XMAS BREAK

Now that I'm on break until January 22nd I have had a lot of free time even though I've been working 4o hour weeks. Its weird having this free time because last semester at one point I was working 30 hour weeks and having class every weekday. Next semester I will hopefully continue working 40 hours a week and I will only have one class so I should be able to focus on Titan Town Sports more than I already do. Since I've started working with New Vision I have thought about what I want to do with Titan Town Sports. I would love to do live shots from different sporting events but the chances of that happening are slim to none. I tried thinking of how I could be creative with the show, instead of just doing highlights and SACC athlete. I think I will have Dave and who elese wants to, shoot the highlights like I did first semester when I was availble. I want to start doing more feature stories and I'm going to really test my shooting, editing and most of all my writting skills. I won't be setting up my interviews or any of my shots before hand. I want to be able to go to a practice ask the coach for some interviews and get some shots come back write it, voice it and get it on the air in a matter of a 3 hour span. The only problem I think I'll run into is making sure I have an editing bay and hopeing that the computer doesn't crash on me. If all the equipment is availble and working I dont see how I wouldn't get these features done on time. This is what I would like to do next semester, well see if it works out that way.

Second week

I am now in my second week as a New Vision employee working for not only one station but two. When I first started learning our editing system AVID, I was not sure if I would ever learn it and be an effective editor. But now that I am in my second full work week it has gone pretty good. I mean I still dont know what every button does but I do know what I am doing and I feel I am producing good footage. I have been out on a few spot news accidents which was something I really didnt do when I was with WYTV. Other than that I have been shooting a lot of local stories and a few sporting events. So far everything has gone good and I am learning something new every day about the AVID editing system.

Hitting the WALL

This week was a rough one for not only myself but the whole campus, we all had finals. My finals weren't that bad because I only had two. The reason it was a rough week was because I had to do a 24 source lit review on what makes a good Sportscast. Not only did I have to do that I was on the work schedule for 40 hours and it was the first week at the new station. I had both of my finals on wednesday and I worked from 8 to 2:30. As soon as I got off worked I hustled down to the field house at the college for my capstone final which was with Titan Treverse like at the beginning of the semester. We did a few exercises like the tank and driver game. We had a obstacle course that was not a lot of fun but we got through it. After that it was time to climb the rock wall. I had never climbed a rock wall and I wasnt scared but I was just tiny bit nervous. I am not sure why but after flying up the wall I realized why I was nervous. Once you reach the top its time to come back down and that is pretty scarry when you just drop 10 feet at a time and your not sure if your even going to stop. All and all it was a fun experiece and I would love to it again. I also finished my lit review on Friday night the day before it was due. I didnt think I would be able to find 24 sources but I actually found 26. There was alot of good information that I will use towards my final project. Some of the information was kind of shocking because it talked about the 6 o'clock sportscast as dying segment. This makes me think what are sports directors leading with in their shows and why are they loosing viewers. So now next semester when Titan Town Sports starts up again, each week I am going to make sure that were hitting what our viewers want. What is it that our viewers want? Well after all the research I have found they want to see local stories not national. They want feature storys on athletes they might know and they want to get to know the athletes. So next semester get ready for a better and more improved Titan Town Sports.

New Vision

Ever since I was hired at WYTV channel 33 three months ago there has been a lot of talk about merging with our competitor WKBN channel 27. Well last friday was the day we found out if we had a job or not. What happened with the merger was both stations would be going through massive layoffs because we would all be working in the same building "WKBN" as one joint station. Both stations would be having their normal broadcast but because were all working in the same building a lot of the jobs were downsized. Now my job before was a Photographer for WYTV and what I did was I would go out with a reporter or by myself and shoot stories and edit them for WYTV's news. Now what I will be doing is since I am a New Vision employee I will go out and shoot and edit stories just like before but now the stories will air on WYTV and WKBN. What New Vision did was they bought both of our stations and put us in the same building so they didn't have a photog from WYTV and WKBN at the same story. It is easier and cheaper to have one photog than two. Another thing that New Vision has gone to is "VJ's". This makes me realize that my job position is not as valuable as it use to be because what a VJ does is everything. They shoot, write, interview and do their own stand ups. A lot of the people that I learned from and got to know at WYTV weren't hired back by New Vision and I truly feel terrible for these people who have been doing this for five, ten or thirty years of their lives. I am not real sure why all these people were not hired back but I do think it might have been because they made more money than me. But I can't complain because this is a great oppurtunity for myself to gain more experience. My work load will probably double but that will only help me in the long run. This week I did some job training and basically what I did was I trained on our new editing system "Avid". Its not really like WYTV's editing system or Westminster's but it is the most advanced system out there and it may take some time learning it but once I get it down I should be able to produce a better and quicker quality product.

