Adventure!!

When I was a kid, my favorite summers were those when we traveled and that was almost every one. When you have parents who work in the airline industry, that means that you travel a lot.

We'd go to Utah to visit Grandma and Grandpa Slaugh and play in the featherbed in the attic bedroom or find toys in the hidden staircase or float leaf boats down the street after a rain.

We'd go to New Mexico and visit Grandma and Grandpa Heeren and eat hot sopapillas and buy handmade turquoise jewelry from the native American Indians or listen to road runners run across the roof at dusk or ride on grandpa's tractor.

We got to feed horses sugar cubes and dig potatoes at my Aunt Lela and Uncle Bud's house, we went to a family reunion at a beach house in Hilton Head, SC. I've eaten ice cream in Italy and French Onion soup in Paris. Strolled through gardens in the south of France, walked in castles in Austria and danced the night away on a rooftop nightclub in Montreal, Canada. I've been to almost every state in the country and have traveled 12 of them, by car, in 24 days.

Adventure and travel. I LOVE it. I love experiencing something new or hearing about something new. I guess that's why I love journalism so much because you get to experience things that most people don't get to through other people and by meeting other people, in their places. Places that most people don't get to go.

A group of our students got the chance to do a story on the Kangaroo Conservation Center in Dawsonville, Georgia. It was awesome. We did an interview with a really nice, very informative facilities manager, met someone in the gift shop in charge of tours who was super accomodating to us and locked eyes with many different creatures that we had never seen before. Kangaroos, wallabees, wallaroos, blue pigeons, bearded lizards, fan lizards, a rat kangaroo and kookaburras. We heard kangaroos make noises (we didn't know they made noises) and got to see a Joey crawl into a pouch.

We spent several hours getting a behind the scenes, exclusive tour when no one else was on the property. The students who went said it was one of the best stories they've every done, yet they worked harder on this story than they have on any other and they have not even started editing. It was truly an adventure.

Try to find adventures to take people on. I'm not asking you to try to snake (to use an animal analogy) your way in to get a free tour of someplace you'd like to go, but find a story or a place or a feeling that you want your audience to experience. What a distinct honor to be the vehicle with which people can see things, experience things, learn about things, THROUGH YOU!

Try to come up with innovative stories. Things no one has thought of before. Take people on an adventure with you.

Where will your next adventure be????

What is Progress?

How can you measure progress in a broadcasting class? There are so many variables that students can excel with one skill yet fall behind on another.

Some examples:

• Students now seem to understand the need for an external mic, but when some of them edited their story on Carey, the young girl who lost her mother to alcoholism, the audio was recorded on two channels and for whatever reason, they didn't notice this when they edited so no adjustments were made.

• I see more and more students putting their subjects next to a light source and/or using light to enhance their subjects. You can see this is the Ivy League vs. Traditional College story where students used the window as a primary light source for their interviews or as a really nice aesthetic element for b-roll of a student, yet the framing of the interviews didn't allow for enough nose room for their subjects.

• Students are using writing techniques like nat sound breaks and "parallel parking" in their stories yet still don't understand how to use the basics of b-roll to cover jump cuts or backtiming with their SOTS.

• And my personal favorite...I SEE a lot of tripods leaving the room, but I see more shaky video than ever, as if my students had been shooting during an earthquake. Note to students: a tripod is not a fashion accessory!

Eagle TV is in its 8th year. When we started in 2001, we were in a science room (room 524 in the Magnet building) without any equipment or books. For an entire semester, I taught video production using old college textbooks, videos and my experience. The room that is now our studio was used as a technology lab and there were no edit rooms, no carpet in the control room, no stairs to the control room, no shelves in the equipment room, and nothing but old drill presses and aerodynamic wind tunnels littered among ancient computers on modular tables sprinkled about the room.

Now, all my students and I have to do is look up in the front of the classroom to see a smattering of award certificates, look in our equipment room, hear former students talk about their favorite stories and experiences and sit in an edit room with state of the art Final Cut Pro workstations to know that we've come a long way in a short amount of time.

Many stories have marked the timeline along the way. The Six Flags documentary, the story for the S.E.T.S. program, the Hawks Press Pass Program, The Crazy Story, the beginning of our annual senior videos among other milestone accomplishments have all made their mark on Eagle TV.

I think that the bar is higher when students enter this beginning class than it was 8 years ago when they entered for the first time. Many students have paved the way for excellence and shown, by example, how it's done. Certainly much more is expected of my advanced class than ever before, but I've seen them rise to the challenge...as long as they don't forget the basics.

