Point One ... Point Two...

Why is it that I had such a hard time making this powerpoint script interesting? Maybe in my mind corporate=boring. Or I think corporate should be boring because it's for a business, and they have script policies about standards and keeping things professional.

I kept forgetting this video was for college freshman. Freshman are still fun, they don't want to watch something professional ... they want to watch something fun. Unfortunately for them, I'm not good at writing fun. I'm so stuck in the mindset of keeping it formal.

A Kid's Point of View

For my final project I decided to write a children's television show. The idea came when I didn't really want to do any of the other options, and I decided that kids are fun and they don't know big words. I talked with my friends for ideas, about characters and names (I'm not good at naming things ... as a point of reference, my beta fish is named Fish.). Anyway, I developed an idea of an education show that teaches kids about plants, animals, and places they don't see everyday. The show is called Out of this World, and is hosted by an adventurous panda bear named Bamboo.

Writing the first draft was not as difficult as I thought it would be. Like I said before, kids still don't know a lot of stuff, so writing simply, is the only good way to communicate to them. Using short concise sentences with words they would understand was pretty simple. It's easy to make something conversational when there are two characters talking to each other. I just kept imagining that the characters were real... what would they say to each other? I also developed personalities and ideas of how each character would talk. That made it more fun, because I could hear the characters talking.

Overall, I was pretty happy with my first draft... and I had a lot of fun writing it!

Endpoint

Endpoint: the final stage of a period or process

3 weeks of class left. I'd say that's the final stage of the semester. We only have a few more writing assignments left in Media Scriptwriting. It's hard to believe most of the class is over, we've climbed the hill, started coming back down, and the end is in sight now. We've written a lot of scripts up to this point ... a lot. But looking back, it hasn't been too bad. I think each script gets a little easier than the previous, but each one has its own challenges.

• Radio advertising: must be brief and descriptive ... challenge: audience can't see product, so more descriptions are needed
• Radio promotion: building up an image ... challenge: determining what the stations represents
• Television advertising: still needs brevity introduces pictures ... challenge: effectively combining audio and video
• News [for radio]: quick stories with actualities ... challenge: fitting everything in the time necessary with all the information
• News [for television]: writing to the video you have ... challenge: sometimes video doesn't match the story you want to tell

So far, so good. Only a few assignments left, including a script on "How NOT to use Powerpoint" ... which I think will be fun since so many people misuse powerpoint. I will enjoy this.

Not my Point

Recently, I had to learn to write using other people's words for a project in another class. You may ask, what does that mean? For field production, we were given the assignment of putting together a student profile about an Indiana Wesleyan student as a way to promote the school. This means follow a person around, interview them, and piece together these elements in a way that makes sense to someone watching. The catch: we could not write voiceover to fill in any gaps....

The project ended up coming together pretty well, and here's why: We conducted a pre-interview before we started shooting. This helped us get an idea of what we wanted our piece to be about. Rebecca (the student we profiled) talked a lot about her experience with the art division. She talked about being involved and developing meaningful relationships. What did this mean for us? Well, during the next part of the process we conducted an on camera interview. Since we knew where we wanted the piece to go, we asked her questions about why she chose to come to IWU, the art program, and the relationships she had developed in her time here. We shot b-roll as much as we could fit into her schedule, of her painting, working with people, etc.

The next part was the trickiest. We had to listen through her interview and decide how to best tell her story with the information we had. We needed to make sure we had a clear beginning, middle, and end. Luckily, she gave a great interview, and we had plenty to work with. We started with why she chose the school, moved on to what she has been a part of while she's been here, and ended with how she feels prepared for the future.

So in the end, it wasn't as challenging as I thought to write with what someone else said. Sometimes the most effective way to communicate a story is through the person who is actually involved. If my partner and I had used pieces of interview and then had us start talking in the middle, it would have been pretty confusing, and would not have been the best way to tell Rebecca's story.

What's the Point?

For the past week, I have gotten to experience a scriptwriting challenge like never before. I had the great privileged to travel with 3 other media personnel to cover the women's NAIA basketball tournament. Before I tell you about the scriptwriting side of things, let me tell you a little about the trip.

When I was first asked to go on this trip, I was a little hesitant. I don't like sports, I'd have to miss classes, and if I had to pay for any travel expenses, I wouldn't be able to afford it the week after spring break. Well, I got over the sports thing, I realized I wasn't missing too many classes, and the trip was paid for by the school. The downside was that I was back from spring break for one day of classes, and then I was traveling again.

Dr. King, Tim Decker, Glenda Rojas, and I spent a long 14 hours in the car on the way to Sioux City, Iowa. We played the highly competitive alphabet game, stopped a few times to eat, Glenda and I watched movies and fell asleep, and after a few hours of driving in the fog and rain, we arrived at t

he hotel. We went to sleep having no idea what was in store for us in the days to come.

