Rhythms of the week

Thanksgiving week was hectic. I worked over 60 hours at KOMU-TV including three reporting shifts and three production assistant shifts. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to my next paycheck. 

I learned a lot with time management, interesting shots and story writing that week. 

Shift One

My first shift, the day before Thanksgiving, was difficult. It seems every public official thinks the day before a holiday is a holiday. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to turn a package that night because the right people to talk to weren't available, even after numerous phone calls. 

Shift Two

My second shift was the day after Thanksgiving. I was able to track down a story on designated driving service that began in Columbia in August. I was happy with my video with the exception of needing a few more cutaway shots, even though I did overshoot.  I balanced the camera out of sunroof to get a clear, moving shot of the little motorbike in front of me. I used a number of angles, and I was able to find a good person to humanize the story that ended up using the designated driving service at the end of night.

Most of all, I liked my stand up. It was creative, I think. I had the camera shooting me through a glass of beer, so my image was skewed. I took the glass away as a I spoke to reveal two beer bottles, the amount of alcohol it could take to go over the driving limit for a 180 pound man. I got a lot of positive feedback on that standup. 

Shift Three

For my Saturday reporting shift, I started out wanting to do a update/reflection story on the Columbia family that crashed their car in Georgia. Two people had died. I wanted to get a community/friend/family reaction. However after LOTS of searching, I was unable to come up with any names or connections in the two hour span, and I wasn't about to start calling every person with the last name of 'Brown' in the phonebook. 

After talking with the producer for the day, she suggested a story on the Mizzou/Kansas rivalry game. She wanted to me find locals who did not drive to the game and were having watch parties here. I needed an interesting twist and I found it. 

I went to D. Rowe's, a bar/restaurant owned by a formed Missouri Tiger. David Rowe was in town that day and plenty of people showed up to watch the game at his bar. I showed the atmosphere of the bar, the memorabilia on the walls and used his old Mizzou football jersey in my standup to reveal that the owner was a former Tiger football player. My video wasn't as special as in my other story, nor was my standup, but I feel my writing was stronger for this package, showing the excitement with lots of natural sound and putting an interesting twist on the story with the revelation about the bar's owner. 

My package ran in the 6 p.m. newscast and luckily and within seconds of my package being played, Missouri won the game, so it was great timing. (My final shot for the video had been a Jayhawk hanging in David Rowe's bar with me say "you probably don't want to be a Jayhawk here.")

I learned a lot with time management during this football package. The game started at 2:30 pm, about the time I should be back at the station. I went to the bar at 12:30 and got my interview with David Rowe and even found three Mizzou fans to interview that came early to get great spots at the bar. All my interviews and shots of memorabilia on the wall were done at the point. I went back to the station and wrote my story quickly and uploaded and converted the video. 

At 3:00 pm, I went back to the bar and got shots of reactions to plays and of the bar filled with people for b-roll and natural sound. When I got back to the station at 4:15 pm, I still had plenty of time to convert the new video and put together my package. I was proud of myself for the time management, especially because I wrote the package so quickly. 

Interesting video of the week

I stepped a bit outside the hardcore news this week and watched a package put together for National Geographic online. The package was a "nat pack" filled with all natural sound and no voice overs. It was on the rhythms of New York city, day and night. It used music from subway players, sounds from construction, walking, traffic, etc. There was never a dull moment for sound. 

The video was also interesting, and I think I could incorporate a lot of ideas from this package into my own work. They took video from a boat, helicopter, and hanging a camera outside a car window at the level of the wheel.  They made for very interesting angles. They also held a camera at knee level and walked through crowds, another neat angle. Many shots were taken from the ground and looking down from above.  

Interesting, uncommon angles are one thing I really try to get into every package of mine and the more ideas I get and the more, the merrier. I love to play with reflection shots, highs, lows, etc. That's the one thing I love about being creative with video stories. 

I need to work on audio more though. It's something I tend to neglect more and it can make or break a story when you want to bring someone to the scene.  In my next package, I will try to concentrate on that more. 

 

Ever want to fly?

For lack of better word, this post will be all about flying, flying through an assignment and flying through a 60 Minutes story.

This last week was not too terrible for me as far as how busy I was. My convergence group managed to put together our story after getting our ideas rejected about four times. When we finally were approved Monday morning leaving us only 4 days to work on a week-turn story. We got lucky and managed to research and set up all our interviews quickly. Luckily for us, everyone we needed to talk to was available and willing.

