Just For TV Teachers

Okay, all you TV teachers out there. Something cool is now available online for you and your students. Check out: www.schooltube.com.

The site is in its infancy, and technicians and designers are working everyday behind the scenes to have it refined and ready for the new school year that approaches, but already you can see the advantages it offers schools, and the comfort zone it offers administrators wary of online video. No need to block Schooltube. Why?

Schooltube features “student-produced, teacher-approved” video clips, uploaded easily from just about any school in the nation. I uploaded a few things last week and it was scary-easy. It took just a few minutes to find our clips on the site, ready for all to see and hear. Granted, we already have video on our htvmagazine.com site, but we are happy to share with Schooltube, which will become a one-stop shopping opportunity for students and teachers seeking a sample of the projects being produced across the nation.

STN has forged a partnership with Schooltube, and soon lesson plans, curriculum resources, and all sorts of benefits will be available just to STN affiliates. In fact, the site has unlimited potential, and will become what we STN teachers make it. Just yesterday I sent a document to the site with a lesson plan we use at “Camp STN” each summer, one that I also use each September in my Broadcast I class. Soon you can download it and see if it applies to your classes. Do me a favor and send Schooltube a few of your own lesson plans. I bet lots of us could use them.

Student-produced, teacher-approved. A great idea. Give Schooltube a try. I think it’s going to be a huge plus, especially for STN schools and teachers who are looking for resources that will help them take their productions to the next level.

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The summer show I can’t turn away from is “On the Lot” on Fox.

Wanna-be filmmakers from all over the place have gathered to produce short films that they hope will propel them to a contract with (please utter the following name with due respect and reverence) “Steven Spielberg.” The set-up is much like “American Idol” as three celeb judges critique their efforts each week, and then the public votes on their favorite films, and one director is eliminated each Tuesday during the show.

We can debate the weaknesses of this program, from the somewhat annoying hostess, whose name seems irrelevant, to the frozen-faced judge, Carrie Fisher, who looks like she’s had a little too much work done. The production values are first-rate, and the live audience gets involved, booing critiques they disagree with.

What interests me the most are, of course, the classroom applications I can steal from “On the Lot.” I loved the assignment a few weeks ago which challenged them to make one-minute, humorous films. Ahh, comedy is so difficult, and you can see the proof of that on the show’s cool website, www.thelot.com. In fact, you can watch all the films created for the competition there.

The assignment, or “log line,” used this week? Here it is:

*Use the following log line: Moment Of Truth.
*Create a story based on the log line. There is no genre assigned, it is completely up to you.
*The short should be up to three (3) minutes in length, no credits. It may be shorter, but do not exceed the three (3) minute time limit.

The contestants had five days to work on their films. In my classroom, I could give kids that much time, but they would have to work around other classes and activities, so I think two weeks, maybe even three, for a three-minute film would be fair, especially with our eight-block schedule. I would probably have benchmarks along the way. For example, submit a script by day three, show me “rushes” of your first scene by day four, things like that to keep them hitting deadlines to ensure they are really working on the project.

Here is my favorite part of “On the Lot” so far. The judges frequently use this line in summing up the entries they liked: “Well, it had a beginning, middle and an end.” Now where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, at “Camp STN” every summer, and in my classroom when I am looking over student work. I hope some of my HTV staffers are catching this show now and then. They might (MIGHT) decide their teacher isn’t totally full of hot air.

“On the Lot” is not pulling in great ratings last time I checked. You may not like the pacing of the show, or the format. As I teacher, I like it, and with our DVR function, I can zip past the commercials. The challenges are many as these young storytellers compete for a major movie contract. They may not appreciate the fact that as they are creating short films, then having them criticized on network TV, they are learning many valuable lessons that will make them better directors in the years ahead.

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It’s what I call “pure storytelling.” The true documentary, full of natural sound, great interviews, meaningful b-roll, unique access, all the things that open viewers’ eyes and ears, and hopefully, their minds.

We have done a few in the 18 years of “HTV Magazine.” One I will never forget was our hour-long documentary about “Firefall,” a huge Fourth of July celebration, complete with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra playing patriotic songs as thousands of dollars of fireworks explode in the sky. It was July of 1996, and the entire staff of HTV was required to be there. We had crews on site the day before to record the final preparations, then we covered the day of “Firefall” from 6 a.m. until the last cars pulled out of the lot around midnight. There were 60,000 people in attendance, giving us 60,000 characters to choose from.

The lessons from that shoot were too many to number. Some of the ones that had the longest-lasting impact on our kids, and our entire program, included:

*Learning the value of logging our tapes so we knew what we had. There were over 20 SVHS tapes full of footage. We edited the show by logs, not by trial and error on our deck-to-deck JVC systems.

*Kids realizing it was possible to approach total strangers and ask, in a friendly, professional manner, for an interview.

*Reporters understanding that you often had to ask the same question three or four different ways to get soundbites that would work. Fragments are not your friend when your story is being told only by the bites you get from interviews.

*Knowing little stories help tell big stories. We shot mini-packages throughout the day, like the one where a mother lost her daughter for about ten minutes. Our camera followed the initial panic, then caught the happy ending, complete with soundbites from the happy mom.

