Producing During Election Week

This week I produced on both Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I worked as Video Producer and Tuesday I worked as Graphics Producer. In both instances I learned how hectic producing during election week can be.

Working as video producer on Monday was particularly difficult because of how frequently new video of the presidential candidates was coming in. I had to constantly be checking the most recently added videos to see if either of the candidates had made another speech or appeared in a different state. We had to avoid editing stories about the candidates until later in the day so that we would have the most up to date information. This left a lot of work to do at the end of the day.

On election night, producing started out being very difficult. It took us about 30 minutes to find a groove and learn how to improvise an entire show. Unlike a normal show, we couldn't just depend on a rundown to provide the structure for our show. WIth so much new information coming in with regularity we often had to bounce around our rundown and prioritize what information was more important. As graphics producer, I really had to be on the ball about all the new numbers and information that were coming in about the various elections because I had to update all of the graphics that we had. This took a little while to get used to but by the end of the show I had definitely gotten the hang of it.