I'll get it this time...

Today we met in that classroom to have a little lecture. I was able to watch some of Jill's newscasts from when she was in college. I was surprised to find out that she was only 17 when she started college. After watching one newscast from her freshman year we watched one from the stage in her career that she felt most confident with herself... it was a HUGE change. So, that gives me hope that I'll be able to get better and improve on my voice and look. We also had a little girls session and Jill showed us girls what make-up she uses and how she uses it. She also told us were to go to get it! Something else I found interesting that we talked about was in these packets that she gave us. It was all about breathing techniques and how to keep from getting nervous. There were some things that I would not have thought to do... like yawning... who would known?! After that it was time to go over to the tv studio.

Today was my day to be one of the anchors. My co-anchor was Davina Horton . We both had a lot of fun together! Granted...we did both mess up a few times... it was funny because I was like "Okay, I got it this time!" But yeah... i messed up again. Sakshi was so hard for me to say, I kept asking her in class... "How do you pronounce your name again?... Did I say it right?" lol. Don't worry though we got the news done!

Edit...Edit...Edit...

Yup...It was that time today....EDITING!!! I already knew how to edit...so it wasn't really anything new to me. You see… I took video production and got very involved with Avid. I might have...perhaps...annoyed everyone in my group, because I'm a huge perfectionist and I think that everything has to be perfect. But if there is one thing I've learned from Jill and Virginia, it's that you don't have a lot of time to edit your packages when you're actually on the job and working at a station. You may have only 20 minutes to edit… and that is definitely something that I have to work on, because I can spend hours and hours editing one two minutes package.

Today we also had our scripts due. Out of mine and Neal’s... Neal won. :( I’m just kidding... Congrats Neal! Now don’t you think that mine wasn’t good... because it was great... in my opinion I did a good a job and it was just a person preference on who’s scripts we got to actually use to edit. However, we did use Neal to do our voice-over and stand-up, because when we did stand-ups Dustin and I wore jeans (booo) and Neal dressed nicely... in black pants and a nice collared shirt.

We also met with Jill and she gave us a little voice lesson. She gave some good pointers on how to speak, breath, and pace myself while reading. She was very informational and told me about some things I was doing... that I didn’t know I was doing before... so now comes the tough part... fixing everything!!!

Operation Camera

In class today we turned in our logs for our packages. We also talked a little bit about interviewing and how to get the people that you’re interviewing to say what you want by asking the same questions in different ways. Plus, it’s hard to interview children because they all want to be on television, but when it comes time and you have the camera set up, lights up and rolling, they freeze up and don’t want to talk anymore. They start saying yes, no, and I don’t know to all the questions that you ask.

Then we went over to the television studio and taped the news. It was my day to run the cameras. I set the camera up to tape the sports with John Walsh, entertainment with Dustin Bailey, and weather with Davina Horton. When we were done taping those segments I had to rearrange the cameras and set them up for the news. I lined up camera three to set on Michael Calhoun and camera one to set on Neal Steinbach. Mike had to be more positioned on the right of the screen because his graphics were going to be on the top left of the screen and it was the complete opposite for Neal, so I positioned him more on the left of the frame. Even though I want to be in front of the camera…it is essential to know how to do the work behind the camera too! All of the students that did the newscast did a great job…I’m proud to call them my classmates!

KSDK

The first thing I noticed while watching news on KSDK at 10:00 am was Art Holliday. He just stood out in his black suit, with a pink undershirt and pink and gray, checkered tie. Art Holliday was a single anchor and worked by himself today. I saw all kinds of reporters that included Christine Dalwin, Lee Ann Ray, and Jay Gray. However, these reporters weren’t local here in Saint Louis. Jay Gray talked about Life-ware and how it now runs just about everything inside the home. For example, if someone rings the doorbell and you’re watching a movie the television actually pauses itself. Also, when you turn your home security alarm off then the lights come on, shades pull up, and music can come on. I don’t exactly know where his live shot was…there was a bunch of computers behind him, so I’m thinking it was done at his station. During his live shot he said that they weren’t as cheap as you would think…that they were actually quite expensive.

One story that I remember was when Christine Dalwin reported about Debra DeFay and how she is currently going back to court to see if she has violated her probation. Earlier she had sexual relations with a student and now she has been talking to a seventeen year old girl about sexual relationships and more. Another story I remember was when Art Holliday talked about Johnny Grant dieing. The found him in a hotel room, which he stayed in often, and believe that he died from natural causes. He was eighty-five years old. One last story that I remember was when Lee Ann Ray reported about autism. Researches have found that chromosome 16 is either missing or duplicated in most people with autism. However, this is only one important piece in the whole puzzle of autism.

