for breast cancer patients. They conducted a series of interviews and filmed them performing various activities. Check www.abc.net.au in the coming week to view the feature. It was interesting to see the interview techniques of the interviewer and how she asked particular questions to trigger a certain type of response.

Although the program is not an RPH initiative, it is run on RPH grounds hence the requirement of a PR team member to be present. We just had to make sure that the interviewees were comfortable being filmed and that consent forms were signed. Essentially it is ensuring that nothing inappropriate or that may harm the organisation is aired, particularly people in the background who are unaware they’re being filmed!

The other filming I sat in on was Today Tonight interviewing the primary Doctor to see for Mitochondrial Disease in Western Australia. As it is a rare and complicated disease, the Doctor agreed to do the interview in the hopes of raising awareness and funds for research. It is also a relatively newly discovered disease therefore there is still a lot they do not know about it and so the aim of the interview was to call for support. If you’d like to know more about the disease go to the Australian Mitochondrial Disease Foundation at www.amdf.org.au.

It was a learning experience to see the different types of filming techniques in how to engage viewers as well as seeing the relationship between Public Relations officers and journalists. They are interdependent of each other therefore they make a real effort to maintain strong relationships.

I spent the rest of my time working on the Employee of the Month section of the RPH ‘Servio’ newsletter. I think it is a great initiative of the hospital, it engages the employees as they are able to nominate and it recognises the hard work of staff members. Both of which are important for strengthening the organisational culture and creating a team spirit. I wrote up two pieces on two different employees based on the information supplied by their nominators (other staff members) which will be published in the December edition J

I think the newsletter is a great way of keeping in touch and communicating with stakeholders especially since the organisation has a very large employee base. Additionally, the organisation’s new developments and recent happenings gain wide attention as the newsletter is not only distributed internally but to the wider community.

Can you tell that I enjoy working on the newsletter J