Behind The Lens of The Stallion Newscast
Co-anchor Gavin Blackwell (12) is filmed inside the F Building studio. The students produce the anchor scenes for The Mane Event.
February 16, 2023
From brainstorming story ideas to editing the video segment, there are several steps the broadcast journalism class completes each week to produce their newscast, The Mane Event.
The first semester of the broadcast journalism course, which is tasked with airing the weekly newscast, is focused on the nuts and bolts of the newscast process.
“For the whole first semester we didn’t do any of the newswork because we got explained how to do every single video and how we do each shot and the type of sequences we need to do for the filming. He [Mr. Z] taught us how to edit, he taught us how to use the cameras and it’s very helpful and it made it so this process is easier and we’re able to get a news story (newscast) out once a week,” said co-anchor, senior Gavin Blackwell.
The first step to create the newscast is to brainstorm story ideas on Monday mornings. . Ideas might include spirit days, upcoming sports and performing arts events, and any news that deserves student attention. As the producer, junior Isabella Gillis is tasked with coming up and organizing the ideas.
“I love coming up with story ideas, I love helping everyone figure out what would be fun ideas to shoot. Especially when we do interviews with students on campus, thinking of questions to ask them are really fun,” said Gillis.
I put together the Mane Event. We have the students that record the stories, they edit their own stories, I put their stories and I put the anchor parts where you see Gavin and some of the other news anchors. I put the sports anchors together. I technically make the Mane Event Episode — Nathan Lawson
The next step of the process is filming anchor shots in the studio, co-anchor Gavin Blackwell is on camera. While Blackwell is being filmed, Producer Isabella Gillis is behind the camera, overseeing the filming.
“Anchoring is my favorite because it’s really fun and my friend Jake do it [anchor] together and we have lots of laughs together, and I think it’s just cool to be able to entertain,” said Blackwell.
Anchors begin and end each newscast, and introduce and bridge segments. Other team members are divided into groups to do the fieldwork: filming the segments.
“Other than that I do a lot of the editing, we have a group where we do stories and I do a lot of the editing of the videos and I also hold the camera. I’ll do [film] the shots and I’ll edit it [videos] and just put it all together basically,” said Blackwell.
After conducting the interviews and getting the B-roll filmed, the group makes their way back to the F building to upload the footage into Final Cut Pro, an editing software utilized to edit the story together. Once the story is complete, it will be edited by senior Nathan Lawson.
“I put together the Mane Event. We have the students that record the stories, they edit their own stories, I put their stories and I put the anchor parts where you see Gavin and some of the other news anchors. I put the sports anchors together. I technically make the Mane Event Episode,” said Lawson.
Lawson enjoys watching the evolution from the original video to the ultimate product.
“I just like seeing what the raw clip looks like and then the final clip. It’s very satisfying to see what I did and how much I improved the actual footage,” said Lawson.
New episodes air each week on Fridays. Catch the final product and previous episodes of The Mane Event on their website and the Canvas Dashboard.
