Three Weeks of Crazy

A person can only live off of peanut butter sandwiches and pistachios for so long. Personally, it was week three when I saw the light, and the fact that I’ve lost five pounds. The past three weeks of work have been exhausting, enlightening and famishing.

Anchors Away!

It took until the second or third time anchoring until I realised why we were called “anchors.” Us anchors hold down the show and keep it on it’s correct course. We keep the show tied back to a specific duo of people who are responsible for, in a way, emceeing the event we call a newscast.

My first week on the anchor desk was fun and very eye-opening. Danny and I were getting ready for the newscast here.

I am not not one to be in front of a camera, rather I spend most of my time behind it. It was fun and enlightening to actually be in front of the thing for once and doing something than just smiling. When being an anchor you have to focus on so many different things while reading a script that sometimes things do go wrong, but as long as you keep going and just ignore that slip up it’s all good.

I think the thing I learned the most from being an anchor was the investment I had in my stories. I wanted to make sure each and every story was accurate and made sense to a viewer at home. I was also determined to attribute any stories that needed it. I wanted my time as an anchor to look and feel as professional as possible. This article by The Muse features a Q&A with an E! anchor. The anchor goes into detail about what it took her to get to her dream job today and helped answer some lingering questions I had about the real world.

Sometimes a casual selfie is needed in the world of professional news. Plus, I thought it was pretty darn cool what I had just been doing.

There is one big plus to being the on-camera talent: photos. There are so many more photos of me out there now that I can choose from when building an online portfolio. Not just selfies, but actual photos of me working in a professional environment. It is a very cool thing to show people and I feel proud of each one because I’ve been working hard for it.

As an anchor I also learned how to write for broadcast news. It is completely different from writing for print and digital media. Broadcast wants those active and present verbs while print needs the passive voice to keep a story straight. It has been interesting trying to go back and forth between the two seeing as I am still in a class that is print journalism. It just means I have to work that much harder. No prob.

Editing can happen on the fly, so having a pen handy is key. These were notes made after the live show that helped me understand and say this script better.

Producer Life is the Life for Me

I spent a total of 14 hours being a producer. In that tiny timeframe I produced two newscasts. If you had asked me when we first started this class if that was possible I would have laughed in your face. But contrary to what I thought, I loved every stressful second if it. I’ve always been someone who likes to push through a super stressful situation. I am never sure if I handle it 100 percent, but I love the idea of going into an unknown then becoming proficient in what used to be something I knew nothing about. Now, I am in no ways proficient in producing yet, but it is definitely something I want to keep practicing.

I was ready for my first show and prepared to take as many notes as needed. I wanted to be able to relay information to my news peers in order to better the show.

As a producer you have to be on top of everything and everyone, with that last part being more important. I found it was much more beneficial to ask the room, “Hey, how is everyone doing?” every hour or so in order to get a feel for where we were at. Every free second I got (which was seven I think) I went through the rundown to make sure our show was looking good. The rundown lists all stories, who wrote them, how long they are, if they have graphics, where those graphics are, what camera the talent looks at and so much more. The rundown is where we go for everything. The rundown is life.

This is the rundown for the day. Think of it as a producers Bible. I lived and died by this thing. This particular show was quite the learning experience.

Since I was in high school I have always been fascinated with the idea of being a producer. As far as I knew then producing was just calling the shots while a broadcast was going on. I now know it is so much more. You have to be able to know every job of the newsroom inside and out and be able to predict their every move. My favorite example of this is another awesome clip from Morning Glory. I did not fire anyone, nor did my morning really go like this, but in my mind this reminds me of some moments.

Multitasking and Transcoding

While doing the job of a producer and possibly three other things I also had a package airing last week. I spent hours working on a natural sound package that I was actually very happy with. Soon you can find it on LUTV’s YouTube channel. I went to a Arch Rival Roller Derby game and filmed the girls’ teams. It was a great learning experience learning how to capture sound and focus more on that. It took me about three hours to shoot and five hours to edit. It was completely worth it in the end. I was really impressed with myself.

Shooting the game was difficult because I did not want to get in the way of the girls, nor did I want to end up getting run over. I think in the end I captured some great sound bites and natural sound.

I can’t wait to see what the next few weeks have in store for me. I am hoping to get as many packages and VO-SOTs done as possible without sacrificing quality. Let’s hope my coffee intake doesn’t increase too much. Here’s to six hours of sleep a night!

Sometimes my outfit is on point and the coffee is strong enough to wake me up. I’ll say YES to that!