EPTI am Jason Staples a student of Connecticut School of Broadcasting http://www.gocsb.com. Recently I was tasked with my final assignment for a 30 minute news broadcast all the students will be graded on. My assignment was to shoot, screen, write, record and edit a 30 second commercial and a 90 second news piece. I also drew the position of Technical Director (switcher) during the final news cast! I am going to outline the 90 second news piece in this post for you all because I had a lot of fun doing it and I think it is good for ESPORTS as a whole!
Assignment day, pick 3 news stories to pitch to the director and executive directors and get approval on 1 at next class. I was stoked, first thing that came to mind, cover ESPORTS! I thought hard and wanted it to be perfect, went home and went to mlgpro.com to find out the next stop and date of the pro circuit, June 3rd through 5th in OH, perfect but tight considering the 10 hour drive, shoot screen and write was due on the 8th for approval to record and edit. This is night class and I have a job as well as a life outside my career goals, no problem I thought I will make time! 1st pitch done and very detailed, I whipped 2 other local stories together but knew exactly which I wanted to do.
Next class, sit with the director and executive directors of the show (instructors) to pitch my stories. With great ambition I explained and pitched ESPORTS first, explaining how the nations largest pro circuit held by MLG was going to be fairly close and there was a lot of money for competitors to win. They ate it right up, I didn't even have to really outline to them my other stories, only enough so they knew if ESPORTS were to fall through I would be confident doing a fall back story and not fail miserably. They gave me the go, told me to start making phone calls and report to them my progress next class.
11:30pm, I went home and signed on to mlgpro.com to find a press contact, the press staff for MLG (Katie) was very professional and responded to my request the next day! Everything is coming together! I called my brother (Servatose) and asked if he would like to assist in my assignment. Being a huge SC2 player and fan he said yes and made arrangement in his RL to accommodate me.
Next class, we all (12 of us) reviewed our progress, I was first and most squared away! The instructors (industry professionals working in the field) seemed as stoked as I was and gave me the go to sign out the camera for nearly 5 days! (usually increments of 4 hours by procedure)
We left on Thursday and arrived in OH on Friday with enough time to check into the Super 8 and sleep for 5 hours. Arrived on time at the Convention Center with so much excitement! I shot some b-roll on the first day as well as some SC2 stage events like IdrA vs MC. What a blast, I got to finally meet so many people I had watched or listened to since SC2 Beta, including JP and IdrA my favorite icons of ESPORTS. Saturday I shot even more b-roll, met more great people and saw even more pro games.
Sunday, At this point I am nervous about getting the final b-roll shots and interviews to cover the context of my story. I set up in the corridor and got the gull to approach Milkis and LosirA for a very brief interview, with some consideration they agreed! (thank you again guys!) Next up, LzGaMer, Torch, iNcontrol an LiquidTLO one after the other. They provided me with more than just the content I needed for my news piece. I did have questions prepared for others as well but its an action packed weekend for people involved with the production which is very understandable! (Maybe next time!) What a great event, I stayed right through the end of the show to get some b-roll of the winner as well as enjoy a great Grand Final game between LosirA and MMA, I am a Zerg player so I was a little disappointed but happy at the same time to have at least a Zerg runner up!
Ok so next class was Protools and held no bearing to my assignment, although I hadn't slept in over 28 hours at that point. Tuesday I signed out the Final Cut Pro Studio and screened my interviews to start writing a solid script, I ended up with over 3 hours of b-roll and 40 minutes or so of interviews! Finished writing the final script and emailed it to the executive director for approval.
Wednesday (a week ago yesterday) I get the go ahead to start recording and editing! I jumped into the Adobe Audition Studio to do the V/O. Come to find out I wrote about 30 seconds too much. No big deal, I cut out the carrots and left the meat and potatoes. Back to the Final Cut Pro Studio across the parking lot I go. I laid down my Interviews (Sot's - sound on tape) and V/O between. It was really fun and technical to dub the interview over LosirA keeping his natural language slightly in the back! Now to screen my hours of b-roll. It wasn't hard because only half my b-roll was shot with a tripod and that is crucial for my piece. All but the shot of MMA toward the end was Tripod and that shot you can hardly tell :D I laid the b-roll, added a little color correction here and there (not too much because its naturally dark in the venue and I wanted to keep the mood), mixed my levels and exported.
I am not sure if many of you are familiar with Aja TV or with NTSC and the workings of encoding for Television but I was really nervous when I loaded up the .mov file through Quicktime on the Mac screen, it was very grainy! The next day I expressed my concerns to the instructor and we fired it up with Aja in the control room. Much better! (wish I had/used a HD camera though, it still looked very good through a television!)
Rehearsal is in 2 weeks and myself along with a few other people were the only ones to meet all deadlines. That is where my collateral duty for the show comes in, I will be helping people record (capture from tape) and edit their pieces through then. (CSB is a school that teaches everything, not just 1 facet of the industry, this is why some people had a little trouble over others, they are learning something that doesn't necessarily pertain to their career as a whole and can be rough for some although myself, I love the radio side and take that just as serious!)
I hope you all enjoyed my little story without falling asleep! I got so much extra and want to say so much more about ESPORTS so after finals I plan to put together a real nice 12 or so minute piece on ESPORTS, Stay tuned!
Please forgive me for grammar errors as I am a video editor and do not nor ever plan to have a have a degree in Journalism.
Thanks for watching and your constructive feedback!
-ZerOsAndOnEs
Jason Staples
Connecticut School of Broadcasting Student
Jason Staples
Here is my 90 second news piece on ESPORTS featuring the MLG.
Obviously the picture quality is an issue, but I'm guessing that isn't your fault.
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