BROADCAST JOURNALISM
As I came into my senior year of high school, the video-making process was entirely new to me. But just like writing, photography, and design, it was a necessary form of storytelling that I was curious to discover. Although my first couple of assignments certainly involved an adjustment period, I learned more about the filming, editing, and production process with each video I filmed.
MY FILMING PROCESS
Plan the interview: This involved gathering research on my topic, which was especially important for news reports. After reaching out and confirming who would be comfortable interviewing on-camera beforehand, I would lay out specific questions unique to them.
Organize materials: This involved setting up my SD card, ensuring I have enough storage and battery, and doing a few test runs on my camera. This ensured that I would not run into any technical issues during the filming process.
Arriving on set: To get the lay of the land, I always scoped out the area in which I intended to film. This allowed me to get comfortable with the space I was in and brainstorm potential B-roll opportunities. I would then collect a wide range of B-roll footage with different angles and focus.
Conduct interviews: Especially for videos covering events, it was important to get a good balance of pre-planned interviews and event attendees. I made sure to approach people in an open, friendly manner, and only encouraged them to interview if they felt comfortable on camera.
Editing and publishing: After the filming process, I immediately used Premiere Pro to edit the footage together. This involved placing in A-roll footage, editing the interview clips down, implementing B-roll, cutting out background noise and placing in background music if needed. After the video-editing process, I uploaded the videos on YouTube and submitted them to be published on Scot Scoop.
LGBTQ+ EXPRESSION
When I heard about a local organization that provided LGBTQ+ individuals with a safe space to freely express themselves, I was excited to cover their story. I attended one of their dancing sessions and interviewed the program founders after the session was completed. Through this video, I hoped to highlight unique perspectives of those in the community regarding gender, sexuality, and self-expression.
My B-roll opportunities were limited in this video due to protecting the privacy of some participants, so I struggled to work with what I could. In future videos, B-roll was one of my primary areas of focus.
COVID-19 ADJUSTMENTS
Due to the pandemic, the video production process was more difficult than expected. Many events had limitations or were cancelled completely, so I struggled to find topics to report on in my community. In order to brainstorm, I explored local news topics searching for opportunities to film. When I arrived at my sets, it was important to ensure everyone felt comfortable on camera, answering questions without their masks on. To do so, I made sure I was double masked and offered to film outside if they preferred it that way. This created some difficulty in finding the quietest area to film; in this process, I learned a lot about improving audio quality during the editing process.
BAY AREA BITES
When I noticed that a lot of restaurants in my community were not getting the recognition they deserved, I decided to start a video series that highlighted local restaurants and their food. As my first video series, it was a challenging process to discover how to keep the formats consistent while avoiding repetition.
EPISODE 1 & WHAT I LEARNED:
For my first episode of the series, my friend and I visited a new American-style restaurant named Drakes.
The process of filming taught me a lot about balancing B-roll with commentary from the source and how to conduct an interview in a noisy space. My interview with the initial restaurant manager was out of focus, so I made sure to prevent that in my next video.
EPISODE 2 & WHAT I LEARNED:
In my second episode, we took a trip to a street-style Mexican food restaurant.
From the previous video, I sought to have a diverse range of food in each episode that students in my community may not have tried before. For this episode, I learned a lot about making my videos more engaging, especially in the taste-testing portions of the video. To improve on this, I cut down on extra footage to make my videos as short as possible to appeal to my audience.