Last Day with a New Beginning

Well, this is my last week as content team and I am kind of excited to be switching over to the other side of the news desk. It was not bad being on content team, but it was stressful making sure I had a story each day.

I am glad I got to do this first however as I feel majority of my time at Lindenwood has been working on shooting and editing so I feel I have gotten this down pretty well. I have been told that I am a good fast editor when it comes to news which I feel is a good compliment. I do enjoy the editing part, especially for news as I feel it is a bit simpler than when I was making short videos for my other classes.

So far there has only been one really stressful day for me in Super Semester that I will definitely remember for a while now. I think it was on the 7th of October or so, but I was assigned to do a story on Fire Prevention Week.

I had scheduled three interviews for the story to make a package and everything was going well until the day of the interviews came. The story was scheduled to air on Wednesday so I shot the first two interviews that day before, but one person dropped out and then the other person, who was a Red Cross employee, had some complications so I had to wait for a long time to get that. By the time I got the interview it was closing time for them so the person left before I could check the video quality, which ended up being unusable as the interview was too dark and not centered up and all that stuff. Always be sure to get the best shot you can no matter what.

Then the last interview I had was with a fire captain who could only do it the morning of on our newscast day, so I thought I could get it and some b-roll and be back in time to edit and send it to air speed. That’s where the real problems began to occur. First I had no charged batteries so when I got there I could not film. I felt really embarrassed when I had to ask the fire captain if I could come back later as I had battery issues. He was very nice and said no problem and to come back in a couple of hours which was when he was free next. He also said a lot of the news stations in the area like Fox and KMOV have had this problem plenty of times as well, so I felt better since professional news outlets also have done this before.

So while I waited for the last interview I decided that I could get weather footage as well so I was given the go ahead to get weather. That was an easy part and I was able to get back in time to transcode everything so I could have more space on my p2 card. Then I went out and got the interview as well as the b-roll of the fire station.

By the time I got back to edit both the weather and fire safety package I realized I had almost no time to get it done. I ended up skipping lunch and just getting a completed video for everything I said I would do. I was also told I should do a wraparound that day so not only did I have to finish in time for the live newscast I also had to get dressed and ready to go on air. It was close and came down to the wire, but I was able to get everything done and sent over as well as get to the studio dressed and ready to go on air with about five minutes remaining.

It was the most stressful day ever for Super Semester, but I got everything done and my teacher said I did a good job and congratulated me saying that this was what it was like in an actual news room trying to get everything done.

What a day that was.