Conveying journalism in different ways is essential for any journalist. Making a visual video package can help with certain kinds of stories and make it more exciting to consume. Setting up multimedia events also promotes different types of story forms, including videos. Below, you will see my best work with Multimedia Broadcast.
Doing sports media days
Check out the published content!
Originally a pet project of mine, sports media days quickly turned into a wlhsNOW staple. Getting interviews and photos with a sports team feels like a big journalism treat to me; getting to know every player’s character and doing a photoshoot for each players just sounds like the ultimate team building experience both ways.
Sports media days make way for multimedia projects. In the past, I have made space for multimedia projects such as TikToks and exclusive video interviews. Having these alternate ways of doing journalism, such as video, is very important for a staff. This is why I organized this event. For more information about organizing, let’s get to the details.
Media day projects started with planning. This included figuring out the logistics, like where the players will be at which time, who they will be with, where the interviews are, among other little things. I have done five media days, and each time I’ve learned more and more, such as direct communication. Being assertive during media days turned out to be super crucial. But before the media days, having constant and direct communication was even more essential than having a loud voice. Projects like this were similar to how our board and I completed the SNO Distinguished Site accomplishment, however with media days, things can get chaotic. I learned to never underestimate how a small area with just so many people can cause great stress and chaos. I adjusted to this by making sure every staff member has a printed sheet of some kind of plan on where each person will go, who they will be interviewing, and overall, each person’s media day agenda.
For getting the video interviews, I set aside one closed room so those could happen. This is what we call the video/podcasting room. It has custom soundproof features so it was easier to capture the audio. So when you see my planning sheet in the top right, I purposely had a TV Studio area for social media coverage (videos).
The differences between my first conducted media day to my recent conducted media day is astounding. For one, my first media day, one for the womens basketball team, featured no content produced outside of just practice. However, as the post-production process developed, I set agendas for staff members, along with me, to create player profiles that go along well with the photos I help capture. When putting all the profiles and photos together, the project creates its own kind of story. Each player plays a vital role on their team, along with each of their unique personalities. By putting all the profiles together, you can see how each piece of the puzzle falls into place. It’s a project that only creates unity within our staff, but it helps create unity with the team’s community. This is something wlhsNOW strives for, which is giving back to the community.
The end result for our two recent fall media days, with the womens and mens soccer teams, was a great success. Having this project come together proved crucial in the end since we were searching for a quick SNO Distinguished Site, since we got a couple videos for the Multimedia Badge. This added perspective is crucial because these kinds of findings have a lot of practical use like communicating to team members and working with them. Media day is a project that I will always love. Most importantly, I love that it has become a wlhsNOW staple. Check out the published wlhsNOW.com content on the left. Everyone played their part in making the content, though I always had the joy of planning and leading the media days.
Check out my best Media Day portraits!
Making a video package
Right at the start of my senior year, I went and tried something new. I have never made a video package before, one of the only story forms I have never tried to this point. Throughout the making of this video, which previewed the football season, I learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, how to actually shoot footage, and putting everything together.
First, I had to get content for my video, and this starts with recording B-Roll. A video cannot be just an interview talking about the subject, I needed to overlay background content over the interview to create an appealing broadcast story. So, this started with going out to a football practice to shoot footage. As you will see in the video, I captured moments of players smiling, practicing, and even the coaches coaching. I think getting a variety of aspects of the team was important because I was doing a football preview article, which includes many members of the sports team. I also learned why a monopod is so important. Without a monopod, my footage was choppy and less consistent but with a monopod, the horizons were smoother and there wasn’t much imbalance. During this time, I also got interviews. I made sure to have my subject at a third end of the frame on the camera during the interview. I also had the interviewee look at me when talking so the interviewee wasn’t staring directly at the camera. All together, in one night, I got footage collected and interviews done.
The next part was organizing my footage and putting together a story. During this phase, I learned how to drop footage into a sequence into Adobe Premiere and how to splice footage to get the right cut-offs and get rid of unneeded parts. More importantly, I learned how each bar works in the sequence board. By putting my footage in the right spots, I was able to have the video footage mute with the interview/voiceover footage be the audio.
After organizing my footage and figuring out what else I needed to connect, I needed to make voice overs to connect my content, my last step. Like how I described bridge sentences in my Writing page, voiceovers are the bridges in my video. I learned that voiceovers give context to the connected footage and what’s more exciting is that I can overlay the voiceover with B-Roll to create a cooler way of making a story visually than looking at words on a computer. After my voice overs were done, my story was ready to be published. To check out the final draft, watch the video below.
Being a part of a podcast
Through my junior and senior years of journalism, I got to be a part of the West Linn Weekly Wake Up as a sports correspondent. This side-job has given me the opportunity to learn how to be a part of a podcast and talk into a microphone.
At first, I found it hard to talk because I wasn’t with the people I was with in-person. This took to getting used to, but once the first of my three podcasts was over, I was comfortable with all of it. It was easier getting acclimated to this kind of reporting because I was a part of a live script. Audrey Lippert and Karina Rower were the hosts and they always used a script to indirectly tell the other person when to stop talking or when to defer to the other person or when to switch topics. This is something I used for the first two episodes. It was useful because I was able to tell where each other’s minds were at, without even having to ask them. By referring to the live script (a google doc), I was able to be on cue with the hosts.
Another thing I learned with being on a podcast is having a consistent voice. The live script helped with this because sometimes I talked too long so the hosts had to let me know when I should stop and defer to the hosts. This is important because, talking for too long could lead to an inconsistent voice which isn’t good because I want the listener to be able to comprehend what I am saying.
Lastly, another thing I take away from this experience is learning the overall structure of a podcast. As the sports correspondent, I learned the interview-based method of podcasting because I was the one being interviewed. I think learning structure like this is important because knowing how to convey content in different story forms is useful. I say this because a viewer might like podcasts or videos more so I learned that trying different methods of journalism can reach a larger audience.
Joseph Murphy's Portfolio 