Tapes

Well this week was pretty hetick because the semester is coming to the end and most of my professors are trying to get all there last minute projects and tests in. Also trying to put a good show together was a challenge because we haven't had a show in that was live and more than 3 minutes in 4 weeks. I wasn't thrilled with the content we had but I was trying to fill in all the empty spots. We did 2 recaps of highlights that if it was a normal everyday sportscast I would never put it in the show but seeing how our show is only once a week and we haven't had a show in since these events happened I put aired them. One was a basketball tournament that the Titans hosted and its been happening for a long time. Another reason why we aired it was because we didnt have any footage of the men's team. The other story we aired was a local allstar soccer game that was Lawernce vs. Mercer county which Lawernce county is our main viewers.
Well were in the show and everything is going very smooth there hasn't been any blunders. But then we get to sports and of course something always goes wrong. We showed all the highlights and the allstar soccer match package and they looked and sounded great but then we got to my package on Dan Orrison who was our outstanding athlete and student award and what happens we air the wrong video. I wont mention names but somebody doesn't know how to read. I cued up the tape for this person, I wrote down the time code so even if they accidentally re-winded the tape they would know where the video was. The person ended up playing highlights from a football game from 4 weeks ago. Even though the package was on a football player they should have known that the video they had was not Dan Orrison. So I guess I should have known by now that I can only rely on myself to run the right tape. This week I will not be producing the show but I will sit in the control room and make sure they run the right package.

Confusion

This week was kinda of easy because I didn't have to anchor and we didn't have much content for the show. Garrett anchored for his first time and did a pretty good job, even though it never aired on TV. This weeks show was live in New Castle for Light Up Night. Our producer wasn't sure if they would be able to fit the sports segment in because it was a live parade. Garrett was kind of upset and I would be to if it was my first time anchoring but he has to realize that in a real life News segment sports is the usually the first thing to get cut. A news director would rather take time away from sports than from weather or the news.

But even though it didn't air Garrett did good and we had a lot of readers because the hounds were away and we didn't have a game of the week. We did have titan highlights with a few readers about soccer wrapping up their playoff games and a few previews of what was coming up this weekend. One thing we previewed was the Buzz Ridl Classic which is a Basketball tournament that the Titans host every year. There was a local soccer tournament that also happened today that we previewed. That was about all we had and sports ended up being two minutes and thirty seconds which would have been perfect for a commercial break or for the open of light up night.

I sent a crew today to cover the local soccer tournment that was held at Wilmington High School. I will make it into a package and the main point of the pack is "what does this mean for the kids." I had them interview the players and find out what this tournment ment for them and also some of the parents. They also got some highlights of the game. I feel this package is perfect for not only our sports segement but also for this allstar game because it is the first one ever.

