This past week at my internship I've come to learn a great deal of different things not only about the broadcast industry, but about the people who are running the scenes behind it. The first shift was Monday morning at 12 a.m. to 9 a.m. - this was the producing shift. I shadowed Erin English, a long-time producer at abc27 who has been producing shows and transcripts for anchors for 10 years running. When I first got there, she introduced me to the staff working the day break shift and everyone was beyond inviting and accepting of me as an intern. The first couple of tasks Erin had me do was to write a couple of scripts and teases for stories that were going to be aired on the Monday morning 4:30-7 a.m. show. Writing the scripts was not all that new to me, but using the software in which they had was a bit different from the regular Microsoft Word I'm used to at school.
After writing scripts and speaking/shadowing Erin for the first couple of hours, I was introduced to the morning anchors and the cameramen and producers that were going to put the show together. Again, everyone was very intelligent about the scene they are working in and offered up as many tips and pointers to me in order to answer all the questions I was dishing out to them. I spoke with anchor James Krummel for nearly a half hour just about the show and how he earned his spot at abc27 over the years of working with broadcast journalism.
The second shift that I worked was with weekend reporter and part-time producer Amanda St. Hilaire. Amanda is a great mentor and fantastic inspiration for anyone interested in getting in the broadcast industry. As soon as I showed up for my shift we were called out to a story in Lancaster, PA about an unfortunate death of a 2-year-old baby. When we got to the house of the woman suspected of doing the crime, we interviewed her next door neighbor, got b-roll of the scene (background roll, used to put video packages together for the 11 o'clock newscast) and also got in touch with the barbershop next door for quick interviews and more b-roll. This was a great experience for me because I got to see first hand how in-field reporters are able to pick up stories and put them together for an actual news station - which is some exciting stuff!
After we got all the material we needed (and Amanda did the live stand-up shot for the 6 o'clock news) we headed back to the station to put it together. One of the photographers that came with us showed me how he puts together the video packages for Amanda after she does the recordings for herself and has written out her script and recorded her voiceover for the video component. It was amazing to see how fast someone can put together a minute and 45-second long video package in just about an hour or less. Anyway, that was the bulk of the internship those two days and I will be heading back there next Saturday to do it all over again.
After writing scripts and speaking/shadowing Erin for the first couple of hours, I was introduced to the morning anchors and the cameramen and producers that were going to put the show together. Again, everyone was very intelligent about the scene they are working in and offered up as many tips and pointers to me in order to answer all the questions I was dishing out to them. I spoke with anchor James Krummel for nearly a half hour just about the show and how he earned his spot at abc27 over the years of working with broadcast journalism.
The second shift that I worked was with weekend reporter and part-time producer Amanda St. Hilaire. Amanda is a great mentor and fantastic inspiration for anyone interested in getting in the broadcast industry. As soon as I showed up for my shift we were called out to a story in Lancaster, PA about an unfortunate death of a 2-year-old baby. When we got to the house of the woman suspected of doing the crime, we interviewed her next door neighbor, got b-roll of the scene (background roll, used to put video packages together for the 11 o'clock newscast) and also got in touch with the barbershop next door for quick interviews and more b-roll. This was a great experience for me because I got to see first hand how in-field reporters are able to pick up stories and put them together for an actual news station - which is some exciting stuff!
After we got all the material we needed (and Amanda did the live stand-up shot for the 6 o'clock news) we headed back to the station to put it together. One of the photographers that came with us showed me how he puts together the video packages for Amanda after she does the recordings for herself and has written out her script and recorded her voiceover for the video component. It was amazing to see how fast someone can put together a minute and 45-second long video package in just about an hour or less. Anyway, that was the bulk of the internship those two days and I will be heading back there next Saturday to do it all over again.