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.