Audio

This week was an easy going week at WSB so I was able to learn a something that I already thought I knew well. This was the week of voice and audio. I did my first VO this week and learned that my voice sucks. I was rather monotone and that won't work for news production.

In news the biggest struggle is to keep the viewer interested. It is especially difficult because producers and reporters don't choose the news, they are the messengers. It is their job to get you the info you you need and keep your attention. Therefore, when it comes to your voice on something like a VO, the reader, wheter it's a reporter or producer, must maintain a conversational style... ie monotone is not useful.

So I recorded the audio five or six times. In the process I learned how to work audio, compress and save in to the track. I used tracks from each of the recordings to make the VO. None of them were perfect but parts of each of them were. As producer audio and voice are two things I have to understand to be succcessful. I'm getting better at it.

The First Week at WSBTV

This week showed me just how rigorous being a producer will be, especially if I continue in my path to producing news. This week I shadowed Damien who just happened to be producing the 11p.m. show. Damien arrived at the station at about 3p.m. and we still experienced a seemingly major issue which, as the producer, Damien fixed. He sat for about six hours deciding what stories still had new value since most of them in the run-down were just revolving from the morning, noon and afternoon news. Stories like the idiots pick pocketing old people and of course the break-ins in Clayton County homes made the cut. He also made the decision not to lead with the Haiti like other stations because at the time there was no new information to report. So everything was going well. Damien assigned reporters to stories, entered time for stories, read over scripts, approved new stories, wrote teases etc. Everything is running smoothly until 10:45. As I previously stated, we wanted to treat the sensitive Haiti situation with special attention and not show the same thing broadcasted on every news station across the world. So the deal was, our reporters on the ground in Haiti would send us a new package. Damien had already talked the graphics department into making a new Haiti template and all was well. Then along came the dreaded phone call... "can someone let them know the Haiti package won't be ready by 11?" Every person near me stood still like the entire news cast was at stake. Then it was a simultaneous stirke into action. Everyone tried to figure out different ways to still have a Haiti segment. In the end we cut and edited the old package to fit the new script. It was exactly what we did not want, but the viewers had no clue there was even an issue.