Breaking out of the shell

I finally came out of my shell, what I mean by that is I finally did some on air work. Thursday I pre-recorded Titan Town sports which I anchored for the first time. It was a little nervracking to get all the highlights and full screen graphics for it but it turned out pretty darn good. The one thing that I struggled with the most was voicing my highlights, for some reason I just couldn't get them to sound good. In the end they sounded pretty good in my ears but I let you be the judge of that. I stumbled through the volleyball and soccer readers but it was only a few words that just didn't want to come out of my mouth right. I feel this was a great eye opening experience for my self. I learned that I can do on air stuff with out being so nervous and that I can show some of my personality on air. Also on Thursday night I was a on the floor reporter for the Mock Convention. This was another reason why I anchored Titan Town sports. I wanted some type of practice in front of a camera before I went on live television. My responsibilities for the Mock Convention was to find people on the floor and ask them funny questions and obvious questions such as what are you dressed up like who are you voting for and so on. I was under the assumption that I would only have to do one interview, well it turned out I was doing four interviews. I got very nervous when I saw on the rundown that I had four interviews to do. My first interview went alright except you would think I was doing a 100 yard dash because I was flying through my questions, mainly because I was nervous. After that everyone told me to relax and just be myself. So it was time for my second interview and I had it all ready to go and I am in the middle of asking my interviewee a question and the microphone gets knocked out of my hand by a big beach ball! I almost lost my composure and flipped out on the kid who hit it but I realized the show was live and I went back to asking the question. Lucky the microphone wasn't working so I had to do the interview over again and it went awesome. I have never been so relaxed on air before. I was listening to what my interviewee was saying and I had follow up questions. I had a lot of comments on how well I did and that made my next interview go great because I knew all I had to do was relax and listen to what my interviewee had to say and respond. Now I feel I could do anything on air because of how well the whole day went with Titan Town sports and being a floor reporter. I really came out of my shell and I am ready to do it again and again.

Help me please!

This week was jammed packed full of local sports for the show. I was very impressed with the rundown and with all of the quality footage I had. I did a lot of running around each day of this week to put together what I felt should be our best show yet. Tuesday was a big day for me because I went to the basketball PAC media day and got some very useful sound bites for the show and shows down the road. Then when I got back the Women’s soccer team was hosting the first round of the PAC tournament, so I got some highlights from that. Wednesday I worked on a story coming up next week and shot highlights of the Men’s soccer team also hosting the first round of the PAC tournament. Then that night I put together my Hounds and Titan football highlights. I put a few readers in the show also with our SAAC athlete and I was ready to go. I felt my content and the work I put into the show was spectacular. All I had to do know was sit back and watch them hit play on my tapes while my anchor David Greg did his thing. Well this is why I put help me please for my title because the show was a total disaster and there was not one thing I could do to help or fix it. There was no audio for my first video of PAC media day, when they got to the hounds highlights David Greg introduced the interview at the end of the highlights and our switcher cut the interview and made David look like a fool. Once again I feel responsible for these technical difficulties because I am the sports director but I will not lower my head in shame because of errors I can not control. Next week I guess will go back to pre-recording the show because that’s the only way I can make sure things go the way they should.

One day to prepare

This week was a hectic week because our school was on fall break until Wednesday. It didn’t really matter for the news crew because they were able to re-rack their best non-dated packages. Unfortunately for sports you can not re-rack anything but we did the best we could with our time constraint. As always we had titan and hounds highlights which looked great and were easy to edit. We also had Garrett’s How to and a couple full screen graphics to preview what’s coming up next. I and David Greg had all of our material done by four o’clock yesterday. Then the show starts and everything is going well until we get to the titan highlights. I notice that I can’t hear the music bed I put under the highlights and I shrug it off thinking I might not be able to hear it from where I was watching from. Then we get to the hounds highlights and there the wrong ones there from two weeks ago, so David apologized for the technical difficulty and moved on to Garrett’s How to, which didn’t have sound either. The rest of the show was full screen graphics and they went better but after the show I figured out our rookie crew who has been doing this for two or three weeks forgot to turn on the audio for the highlights and accidentally rewound the hounds tape to a random football game. My show has had two major hiccups since we started and I feel responsible for them but I can’t control these mistakes. Next week I guess I’ll have to do my own audio and push play for my tapes because I will not accept another flaw in show that I can not control.

Pre-recording

Last week we decided to pre-record this show for a few reasons. One was so I could put it on my blog for all of you to view and understand what I do each week. The other reason was so it would be our polished show with hopefully no mistakes. I was a leery about doing the pre-record because I knew that meant I have to get my highlights and graphics done for Wednesday afternoon instead of Thursday night. I also had to call in for an in studio crew to help run a camera, audio, tapes, floor director, teleprompter and the switcher. So I need about six people and I thank everyone that showed up, there were five of us including myself. We started to record the first time and I knew something would go wrong but I wasn’t sure what and of course I screwed up the second tape I forgot to bring it up on the switcher. Round two went better but we didn’t have someone running camera though and David had half his body on the screen so we went to round three and there was no audio for the hound’s highlights. I didn’t realize this till the next day so we had to do it once again. This time it went better and we had audio so I was happy and not so stressed out anymore. All we had to do was sit back and watch the tape during the newscast. There was no worrying about if we would have audio or anything. Here is the show please give some feedback on what the shows strengths and weakness are.
http://www.westminster.edu/student/orgs/radio/county_line.cfm

