News Doc Ideas
Idea #1 - Sophomore Steps/Weather
I came up with an idea with Henry and Sophie based off of several experiences I've heard about walking down the sophomore steps which have been very icy and dangerous this winter. The news story would be us interviewing different people who have tripped or taken a hearty tumble down the sophomore steps and raise awareness on the dangers of them. We could also incorporate the dangers of the hill (main hill and it's hazards), because I know people have been slipping down that as well. It would almost feel like a PSA, but a funny one. We could also include different perspectives from teachers such as Nancy or Mr. Tashjian trying to come up with an idea to fix this problem. It would be a short News Story, but certainly an important and impactful one.
Idea #2 - New! at BBA
I came up with the idea of doing a segment about diving deeper into the new editions to BBA. BBA recently added Custom Bowls to their Bell Tower Bistro menu and I thought it could be a cool idea to learn more about their success and peoples opinions. We could also learn about how they are made and any menu recommendations! Another addition to this serious could be interviewing Mr. Nicholson about his inspiration behind his new Hip Hop club and upcoming performance featuring famous Youtube rapper. We could get to know the team/performers, the details on the upcoming performance, and anything else related to the Hip Hop club! It would be a great way to spread the word and create good revenue for the newly formed team.
Idea #3 - Steroetypes
I came up with the idea of doing a bit about something fashion/winter apparel/trend stereotypes. I've noticed a lot of people in Canada Goose jackets or cruising around campus with AirPods in their ears, so it could be something related to BBA trends or something relating to flexing. Every high school has stereotypes and it's not like these stereotypes are just BBA but i've seen them at BBA recently.
Our News Stories
One Act Festival
The process of making this news story was fairly easy and fun. My involvement in the making of the story was doing the stand up for it. We wrote a small paragraph of what I was going to say and then we had to set up the shot correctly, and made sure that the lighting good, which it turned out to be great. I was working with three other people for this project, so we delegated the responsibilities. Sophie and Chapin were in charge of interviewing Jim Raposa and Olivia Saunders, who are both involved in the One Act Festival. Henry focused on the editing, and because I did the standup, I just helped edit and put everything together. We worked together on editing each interviewing and pairing it with b-roll from some of the One Act rehearsals. It blended together nicely into a brief News Story! We didn’t face many challenges along the way. Considering we were in charge of interview a student and a teacher on campus, the only slight difficulty was setting up the meeting times for the interview. We also could’ve gotten better b-roll, but due to the poor lighting in the theatre where the students were rehearsing, it was almost inevitable for not the most perfect b-roll footage. Overall, a very fun process and I felt comfortable with everything aspect we accomplished.
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This is a screenshot from when we were working with color correcting our standup for the One Act piece. We had to work with turning up the saturation and making the lighting look less bland and more bright and lively.
Hip Hop Club
The Hip Hop Club news story was so fun and engaging, however, many complications were met along the way. As a group, we knew we wanted to bring this newfound club into the light. We all agreed that it was such a cool concept for a club, and due to it being new on campus, we thought a News piece would give it the recognition we believe it deserves. We began the process by deciding who we knew we had to interview. We interviewed both Mr. Nicholson and Mr. Klein as well as Max St. George, a BBA sophomore and an up and coming rapper, who seems to be very involved in the club. The interview for both Mr. Klein and Max turned out very well. We were able to shorten them to about 15-20 seconds and they blended well with the b-roll footage, Henry and I got, which was clips of members of the club rapping and feeling the beat at their Thursday meeting during flex. The biggest complication we met, and the most upsetting, was the amazing, but flawed, interview we got of Mr. Nicholson, who is the founder and leader of this club. We went in last week to record the interview in his classroom. The shot was well lit, the content itself was great, and we thought we had a great interview for the piece. However, when we plugged in the SD card and imported the footage to Final Cut, we discovered that the mic we had used was broken, and the audio was gone completely. It was a very frustrating moment in time, but we knew if we used a different mic and tried re-filming, we would still have time to put together the News Story. We went back to record his interview once again, in the same location. Once again, to our very embarrassing and almost comical surprise, the audio was terrible. The microphone we had used for the second interview was causing a problem. At this point, collectively, we were very annoyed because if the audio had been good, we could edit it together and be done with this News Story. After tinkering with the audio for a while, we finally were able to use some of it. This microphone issue definitely set us back, but moving forward, we know to be more cautious when we are choosing equipment and making sure it works correctly. In the end, the piece came together nicley.
This is a picture of the timeline of the process of making the Hip Hop story and the b-roll that we included within Max's interview. We also played with the speed and transitions from clip to clip, which you can see here, and within the film.