Creation of OMNI NEWS CHANNEL
Me a Reporter? Yes and no. executive producer? Definitely yes, hold on, it is not what you think, my pocket is not at all hot to be a producer, a total broke I am. Then how? Well, here is the answer. In a television production (not film), there is no such word as director, all the works that a director do in a film production, is done by the producer, in a sense, a director is known as a producer in television production. And the word executive producer is addressed to that person who looks after the entire work, and whose green signal is a must to let anything take place.
Now coming to the real talk. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you all a freshly produced News Channel, “Omni News Channel” which is of one-time investment of idea, labor, and time, hold on! I say, capital (AKA money) too, since we contributed for the logistics as well.
I have already done one month internship in an actual legit electronic media house where I worked as a reporter, camera man, and an interviewer, it was of course a great learning experience; and I used these many experiences to experience a new experience, viz. Executive Producer (EP). Plus, my other experience of anchoring and news reading in my college news channel “SCCZ News Channel” also helped me out a lot.
Creation of this News Channel was a literal definition of blood, sweat, and tear. No kidding. Don’t trust me? well I have the proof and will show it here. I have proof even for the blood. LOL.
Readers, I take you to a sphere, where you will see a roller coaster of mixed emotions: excitement, happiness, fear, anger, frustration, pain, and pride, while creating Omni News Channel.
It is the beginning days of idea generations; forming of group in WhatsApp has been done, talks are being done of what name should be given for the news channel. Teammates pitches in few names; no name seem promising and perfect. And one good sunny day, while sipping coffee and discussing with few mates in the canteen, I said, what about the name, Omni News Channel, what say? A mate said, I think it is okay, however, others were convinced later after I explained how and why it is promising among other names.
If you want to know the meaning, which I don’t think you are totally interested in, but still, if you want to, then comment section is where we shall talk.
Anyway, coming back to the story, I divided the team in three sub teams; two teams for gathering two hard news each, and one team for covering two soft news, everything is properly concocted. All the teams are precisely primed of what to do and what not to do and is ready and heads out. I am in the soft news team since the interviewees of the respective soft news are very prominent personalities, and you do not want to screw up.
We reached the office of the first interviewee, I confidently introduced myself though I was a bit nervous inside.
The cameras and microphones have been setup and fixed, I sat beside her as I was the interviewer here. Obviously! LOL. So, we talked, and thankfully, the interview went so efficiently and smoothly.
Later, on the evening, I checks on the products of the two teams who went to cover hard news on the same day to different places. Giving green signal to their coverages of news seems not possible, as it has so many mistakes and errors. I give feedback to the teams and again brief them; some seems annoyed that I did not approve their work, while some genuinely takes in the feedbacks.
The first day could only see one green signal.
Here comes the second day, I let the hard news teams gather in the university campus, again makes them practice Piece to camera (The intro that a reporter gives in the beginning of the video) before heading out straight for covering news.
Soft news team heads out to Karsingsa to cover another story of a prestigious medal winning karate athlete. The interview goes very well.
We slowly continues to head back to university, no singing, he asks if I am doing okay, I asks the same to him.
I enters my room, slowly and carefully pulls up my now thorn long pant and checks the wound. I starts crying out loud not only because the wound is shiny and vibrant red color, but also because it is legit painful. My hand grabs the tissue and continues to cry.
Thankfully, my roommate was not in the room.
Teary red eyes see the phone ringing, I hold my tear and takes a deep breath before picking up the call. And it’s him, he asks me to go with him to a drug store and get the cleaning and dressing of the wound done. I deny but he convinces me anyway.
Rain continues to pour, I, him, along with his friend who drives us down to a drug store, and there, we gets the required procedure done.
TT injection i had for the first time in life and the pain was not worth the hype, I mean it was not as painful of what people defines the pain of TT injection.
The third day is here, I stay on the bed till evening, planning to not go out of the room the whole day as I could not walk properly. But the phone rings, I pick up the call, and here is my one teammate suggesting and asking for a group meeting to be held in the evening, I being the executive producer is compelled to attend, also this meeting is crucial for the team to efficiently work together as the team is currently not cooperating with each other, hence the team is about to break.
The evening comes, I not being able to walk properly, asks a friend to drop me to the meeting. Many of the team members also arrives, some with cheerful face, worried face, and some with a little annoyed face.
A discussion is going on of what to do and how to complete the task of gathering materials for the news channel. A conclusion comes out that the whole team is going to go together to cover and complete the remaining hard news the next day. Yes, not a single hard news material we have so far, and we are running out of time.
Comes the fourth day, the busiest day of collecting material, the whole team goes to Jolang to cover the pathetic road condition, Office of Sub-Divisional Police Officer, and to various traffic points.
Till the golden hour, the team works; everyone exhausted and drained to the core. And yes, now we have enough hard news material with us, ending the half part of the production stage.
Since our department has no proper television studio, we are opting for radio studio since the acoustic panels on the walls are green and it will give less problem in using green screen/chroma key effect. Studio is not that big and many people is also not necessary except for the executive producer, camera man, news reader and weather reporter, therefore only the mentioned above people are selected to be in the indoor shooting.
We have chosen the evening hour to start off with the shooting since the campus and ambiance is less noisy by then.
The News reader and weather reporter comes to the studio with their various options of clothes for shooting,
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take one and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take two and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take three and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take four and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take five and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take six and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take seven and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take eight and ACTION!
Silence! camera rolling, sound rolling, scene one, take nine and ACTION!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the first scene needed a giant NINE takes to get the perfect shot with right and complete dialogues. The problem is we do not have teleprompter, so the News reader must memorize the script and then say it without having the required facility, and we have 10 scenes to complete before the sunrise, yes, sunrise, and by now, it is already 9:16 PM. I told you; it is a session requiring abundance of passions, remember? I know, reading the above similar lines is boring, but just imagine, how challenging it would have been for us to practically repeat the same thing again and again.
But guess what, we Indians are extremely good at a thing called JUGAR(hack), in it? And voila! We are using the tab as a teleprompter by placing it near the camera, by the way, placing the teleprompter is also a Jugar as u can see.
However, even with the jugar, 11:53pm is when we have finished and is having our packed food.
The post-production stage (editing of the footages) did not show mercy on us though, we met the sunrise in this stage. Also, this stage continued till the very last minute of our Practical exam, not even kidding, the exporting of the 10 minutes 18 seconds video in the very last minute beforehand our practical exam had me go insane, never been this anxious and worried about a project deadline ever.
Ladies and gentlemen, of course, we could have easily finished the project even before the remaining few days of exam if we just simply wanted to finish the project only for the sake of doing and finishing it, but then, if we did likewise, we would not have gotten the appreciation and extremely good comments that we got from the teacher and external examiner. When our teacher said the word “EXCELLENT”, that is when, when I was satisfied and happy for me and my teammates especially, who have invested blood, sweat and tear, and which indeed finally paid off. However, I was not entirely satisfied with the final product of the project, as few more adjustments and corrections could have been done, but still, I was happy. Moreover, my team was very happy, so I had no reasons to not be happy.
The actual thing is, you can never be satisfied with your work, you always feel like it could have been better, or I could have done better, and you know, stuff like that, but I guess, this is what actually is important and necessary for a person to grow and become better version of himself and herself.
The pictures below are some of the screen shots taken from the final video which might interest u a little bit more. Have a look.
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