Final Report

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.