School Video News Homeroom News

(Ed. Note: Although this article was first published in 1994, the challenges that we face in starting a high school news broadcast have not changed!)

By Rick Nolletti

It doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg to make good video. With a little ingenuity, you can find ways to produce work you can be proud of.

I should know. As the mass media instructor at a small, rural high school, I faced a formidable challenge: to develop a high school video production program-complete with a daily news program-without much in the way of resources.

The minuses: very little funding, equipment or video experience.

The pluses: an enthusiasm for video and a determination to succeed.

It could all add up to fairly advanced programs using two cameras and prerecorded sources. Here's how.

The Learning Curve

There were just five of us: me and my four-count 'em, four-mass media students. We knew we'd have to learn quickly; the principal was pressuring us to televise the announcements as soon as we got a system up and running.

Since we lacked substantial video experience, we decided to keep things as simple as possible. Instead of producing a live newscast, we would prerecord the school's daily announcements to air at a later period.

Fortunately my personal camcorder was the same make and model as the school's. My only other assets: 1) an adequate understanding of audio and 2) a couple of external microphones, both products of time I spent playing music in my earlier days

The actual shooting proved a bit tricky, since the school had no tripod. As the cameraman-none of my students had ever operated a camcorder, so I was it-I steadied the camcorder while seated in my desk chair. Its coasters allowed the option of dollying and trucking, which came in handy for shooting our homemade graphics off the board. The lucky student assigned to flip cue cards navigated my chair. The cues, placed in an oversized three-ring notebook, hung over both my face and the camera's viewfinder. Effective if uncomfortable.

We had no audio mixer, so we used a portable cassette player and a pair of headphones to provide audio mixing effects. We simulated audio mixing, fades and boosts by taking headphones set on high volume and physically manipulating them in and out of the face of an external mike. We threw in a generous helping of jittery camera work marked by amateurish pans and fades: voila-NWN Central News was born.

An extensive period of trial-and-error production followed, interrupted only by summer vacation, which I spent discovering the world of flying erase heads, edit controllers, SEGs and more. Eventually, using only equipment found in most high schools, I managed to develop a rather sophisticated approach to low-budget, high school video production.

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