Getting An Early Start

This past week has been busy for me, but I feel as though I have accomplished a lot because it's only July and I already have almost all of the filming completed for my capstone project. After meeting with Debbie from the Lawrence County Community Action Partnership, I was able to get some good background information on the organization that I am focusing my project on, His Hands Ministries. I also met with the other 5 women in charge of the organization who would be helping me throughout the week.

His Hands Ministries is basically a large work project that runs through LCCAP and takes place one week out of the summer each year. The idea is to help out residents throughout Lawrence County with household jobs or projects that they may not be able to do themselves. Volunteers do everything from trimming bushes, to painting, to building wheelchair ramps. This was the 5th year for His Hands and there were between 30-40 different projects going on throughout the area.

Before the week started, I received a packet of information from Lynn at LCCAP, which contained all the houses addresses and a brief biography of each family receiving help from His Hands Ministries. Then each morning I called Lynn to get a list of all the houses the volunteers would be working on that day. Each day I made my rounds to about 5 or 6 houses to film the volunteers in action. I'm so glad I had a GPS, because the houses were all over the county and I definitely would have been lost. I went to houses in West Pittsurg, Harlansburg, Volant, New Castle, and other places I've never been before. I spent between 5 and 6 hours each day driving to different houses, filming, and interviewing people. By the end of the week I ended up with about 2 to 3 hours of footage, including about 15 interviews with different volunteers and homeowners. Not only did I get a lot of video, but I also made sure I took my digital camera to get lots of stills.

On Friday, after all the work was completed, LCCAP held a luncheon for all the volunteers and homeowners. The leaders of His Hands from LCCAP had asked me a week earlier if I would be able to make a slideshow of pictures in order to play at the luncheon. So Thursday night I spent a few hours going through all the pictures I had taken and created a 15-minute slideshow using MovieMaker. After playing it I got a lot of great feedback from people at the luncheon especially from the 5 women in charge.

So now that I have a good start on my project there is one more thing I would like to finish before I go back to school. I have not interviewed Debbie yet from LCCAP. She was in Harrisburg during most of the week that His Hands was going on so I'm hoping I can schedule a time to meet with her before the summer is over. Other than that, I have A LOT of editing to do once I get back to school. However, I'm glad I got the filming part done so hopefully I can get a lot of my editing done before other Capstone students need to use the edit bays for their projects.

Not only was this past week a great accomplishment for me, but it also was very interesting. I met so many people throughout this experience including the homeowners and volunteers. After I told them what I was working on they all thought it was such a great idea and were very thankful that I was trying to help out the organization for next year. So not only is this project my ticket to graduation, but it's also a great way of helping out my community which gives it even more purpose.

The Interning Experience

I've been at WKBN for about two months now and it's not only been a great learning experience but also very eye-opening. I'm really starting to get the hang of ENPS and I think it's a great program because it's pretty much an online rundown that everyone can access and edit. The anchors and reporters can type their stories right into the rundown and it appears on the teleprompter.

I've also been learning a lot about the job of a VJ. I don't think the public really understands how much work a reporter actually does. Sometimes when I go out with reporters the people we are interviewing or filming are pretty surprised to find out that there's no real camera man, just the reporter. Ever since the merger with WYTV, only a few of the reporters that have been there for a long time have their own camera men. I've also been learning a lot about writing scripts and trying to improve my writing. After we went out on a story I came back and wrote my first VOSOT and showed it to the reporter to see what he thought. I learned that I need to cut down my story and make it much more tighter and concise. However, ever since then I really have been improving my writing.

Although I find the job of a reporter to be exciting and interesting, I do have doubts on whether or not I could actually be a reporter. I'm not the type of person who can knock on a strangers door and ask them if they want to talk on camera, especially if it invloves the death of a family member. Some of the stories we go out on do involve some type of crime or murder and I'm not going to lie it can be scary at times. One day we were sent to a house where a woman was murdered just 5 hours prior and all we knew is that one person was arrested. We had the address and that was it, no further information.

So even if I can't be a reporter I feel like I have plenty of other options. Nate and I got the opportunity to intern in the promotions department the other day and I felt like this was something more along the lines of what I would like to do. They create all the promos for the station and work on special feature shows such as a "Movie Review," and "Sunday Morning with Dee." I'm hoping to keep in contact with some of the promotions people so when I begin working on my capstone project they can give me feedback.