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.