Day One: We followed the team to their morning practice, talked to some players about their expectations, and Glenda got some footage of the players at practice. Shortly after, we arrived at the arena to set up our workspace: tables on the second level overlooking the court. Glenda started editing, and I really didn't have much to do for a while. Eventually, I set up for our live pre-game, which required a light, a mic, a camera, a tripod, and my computer connected to a program that would stream our feed to the web. Our station had never tried anything like this before, but live remote television was now a thing of the present for us! I spent about a half an hour on the phone with people from back here, making sure we were all on the same page and our timing was correct. It was a challenge that first night, but we were starting to get the hang of it. During the second half of the game, I was instructed to shoot my first package of the trip. It was a feature story about the small group fans that traveled from near and far to cheer on the team at the tournament. Since the people I interviewed were very involved in watching the game, I didn't get very many soundbites. Along with that, I had the added challenge of shooting in close quarters, making it hard to get the mic close, and the camera at the right angle. Needless to say, I wrote the script to work with what shots and soundbites I did have. The story told itself, the Lady Wildcats have a strong, supportive fan base. Looking back at it, this piece was probably my weakest of the trip, but it was a great starting point and a good place to start learning about how to shoot better to make the writing easier.

The Ladies won their game that night, extending our trip to Friday...

Day Two: Tim and I were designated as the ones to wake up early. We had gotten the most sleep the night before (since we went to bed at 2:30am), so our job was to go with the team to a local elementary school and shoot another story. This was more about the team helping out, and growing closer together. I had a lot of fun with this piece because the kids were cute, and the girls all were having so much fun! I was starting to write in my head as I was shooting which made writing the script easier. Since I was shooting my own video, I already knew the content I was getting. It's much quicker than using someone else's footage and trying to come up with a story. The writing was already starting to get easier.

Day Three: Second game of the week...the women's basketball team made it to the 2nd round of tournament play. I spent about an hour and a half trying to get our broadcasting program to work, which was very frustrating and disheartening. Eventually, people who are smarter than me, got it working, and we were back in business. I was assigned a feature story on Kat Spitler, the team's assistant coach who was a part of the team who won the championship in 2007.

She gave a great interview, which was very insightful, so the package, ended up being more of her soundbites than my voiceover. It was a different sort of writing; writing with someone else's words, and finding ways to bridge the gap. I had a lot of time to work on this script, but didn't actually get it to the point that I was happy with it until an hour and a half before my deadline. That made for a crazy time editing, but I got it done on time :)

Day Four: Sunday. The day of rest. Our day off ... but not really for me. We traveled and hour plus to South Dakota to go to church with the basketball team. Instead of enjoying the time of worship, I was working! Ha. No surprises there. Work doesn't stop for anything, especially a great story about the team refocusing and finding importance in more than basketball. We spent the afternoon eating with the team at church, then made our journey back to Sioux City, where the guys crashed. Glenda and I did not indulge in that luxury. For one, I had a script and package to get done, and second, Glenda decided we should make posters for the parents to hold at the next game. So I looked through my clips, we went to Walmart, I wrote my script, we painted posters, I edited my package, and fell asleep at 2:30am while it was exporting. This day I learned that writing sometimes needs to get done quickly because we don't always have the luxury of time.

Day Five: This was my real day off. We went to the arena, did the pre-game, halftime, post-game thing. Girls lost. We were disappointed. But for me it meant I was done. No more stories to do, no more writing. Just a day of travel to look forward to.

***

So what's my point here? I got to experience first hand what it's like to work in a fast paced media environment. It involves writing. And it's a lot of fun! I learned a lot about writing from the four scripts I had to write. I rewrote every script until it fit the story, was conversational, and matched with the video. Writing is an important part of real world journalism. News isn't all about being on camera, or shooting good video. It's about the words that are said to communicate what is going on. All the writing we are doing in class is good practice for what's going to come after college. We often won't have time to think about a script for a few days before we write it. If we waited to write a news story for 2 or 3 days like we do in class, it's old news. No one cares anymore. We need to learn to write quick and well if we want to succeed. It really does involve practice and discipline, and taking advantage of all the practice we can get in this class will help us be better writers in the future.

Thanks.

Points of Light

FINALLY!! We can use VISUALS!

I'm a very visual person ... well visual and kinetic, but that's hard to get across even on television. Being able to show a product, it's uses, creating an ideal image of the product, showing a situation, not always having to use words. What's the quote about actions and only using words when we need to? ........

“Preach the Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” - St. Francis of Assisi

Okay ... so not exactly the same idea. Let's try this one:

"Actions speak louder than words."

That's more like it. But both quotes point out the we don't need words to communicate effectively. Sometimes learning to tell a story through only pictures makes you think a little more. What best communicates the ideas you're thinking of without plugging this feature or that, or the price tag, or talking about all the benefits the product has? It's a question that you can start to answer when you get the opportunity to take words out of the equation.

Pointing it Out

"Image is everything!" - Ella Enchanted

Imaging is hard. Determining what ideas and values drive your radio or television station, and figuring out how to portray that to the audience is tricky. Whether you have words or pictures, finding a way to communicate your vision quickly is a challenge. If you want to attract your audience it has to be interesting and relevant to them. What will make them want to listen or watch?

Sweepers are the hardest so far because they're so short! 5-9 seconds to 1) grab attention 2) convey a message of values and 3) remind the audience who you are ... that is a lot to do in a short amount of time.

Promos should be easier because you have more time to express the message, but they are proving to be even more of a challenge! Jenn and I sat and stared at the screen for at least 15 minutes with no ideas. And every idea we came up with seemed more ridiculous than the previous one! Needless to say, we'll be brainstorming this weekend for sure!