First Show "Teaching Moments"
Guess what? Sometimes, we just screw things up. It is year 29 for “HTV Magazine,” a show I actually started at our school in 1989, and things still go off the rails from time to time.
So here are my latest first-show-of-the-year miseries, and remember, my staff is made up of juniors and seniors:
*Two boys get great b-roll, but no audio from their primary interview. Just a lot of static. So they convince the guy to give them a second chance a couple of days later. This time, the photog is so focused on the audio recorder, that we discover later that he forgot to hit “record” on the camera. So he had audio the second time, but no video.
*Three girls decide to cover our new, first-year head football coach, always a big deal on campus. They shoot a nice interview, well-lit, good questions. They shoot a decent amount of b-roll at practice, and at a game that unfortunately took place in a downpour. Problem is, they shot about three plays from scrimmage, total, from the game, and none from practice. So lots of shots guys standing around. The coach standing around. But this is football and still, the footage had no sounds of pads crunching, a quarterback’s snap count, no visuals of completed passes, tackles, kickoffs…just guys pretty much standing around, mostly in the rain.
*Another story was about 9-1-1 prank calls. Not a good thing. My crew goes to the call center, gets almost no natural sound…a lot of shots of people sitting around, and the primary interview, I find out later, is with the reporter’s mom, who works there. What’s next, my dad the plumber? My sister the dancer? I mean….
*The line producer’s job in our program is to assemble the show. He takes the anchor spots we shoot, all the finished packages, the show opening that he produced, and he glues it all together, making it sound and look as good as possible. And he adds our lower thirds, the captions with the names and descriptors. Reporters write their lower thirds for him, and turn them in so he can actually drop in the graphics. He has only received captions for two of the eight stories. Thanks, reporters.
*A crew I reminded 100 times to shoot tights didn’t. All wide and medium. I mentioned these are juniors and seniors, right? We have covered WIDE-MEDIUM-TIGHT since they got here. I mean, I’ve helped produce a training video about that, seen by thousands, and apparently forgotten by at least six or seven teens I know.
SO…I could go on and on. We all could, right? Some of you, at least? I have to remember every September that first shows provide teaching moments. That is a good thing. But if those mistakes continue, then the old guy I see in the mirror needs to get his message across a lot better.
