Month: April 2020

Host Intro: The current covid-19 situation hit the U.S economy. To slow down the spread of virus one by one, the U.S cities are imposing the shutdown of schools, colleges, public places and non-essential stores. Some stores are closing temporarily for a period which can cause workers to lose their jobs and face financial challenges. According to theregreview.org 6.6 million Americans filled for unemployment. The highest number of unemployment claims filled in the history. Due to pandemic situation, the number of unemployment rate has been increasing. The U.S department of labor released the report that shows the overall rate of unemployment has increased to 4.4%. Covid-19 also affected businesses, and financial sectors are facing losses. The business sectors Includes restaurants, bars and entertainments where people are more in contact and close to each other. Coronavirus has a highest risk of spread, so companies in these industries are the first to be affected, causing the unemployment of workers. Here’s Zarifa Ahmadi with the story.

Track: Various small industries negatively impacted by covid-19; a Fox news reports Sandy Lenger story. Sandy Lenger manages a bar the governor order to close, to slow the spread of virus.

ACT:  Sandy Lenger (report from fox news) we been closed for approximately two weeks; a lot of our income goes to that, so I was told to come down here and I was glad they were open.

AMBI: sound of footsteps of people walking to the unemployment office

Track: people who lose their jobs are the ones who face the most of financial problems, some of the workers are not even eligible to apply for unemployment benefits. It’s a hard and challenging time for them to pay rents, bills, and to feed their families.

ACT: (Vickeia Mayweather) I just came here to check my claim to see what’s going on.

Track: According to report by a Fox news Vickeia Mayweather a school bus driver is out of work for at least through April 5th

AMBI: Sounds of people talking on unemployment office

ACT: I need to keep my rent, my vehicle you know bills got to be paid the government isn’t going to stop that, so they have to. I want to keep my light and gas on and stuff.

Track: For the people, the timing of the job loss is questionable but, in this situation, nobody can do anything. Most of the students are part-time workers as well. Students face the problems of unemployment named Fatima from St john’s college was working at CVS and now, she is been out of work for the past 2 weeks. The CVS store temporarily closes to slow down the spread of virus. Let’s hear from Fatima.

ACT: (Fatima) My name is Fatima. I’m a student at saint jones university. I currently work at a local pharmacy and due to the pandemic, we have been experiencing a lot of staffing issues. we actually had a positive case of corona virus at my pharmacy  and that led to a lot of people been quarantined and we had low staff and a lot of our staff took leaves and absences which led to our pharmacy temporarily closed for the last two weeks so currently I’m unemployed and its been really hard. My heart goes out to anyone else experiencing troubles either health wise, mentally, physically, or financial troubles and yeah, I just want everyone to know that we will get through this.

Track: As businesses throughout the country closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and as I mentioned earlier over six point six million people across the nation filed for unemployment benefits.

ACT: (Singh) Honestly, I feel um helpless like there’s not much more I can do.

Track: Singh is a full-time student at John Jay college and was advised by his employer to file for unemployment as a result of the recent health crisis unfortunately.

ACT: Unfortunately with me being laid off I do have to use the money that I was gonna use as tuition, which is also my emergency fund I do have some of that money and I might not be able to take classes next semester if I’m not able to get it through on the unemployment website.

Track: According to DOL report, on a typical week the DOL receives about fifty thousand calls and about three hundred and fifty visits to their website the last week of march they received 8.2 million calls and over 3.4 million visits to their website.

ACT: It was very high ceiling because it would take this to like the last page where you filled out a bunch of information then it would automatically just crash and bring you back to the first page.

ACT: I apologize for the pain it is must infuriating to deal with I am telling you we have every technology company, the company working on it we’re spending a lot of money.

Track: In a press conference on Tuesday, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo apologized for the difficulty New Yorkers faced when trying to apply for unemployment.

ACT: (Andrew Cuomo) The site is so deluge that it keeps crashing because you literally have hundreds of thousands of people at any time trying to get on the site and it continue to crash

Track: According to the DOL they created a two-fold plan to help New Yorkers applying for unemployment the first part reducing the volume of unemployment application a day and encouraging New Yorkers to apply on specific days based on their last name the second part to increase the capacity of staff to deal well, taken additional staff from other agencies. Zarifa Ahmadi from New York.

 

Host intro: The coronavirus has caused over 5,000 deaths in New York City so far, and the number of new cases continues to rise. Like most institutions of higher learning, the City University of New York transitioned to remote learning last month. CUNY is the largest public university system in the country, and many of the students at its 26 campuses around the five boroughs work to support themselves and their families. Many have been impacted not just by the switch to online lessons, but also by the loss of jobs and internship opportunities as all nonessential businesses have been closed. M’Niyah Lynn has more on this story.

