Frustration!
frustration: n. a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems
With the exception of depression, that pretty much sums up the hour leading up to my last show.
Usually, my goal is to have everything for the 10:00 newscast finished by 9:00 -scripts edited, videos cut, teases written - so I can post all my new news to our website before I go downstairs. It's all in an effort to clock out as soon as the show is over and go home.
But that didn't happen tonight.Remember when I talked about the calm before the storm? Tuesday night was a prime example of this.
That last hour before the show was definitely the storm.
Our lead story was a package about the trial of a woman accused of kidnapping a 7-month-old baby last year.One of our bureau reporters put this story together and sent it to us over our shared server.
But guess what?
The video was completely unusable. You know how when you look through a camera you can see the box outlines of what you're capturing, along with the battery life icon, record icon and other various things? All of her video from the courthouse had that in it. And to top it all off, it had this frustrating digitized green bar things throughout the whole thing.
So my two-minute lead story got cut down to a 40 second, horrible compilation of the few still shots we could salvage. Much thanks to my sports guy for his patience in helping me with the intricacies of video editing [that I was never taught] and my anchors for their help in finishing editing the scripts.
The show itself went rather well, though. It was nice and calm, with no mistakes... other than my live reporter calling the female anchor by the male anchor's name.
But by that point, we all needed a laugh.
4 comments
Well heck, I can record video that good, give me the job! :P
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've read you've been lucky to have most of the fires put out and the chaos behind you by the time the red tally light comes on at the start of the newscast. Apparently, you have also enjoyed smooth sailing through most of your shows. Actually, I shouldn't have used the word "lucky" because as I am sure you know you make your own luck through hard work and preparation.
ReplyDeleteMy producing philosophy matched yours, AK. Unlike some producers I didn't sit around watching football games all day and wait till the last minute to begin putting the newscast together. I took it seriously. I jumped on it early and got all the major elements knocked out well in advance. I produced at three different stations and everywhere I worked the crew loved me because I was always organized and prepared and consistently got the scripts to them earlier than any other producer.
To me the producer's number one responsibility is to present an error free program to the viewer, even if it isn't loaded to the max with whistles and bells. It's easy to forget how simple and basic all newscasts used to be, local as well as network. They were little more than a talking head reading hand held copy. There were no teleprompters, no FX, no live remotes. Viewers didn't miss all that razzle dazzle because it wasn't even invented yet. State-of-the-art technology has become such an integral part of today's newscasts that local stations tend to overindulge. I yell at the television when an anchor stops reading so that a musical animated banner can provide the fanfare to introduce the next story. What a colossal waste of air time! When stations get carried away and make the newscast more about showcasing their technical capabilities than about the news itself, I reach for my remote!
Bottom line: As a one time producer turned viewer I would much rather watch a simpler and problem free newcast than one that tries to do too much and winds up filled with awkward pauses, blank screens, wrong video clips and flustered anchors apologizing for technical difficulties.
Well that sucks. All that work and a good story and no usable video? I'd be beating my brains out over it.
ReplyDelete@Shady - 'Bottom line: As a one time producer turned viewer I would much rather watch a simpler and problem free newcast than one that tries to do too much and winds up filled with awkward pauses, blank screens, wrong video clips and flustered anchors apologizing for technical difficulties.' <-- too true. We've got these things called web tags, which are basically animations directing our viewers to the website. It started out with just one, generic tag... and then exploded into 10 different ones to choose from. It's ridiculous!
ReplyDelete