Our story was on medical marijuana, looking at how the new federal guidelines will not affect Columbia's ordinance. We also took the time to find out how legalizing the possession of medical marijuana in a state that doesn't allow it has worked since it has now been five years since it was implemented.

We quickly found a great source to be our main character around the story. She has multiple sclerosis and has to uses the drug every evening before going to sleep to help control her muscles. She was easy to find, and very open. The part that was difficult in this story was trying to figure out how much about her we wanted to tell and exactly how because the topic is so controversial and illegal in the rest of the state.

The biggest concern came with how she gets the marijuana. Since the law only allows possession of medical marijuana, she still can't legally buy it in any way. She briefly mentioned that she gets hers through the mail, but mentioning this in our story might get her into trouble, but it does bring up a good point. Safety of the product, working with the black market and sending it all through the US postal service added an interesting aspect to the story.

In the end we decided that mentioning how she got it was irrelevant to the rest of the story, so we stayed with saying that she gets it from the black market, but not saying how. This may have been a mistake, because the small fact did add an extra "umph" to the story because getting the marijuana is something she still has to be cautious about.

The next step, advocates say, is making it legal to buy the marijuana for medical purposes, and having a safe place to buy it, as in NOT in the black market. This alone should have led me to explore where and how she gets the marijuana further.

"Birdmen" - 60 Minutes

Steve Kroft went to Norway to follow a group of skydivers that use special suits that allow them to glide longer than a typical free fall.

The video alone for this story is incredible. They had cameras hooked up to the bodies of the divers, they had cameramen on the edge of the cliff, in a helicopter and on the ground. They had to have done several jumps to get all these angles.

Had they not had the cameras hooked up to the bodies, the video would have been boring and less dramatic. You would not have been able to feel the speed. The quality of the picture from those cameras were also, surprisingly, very, very good. Usually when they hook up video camera's to skydivers the picture seems very amateur. They did a good job of setting the cameras up in a great position.

The quotes were fine but nothing great. It was definitely the video (not to mention the Norwegian scenery) that made this story.

Never too much?

This past couple of weeks I spent learning a lot of lessons the hard way. Granted, I have been told you aren't professional until you've made every mistake twice (and learned from it) but still, it was frustrating.

My first mistake, or ultimate challenge, however you want to look at it, was giving myself a ridiculous schedule this semester. Unfortunately the end result was me being a caffeinated zombie walking through what I called a life. I am now certain that life is more than being one step ahead of myself, so I can graduate and get to Wales faster, where a one-year graduate program on intercultural and global politics (emphasizing in war and conflict) and, oh yeah, my Danish boyfriend await me. I need to take more time to myself, actually get sleep, and enjoy a little bit of the social life that comes with college. I already feel like I'm three to four years older than I am so there's no reason to push it further.

Don't get me wrong, I love a challenge and I love proving people wrong that I can handle a lot and do well at the same time, but I think I may have outdone myself this time. Needless to say, I broke down a bit last Monday, but managed to talk to enough people and take enough time to myself this weekend to make-up for it. I'm never afraid to ask for help when I need it, but I am still too stubborn to drop any job, class or organization, and I plan to finish the semester full force.

My second mistake led me to learn to put my own work before friends' work. In short, I go out of my way too often for people. I am often told that I'm too nice and shouldn't put up with a lot of things that happen to me. I am a believer in what goes around comes around, but I am probably too much of a doormat sometimes, and I have a feeling that if I keep that up, I will be consistently giving away story ideas, stand-up ideas, script ideas etc. for friends going through "emergencies." I have to remember to get my own stuff done first and remember that in the end, if I keep that up, I may as well be giving away my career to someone else so they can take credit. Note to self: keep my good ideas for myself and learn to say "no".

I also feel like I am getting much better at seeing my final product sooner in the process of putting together a package. I am getting better at shooting all the elements I need, thinking ahead, and planning out my story in my head ahead of time.


Story for this blog: Gopher stadium

After the Minnesota Gophers got ready for and played their first game, I was lured to a long-form story that several of KARE 11's journalists put together. In short, I loved it. The story was wrapped around a few very interesting people, the creativity with the editing was really good and I felt a sense of being there.