AMBI: Nat sound of street showing how empty streets are (FADES AS TRACK BEGINS)

TRACK: Hear that? No…you don’t. Normally, the NYC streets would be bustling with activity, but today it is almost deserted. Here on the Upper East Side, few cars drive past 1st Avenue. What you don’t hear are the kids chasing each other in the park or the sound of heavy chatter at the local mall. 

AMBI: Room tone (LAYER UNDER TRACK)

TRACK: I’m here with Adonia Smith over a video chat, listening to her speak as she prepares for another day of sitting at home to complete assignments. She’s a CUNY undergraduate student at LaGuardia Community College who is planning to transfer to John Jay after she graduates at the end of the semester. She would usually be at school working in the financial aid office.

ACT: ADONIA: Because the Federal Work Study office is physical and they are not moving electronically like other resources on campus, it has affected my ability to work because I cannot work currently, and as a result nobody that works in the work study office is working and we are all collecting our paychecks.

TRACK: Although CUNY has insisted that their community practice safe protocols, they have allowed internships and jobs to “use their best judgement” when it comes to deciding how work will be given out and deciding if people can still go to work sites. Smith says that LaGuardia is still paying Federal Work Study students as long as their worksite is closed, but some students are unable to have the same opportunity.

ACT: ADONIA: My employer stated that because of federal work study closing, there are no students that could submit their working papers and there’s no students that could apply for work study.

AMBI: Nat sounds of email notifications (FADES INTO TRACK)

TRACK: Student’s emails are being flooded with information from the CUNY chancellor, their professors, and their individual institutions, as both students and professors struggle transitioning.  Angelica Tejada, Baruch College junior, was supposed to begin her first journalism internship the day after CUNY announced they would go remote. Now, she’s forced to delay her internship, that she worked so hard to get, for college credit.

ACT: ANGELICA: The position itself kind of requires in person because you know it’s about hosting events and interviewing people and obviously that’s like something that is traditionally done in person. I mean, we have come a long way where you can call someone and interview them or you can host like an online like via Skype party you know? But, it’s not the traditional way of doing it, and also the role that I was gonna be in that company it wasn’t supposed to be like remote. 

TRACK: Fortunately, her supervisor postponed the internship until the fall. However, having to wait to pursue her opportunity has diminished her usually positive attitude.

ACT: ANGELICA: I feel like I’m fortunate and I really cannot complain because there’s people who are in like very unfortunate situations. But, for me, you know I did feel like pretty bummed out you know I was really excited for this internship and to finally you know work and feel like I was doing something important you know for the projects that the company presented to me and everything, so I just felt kind of like unmotivated now and uninspired in a way and you know, cuz’ I was really pumped and now they just like bursted my bubble.

AMBI: Gov. Cuomo’s press conference from March 20th, announcing the closing of non-essential businesses. CUOMO: Only essential businesses will be functioning. People can work at home, god bless you, but only essential businesses can have workers commuting. (FADES INTO TRACK)

TRACK: Non-essential businesses, like clothing stores and barber shops have been closed to curb the spread of COVID-19. This means many students are screwed because “42% of students have household incomes less than $20,000,” according to the State of CUNY 2017 report. Students seek work to help pay for college expenses that PELL grants and TAP don’t cover, if they receive anything. In a video posted to the CUNY website last month, Chancellor Matos Rodriguez said he’s working to make sure students can thrive in school and work from home.

ACT: MATOS: If we don’t do something to help them, those students will lose their semester. Those are our most vulnerable students, and it wouldn’t be CUNY if we just said that we’re not going to help you. 

TRACK: CUNY continues to keep students posted with updates, including implementing a recalibration period to hopefully equip everyone for distance learning and running spring break from April 8th to the 11th. For Baruch College, I’m M’Niyah Lynn.

