Taking Comm 465 this fall has greatly expanded my skill set and my knowledge of the journalism industry. Prior to taking this course, I had never set up a camera or tripod before. I had never used Adobe Premiere to edit videos. I had never shot footage and turned it into a visual news story. After fifteen weeks, I can confidently say that I can do all of those things with hardly any problems.
Each project provided me with a new opportunity to improve my reporting skills. I learned the importance of letting the shots tell the story more so than the voice over. This will help me produce better new stories in the future because I will seek out the shots that can best portray the central message of a story. I also learned how critical it is to get more footage than you may think is necessary. Looking back on my group’s first project, I remember thinking that we had enough shots to tell our story. When we went to edit our news story, however, my group and I wished that we had gotten a wider variety of shots. A third thing I learned from this class was how to be proactive and plan-ahead. This was especially important when working with other people because we had to be considerate of each others schedules and availability. Unfortunately, most of our projects were done a few days before the due date. Planning accordingly in the future will ensure that there is enough time to edit and make any necessary revisions.
One new experience I’ll take with me is how to write a script tailored for television reporting. It is slightly different that what we had to do for radio reporting. I also appreciated that we had to turn our visual stories into written web stories. This really made me think, personally, about what aspects of the visual news story was important to tell in the web story in order for the story to have the same impact and meaning.
Right now, I think I want to do production work within the journalism or communications field. The skills I have learned form this class will help me tremendously in doing pre- and post-production work. I have really enjoyed doing “behind-the-scenes” work. Planning a story, writing a script, gathering footage, editing the video, and producing a news story is special craft. I believe that I have a much better understand of what goes into producing a successful visual story after doing the four class projects. I also have a greater appreciation for those who do this kind of work on a daily basis. By creating original news stories throughout the semester, I have strengthened certain qualities such as patience, dedication, organization, and curiosity. This will allow me to go forward from this semester with more knowledge about my field of interest and a desire to improve even more within the coming semesters.