A Columbia Culinary Story...SWEET!

Okay, I know the title of this post is an awful pun, but I have been thinking about it all week and I had to get it out. Well now that that's out of the way we can get down to business. This story was a lot of fun to work on. First of all, Charlie and I got free caramel machiato something or others, courtesy of the Columbia culinary students, as well as a slice of delicious chocolate cake. I really cant think of a better way to start the day. Its a good thing we got those coffees because we sure needed the caffeine. Charlie and I went to the career center twice for about 5 hours each time, once at eight in the morning, and ended up working on the story until 9 that night. Thats a long time to work on a story in one day, but I think all the hard work paid off in the end.

Getting to the end wasn't easy though. We had quite a few technical difficulties with the camera, as well as some human error. The audio levels weren't set to the proper settings on the video camera, which made some of our audio over modulated. Because we were shooting a lot of footage of things that are white (cake frosting, chefs uniform) some of our video was overexposed as well. We realized it halfway through shooting and were able to correct it though, so we salvaged most of the video. It was also very loud in the kitchen so we had to deal with the humming sound from all of the equipment throughout our audio.

Despite these difficulties, I am proud of our final product. I thought our text piece was clear, concise, and well written. With some help from Victoria and our student editor, I think the video turned out well also. We had victoria look at our video at about 12 on thursday, which I know is a little late, but we had a lot of footage to sift through to make the video. Anyways, Victoria told us that the video didn't really cover any material that the text piece hadn't already gone over. She told us that we could improve it by tightening up the editing, redoing the voicing, and getting rid of the jump cuts. After some consideration, Charlie and I decided to scrap our old video and take a new direction. The focus of the new video was to highlight the winning students, their passions, and how they got to where they are. We rewrote the script, I voiced it instead of Charlie, and we went back to the drawing board in terms of b roll and interview bites. After many hours of editing and several more critiques by Victoria, I think our video turned out well. We also took pictures and ended up choosing one for the story. Overall we had three strong components and I think we deserve a high grade *hint hint*!

Latest

Well the 5th team is in the middle of the pushing through all of the final steps of our projects. Some of the things I am directly working on is I got our backstage passes designed and created. They turned out pretty well, except for on the one print out I got a little W-happy on the web address. As for my other aspects, I am starting to do twitter updates through the 5th team page doing today in Rock and Roll history and linking back to Backstagegallery.com to help generate traffic from interested users. For example: Today in 1946, Al Green is born in Forrest City, Arkansas http://tinyurl.com/dy2u8f

I think this is a pretty cool idea and hopefully it helps bring in some people. As for my other projects, I've been a little overwhelmed with other classes to really tackle these at the current juncture but in the next week hopefully I will be able to get these done. That's all for now.

NEWSY!

I'm really excited about my Newsy newsroom experience this week! The first thing that struck me as I walked into the Newsyroom was the rock band guitar controller and drum set laying next to a big screen TV sitting in front of a very comfortable looking couch. As soon as I saw the sweet set up they had, I knew I was going to like working there. But it wasn't just the video games, it was the snacks! They had free chips and candy, I was literally like a kid in a candy store (although I had to act like I wasn't interested at first, you know it's not professional to go straight for the food your first time working somewhere).

All joking aside though, I really loved working at Newsy. I was told that most 4804 students usually only pitch stories when they are there and are in and out pretty fast because they already have enough people working to produce content. But that wasn't my experience at all. As soon as I got there I was put to work. I helped some other students gather quotes and clips and write a script for a story about a new law in Afghanistan that critics claim essentially allows husbands to legally rape their wives, but that Afghani officials said follows Muslim religious law. I learned how to search the recordings of news programs and cut video clips to be used in the stories. I also learned how to pull sections of video straight of the internet. During my second shift I was able to shadow a senior convergence student working at Newsy during the editing and producing process. I learned specifically how newsy packages were put together and picked up some cool Final Cut tricks that will definitely help me in the future.

Working at Newsy was a really great experience and I enjoyed myself immensely. In fact I enjoyed myself so much that I signed up for the Newsy class next semester, Advanced Global Converged News, and switched my concentration to online journalism. I liked the environment of Newsy, the people working there, and the work being done. I cant wait to be more involved in the writing and production of stories at Newsy next semester, and to see what great experience I will gain!

Creative

Now that all of the research is finalized we've moved into the creative stage of the campaigns for Backstagegallery.com and LikeMe.net. Our attack is a multi-level campaign to encourage 18-24 year olds to learn about the site, increase traffic and then use the sites regularly. Our ideas right now for Backstage include a viral video, advertisement spot on Pandora.com, a hybrid art gallery/poster sale, VIP passes to encourage increase in traffic volume, and we are going to establish a plan of attack for Backstage to establish a presence at current concerts in order to appeal to a current younger audience. Our Single Minded Propositions are "Having this art establishes your status as a VIP" and tagline, "Live Backstage." As for LikeMe.net our ideas right now include a big undertaking in the form of an internship program that will establish presences on college campus', it is our thought that this will really increase traffic from our demographic. We will also be doing a viral video, making both Facebook and iPhone applications and we will be creating stickers in conjunction with the internship program for branding purposes. Our single-minded propositions for likeme.net are that, "LikeMe helps you explore new things without having to leave your comfort zone," and our tagline, "LikeMinds, LikeTastes, LikeMe."

The Horse Whisperer

It is week nine and we are nearing the end of the semester now. This week Kelsey and I worked on a story about abandoned horses (which for some reason I always want to spell as "abondoned", but I guess that is a little off topic). This story was SO much fun to work on! Being from the Washington D.C. area I have never had the opportunity to spend a lot of time around horses, until now. We had some good weather and were able to spend a few days with some very hospitable and knowledgeable horse owners. The best part was by far the horse from Erika Harvey's stables that followed us around everywhere we went. This horse acted like a dog. A 1,000 pound dog that was taller than I was. You could be taking a photo and all of the sudden he would put his face right in front of the camera. I was asking Harvey some questions one time and when I turned around the horse was right behind me, which was a little creepy but still very entertaining.

More importantly than being fun and entertaining, this story gave me some new journalistic experiences. We spent so much time at some of the horse stables and farms that for the first time I felt that I had actually just become a fly on the wall. I felt that the subjects of the story became very relaxed around me and were able to just be themselves, which is usually what makes for the most honest and true to life story. Perhaps this was made easier because I was working around so many children. Children seem to be very relaxed and open around new people and do not change their behavior very drastically because of the presence of reporters. Although it took a little bit of time for the children to get used to me and Kelsey's presence, once they did they almost forgot we were there completely.

Kelsey and I put a lot of work into this story. We went to four different stables and private farms to talk to equine experts and take pictures. We knocked on doors and did some dirty work, literally (If you've ever been to a horse farm you understand). We talked to local, state, and national figures who had authority when it comes to the issue of horse abandonment. We collected so much information that the hardest part about the story was sifting through all of it to craft a well written story that really captures the heart of the issue. I think we succeeded.