Henry James Memorial School
March 18, 2008
Date Posted: March 18, 2008
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: Backpack Safety
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good energy and pace. Creative stand up.
INTERVIEWS: Good people to interview. Sound bites helped support the story.
ORIGINALITY: Newsworthy topic.
WRITING: Nice job discussing the problem and possible solutions.
VIDEO: Good shots. The color seemed a little off and there was a green line at the top of all the video.
AUDIO: Voiceover level went up after the second interview. Otherwise good.
EDITING: Nice job matching the video to the script. There was a long pause between voiceover and the stand up.
OVERALL: Good story idea. Next time tighten up the editing so there is so much time between the end of the voiceover and the stand up.
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Date Posted: March 13, 2008
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: East Coast Assistant Dogs
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good energy and pace. Nice location for the stand up.
INTERVIEWS: Great sound bite. Nice job finding and emotional clip. Nice use of an establishing shots of the interviewee.
ORIGINALITY: Excellent!
WRITING: Very well written. Well focused and informational.
VIDEO: Great shots of the dogs being trained. Good b roll. There was a bit of unnecessary camera movement. Let the movement happen in the shot don't move the camera around. You should not use supers. They will be covered or cut off by the wrapper that goes around all the student news stories. Good job getting a variety of tight, medium and wide shots. Always use a tripod a few shaky shots at the beginning.
AUDIO: Consistant levels.
EDITING: Nice job.
OVERALL: Good work.
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Date Posted: November 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: Voting Machines
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Nice job telling the story. Great enthusiasium.
INTERVIEWS: Good sound bite. Good interviewee. The writing into the interview could be worked on.
ORIGINALITY: Excellent story choice.
WRITING: Very well written. Nice job.
VIDEO: Steady video. Nice job making sense of the script. The interview was not framed properly. Camera should be at eye level of the person being shot. Too much head room and back ground. Would have worked as an establishing shot but should have been closer for the
AUDIO: mic on interview or stand up. If you don't have a mic that is detachable from the camera you should get the camera closer to avoid some of the background noise.
EDITING: Nice job matching video to script. When you are introducing the interview show the subject not the shot of town hall. The end was loose between the vo and the stand up. Could tighten up the editing.
OVERALL: Need to have video pad. There should be 5 seconds of b-roll for video pad that can be used in post production.
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Date posted: April 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Salmon Awareness"
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good job. Easy to follow and understand.
INTERVIEWS: Good interview. Good angels for the interviews. Interesting sound bites
ORIGINALITY: Good story idea.
WRITING: Nice job telling the story and sticking with a focus. Nice job answering the questions and sticking to one topic.
VIDEO: The still shot of the poster was a bit shaky. You needed B-roll of the salmon. The shot of the teacher could have been closer. Great opening shot of the river. Be careful of the poster shots. There was either a wrinkle in tape or it was a shaky shot.
AUDIO: Nice job using natural sound.
EDITING: Good job. Great job using an establishing shot of the student you interviewed. Great location for the establishing shot and the interview. He was wearing a different outfit in the shots though. Try to do both shots with him in the same clothing so that it flows better.
OVERALL: Great job!
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Date posted: April 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Solar Powered Farm"
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Easy to understand. Good job.
INTERVIEWS: Great sound bite from the second interview. Nice job illustrating why this is important. This is what a sound bite should be!
ORIGINALITY: Newsworthy. Good story idea!
WRITING: Well written. Good job telling the story.
VIDEO: More shots of the animals.
AUDIO: Great use of natural sound! Make sure to use a microphone for the stand up.
EDITING: Nice job matching video to audio. Nice composition of the story. Flowed nicely.
OVERALL: Very good story.
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Date posted: April 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Teen Drinking"
Status: Re-Submit
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good job. Confident and easy to understand.
INTERVIEWS: Good choices for people to interview but be selective of the sound bites you use in your story. The student's lift really didn't add. A sound bite is a great place to add emotion to the story. Maybe if she answered why she felt it was so important to not drink as a teenager.
ORIGINALITY: Newsworthy story. The breathalyzers at dances would make a great hook for the story.
WRITING: Nice job with the writing. A great focus would have been on the use of breathalyzers at dances. This would have been a great way to introduce balance to the story by getting opinions of people that are for it and those that are against it.
VIDEO: Some good shots could have included health class, MADD activities, a graph with statistics or kids pouring liquid into a glass. Don't show obvious drinking or specific product labels.
AUDIO: Ok.
EDITING: It is good that you are thinking about B-roll but work on finding more appropriate footage.
OVERALL: Great topic to do a story on. You need to be careful when showing a specific brand on camera. It calls attention to a specific company in a negative way. There are other shots that would move the story along a bit better. A tight shot of one kid handing another kid a beverage with the label facing against the palm would have worked. Don't use logos of the alcohol companies in the video. Try to find more action shots.
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Date posted: April 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Library Renovations"
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Don't do your stand up in front of a blank wall.
INTERVIEWS: The first interview was very good. The second interview just stated the obvious. It would have been good to hear how she can't wait to get DVDs or now she will be able to access the library easily in her wheelchair. First interview was almost at a right angel with the camera. The microphone was too far away and picked up too much background noise. Good background for the interview.
ORIGINALITY: Interesting story.
WRITING: Good job explaining the reasons the library needed to expand. Make sure you attribute statements such as: "Everyone loves the library.", "best thing to do", and "The library is a great place to". The first sound bite was a little bit redundant and second lift didn't add much. Try to find sound bites that add to the writing.
