Down to the Wire
I've been a part of many teams in my short 21 years so I've picked up on many important characteristics of teamwork. Or, at least so I thought. We did surprisingly well and for me personally, I think it was beneficial to shadow on Tuesday to get an idea of how the day was going to pan out. It also will be interesting moving forward to see how if teamwork improves or diminishes once we really "lose our training wheels" so to speak. This week was a little strange for team Thursday because we had a substitute with Elisabeth off in New York for an interview! However, Kaiti is a rockstar and we loved having her just for this week as video producer. I think the hardest thing for all of us was to be able to keep track of everything that was going on while maintaining our individual responsibilities. Thursdays are tough because two of the three producers run off to class for three hours and basically miss a majority of the morning. Then, we immediately have to hit the ground running because we have a show that goes on air in a few hours! However, despite some ninth hour stress our show turned out pretty well especially for the first week. I cannot wait to see what this talented group of students can do by week 11!
One challenge we ran into I think was communication. It's really hard when Kaiti and I had to go to class leaving Shannon alone and in charge of learning labbers, creating the rundown and maintaining sanity. We had a lot of reporters on Thursday so we were going to have a package-heavy show if everything worked out which it did. The morning meeting went great with everyone pitching ideas and contributing; however, after the morning meeting before I ran off to class I gave all the reporters my number because I wanted them to send me pictures and videos so that I could fulfill the social media requirements as the graphics/web producer. The reporters took this as their only contact with people back at the media center so they kept calling me instead of Shannon or the main ATVN line. When I was in class, I forwarded them to Shannon but in the afternoon I answered some of these calls and talked to the reporters. I tried to communicate everything to Shannon, but it may have been better for them to just tell her directly because some things may have been lost in translation. The time when we lacked communication the most was during run throughs when I was in the edit bay frantically making sure that packages were finished in time while the other producers watched the anchors go through what we had. Luckily, everything worked out pretty seamlessly but it's something to remember going forward. Though we're pretty exhausted and burnt out by the time the anchors start reading through the show, we have to seize the adrenaline from going on-air to help us stay focused on what else needs to be done.
As I said earlier, I cannot wait to see what's in store with this talented group of people. From our EP Rachel to my lovely co-producers and our anchors not to mention our studio crew and all the energetic and eager learning labbers, we have the ability to do something really special this semester. It will be interesting to see what it's like next week as Video producer because I might have a different perspective on how our team is working together but I cannot wait to hit the ground running and continue to learn as the semester flies by!