We also saw Scott Connell and he gave us a little weather update. He said that we will have a little bit of filtered sunshine, but clouds will be getting thicker and today we might see a little bit of rain and possibly a tad-bit of snow tonight, but this weekend we shouldn’t see much precipitation.

I thought the newscast and anchor were comforting…the stories were interesting and Art seemed like he was speaking conversationally. I believe the reporters definitely have good credibility, because they are working in a market that is even “higher up the charts” than Saint Louis. The stories sound like they were well thought up and researched, which also helped their credibility. Art Holliday also seems like a credible source because he presents himself very well by dressing nicely and speaking confidently in what he says. You would catch me watching this channel again, because Channel 5 is the “number one station” in Saint Louis.

Tape Rolling

Today we taped our interview, stand-ups, and b-roll for our packages. We interviewed Mike Wall. It was a lot of fun...but it did take a lot longer than I expected it to. To be honestly...I thought it would take like an hour, but it took all of three hours. But then again, we did spend some time just goofing off and talking to Mike about all sorts of random things. It was a really “natural” interview, because I do know him and so that helps me to just feel comfortable around him. Plus, he’s a really fun guy…for example, we were just taping some b-roll of him and he was walking into him office and next thing you know…he just runs smack into his office door…on purpose! It was hilarious. One thing that cost us some time was that our wireless microphone decided that it didn’t want to work, and we still had one interview to do…so, we started really worrying about what we were going to do. That’s when Mike Wall came in handy…again, since he’s in charge of KCLC, he just happen to have a microphone and a cord that we could use! Yesss… it was kind of crazy that we didn’t think to ask him sooner…all well, we got the situation under control! All in all I think our package is shaping up to be really good...so I'm excited to see what it turns out like! We did log our package, but we still have to write our scripts and everything. We edit on Friday…so we will see….

KMOV

The first thing I noticed when watching KMOV's “4 In The Morning” at six was Virginia Kerr. I will admit that it’s because I was looking for her though. I wanted to study her before I interview her, to get a feel of how she does things, so I can make sure that she feels comfortable. However, besides that I noticed the “News 4” logo behind the anchors. The two anchors were Virginia Kerr and Marc Cox. Virginia was wearing a turquoise sweater, bulky necklace, and some dangly earrings. Marc was wearing a black suit, white shirt, and a red dotted tie.

The news started with Matt Chambers and a weather report. He talked about storm reports and said that it will be getting “cooler, rather than warmer”. Just a moment later Paul Cook updated with traffic and stressed the flooding on roads, from the rain. Throughout the first ten minutes of the news there were no live shots of reporters. However, Christine Doyle’s voice was on the air as a live shot by the West County mall showed what traffic looked in that area. Christine also explained that even at six in the morning, there was already a ton of cars out.

One story I remember was about Southern Wisconsin and the January storms that hit them. They reached a new January high and about a dozen people were hurt from all the storms they had. Another story I remember was about Barack Obama pushed even farther ahead for the Democratic race for President. So far today, the presidential primary in New Hampshire is proving his lead on the other candidates. If Missourians want to vote, then their deadline to register is tomorrow. One other story I remember was about a tornado that passed through Webster County. In the tornado’s path was two people…which didn’t make it out alive.

The newscast seems credible because they work at a well established station. Also, they all look nice and appear to know what they’re talking about. I would definitely watch this station again. The casts’ voices are easy on my ears and they all dress nicely. Also, even though there was not a lot of news stories within the first twenty minutes of the newscast…there was a ton of traffic and weather updates. Since the show was about the time that everyone would be leaving for work or school, it seemed appropriate!

Virginia Kerr

Virginia Kerr came to speak to our TV Talent class and was very sweet. She had all sorts of information to tell us. I know that I kind of always thought that anchors and reporters had to speak a certain way...and well, she said not to try to be somebody else, that I need to stay true to myself and just be natural. So, that takes a lot off my back, I feel a lot better about things. She also shared some of her most interesting stories. One time she was sent off to get some news and she didn't end up coming home for a whole week. She went to Wal-Mart and had to buy shampoo, change of clothes, etc. That's crazy...just to go to work one day and next thing you know...you don't come back home for seven days! She was right though, it would be a very exciting job, you’d always be on your toes, and you would get to be right there when something happens! She also told me about the story she’s most proud of while being in Saint Louis. This story was about her getting the whole community involved in donating tons of clothes and presents together for a single mom with eight children. She said that they were able to get a hold of the families Christmas lists, shoe sizes, and cloth sizes so that they were able to get several truck’s full of things for the family. Virginia was also able to unfold this story live on KMOV…which is awesome to show all of Saint Louis something that you worked so hard on!


You can check her out at the KMOV Website or take a look at her blog.