Rocky Mountain High Lingers
For the third time in the last five years, I loaded up my HTVstaff on a motor coach and set out on a ten-day “mobile journalism”journey. We left on July 22 for theRocky Mountains of Colorado, and returned on July 31. I took 17 of our 20 staffers. Three kids could not make it for one reasonor another, and that has no impact on their grade. We had five adult chaperones on the bus. Three seniors who just graduated in May camealong to produce their own vlog, and to just have some fun.
The point? To get out ofour comfort zone in about every way possible, visiting far-away places where wedid not know anyone. The kids were notallowed to call ahead or “pre-cook” their stories. Everybody has one, after all. Steve and Les proved that years ago.
Our very simple, but treacherous focus for the trip: Get offthe bus and find a story.
We filed over 80 segments in ten days, including threenews-feature packages shot every single day, no matter where we landed. Other things you will find on our htvbuzz.comwebsite include short pieces we call “quick clips,” which are our more“touristy,” sometimes unedited segments from the road, and the usuallylight-hearted “From the Bus” productions.
We take four field producers with us, former HTVers, all membersof our Hall of Fame, who escort and assist the kids in the field, and make surethey finish their stories and segments before crashing each night. The field producers also handle processingand uploading the clips to the website, so they usually go to bed around 3:30a.m., and start it all over again the next day. They are the heroes of the HTV bus tours.
Kids learn the following on our little journeys:
- How to approach strangers in strange places and ask them forinterviews
- How to check all of your equipment so it is ready for the field
- How to politely take “no” for an answer and move on
- How to find a story and shoot it in about two hours, sometimesless
- How to realize when a story is not going to work, and move onquickly to another one
- How to think about editing while you shoot, because they have toturn the story in a day
- How to find a character
- How to edit audio first, and fast
- How to collaborate with new staff members
- How to meet deadline, no matter how tired you are, our how muchyou would rather be site-seeing
- How to use time wisely
- How to know when “good enough” is “good enough”
A that’s just a partial list. These trips are the perfect educational experience for youngjournalists, and the ideal way to prepare kids for the year ahead on HTV. We build a sense of teamwork and family, andget a chance to see some amazing places in the process.
Now some of the nitty-gritty:
Cost per kid: $760covered transportation, lodging and usually breakfast
- Computers: Five 11”MacBook Airs, loaned to us via our Apple rep, plus one student had her ownMacBook Pro (the four field producershad three personal MacBook Pro laptops between them, but students did not usethose)
- Software: Final Cut Pro 7
- Cameras: We took fivePanasonic HMC 40s, and two small consumer Canon cameras for quick clips (we also took five tripods, and several lavand hand-held boom mics)
- My wife was the traveling secretary, reserving all lodging,including two nights in Estes Park where all the kids camped in tents theybrought along, while the adults and producers stayed in small cabins.
- The bus was a 56-passenger motor coach, so all but four peoplehad two seats to themselves, and kids took turns with that.
I don't know if anyone else will ever do a similar project, butif you do, and you have any questions, just drop me a line: dave@scholasticbroadcasting.com.
In the meantime, our new staff will be back in school next week,doing stories in the Ozarks. Somehow,that is not as scary as it was a couple of weeks ago.
