This semester I feel I have gained
a lot of knowledge and experience from my Practicum hours in studio production,
writing and taking photo and video. I did a lot with the News Show and
Interlachen.
I came to quite a few of the News
Shows in the studio and it was a great way to increase my previous knowledge in
studio production. I did a lot of things in high school and my dual enrollment
classes where we did a news show and filmed short skits using studio equipment
but it was really cool using all the new equipment in our studio here at
FSC. The first few times I helped with
the News Show I did the camera, it was a job I felt very comfortable with and was
pretty simple for me. I also helped deciding on how we wanted the set to look
for the different segments. A lot more went into it than I realized. We had to
check how the lighting looked and check headroom and that nothing awkward was
sitting right above the anchors head. For example, the few incidents the FSC
logo looked like devil horns coming out of Olivia’s head! It took a lot more
time in the beginning of the semester than it does now because every week we
seemed to find and fix more issues more efficiently. Rachel taught me a lot on
using the tri caster and teleprompter. I had to be careful controlling the
speed of the teleprompter with the pace of the anchor and I learned every
anchor speaks with a different pattern and speed. If the teleprompter doesn’t
keep up with the anchor they will have to stop and the segment will have to
start over.
When I started at Florida Southern
I questioned if I wanted to be a broadcast major when I found out how many writing
courses were required for the major. In high school I loved being on camera and
I loved playing with and learning the technology that was involved. I very
seldom had to write anything besides storyboards. This semester I wrote a lot
of readers for the news show. I realized how short news show stories really are.
The best readers were sometimes just three sentences. I realized I loved
writing them when Rachel Facebook messaged me to tell me she had no edits for
my reader. I felt that I was better at writing than I gave myself credit. Then I
moved on to writing copy for the yearbook. I was really nervous on having to
write a similar story but 300 words versus 3 sentences. I wrote a couple and
sent them over to Kelly who is the copy editor for Interlachen. A few days later I got an email that said she
liked my style of writing and that she attached the edits. To my surprise there
were few changes and it made me really happy.
The last area I worked in
(mentioned a bit above) was with the Interlachen team. This semester in
Interlachen was great. I made really great friends that I feel comfortable
around and have a lot of fun with and am constantly learning things from! I
learned how to use cameras that I absolutely love using. I had never taken
photos that had to be professional before. This semester I took portraits of
people and photos at events. I never imagined myself doing either, and I
actually really enjoyed it! What I was more excited for was filming events. I
thought it would be super easy for me since I had done similar things before.
Kenzie had so much to show me and I learned a whole new style to filming. For
my last few Practicum hours I started helping Kenzie upload and organize the
video from this semester onto our server. I am hoping to learn more about
editing next semester and possibly see my stories, photos and videos in this year’s
year book.
