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Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism University of Southern California
Producers

Working on Organization

When trying to pick just one of my producer goals to write about, one of them immediately came to mind: being better organized as a video teammate. This goal was reemphasized to me today when, once again, I was the video teammate and had to deal with numerous issues. People think that being the lead producer is the most challenging, which in a lot of ways it is, but the video teammate has to organize everyone! They have to know where everyone is, what everyone is working on and what still needs to be written or edited. 

The first time I did the job, I got so confused on who was working on what and jumbling up stories. This time around, I think I got a lot better, but there is always room for improvement, hence why I am making being organized as video teammate one of my goals. 

One major way I'm going to accomplish this is to make a line in the assign cue that is devoted specifically to the video teammate. In this cue, I will write down each story and the CNN video that goes with it. Not only will I write down the number, but I will write down if it is b-roll or SOT. This can be a great tool to refer to when I'm keeping track of all of the videos I've ordered and which video goes with which story. Furthermore, this helps out the lead producer, so they can know which video they can expect in their stories. The lead producer always needs to know what types of video they are getting for the rundown meeting, so this helps them, as well. 

Another way of accomplishing this goal is to write down where all of my MJ's are going and what story they are working on. This may seem like a "duh Heather" moment, but this really clears up a lot of miscommunication that can happen. The video teammate gets asked where MJ's are and what story they're working on numerous times throughout the day. If you have the list right next to you, it makes this question so much easier. So many things are going through your mind that it is easy to forget little things like this. 

One final way I plan on becoming more organized is to always have the MJ's fill out a story summary sheet when they are out in the field shooting video and getting interviews. I have had so many MJ's come back extremely late, have to run off to class and leave me with trying to figure out what happened at the event, what interviews they got and if they got good b-roll. Having them take five minutes to fill out this sheet is extremely helpful, so that they can write down the basics of what happned and who said what. If they don't have time to write the story or edit the video, I can hand it off to someone else and they would be able to pick it up just fine. Giving the MJ's these story sheets is easy to forget, so I'm going to have them sitting next to me each time! 

While I have started to notice continual progress over the weeks, I think that these ideas will help me to become an even better producer and a hardworking member of a news team! 

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