Feed on
Posts
Comments

For the longest time, I dreamed of being an on-screen actress. I wanted to be in the movies.

I had a natural penchant for acting and my mother always tells me the story of how once, when I was four years old, I waltzed into her bedroom and proceeded to recite 45 minutes of Beauty and the Beast. Which I had seen once. Two months beforehand.

She said the hair on the back of her neck stood up as she realized that I had a talent for mesmerizing words. She enrolled me in acting classes and I took them for years, acted in school plays, the works.

I even left for college at San Diego State University to study Theatre with a concentration in Performance. It was a lot of fun, but after a year and a half I realized that maybe I’d be happy doing something else too, something that might not come with as much intense competition and waitressing.

I love to write, too.

I took a leap of faith and moved across the country to attend George Mason University, where I am studying Communication with a Public Relations concentration. After taking a couple journalism classes and relishing them, I chose to add a minor in Online Journalism. I love journalism, but I miss acting and performing.

How do you do both?

Broadcast journalism.

I was presented with a unique opportunity to do just that when my classmate Jake McLernon approached me about being the female anchor for a student-run news broadcast he was creating called Late Night Patriot. Along with a few of my other classmates and a few new friends, we have officially started it and last night we completed our third broadcast.

Last night was particularly exciting because we had a professional backdrop, our own theme song created by one of the crew, and two cameras which enabled us to transfer quickly between shots. We use an iPad as a teleprompter, which Jake controls using his phone while another crew member holds it up at just the right level so that we look like we are staring into the camera. It’s really quite sophisticated, and a lot of fun.

I am extremely grateful for this opportunity and it has been truly eye-opening to see how many different crew members are needed to work the cameras, control the teleprompter, and handle the audio. Each show we have had keeps getting better and better.

I hope that Late Night Patriot sticks around long after I have graduated.

“Thanks for making history with us, Mason.”

One Response to “Workshop extra credit”

  1. […] (other than getting over my insecurities) has been getting used to the teleprompter. As I previously discussed, we use McLernon’s iPad to slowly scroll through our weekly script. In the […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *