I Want My J198 TV

TV News Anchor: What goes on behind the scenes of making a minute-and-a-half long TV news spot? Amateur TV reporter Andrew Daniels has this and more.


Reporting from my bedroom a mere five minutes after waking up, this is Andrew Daniels for J198.


Last week we were given the assignment of crafting a TV news spot, no longer or shorter than 1:30, of an event happening off campus. The three of us ultimately decided to do a spotlight on the Bobby McFerrin vocal workshop that happened Sunday afternoon at Zoellner. While the workshop was technically on Lehigh's campus, it still had plenty to do with the theme of our final project, which will most likely be a look into the revitalization of arts in South Bethlehem. So Bobby fit.


Opeyemi got some brilliant footage in some less-than-subtle ways Sunday afternoon, which is hilariously documented on her blog. While next time we should probably clear permission to record video at a high profile event like this, our cunning reporter got the story, and we couldn't have made the final product without her work. (Wait for the moment where Bobby himself comes right in front of the camera and sings to it. Priceless.) Lauren also was lucky enough to attend Bobby's concert at Zoellner later that night, and got great footage and interviews with enthusiastic members of the audience.


I was in charge of editing, which is fast becoming my favorite pastime. I don't even consider editing these videos as work, because I enjoy doing it so much, but I did spend close to three hours yesterday putting the whole thing together. Editing for a TV news spot is vastly different from what we've done in the past for the Web, and I might even enjoy it more because of the "rules" we have to play by.


Given the time constriction, the piece had to be short, engaging and have a logical story structure. My two partners got close to 40 minutes / 3GB worth of video, so I had to carefully pick which scenes to include in the report. There was so much I had to cut out, but it leaves us with some great B-roll footage if we decide to incorporate Bobby into our final project. I had to watch several news reports to get the feel for how these editors transition between scenes. Often, they use hard cuts and very little effects to move between footage. So you'll see that in this video. I also noticed their use of natural background noise from B-roll, so I left a lot of sound in, which is good, because hey, it was a workshop about sound.


Lastly, we come to voiceovers. I wrote a script yesterday to guide the story along through voiceovers, which I intended for Opeyemi to read. She originally recorded the VO's for this piece yesterday using the lapel microphone, but when I came back to my house to edit, the sound from the lapel was grainy, distant and from the sounds of it, recorded in mono. I'm not sure if we didn't use the mic properly, but we basically couldn't use these VO's without seriously jeopardizing the natural flow of the piece. So I recorded the VO's myself in the traditional method sans lapel mic, and the results turned out fine. (Though I had to re-read the script several times until I finally became happy with the sound of my voice. Ugh. I hate hearing myself talk sometimes.)


I also had my friend walk with me to Zoellner, which is a block away from my house, so he could shoot my field outro. This should have theoretically taken 30 seconds, but it took us about 15 minutes to get the decent shot I wanted. We tried all sorts of places from different distances for a visually pleasing background, but in the end, I chose a tight shot of me in front of one of Zoellner's pillars where I "signed off" from the report. I also pledge to wear my cheap wayfarer sunglasses every time I'm on camera, because I'm cool like that.


So enjoy the video above, audience. This is by far my favorite of the projects we've done so far, and the video I'm most proud of. I can't thank Lauren and Opeyemi enough. We're really gelling as a team right now, and I hope that we continue to as the semester goes on.