VIDEO: It would have benefited the story to show other forms of media that will be offered. Stack of DVDs, CDs, tight of shots of books, computers, etc. would all have been good shots. Good job showing the building plans. The before and after shot was a great touch. There was one pan of media room but the camera movement wasn't needed. It would have been more interesting if the movement had been inside the frame such as someone putting back a book instead of the movement coming from the camera.. The outside of the library would have been a good shot to add. A wide shot with the reporter and the library in background would have been great for the stand up.
AUDIO: Too much background
EDITING: The story needed more B-roll and more close ups to put this together.
OVERALL: Good but next time work on shooting more B-roll to add to the over all flow of the story.
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Date posted: April 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Gifts of Love"
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good job. Don't do stand up in front of blank. Find a more interesting background.
INTERVIEWS: Good choice of people to interview. Good sound bites. The interviews had good backgrounds.
ORIGINALITY: Good choice of subject.
WRITING: Well written. The lead in to the first interview was a little repetitive. You could have clipped some of her sound bite to make it shorter and add more information to the voiceover.
VIDEO: There was not enough B-roll. The shots were way too dark! You needed more shots of donations. We were on that shot of the sign for a really long time.
AUDIO: Good levels.
EDITING: More B-roll will help with overall editing.
OVERALL: Good story idea. Well told but work on getting more useful B-roll to help with the overall editing and flow of the story.
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Date posted: April 20, 2007
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "How Candy Is Made"
Status: Re-Submit
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good job. You should have shown the reporter. It would have been great to have the reporter taking a bite of chocolate and saying something clever in their stand up. This would be a great story to include some involvement of the reporter at the end.
INTERVIEWS: The composure was off. The sound bite didn't really add to the story. Some good questions to have asked in the interview would have been, "What is your favorite candy and why?", " How much candy do you eat?", "What can go wrong?" or What is the critical step?".
ORIGINALITY: Good. Nice job keeping the story from becoming too commercial.
WRITING: The writing into the interview didn't go along with the sound bite it was leading into. The writing about the water heating the table was interesting. Work on writing in and out of the sound bites and picking lifts. Creative opening line. It would have been interesting to hear us why they do the things they do. For example, why do they use copper kettles?
VIDEO: Good action shots and good job following the process. The opening shot with the pan had way too much movement. It was too fast and didn't have a specific purpose. Cuts would have worked better.
AUDIO: You needed to have a microphone on the interview.
EDITING: Nice job illustrating the process.
OVERALL: The best part of the story was the delivery. The audio on the interview was poor. The video has way too much movement. There should have been a static shot instead of jerking the camera and randomly panning across the candy. Camera moves have to have a beginning and end instead of just random movement. Next time work on digging deeper and answering more questions.
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Date posted: November 22, 2006
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "How to Make Ice Cream"
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY: Good pace and enthusiasm at the start but toward the end it sounded like it was being read. Try to work on sounding more conversational.
INTERVIEWS: Good choice and good sound bite.
ORIGINALITY: Good.
WRITING: Good writing. Great line using the "inside scoop". Be careful of editorial. You say everyone loves ice cream, but not everyone does. Also you say, "favorite frosty treat for all" you have be careful when you say everyone or all. For the most part you did a nice job incorporating of facts.
VIDEO: Good shots. Nice job showing the machine. More shots of ice cream would have better than the shot of the white board shot. Would have been better to use Tulmeadow sign at beginning to establish the location of the story.
AUDIO: Consistent levels.
EDITING: Ok. At points it looked choppy. Watch out for jump cuts. There were at least two. Cover jump cuts with other footage. Also, there was a long pause at the end with the white board shot of the ice cream flavors. Make sure that the voice over is all in one take or match it up better. There was a higher tone to the end.
OVERALL: Good job. Next time just be more crisp with the editing.
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Date posted: April 21, 2006
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Snowmaking"
Status: Broadcast
Length: 50
DELIVERY:
INTERVIEWS:
ORIGINALITY:
WRITING:
VIDEO:
AUDIO:
EDITING:
OVERALL: Nice job re-editing to required length and adding more information to the story. Good work.
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Date posted: April 4, 2006
School: Henry James Memorial School
Town: Simsbury
Slug: "Snowmaking"
Status: Re-Submit
Length: :38
DELIVERY: Very nice. Good pace and tone.
INTERVIEWS: Good choice. Another good interview would be with a skier. It would have been interesting to hear if they like the snow machine powder or if they like natural snow better or if this year's conditions needed the snowmaking.
ORIGINALITY: Interesting story.
WRITING: The writing needs some work. Introduce your story's hook and then talk about it. Add facts to support your story. Remember you always need to answer the questions: who, what, where, why, when, and how.
VIDEO: The shots you have are great, but you need more. It would have been great to see more skiers and other snowmaking shots. Shoot lots of video and you'll have tons of footage to choose from. It will make editing easier. Also, remember to get a mix of close ups, medium and wide shots.
AUDIO: Always use a microphone. The interview was hard to hear because the camera mic picks up lots of background noise.
EDITING: Nice job. More footage will help with overall editing.
OVERALL: The story came in at about 38 seconds. Unfortunately, that is too short to broadcast. The story needs to be expanded to fill the required :50 seconds in length. We time from the moment the voice-over begins to the end of the VO/stand-up. If you work on your writing you should be able to expand the story. Also, there should be 5 seconds of natural sound and video pad at the beginning and end of the story. If the story comes in a second short we are able to borrow from the pad to make it the required length for our broadcast schedule. Please re-submit at required length so we can air this story. Thanks.
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