Intern Log: July 4 - July 10
Friday, July 9
It's Bluegrass Festival time here in Stratford, Iowa.I decided to shoot this package on my own to cover this little-known event. I ended getting up way too much footage, so hopefully I’ll be turning that into a good package Monday or Tuesday of next week.
Keep an eye out for it on the KCCI.com website.
Thursday, July 8
On Thursday, I teamed up with Mark Carlson and Donna Smith AGAIN, and covered a press conference held by DART, the Des Moines Bus and Transit company.They’re going to build a new transit center to replace the Walnut Street Transit Mall. It was Mark’s package for that day, so we went to the old transit mall and shot a standup and got some interviews.
I’m glad I don’t use that transit mall. It’s an interesting place.
Also, I learned several things this day, all from Donna Smith (an experience photographer and ISU alum). I’ll try to list them in brief here:
- When to take water bottles at a press conference (basically if it's federal- or state-funded, you're OK)
- Always take notes during and interview, and watch the camera's time code when you hear soundbite-worthy material. (In case there is breaking news right after the interview and you don't have time later to log the tape before letting the photog edit it - you'll have the timecode already written down)
- When to use the words "fewer" and "less." Rule: one less and two or more fewer.
Wednesday, July 7
On Wednesday, I put together a practice 10pm newscast. I discovered doing this activity is quite boring and challenging, especially knowing that hardly anyone will see your work. More to come.Tuesday, July 6
Tuesday was an exciting day as well!Since one of the reporters has to stay in the news room because she is expecting, I got sent out to do some interviews.
First, photog Donna Smith and I headed to a press conference held by Iowa Secretary of State Michael Mauro. He spoke about how Republicans had gained about 33,000 registered voters since the primary this spring.
When I returned to the newsroom, I made calls to Des Moines Public Works director Bill Stowe (great guy, by the way), to Eddyville about flooding and evacuations, and to Ottumwa about the same.
Finally, Donna and I went out again to interview with Dennis Goldfield, KCCI’s political analyst and Drake Political Science professor.
The interview went OK. That’s all I’ll say, but I can confirm a theory I have about older men who are political science professors. Again, that’s all I’ll say about that :)
Monday, July 5
Today was Star Wars In Concert day!Fellow intern Tyler Kingkade and I went to check out the Star Wars In Concert that was in Des Moines for one day only. We went to the 2:30pm showing with press credentials, but we could only stay for a few minutes into the actual show.
We saw a lot of cool stuff. We also managed to catch a couple words with little kids and quite a bit of b-roll footage in the concourse.
I screwed up - both with recording too much while moving the camera and having the audio levels too high during the actual performance.
But Tyler did a good job writing and editing the story, which can be seen here.
Later, I was about to head home around 10:30pm, when Mark Carlson and photog Spencer heard about a foot chase happening.
We headed over to the scene where there were at least 20 police vehicles. Apparently, a man tried to escape from the PAR electrical sales building and was caught in the act.
Police verbally warned the man (hiding in the lot) that they were about to release the K9 unit dogs. He didn’t come out, so the dogs came in.
Several minutes later, the paramedics were called in to aid a “possible dog bite victim.” The man came out of the lot in handcuffs and covered in blood. Quite a sight.
I didn’t get home until 1:30am, but it was well worth seeing a little bit of spot news.