We can measure success in years, months, weeks or days. Eagle TV sure has improved in the last several years. I hope that my students are better now than they were 6 weeks ago when they stepped into this classroom in January. Will the students that I take to the STN convention be better journalists when they return 5 days later? I hope so.

There is a saying in this business that you must run fast just to keep up with the guy running next to you and that's no joke. If you want to be serious about this class, and certainly this business, you must always strive to get better, to learn more and to do more. Be better and more professional than the guy running next to you. Constant improvement. This is the proving ground...not after you graduate. How do you measure your success? Are you better now than you were 6 weeks ago? Are you a better editor? Shooter? Writer? What do you need to get better at? What did you learn today? Yesterday? Last month? What do you want to learn tomorrow? Do you have what it takes to be competitive in this class and in this field? What kind of experiences are you having in here? How will YOU make your mark on Eagle TV?

You must do your best work. Every time.

I've come to know that we all have power....

I want to first say that Jocelyn, you're comment hit me hard, but I needed to hear it. I know that I have been so busy, but I really didn't realize that you felt that I was too busy for you guys. I've always just prided myself on the fact that you guys are so self-sufficient and didn't need me, or even want me around. During the morning annoucements, most of you don't want me to be in the control room at all.

I was at Ms. Smith's memorial service this afternoon and there were many lessons about life and how to live that I heard today. Many of those included the underlying theme of REALLY living life and making connections with people. I'm missing opportunities to spend time with you all. I'll change that. It's the part of my job that I love the most anyway. Believe me, it's not the paperwork!

When I first started studying journalism in college, I really loved that it brought me into a place where I met people. Perfect strangers, with stories. Those stories turned into messages and these messages were there for me to put out there; for people to see. I love the fact that what we do in this class sometimes has the power to change perceptions, opinions, perspective. We have the power to inform, to move people to action or to tears or laughter. I don't take that responsibility lightly and I try to instill it in you all. With that power comes responsibility. And most of the time, I think you all get it. But we also have the power to make deeper connections with those right around us. We must never forget that. I must never forget that.

Do both. Move people with your powerful stories and make deeper connections with those right next to you. You (and your stories) won't be remembered by what you said or what you told people, but how you made them feel.

Good journalists are those with feelings. For this week, I'd like to hear from you about how you connect with people, both with your stories and in your personal life. Maybe the two ways overlap. How can you use what MOVES you and is POWERFUL to you and make it part of your stories? How have you made connections with people in this class? Or with me? Have I or someone in this class said something to you that made an impression on you? How can you make an impression on others? How do you let people into your life and how do you get a glipse into theirs? What is your legacy?

Okay, I feel like I'm speaking to a brick wall....

I'm not sure if it's my failure to communicate clearly or it's a function of my students not listening. I tend to think that my students aren't listening.

I created this blog for several reasons:

1. Writing practice. It's really important that we practice writing in this class. This is broadcast JOURNALISM, for heaven's sakes and journalists write! All of them, not just reporters and producers. You have to write more and more in order to get better at story telling (yes, that includes editors and photographers).

2. So I can get a feel and some feedback for what students are thinking about studying this field and so students can reflect on their work in here. I don't want students just going through the motions. I want every move, every interview, every edit decision to be thought out. "Why did you put a dissolve there instead of a cut?" "Why did you use that soundbite?" "Why are you putting off getting your b-roll until tomorrow?" You know, questions like that. If you start to really think about what you do in here (title of last post) than you're more likely to improve. There is a saying in the broadcast field that you have to run fast, if only to keep up with the guy next to you. If my students don't improve....all the time....then we fall behind. We have the talent, we have the tools, sometimes we lack the drive and work ethic. I'm asking you to run faster.

3. So we can all be on the same page. I want my other students to read these posts and see what their classmates are thinking and doing. A good team thinks alike and if we don't share our thoughts with each other, than how do we know when we're not thinking like a team?

So, my advice to my students is to "Really think about what we do in here" (there's that phrase again) and everywhere else. Don't respond to a questions that is not asked and stay on topic. Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. Do you think that reporters zone out during an interview? NO, they don't. They pay attention to EVERY word and process it in a way that gives meaning to a story. Please listen to what I say and pay attention to what I'm asking you to do. That is the only way you'll get better at this. You're grade will be influenced by it to.

READ MY POSTS AND RESPOND TO MY POSTS...ONLY. Don't tell me what you had for dinner last night or what you did over the weekend. Don't say "hi" to your buddies in BVP or tell me that your computer crashed. Yes, an occasional shout out to your friends who do great work in here or during homeroom is okay....as long as you've addressed what I've asked you to do first.

Save the att-a-boys for Facebook.