Getting better

The best show with the least content. Our show this week only had one game for highlights and because of technical difficulties the highlights started in the third quarter. We also had Garrett’s How to which looked even better than the week before. We shot it with a wireless lave lire microphone and it looked and sounded ten times better. We had a lot of full screen graphics that turned out great. In those full screen graphics we represented four PAC athletes of the week from Westminster. All and all we didn’t have much video but we make a good show. For the next show were going to try and pre-record so we can get rid of minor errors such as a highlight tape starting right on cue.

New addition

Our new addition to this week show was Garrett Horvath’s How to Soccer second. I was worried about how this would turn out because when we shot it, we were not sure what to expect and it was kind of confusing. We really needed a wireless lav mic so Garrett could explain what he was demonstrating instead of doing a voice over. Garrett and I edited the day of show and it surprisingly turned out pretty good. Their were a few flaws but we made do with what we had. We also had lots of highlights this week Westminster College homecoming, hounds homecoming and the game of the week. I thought the show went well but I’m also comparing it to last weeks show.

Disapointment

Getting ready for yesterdays Titan Town Sports edition was good, I had pretty much everything done in the morning and felt very confident about the rundown. Last week we decided to put a music bed underneath the highlights for this show. We had WC highlights, hounds highlights and the game of the week. So we put down a bed for it and after the show we try to nit pick anything that we didn’t think flowed. The only thing that we saw wrong was that the music bed was the same and it sounded repetitive by the time we were done with the highlights. So for this weeks show we had different beds to mix it up. About a half hour before the show my anchor asked me to see the tape with the highlights and that scared me. Were in the show and everything looked and sounded great. But then we got to the game of the week and about mid way my anchor got lost and confused on what was happening. All and all the content was good but I guess I failed as a producer because I assumed my anchor new the highlights and that person did not.

First show

Finally it’s the week of the show. This week is our first show and we have had two weeks to get ready for it and I’m still nervous. We have our rundown pretty much set, we have some video and all we need now is our student athlete and SAAC athlete of the week. Thursday came around and David Greg and I were putting the finishing touches on everything but we still didn’t have a student athlete just the SAAC. It wasn’t a big deal but it would have been nice. The show went well but after the show we conversed and we thought it would be more interactive if we had music bed underneath the highlights to jazz it up a bit.

Nervous

Getting ready for our first show was a pretty nerve racking but we got through it. On Monday I wasn't sure what were even going to do for the show or how much time we wanted for the show. We had a lot of ideas but there was no definite schedule. Tuesday I started filming a bunch of different sporting events so we had some type of content. I filmed girls soccer and also a new addition to the show "Garrett's How to soccer second."

Capstone bonding

For our capstone class this week we went to Titan reverse. We did several exercises to get our class comfortable communicating with each other and to help us realize that we can count on one another if we ever need help. One exercise we did was Tanks and Drivers. We got into a group of two, with one person blindfolded who was the Tank and the other person who was the Driver had to guide the Tank to pick up a ball and throw it at another tank. This was very difficult because you couldn't see and you had to really listen for your drivers voice. This exercise made me realize how much were going to have to communicate with each other this semester if we want to get certain assignments done. This was a lot of fun and also a real eye opener for what will happen this year.

Abstract

My Capstone project will take the last Titan Town Sports segment on The County Line and show week by week changes. These changes will be implemented because of group communication between myself and the rest of the Titan Town Sports crew. My ultimate goal is to not only get input from Sports producers from different stations but also meet with them and discuss the shows strengths and weakness. In the end I will take the last show of last year and the last show of this year and see how it has improved over the year.

Mission Statement

To integrate what I have learned at Westminster as a Broadcast Communications major with what I have learned as an intern and as a part time photog. To show how my work has progressed from my freshmen year until now. I hope to give a positive spin to a career as a broadcaster.