Personal Reflection: A whirlwind of a week!

For package #3, I decided to cover the "Memory Walk" event sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association's Mid-Missouri chapter last Sunday. Covering an event is like eating an Oreo cookie: take small bites and enjoy both the hard cookie and the frosting or open up the cookie and go straight for the frosting, then eat the hard part. I decided to take the small bite approach when covering this event. I arrived to the event an hour early to set up my equipment and get a feel for the lay of the land to determine where I should stand during my shots. When the event began, I shot b-roll of many different scenes from the event, including registration, face painting, and pre-walk stretching. I did collect some great natural sound but got caught up in collecting a bit of everything and lost track of time. With 10 minutes remaining until the walk began, I panicked and attempted to find my CCC. I did find a team leader who is head of the Alzheimer's wing at The Bluffs in Columbia and tried to work from there. I interviewed several of her team members as well as 2 event volunteers. However, if I could shoot this package again, I may have gone straight for the "frosting" by finding my CCC initially and then trying to get b-roll of the various happenings as well as other interviews.

When I returned to edit my package, I browsed through my shots and thought to myself "I should have framed this closer" and "why didn't I get that angle?" While it was easy to get frustrated, I realized the event was done which meant I had to work with what shots I had collected. I wrote, rewrote, and rewrote twice more for this package. An event is difficult to summarize in under two minutes because there was so much to tell. I could have made this story into a 5 minute spot easily!

When I received news I had been cleared following submission of this package, the feeling was indescribable. I am honored my teacher feels I am ready to move on to the next phase of Broadcast 2. I realize reporting at the station will not be easy. My stories will no longer be seen by my lab of 8 students but rather many viewers throughout Mid-Missouri. My goal for my time at KOMU is to cover my stories fairly and accurately and to establish credibility with viewers. I know I will make mistakes along the way and that is something I fear. However, I have to learn from them and I will become a better journalist because of them. Rich Ward, a longtime photographer at Fox 25 News in Boston gave me this advice last week in an email: "everyday will be different out there in the field and it will always be unpredictable. That is good, everyday will be a new experience, and bad, nothing is predictable and no one thing works all the time. It's okay to make mistakes. Just remember you are not a heart or brain surgeon in an operation. A mistake there could mean some serious results. You are doing TV. Do your best, be patient, and learn, learn, learn everyday."