reporters had this week was getting creative with their stand-ups, mainly with sequence stand-ups.
I was able to even help our anchor, Kristen, come up with and shoot her stand-up this week. It worked
well, and I find experiences like this are only helping my ability to work the camera. I am finally getting
the hang of operating the camera in a way that looks professional on air. Although I am no videographer,
now I am more confident in abilities to shoot.
Later in the week came critiques, and I had to take the reigns. Professor Dahlia is teaching me plenty
of tips on what to look for when critiquing a package, but it was proven to be difficult to find things
wrong due to my whole team submitting incredible packages. Many people did not have anything to
fix at all, and those who did only had a few adjustments. This is only their second show, so I was rather impressed by everyone. My team is making my job rather easy.
The following day, I had the honor of being the first producer to shoot/produce from WVU News’
Studio B. The Media Innovation Center on WVU’s Evansdale campus is home to this new studio. It
took a few hours to get camera angles, lighting, and reporter movement just right. However, it ended
up being the perfect way to incorporate the Reed College of Media’s new space. Studio B became a
great addition to our newscast, giving it a change of scenery during the show. Many professional
newscasts do this already, so we are excited to continue using it.
The script for this show was much better than the one I wrote for the first show. I took a lot of Professor
Dahlia’s critiques and tried to put them into my script. My biggest concern was calculating out show time because last time we almost ran over, but we made our time perfectly. I find myself improving all the
time in many different aspects of producing. I could even hear the improvements I had made in my
writing during our read through on Tuesday. I felt more ready for show the next morning than I had at
that same time during the previous show.
We started right on time this week because everyone became familiar with their positions last week.
After only three takes, we got everything perfect. Anchors read with enthusiasm, control room ran
smoothly, and camera angles were perfect. I felt confident in coaching the anchors on my own this
time. They always take my feedback and run with it. Again, this is only our second time recording,
and we were done an hour and a half earlier than expected. There is no better feeling than knowing
everyone made such a large improvement that we are ahead of schedule. However there is room to
get better, no one is ever perfect. I am sure we will see great enhancements next time.