I have always respected KARE 11 for their work and I think this story is a good example of why. I'll start at the beginning. I love that they used the young kid jumping in front of the camera. Normally that would be extremely cheesy, but when trying to show the excitement of the fans I think it fits in and adds to the story, showing a range of age and excitement.

I love the editing where they put shots of drums and aerial shots of the stadium setting an exciting mood for the viewer, like something big is coming up, and for the fans at the game, that's exactly how it was. They go through several people and try to get all senses from tasting to seeing to hearing to practically feeling the experience of getting a new stadium.

I love the shot where the photographer must have been riding in the back of the fan's truck as he pulls into the tailgating lot with the Gopher flag on top flapping in the wind.

At about 2:05 in the video, they do an interview with a man in the nose bleed seats. I like how they framed it. He is still in the moment of watching the game and his son next to him is still intently staring and experiencing the game. It's like we're right there with them at the game with the interview taking place within the context of all of it. And they covered more than all sides of the fan's stories from old to young, and from fans in the front row to those not even sitting in the stadium and they talk to an announcer and to a past player as well. That's what I think what makes this story so interesting, the array of people in it.

I also love that the sequences used throughout the piece are from several distances and angles that are impossible with only one photographer. I also love the use of photographs, emphasizing big moments of the game and slowing them down for viewers to see. I think the change of pace is okay in this case and the first time I watched it, I didn't feel like I noticed they were photographs. They flowed, except the photo of the first field goal and points of the game, that one may have hung around a bit too long. However, this story was very inspirational to me and it's great to see what journalist can put together as a larger team than we are used to working with.

Time for the Backup Plan

After this week, I'm stressed, tired and basically all-around unstable, but I feel like I can finally breathe out with a bit of a sigh of relief. Too many projects due at once does not make an ideal week.

For my broadcast class, I had to go to plan "b". My first idea, seeing how the No Child Left Behind transfers in Columbia affected segregation, fell through after I got all the video I needed because the statistics are still unavailable. I had figured I would be able to find them out in a week, but no one seems to be able to know how to find the numbers of children that are minorities that transferred. I've asked people at many levels from the assistant superintendent to the schools' principals. I will just have to wait until the official demographic results for the schools come out, I guess.

Although I knew I had a usable backup, the story just didn't have the same punch as my first challenging idea. I knew it would work and would be doable, even if I had a last minute change, but I wasn't sure that it would be great or really newsworthy enough. It's a nice little feature story but nothing incredible, but at least it was visual. It saved my week.

Unfortunately I realize now that I need a bit more b-roll and maybe some still photos of the area as well. I also have some quick fact checking to do today, but all is doable, I believe.

Going back and looking over my work for the week, I realize I need to spend more time with that camera. I'm still not sure where all the settings are that I need. It's not like camera's I've used before, it's newer. I also need to take more b-roll. I might have to go back today and do it. I also need to watch my lighting and crossing the axis on my sequences.

Great story of the week:

One neat longer story I've seen lately was on 60 Minutes. It told a story about an L.A. Times columnist and a homeless, black man that played beautiful music on several instruments on the street, but never for money. He used to attend Juilliard, a prestigious school for anyone in music, but he developed schizophrenia and never finished his schooling. My first thought was that this story was about a journalist and his friend. The story was already documented well in the journalist's columns but was it meant to be retold?

I think in this case it was. Only readers of the L.A. Times would have known about it before hand and also this segment offered an third person perspective on the case. I think the story was well told and covered all the ground that it needed to. We were able to see both sides of the story, not just the journalist's. The story was emotional, interesting and very humanized.

You could see the man's passion for his music and the sound bites chosen were really good, able to tell the story of his mental problem and his musical genius. I think this would be a hard story to do ethically. They showed him in his worst, but only briefly, but it was enough to get the message across that he was not in control over his schizophrenia. The majority of the story focused on the positive. Even though the man had many trials and tribulations. He is still doing what he wants to do and the friendship with the journalist has only given the man more to look forward to. They learned from each other.

Ready, Set, Go!

Slow work days mean lots of time reading news and taking care of small personal errands and duties, such as this. I have now successfully created a blog for my broadcast II class this year.

As I have been pouring over the syllabus, it seems my Fall will indeed be small... in social life, that is. Watch out life, it seems B2 and convergence reporting will be taking over.

And this is the end of my first task: creating the blog, which will no doubt receive a weekly visit from me.