For the love of it

Student broadcasting is starting to settle in to their routine (as always this week’s new MC-TV This Week is at the bottom of the post). The new workshop students are starting to do their first stories with little training and I think more than a little fear. In some ways, being thrown to the wolves, so to speak, gives the students focus and sometimes a faster appreciation for the difficulty of television news.

In last week’s post, I mention that I would be spending the weekend at the Black Earth Film Festival since I am on the board. During the panel I moderated and through other conversations with the attending filmmaker, I was reminded of an important lesson about work that not only my media students need to learn but all students need to understand. Passion is the key to work. In media it is so important, as in most other professions, to be passionate and committed to your work. I try to show my students that one thing that will make most of their work better is if they genuinely care about the finished product. I see this quite often with my workshop students. A recent case in point is the video that the students just completed for the Admissions Office. If you would like to watch it here is a link. The students were genuinely excited by the project and cared about the outcome. If only I could transplant that attitude to every student and every project.

I think of this in my own life in reference to my days as a radio disc jockey. As a part-time DJ for almost 12 years, I saw a good number of career radio people struggle to make a living wage by working a second job. They were in it because they were a little crazy and because they loved it. A friend of mine described it best as being like drug addiction. While you are in the business, you have highs and lows. Some days all you want to do is get out of it and move on. Then once you have gotten out, all you want is to get back in, to have another fix. This is so right. Those who stay in media love it, their addicted to it and can’t image doing anything else. Or after a while they go teach it to get other people hooked. I never thought of this but I am sort of pusher getting my students addicted to media, the addiction they will have all their lives. Okay maybe I am taking the analogy to far.

I can’t believe I went the entire entry without a lame attempt to weave in broadcasting lingo. So until next week, same time , same channel…. Oh, there it is.

So any bad broadcasting puns to start this week’s blog… (This is way too quick for me to have run out). I’ll just start then. This week a very interesting thing happened to one of my students while they were shooting an interview for the newscast. There was a car accident in the background. You see the start of it and hear the crash. Take a look.



Although this was a minor little fender bender it brings up the notion of events unfolding on camera. The student stopped recording where I would have put the camera onto the accident to see if there was a story there. I’m not sure if that is a positive or negative for me or the student. Beyond the news instinct, the saturation of technology does put a camera in front of unfolding events everywhere. The Quad Cites had recent example where a mother of an elementary school student was videotaping with her phone her child’s bus. There had been reports that the driver was not extending the stop sign. The mother caught on her phone the bus rolling forward when the drive forgot to engage the break when she got up to calm down students on the bus.
This week I will have to cut it short. The clock on the wall says I am about out of time (and you thought I was out of broadcasting lingo). If you are looking for other activities this Parents Weekend, the Black Earth Film Festival is going on in Galesburg this weekend and yours truly is moderating a panel on filmmaking Saturday afternoon at 3.

Deadlines and Banter

Coming up this week in my blog… (You always have to tease in media). Besides promoting the fact that regular DJ shifts have started on WMCR, listen at www.monmouthcollege.edu/wmcr and click on the live stream tab, or that MC-TV This Week has another new addition available on line or at the bottom of this post, I wanted to talk about two big ideas that media students have confronted this week.

First is the deadline. Not the fact that projects need to be done on time which I am constantly on their case about, but how deadline pressure can be a great motivator. I remarked last week about the video project we have taken on for Admissions. The students have basically had one week to go through the archives and pick through hours of news footage, pick and edit songs to go with them, shot additional video footage, and edit together a finished piece of work that will showcase the college to students at open house event. Even though students sometimes can’t image getting a project done in a month, the week time frame of a fairly complex project keep them focused and working very hard to have a rough cut ready today. And that cut is ready to show to Admissions later today. The entire crew did a great job.

The second relates directly to this week’s newscast, located below (plug number 2 finished). Going out of your comfort zone is hard and particularly hard when you are on live TV. This week our news anchors tried it and it worked well. One of the harder things for students to get proficient at what in the business we call “Banter,” when anchors are talking to each other or a reporter seemingly without a script. Haleigh and Gabi tried it at the end of one story and it worked very well. What is interesting is that once you can get students or anyone for that matter out of their comfort zone they tend to want to do more and more. So keep on the lookout for more “Banter”, on set interview and all sorts of things real TV people do.

So to end this week’s waste of web space, watch MC-TV thru the link at the bottom (final plug done) .

Student Broadcasting Starts Now

This is the first entry in a new blog chronicling the exciting adventures in student broadcasting at Monmouth College. If you aren’t excited by now…

Last night MC-TV kicked off its semester of “This Week” with a short first episode. We focused on the biggest issue on campus, new construction. In sports, we look at how both volleyball and football are preparing for the news season. Take a look.

Also, the start of regular radio broadcasts for WMCR will start on Monday. Take a listen. Those of you who are saying what is MC-TV and WMCR, here is your answer. MC-TV is a student produced weekly news/sports program and WMCR is the student radio station. Both of their websites are linked here on the blog.
With the start of a new year, some exciting changes are coming to MC-TV. In previous semesters the Fusion program has produced multiple shows during the semester. Starting this year, we will be doing one show per semester. This will allow us to do a better show and will free up the students to do other projects that will better their abilities in Media Production. Currently, they are working on two projects. First we will be completing a video for the Admissions office that will be shown during open houses. Second, we will be finishing a project for the Midwest Governors Association that was started last semester in partnership with one of Prof. Fred Witzig’s Illinois history courses. This project will consist of a couple of video for their website that feature what is great about the Midwest.

Throughout the year, I will attempt to talk about what the media students are working on and also talk about the academic process that our student go thru to not only try to learn the technology but to try to create meaningful and powerful messages. This is a common theme of mine with student and I will share it with you. Technology is great but when you come down to it no measure of technology can fix a poorly constructed message or a weak story. If you don’t believe me, watch Avatar on a regular TV. I think you will see my point.

As an old Radio DJ, I will sign off now and talk to you later. The time is a five minutes till the top of the hour and next is your local news…