Today, I left the newsroom to go downstairs and work with Glenn Dion from the creative services department. Glenn is the creator of Out and About, and it was honestly probably my favorite day, even though it mostly consisted of watching him edit as his show airs tomorrow night. Because of this, I attended a couple of meetings in the morning so he could focus for a little while and so I could see how the collaboration between the Creative department and the newsroom works. In the second meeting I attended, the dynamic, innovative energy of the department shone brightly. Their goal was to create an outline, or doughnut, for a 15 and 30 second ad for WRAL during other programming in the morning. In order to generate ideas and find an overarching theme for the ad, they asked everyone in the room (five including me) what the three most pertinent things are to us in the morning. Time, information, and breaking news were common threads among all the answers, so the taglines for the beginning, middle, and end all related to these themes. In just 20 minutes, the team of four, created about 15-20 potential ideas for the lines in the short commercial and then narrowed them down to one for each part of the ad. By giving themselves a time limit, the group forced all their ideas out, even ones the may not be as confident with. After bouncing ideas off each other and considering all the factors that could affect the commercial, from pronoun choice to who would be featured in the ad, they came to a conclusion that they ran with. I’m lucky to have observed the process! I learned a lot about being comfortable with my ideas and trusting the people around me to help, which can apply to almost any group project we have in school.
After the meetings, I returned to Glenn’s office to see him create segments for his show. He had already made segments 3 and 4, so I observed as he edited interviews and b-roll from his shoots in Warren County to create a 4 (ish) minutes long segment that promoted the area. As for the the actual editing process, Glenn navigates through the maze of Premiere Pro swiftly as he trims segments to fit in his 30 min show.
Here are some tips/terms I learned today:
- Nested sequence- shows bar of video and audio, but contains the edits for an entire segment, which condenses the amount of clips that Glenn sees while making final edits
- Global changes-a change that affects the whole segment (like the corrective filter Glenn uses to lighten up his shots
- Local Change-a change to one singular shot
- Music can change everything! Make sure to find the right background music that correctly encompasses the mood of the show
- LUT-look up table, ‘global change’ that adds a filter to the entire file
- Watch other shows to draw some information for editing! For example, Glenn watched Chef’s Table before editing the restaurant profiles
- Find what audio you want to use first and then build off of that with b-roll for voice-overs
These small factoids are just a snippet of all I learned in a single day with Glenn. He showed me his process of writing teasers (sometimes he helps out reporters on special reports) and his technique for getting good shots with a tripod (need some type of movement) and a handheld/OTS. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the day was just getting to know Glenn and the others in the Creative Services department. They made me feel like my input and questions were important, and treated me with the most kindness and respect possible. I’m so glad I get to shadow them again!
