LET'S SEE THE NEWS!!

We are prepared now to produce a much more ambitious project. The news broadcast. Take a look ... And COMMENT!!

1. Assemble the News Team

Depending on the story, each team will have:

• An anchor, who hosts the show and delivers the headlines and the basic details for each story

• A correspondent, who is based in the location of the story, or nearby

• An expert, who can add detail or contextualize the story

• An eye witness, who will give a personal, human perspective

• An involved person, be it the coach of the sports team, the family of the accused or the victim, lawyers for people involved, a spokesperson for a company or government, etc.

Get Organized

The team should quickly choose their stories and brainstorm the details they will present.

Which roles will be needed?

Would it be better to interview an expert on typhoons, or a villager who has lost their house?

Should the anchor interview a politician or someone affected by a policy decision?

In which order will the stories be delivered?

How much time should each story have?

Focus

Pick a story focus and stick to it as best you can (in this case, the conflicto you have chosen for the project) – remember you have precious little time (30 MINUTES) to tell this story, so pick out very interesting pieces of the information you grabbed for the first delivery to convey to your audience in the different sections related.

Write the News Report/Shoot/Interview

Decide, with the what you’re going to shoot for “cover” video by asking yourself, “What visuals will best help me tell my story?”

Decide what interviews you’ll need. (You already have the one of “ASKING HISTORY” As a beginning reporter, limit yourself to no more than 3 on-camera interviews (unless you’re at an event and you just want to get a variety of opinions about something).

Remember, there is a lot of journalism that can be done WITHOUT getting the interview on-camera. Some interviews can be done over the phone to gather information. You may paraphrase what experts tell you.

This exercise has always worked best when the broadcast is scripted, and I recommend you to write down the adaptation of the vast majority of what you’re going to say.

You might review all the useful language seen in class and that for a news broadcast, such as:

Introducing the Story

• We begin tonight with news from …

• Our top story tonight is…

• Top of the news this evening is…

Handing over to a Correspondent

• We go live now to our correspondent in…

• On the scene is our correspondent…

• Reporting from (the place) is our correspondent…

Introducing an Expert

• I’m joined now by (person’s name)…

• Here to explain further is (person’s name)…

• To find out more, I have with me (person’s name)…

Introducing a Graphic or Statistic

• As you can see from this graphic…

• This is shown in these figures…

• Here’s a little more detail about…

Finishing the Broadcast

• That’s all we have time for tonight.

• That just about wraps it up.

• Thanks for watching, and have a good evening.

Rehearsal

Practice the Reading aloud of the part(s) you have in order to memorize as much as posible though you will have the possibility to créate your own TELEPRONTER in order to help yourselves doing the best of this product.

Follow these steps to produce a traditional broadcast news TV story package: After the scripting stage (made by using the information of the first delivery and any further information for the final delivery this term), you can start the next term’s Project, The News Broadcast.

Capture Video/Audio and Log Tape

Capture (import) your video and take notes on what you see and hear. Taking notes is called “logging your tape,” and it includes noting where things are within the run of the tape/file. You also may want to make notes about a particularly good shot or other parts you know you’ll want to use. You can also listen to your interviews for compelling pieces of information that you were too preoccupied to notice when you first recorded the interview (yes, this happens). In some cases you might transcribe entire interviews.

Writing your Package Script:

You can keep the video editor open while you craft your story in a text file. This will help as you structure things and make sure all soundbites are transcribed accurately word-for-word into the script.

Write your lead/opening first. (To do this… Think about what your best visuals are. Then think about how you might connect those visuals with the main point of your story and why people should care about it. Start writing, then edit it down to two or three concise sentences to get the story going.)

Ideally what is being said and what we see onscreen throughout your story will correspond in a way that makes sense. This is called referencing.

Write the body of your copy/narration and support with soundbites. Note the duration (in seconds) of each soundbite in your script.

Write an ending to your story. You may NOT end on a soundbite. You may paraphrase something that your interview subject told you or add one more fact that closes out the story.

After that last narration, the final line of your story is what’s called your outcue, standard outcue or SOC. For KOMU, the proper style is “[Your Name], KOMU 8 News, [City/Town where you reported from]”: Lynda Kraxberger, KOMU 8 News, Columbia.

The final step in script writing is to make sure your story is the right length. Time yourself reading your narration, add to that the total duration of all your soundbites, and compare with the desired length of your story. If it’s too long, edit your story down and keep repeating until you know you have the right amount of material in the script.

Editing your story:

Import your narration voice track into the video editing software along with all your video clips. Edit your story and export your video. Make sure your exported video file is not too big. You should not be saving any video files larger than 50MB to the Classes Server. (If the file is larger than that, you did not use the right export settings.)

Emphasize the importance of rehearsing the broadcast before delivering it to the class. Everything will be more polished and prepared once the team has run it through once or twice. Monitor this and offer guidance on delivery, speed of speaking, eye contact, use of the ‘news language’ above, pronunciation and any grammar issues.

Present the News