Throughout the second half of October we were able to complete our third episode of the G2 News show. This episode consists of information on the policies and resignation of former British Prime Minister, Liz Truss, Hurricane Ian and its effects, and our homecoming day interviews. After filming, we edited and uploaded our episode on October 30. We ran into some difficulty when editing, as our computers kept running out of storage when uploading the videos. What we learned after editing this video is we may need to purchase an external hard drive in order to have sufficient storage.
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Over the past two weeks we have been working on promoting G2 News and building a following around our show, mainly through our Instagram. Last Saturday, October 8th, we went to the homecoming day games at Severn and conducted many interviews with athletes, as well as students and teachers. These full interviews will be included in the October G2 News episode as the local portion, but in the meantime we edited a few of the clips and made a minute long "highlight reel" to post on Instagram. Since our show is only uploaded once a month, we have been enjoying using our Instagram page to keep others intrigued between episodes. Another step we have taken to accomplish this is by creating "G2 Mini News" which is a series we started this weekend. This series will be comprised of short form interviews about a certain topic that will be uploaded to our Instagram story. We began this series just this weekend, starting with filming a "behind the scenes" of the Baltimore Half Marathon we ran with the cross country team. As we have been filming these interviews, we have found that others really enjoy them and that it is a great way to get the community involved with the show. Throughout the rest of the month we will be researching the stories we have picked for the national and international portions of the October episode, as well as scripting and producing the episode.
Over the past month we presented our summer progress and got our project approved. After this we began to research and script our topics for this month: the Jackson, MS water crisis, and the death of the Queen. Also for our local story we decided to interview Mr. Kohl about what it is like to be a new teacher at Severn. We thought this interview method would be more interesting to our audience, so we decided to try it out for this episode. We were able to finish filming and up loading our video on the last day of September. For our guide this month we began to make edits that Ms. Etchison, our in school mentor, recommended us. Finally, we updated our website, including the calendar and spending form.
We have finished off the summer by uploading the first episode of our news program and completing a draft of our reliable source "how to" guide. Before filming our episode, we had a conversation with our out of school mentor who provided us with tips on how to present ourselves on camera. She also instructed us to purchase a ring light in order to improve clarity and lighting in our videos. Now that we have completed our video, we recognize that we still have work to do to become more confident on camera, so we plan to ask our mentor to provide us with some constructive criticism so we can improve next months episode. For our guide, we have written and revised the draft ourselves, but now plan to send it to our in school mentor, Ms. Etchison, in order to receive feedback and make more edits. Our summer draft of the guide is linked on the "'How to Guide' Progress" page and the link to our first video is on the "News Program" progress page.
So far this August, we have researched the three topics for our first episode that will be released at the end of the month. We plan to discuss the current and past state of the conflict between Israel and Palestine for our international story. For the national story we researched the Inflation Reduction Act and how that affects other aspects of the U.S. such as climate policies and healthcare. Finally, for the local story we are going to talk about the Maryland primary elections and a bit about the general elections that will take place in November. After finishing our research we have written a draft of the script for our first episode that we plan to film this coming weekend. Before we film, we are planning to meet with our out of school mentor. We are super excited to start the official production process of our show!
Since our last post, we completed trial runs with our equipment and were able to record and upload our brief introduction video. The first part of this process was to write up a script and find a teleprompter software to use, which was quite simple as we quickly found a free website that works well for us. Once we had the script, our next step was to solve our tech problems. We ran into an issue when the chord to connect the microphone to the camera was not the right size, but this was a simple fix, as all we had to do was order an adapter. Next, we crafted our backdrop, which allowed us bring our sketches and visions from our last post to life. Once we had completed all of these technical pieces, we were able to film the episode. After we completed filming, we edited the footage and uploaded it to Youtube (linked on "News Program Progress" page). We think starting with such a short video was definitely a good move for us since it allowed us to figure out how we were going to set up our filming space without the stakes of a full episode. Another part of the news show process that we worked on over the past two weeks was writing a practice story script. We worked on how to research a topic (we chose to do the Maryland Primary Elections) and what areas of the topic we wanted to focus on. It is going to be helpful having practiced this when we compose stories for our episodes as we were able to see how long the research might take. For the guide portion of our project, we began work on the draft that we hope to have completed by the end of this month. Over the next few weeks we are going to start collecting stories for our first episode that we plan to upload at the end of August. Also, we have been in touch with our out of school mentor and have a call planned during which we will be able to ask questions about how to present ourselves and not look awkward on camera when filming our first episode.
Over the past two weeks we have made progress on the research for our "How To" guide and have begun to outline it more. Also we started research on the technological side of the news program, including learning how to connect our microphone and tripod to the camera. We also tested lighting and the room set up for our filming space. We made rough sketches of our backdrop design and have decided on how we want the final product to look. A few photos and videos of this process can be seen on the "News Program Progress" page. Also the YouTube link has been updated on this page and should work now. Lastly, we have been making note of recent events throughout the summer and have been thinking through how we plan to present this information on our show.
Since our last post, we have gotten in touch with the potential out of school mentor referenced prior and are pleased to say she accepted our request! We look forward to learning from Mrs. Lutton and her experience as a news anchor in order to help us make our project as best as it can be! Not only have we been in contact with our out of school mentor, but our in school mentor, Ms. Etchison, recently sent us sources to help us with writing our research guide, which we have now begun to outline. Our progress on this portion of the project can be seen on the " 'How To' Guide Progress" page on this website. We also added a page called "News Program Progress" as well in order to document our progress on that portion of the project. This page includes the link to our YouTube channel.
Over the past week we have completed personalizing our website. This included adding all of the necessary components, such as a calendar, as well as adding a bio that states our personal motivations behind our project. We also took the feedback we received during the leadership lab and revised our pitch, mainly clarifying what we meant when we used the word "unbiased" and how we hope to produce unbiased news. We created a logo/title screen using Photoshop that is now posted at the top of our home page. Finally, we got the information for a potential out of school mentor and are in the process of contacting her.
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