A Moment of Discovery!

Finally the moment came! I went to KOMU. On Friday for my first VOP shift from 6p.m. to 10 p.m. It wasn’t the best time to have a lot of story idea. But I still had two and the first idea that I suggested was approved by Stacey and the producer.

I had to go out and shoot a fund-raising event for a woman who had lost her husband and son within the past eight months to cancer. It was at the farthest northern part of Columbia and took me quite some good time to drive up to there. Once I got there it took me around an hour to shoot and talk to people. I decided to have three soundbites from the woman, an organizer and a donator and had some pretty good shots. In fact, I was shooting for a package. All in all, by the time that I got back to the station I had around 70 minutes to finish everything: editing and writing. The producer said that she wanted only a VO and that there was no place for a SOT. I put together 30 seconds of video as the producer wanted. And it was aired, my first ever video to have been aired.

Here are a few lessons I learned from my first shift: Be economical with time, highly economical. Shoot as much as you need. And talk to as many people as you need. Do not over-shoot and do not over-interview. In fact, in a job like journalism with extremely tight deadlines and a good deal of pressure and stress, every second and its management count. And be at the TV station at least one hour before the shift starts, so that you can have your idea approved and the gear examined and checked out before the time countdown for the shift will start. The best case would be if you can manage to be on the spot for your story just by the time that your shift has started on the schedule. That way, you can have the advantage of time on your side and perhaps get away with overstaying a bit. Then try to have a draft script ready based on your research and possibly prior contacts with your sources. That way you will spend less time writing your script and are more prepared and organized in terms of what you want to say. However, that should not be interpreted as determining the content of your story beforehand. And shooting in sequence definitely helps a lot with editing. I did shoot in sequences which is what I have tried to get used to doing for a while. And having several detailed shots definitely helps a great purpose as well: avoiding jump cuts and introducing visual variety.

All in all, I had 21 seconds of VO for my first shift on air. I will definitely have to stick to my own suggestions above to be able to do a better job with time!