A television stand-up is a short video clip where a lone person, typically a reporter appears on camera to go into further detail on a news story. A stand-up usually lasts between twenty and thirty seconds and is written, produced, directed and performed all by a single person. Though this isn't a daunting task by definition, juggling all of the interchangeable elements of a television stand-up can be an immense struggle.
Performing a television stand-up is the most difficult thing I've been asked to do in my (very) young journalistic career. Our class was assigned to do one for a project and today I finally got around to doing mine. To say the process was a struggle would be an immense understatement. Finding a story and writing a rough script is the obvious easy part. For my project, I hopped onto twitter, went to the trending page and selected the story that was most interesting to me. I then quickly wrote my script which was essentially a quick synopsis of the issue and began to set up my camera and set pieces. Everything was going quickly and smoothly the lighting was great, my camera was in focus and the background was appropriate everything was ready to go, except me. I could not for the life of me compose myself in a suitably professional manner to perform. Every single time I read my script out loud to the camera there was a major element I couldn't master. Initially, I couldn't remember my script, then I couldn't remember to look into the camera, then I was getting distracted by various elements around me. Nothing was coming together and I was seriously beginning to lose my patience.
All that being said I managed to figure out some tricks to get myself going, I rewrote my script into point form notes to make my performance more natural and to remember my lines. I turned the LCD monitor on the camera away to stop drawing my eyes and tried harder to focus on the lense. Though I learned a few tricks to help with the process the struggle I faced was still very real, this project was the toughest I've faced so far. I'm far from perfect and I have a long way to go and a lot of practicing to do before I can become the best journalist I can be.
Performing a television stand-up is the most difficult thing I've been asked to do in my (very) young journalistic career. Our class was assigned to do one for a project and today I finally got around to doing mine. To say the process was a struggle would be an immense understatement. Finding a story and writing a rough script is the obvious easy part. For my project, I hopped onto twitter, went to the trending page and selected the story that was most interesting to me. I then quickly wrote my script which was essentially a quick synopsis of the issue and began to set up my camera and set pieces. Everything was going quickly and smoothly the lighting was great, my camera was in focus and the background was appropriate everything was ready to go, except me. I could not for the life of me compose myself in a suitably professional manner to perform. Every single time I read my script out loud to the camera there was a major element I couldn't master. Initially, I couldn't remember my script, then I couldn't remember to look into the camera, then I was getting distracted by various elements around me. Nothing was coming together and I was seriously beginning to lose my patience.
All that being said I managed to figure out some tricks to get myself going, I rewrote my script into point form notes to make my performance more natural and to remember my lines. I turned the LCD monitor on the camera away to stop drawing my eyes and tried harder to focus on the lense. Though I learned a few tricks to help with the process the struggle I faced was still very real, this project was the toughest I've faced so far. I'm far from perfect and I have a long way to go and a lot of practicing to do before I can become the best journalist I can be.
Comments
Post a Comment