A Good End!

My story this week was another chain in a serious of improvements that I have been making since early March. I did a story on the rise in consumers’ confidence during April which was seen by experts as an early sign of a possible gradual recovery of the nation’s troubled economy. The hardest part of the story was getting an economist and a store owner (grocery stores) in Columbia to talk to me for the story. I made phone calls to six economists at MU’s Department of Economics but none was ready to talk, mostly citing time restrictions. My attempts to talk to an economist at Stephens College and Columbia Community College were futile as well! So, I decided to talk to the head of Columbia’s Chamber of Commerce, though I knew he might not be the person with the most unbiased views toward this issue! But he was pretty balanced in his views anyway.

The next biggest challenge was to convince one of the stores in the town to allow me to shoot some video and talk to a manager and some consumers there. I called several chain businesses like Schnucks, Gerbs, Wal-Mart and a couple of small businesses on Broadway and around downtown and even one in Ashland, but none allowed me to shoot inside the store or talk t their managers and sales persons! I finally managed to talk to a clothing store called Envy in downtown Columbia.

I had nice shots, a good stand-up with excellent framing and good compelling story, although I should have talked to a consumer as well as nice graphics which helped me tell a better story. But I didn’t have good natural sound for opening my story!  I did a good job of being the first person to check out the camera and tripod so I would get the ones that work fine!

I was generally very pleased with the work I did but there are always things that one could do better! I should have talked to a consumer and used her or him as the central compelling character of my story. Setting up interviews is sometimes a very challenging part of the job. You call a dozen of people and places and nobody wants to talk. But, in some other cases, the first few people you call are willing to talk. So, you never know how it goes. Therefore, I believe one has to talk to his/her possible sources well before the story’s time so that no time is wasted during the actual reporting shift on calling people and hearing disappointing answers! Also, making sure that one has a headphone so that when you shoot b-roll you can get nat sounds perfectly.

Anyway, I am glad with the level of improvement at the end of the course and should say despite all the tough time that I had during this class, I got to learn things which I did not know about before and hope I will get to apply those learning better in my future work!