Creativity Is One Key To Success
Live shots and selfie teases and the green screen! Oh my! Those creative elements are something we should not be fearing and instead embracing as producers. I know personally I am knowledgeable in all three positions as a producer and am ready to spice things up a little bit. It's good to change things in the newscast and be creative because it keeps the viewers more engaged.
One thing I want to try next week when I'm the graphics producer is I want to do a tease video with one of the MJs we have towards the end of the day. We have so many that come in at 3 pm that sometimes we don't have anything for them to do when the broadcast gets closer, so I'm going to use that to my advantage. I am going to have one of them grab a camera and film people teasing different stories in the newscast. The MJ can go into the edit bay to film another MJ at an editing computer. They can go to a producer and ask them to do a short tease, and they can even go to the anchor desk and ask any of the anchors to tease a story. Then, they can go to the editing room and edit the video to post to Facebook.
I tried a live shot for the first time Wednesday night in my newscast and I definitely want to try to incorporate that into each newscast that I'm the lead producer. I also will try to encourage my producing teammates to try having one in each newscast because it's fun and a great learning experience for everyone.
We have had some great content in our newscasts so far, but I think we can have even better content. Instead of just pulling stories from City News Service or a print story that was published in The LA Times, we should start pushing ourselves to do more profiles and finding more stories in our own backyard. There are so many students at USC that are doing so many great things in the community, but we haven't really featured them on the Wednesday newscast. I want to hear about the students who are getting signed to a record label or who just found a step towards curing cancer. For me personally, I think it's more interesting to see one of my colleagues being featured on the news rather than a politician that's not doing anything concerning me. If we find these types of stories involving USC students, then I think it will bring our newscast to a more personal level and engage the viewers more.
One week, I also want to try to have our sports anchor, Rachel Kohn, at the green screen. She does a segment called "Rachel's Rewind" and I think it would be cool to see her standing at the green screen during this segment. I imagine the video playing on the green screen while she is standing to the side of it. The first time the video can just play through but the second time, she could actually point to different parts of the screen and guide the viewer through the clip again. It's something simple that we could try out but it could add a little something to the broadcast too.
Just in general, it's that time in the semester where my teammates and I all know what we're supposed to do in each position, so we should be trying new things. It's time to bring out the salt and pepper and maybe even the paprika and really spice things up.
