high-quality eight-word stories<\/a>, Johnson\u2019s broadcast news and copywriting students had to learn at lightning speed. \u201cIt was great real-world learning,\u201d she said. \u201cWe hit a lot of objectives.\u201d<\/p>\nJohnson said, she had the students take the lead on the content of the videos. \u201c\u2019What do we want them to look like, what do we want them so say?\u2019,\u201d she asked of the nine juniors and seniors.<\/p>\n
The students settled on \u201cThis election year, what are you thinking about?\u201d and directed their videos at various locations across the county\u2014coffee shops, farmers\u2019 markets, a brewery.<\/p>\n
\u201cI originally wanted to go to a fried chicken place in Harrisburg, but I never heard from them,\u201d said Abbie Erickson, senior communications major, who found the public not so eager to work with the media.<\/p>\n
[youtube width=”300px” height=”200px”]RWdqNBw1kMM[\/youtube]
\nShe had also contacted a hair salon that was equally disinterested, she said. Eventually, Clearview Lanes, a bowling alley just a stone\u2019s through from the Elizabethtown College campus, welcomed recorded interviews.<\/p>\n
Upon arrival, however, she continued to be turned down by patrons who did not want to talk about politics or be on camera. Erickson said it was good on-the-spot learning for how to cope with rejection and move on.<\/p>\n
The bowling alley was perfect for ambient sound, the student said. \u201cI loved the natural sounds. The pins dropping.\u201d Finally, she found a woman to interview who, Erickson said, \u00a0had \u201ca great laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the interview, Erickson had her second aha moment\u2014tight deadlines. \u201cI had to find someone, shoot the story, edit, lay down voiceover ….\u201d Under pressure or not, editing was the student\u2019s favorite step in the process, she said. It gave her the opportunity to find out what she\u2019s good at and use that talent to the best of her abilities.<\/p>\n
Deadline and reject also marked senior communications major Clark Stefanic\u2019s video experience, making him more aware of the need for adaptability in the workplace.<\/p>\n
If he was rejected for an interview he had to regroup and try again appealing to the interviewee. Interestingly, Stefanic said, the two internships he\u2019s completing this semester\u2014one on campus, one off\u2014aided him in the classroom. Working with clients had prepared him for producing quality video on tight deadlines.<\/p>\n
The video standard expectations were high, Johnson said, because the clips were shared on WGAL\u2019s webpage prior to election day. \u201cSometimes students will do something in a class that only people in the class see. This was a chance for a mass audience, hundreds of thousands of people. There was pressure to do outstanding work for a No. 1 station.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WGAL News Director Dan O\u2019Donnell contacted Elizabethtown College this past summer to see how the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, NBC-affiliate could collaborate with students on 2016 pre-election coverage. Kirsten Johnson, associate professor of communications, suggested six-word story videos. Her idea came from colleague Richard Newton, assistant professor of religious studies, who, in turn, had been inspired by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":5362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[178,3],"tags":[490,29,1128,436],"class_list":["post-5357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-achievements","category-real-world-learning","tag-achievements-2","tag-communications","tag-feature","tag-politics","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5357"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5369,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5357\/revisions\/5369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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