Monica Pearson’s Segment with Celebrities
Monica Pearson, formerly known as Monica Kaufman, is a great storyteller. Pearson is a former anchor for Channel 2 WSB-TV in Atlanta, Georgia. She produced news and intrigued her viewers. Pearson is well-known in the Atlanta community for being the first African-American women and minority to anchor the evening news in Atlanta.
While working at WSB-TV, Pearson had a segment that aired on Channel 2, titled Monica’s Closeups. This segment featured celebrities such as actors and musicians. Pearson produced these segments allowing viewers to know more about who these celebrities were.
One of my favorite pieces was her 1986 interview with James Brown. It was a 12-minute piece that encompassed B-roll of Brown, an interview with him and a standup of Pearson. She began the segment on a couch, introducing James Brown and setting up the scene for her audience. After Pearson’s standup, Brown’s song Living in America played in the background as footage of Brown performing along with pictures appeared on the screen. Pearson then begins interviewing Brown and asking him several questions about his career, life, and his music.
Pearson did a great job with helping the story flow with her voiceovers. She added the content that Brown didn’t say. She spoke like she was reading a book, rather than reporting on someone. Pearson allowed her viewers to connect with Brown by learning more about who he was as a person. She discussed notable experiences in Brown’s life, rather than the “cookie cutter” questions that someone may ask when attempting to get to know someone. She asked him questions that required more than just a one word response. Brown was forced to answer her questions with great depth.
“Prison kept him from finishing Ms.Garven’s class, or any other class for that matter. He never made it out of the seventh grade.” — Pearson
“But, I’ve got a doctor’s degree in life.” — Brown
Excerpt from the 1986 interview.
The footage and pictures were good. They were clean and followed the story. Neither the videos nor pictures took away from anything that Brown said but rather added to it. The pictures and videos helped viewers to better understand and visualize the stories Brown shared with Pearson.
I liked that Pearson included a childhood friend of Brown. Leon Austin spoke with Pearson about growing up with Brown in Augusta. That scene added to the piece and showed “The Godfather of Soul” from a perspective of someone close in his life. The way fans may have viewed him might have been very different than how Austin spoke of him. Pearson adding the second source allowed viewers to connect more with the story.
The one issue that I had with the video was the length. I felt like the piece could have been a little longer. It seemed to end abruptly. I would have like to see the video end leaving the viewer with a powerful thought, scene or hearing a funny quote from Brown.
Overall, this feature was great. I aspire to have a voice like Pearson. She had clean edits, good voice overs and asked the right questions.
Emanuela Rendini is a junior at Mercer University. Emanuela interns for WMUB/ESPN3 and plans on being a broadcast reporter after graduating next year.
