Gray Media

As a video editor/videographer at WRDW, my job was to collaborate and work closely with a team of writers, producers, and digital team members to create content for the daily newscasts. The environment was extremely fast paced, with deadlines often coming down to the minute.

Some days, my role was to edit fewer, longer form videos. These are referred to as "packages," and are often a few minutes and go in depth covering a topic with supporting materials like interviews and documents. Other days, my role was to edit many more, shorter form videos that play relatively quickly on air as an anchor talks over them, or act as single snippets of audio from an interview, speech, or similar. Oftentimes, I would have a co-editor working with me, and we would split the editing load evenly. However, on days where I didn't, I could easily have edited upwards of 100 videos in a single night. Even with a co-editor, my daily video total often reached well into the 70s and above.

As a videographer, my job was to go out into the field with reporters, set up our camera gear and equipment, and make sure that when the time came to go live, we were prepared and the transmission was seamless. I would frequently be on call with people in the studio, testing video and audio well before hit times to ensure that nothing would catch us off guard and go wrong at the last moment.

Having worked in such a high energy environment where quick, efficient communication isn't just a benefit, but is crucial, I've gained a lot of experience as it comes to working on a team. Everyone's job is different, but each cog in the machine is critical to ensuring a finished product that accurately reflects our team's skills. I believe these skills and lessons learned at WRDW will translate flawlessly to working with a development team, where many of the same principles of communication across different working fields are present.

My job as a technical media producer was a sort of conglomerate of 2 separate jobs - those being Director, and Master Control Operator.

As a director, my job was to prepare our shows for air by coding the rundowns, assigning microphones and communication devices, and then actually directing the shows in real time. I had a number of screens that fed me lots of information regarding timing, scripts, shots, and more, and my job was to communicate nearly nonstop with anchors, reporters, meteorologists, and producers, to ensure that our newscasts ran smoothly. I prepared shots accordingly for air, took them when appropriate, ran graphics overlays, managed audio mixing, and rolled breaks when necessary. The job was incredibly fast paced, very high intensity, and most of all, a lot of fun!

My job as a master control operator was considerably more relaxed. I had control over a number of systems that routed video and audio signals from various sources to select destinations, making sure that the correct content aired on the correct channels at the correct times. I rolled breaks over national feeds to local channels when necessary, and reconfigured our routing in the event that our programming changed for any reason. While for the most part a fairly laid back job, it could get very stressful when anything would go wrong, whether it be human error or not. It required quick, critical thinking to analyze what was happening, and to know the best way to fix it as soon as possible. My experience as a TMP has significantly improved my problem solving abilities, while furthering my existing skills in effective team communication.