Upcoming/Revised Dates

• Tuesday, April 7. Remember to sign up for a script editing session for Tuesday here.
• Thursday, April 9. We won’t have class next Thursday because it’s spring break. You are all, however, welcome to text me for editing assistance outside of class hours and I’ll be happy to hop on a call or a one-on-one Zoom meeting and help you troubleshoot.
• Tuesday April 14. This is the first day we will “meet” again after the shortened spring break, and the final version of the radio story will be due by class time. This gives you a week to voice, edit, and submit it. Please upload it to Soundcloud and post it to the blog by class time that afternoon along with a headline/title and your final script copied and pasted into the blog post. As a reminder, you are no longer required to submit a photo along with the story, although you are welcome to do so if you were able to find one, and you are no longer required to rewrite the script to make it readable for the web.
• Thursday, April 16. Pitches will be due for your final project, a 2-3 minute video news story, so start thinking now about story ideas—again, you’ll need to think creatively about video stories you can do under the circumstances. We will workshop your ideas as a class this day so have your pitches posted on the blog by class time.
• Tuesday, May 5. The rough cut of your video will be due by class time.
• Thursday, May 14. Last day of class: The final cut of your video assignment will be due by class time.

Intro to Video Journalism

With video, we build on the compositional techniques of photography and the structural, storytelling aspects of audio with one obvious additional element: Motion.

How does video storytelling for the web and mobile differ from TV and film?

• Need to be CLOSER to your subject. Web videos are smaller and more compressed.
• 20 percent of online viewers bail on a video within 10 seconds. So you don’t have a lot of time to grab your viewers and make sure they stick around.

How important is audio?

• Good audio is of paramount importance. If you have low-quality video and good audio, the video will still be watchable. If you have gorgeous visuals but terrible audio, it will not.

When is narration necessary?

Sometimes, you can let the subjects of your video tell the story all on their own — as long as you edit with care, presenting what they’ve told you in a way that makes narrative sense. One benefit of non-narrated videos is that they can feel more organic. There’s no disembodied voice stepping in to tell the story, which keeps the focus on the characters in the story.

But sometimes, for clarity’s sake or for stylistic reasons, narration is necessary, or text.

Narrated videos

Text-Narrated videos

These are more and more popular thanks to social media distribution because they automatically start playing as you scroll through your feed and they can be watched without sound.

Non-Narrated videos

 

Shooting Your Video

There are two main components to any video: your interviews and your B-roll. The rules of composition we learned for photography (thirds, colors, patterns, symmetry, etc.) all apply here, but you also need to keep an eye out for motion. Tracking shots involve following the action with your camera, while static shots involve keeping your camera still, but that doesn’t mean there’s no motion involved; you might just be letting the action go in and out of the frame.

What is B-roll? And what difference does it make?

A big difference.

Things to keep in mind while you’re shooting B-roll:

1. Shoot more than you think you’ll need.
2. Get a variety of shots. Close-up, medium, wide, detail shots, static shots, tracking shots.
3. Use a tripod whenever possible. If you don’t have one or you’re shooting in a mobile, chaotic situation, be resourceful about stabilizing your shots.
4. Think about your interviews and let them inform your B-roll shooting decisions. Look for shots that illustrate what the person is talking about.
5. Hold your shot longer than you think you need to. A good rule of thumb is to hold it for at least 10 seconds (AFTER it’s already steady).

Things to keep in mind when you’re shooting your interviews:

1. Frame the shot with your subject on one of the thirds, angled so that they’re looking slightly INTO the frame. Have them look at you, not at the camera, so be mindful of where you are sitting. It’s a bit intense when someone looks directly into the camera.

2.  If you’re working with a translator, be mindful that the subject will want to look at them, so make sure they are positioned in the ideal place to draw the person’s gaze.
3.  Prioritize good audio.
4.  Make sure their face is lit, but not too harshly.
5. Think about composing the shot in a way that allows for some negative space where the Lower Third will eventually go.

Obviously, you will be a bit limited in the types of video stories you are able to do at the moment. So here are some suggestions:

• ​Aim to find stories you can report at home or close to home. Interview people you are already in close contact with. There are also a ton of internet/social media stories right now because so much human interaction and creativity is unfolding virtually, so consider finding ways to report on this visually via screen recording tools.
•  Ask your sources to record video on their phones and send it to you. Make sure they orient their phones horizontally. This can include interviews you conduct over the phone or B-roll/video diaries done in the moment while your source is handing out free lunches at an NYC public school, teaching their child from home while struggling to work full-time from home, working a hospital shift, etc.
• Use the Screen Recording feature on your phones to record video from your phone screen, or select “New Screen Recording” in Quicktime to record video off your laptop screen. Use KeepVid to grab videos off of YouTube, if relevant to your story. (Make sure to attribute any videos you grab this way and make sure you only use short clips to stay on the right side of Fair Use.)
• Go out and film only if it’s filming you can do outside by going for a solitary walk or bike ride and from a distance of greater than six feet. Don’t use your wired lav mics to interview people in these situations. Under the circumstances, it’s okay if the audio isn’t perfect. Ask the person to speak up.