*Improvising can be helpful if your initial plans unravel. One of our crews got caught off-site after shooting their assignment about traffic. So they rolled tape as the simulcast of the “concert in the sky” was aired on their car radio. That audio became extremely important since we had technical problems with the crew assigned to shoot the orchestra on stage.

*Shooting action and reaction. It’s crucial to realize how important this is. We caught faces in the crowd that literally lit up as the fireworks exploded above them.

*Working hard in the field makes work in the edit bay go a little easier. Once we started piecing the packages together, we realized we had just about every shot we needed. It was amazing. But we still had to “budget” those shots. With a dozen packages in the show, we were proud that we did not use a shot twice.

So why am I thinking about documentaries only one week after school let out? Because some of my new staffers were recently talking about producing one next year. They do not know how hard it will be, and how time-consuming, and how frustrating. The good thing is, they also don’t know how rewarding it will be when it’s done. That moment will be the one I will enjoy the most.

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1. See the movie, “Chalk” because it might make me laugh. Or cry.

2. Order some mic clips so we can actually use our lav mics again next fall.

3. Find a cure for the permanently-attached cell phone most teenagers are afflicted with. A colleague told me how he handles it. If you want his help with an edit, or you want to meet with him to brainstorm a story or talk about a project, and your cell phone goes off, and you answer it, he walks away. Meeting over. I like that.

4. Catch up on all the tapes/DVDs I am supposed to send others. Geez, it gets a bit overwhelming. That’s why I am naming a “Circulation Manager” for our staff next fall. His/her job? Make dubs and actually mail the tapes and DVDs so I don’t have to. It’s called “delegating,” right?

5. Start watching the news again. I haven’t kept up. Spring is a hectic time, and well, baseball is back, and there are only so many hours in the day.

6. Upload some HTV videos to www.schooltube.com for the first time. The new site, for student-produced, teacher-approved video and other cool content, is going to grow and grow in the months ahead.

7. Start working on the 2008 STN convention schedule, special events, contents, sponsors, presenters, the budget, etc.

8. Eat better, walk more, sleep longer, and keep the yard watered and trimmed.

9. Watch “The Closer” because it’s pretty good, especially for a summer with no “Heroes,” “24,” or “Shark.”

10. Enjoy every minute of “Camp STN,” where we get to share ideas and approaches with teachers and kids from across the nation. It’s a great time for all. If you have never attended, check us out in 2008.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I have a feeling my wife will add some items to the list that might be a little more labor-intensive.

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Another school year comes to a close, and another year of producing “HTV Magazine” has concluded. The staff did 12 shows in nine months. Our in-house production staff produced a show every week. Through it all, I hope students learned a few things. As always, the teacher learned plenty.

Call this my “What I Learned In School” list for 2006-2007:

*Cameras don’t suddenly just quit working as they get older. Instead, their features begin failing one at a time. It’s the teacher’s job to remember which camera has which deficiency. “If you use number two, it’s external speaker doesn’t work.” “If you take camera four, the LCD screen is messed up. Just use the eyepiece.” And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.

*Every sport wants a video for its banquet. Just say “no,” or let your students handle it completely. Otherwise, you will get sucked into the vortex of editing baby photos and shaky video, shot by parents and grandparents from the bleachers three miles away. Hey, I have enough shaky video to fret over, the news video shot by my TV staff (the kids I thought I taught to use tripods).

*You know you are going to have a good year when your staff watches its first show and tears it apart with no prompting from you, the teacher. I’m talking about constructive, honest criticism that comes from the kids themselves. This is exactly what happened last fall in our classroom. It was obvious the staff knew where the bar was set, and why they did, or did not, reach it. They got better and better, but remained their own worst critics.

*Three words: “I don’t know.” Powerful words, and the appropriate response for the TV teacher to give when asked questions about complex technical challenges, or anything, really, that may arise in the course of show production. This response enables you and the student to come up with a solution/answer together, which reminds the student that “we are a team.” A broadcast staff needs to tap into each person’s strengths, and encourage each team member to help others improve their weakest areas. Do not feel like you have to know it all, teachers. You just have to be willing to learn it all, and that takes time, and humility.

*I am the textbook. This is reinforced every year. As the broadcast adviser, I am the one who laughs, or doesn’t, the one who praises, or doesn’t. What I approve is automatically “okay” forever. What I do not approve goes on the “don’t” list. No textbook can communicate in two chapters what I can communicate in two seconds with a “yes” or “no” or a nod or a frown. It can be exhausting, but it’s what we do.

*It’s always audio. Yep, it’s been a curse since we began in 1989. I suggest you spend as much money as you can on good microphones, wind screens, headphones, anything that ensures kids come back with soundbites you can actually hear. We had to kill a story 14 years ago that I remember to this day. It was about adults learning to read for the first time. A man in his late 30s poured his heart out about how important it was to him to finally learn to read. Because my photographer did not wear headphones, and our SVHS camera did not display an audio meter, the absense of audio was not known until they popped in the tape to show me this amazing interview. It’s always audio.

That’s enough ‘learnin’ for one year. There were many other lessons, of course, but those are better saved for conversations at “Camp STN” this summer, where the iced tea flows, and we “save a surprise” or two for each day of camp. Can’t wait.

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