Okay, here’s my latest demo: three plasmas followed by four stories that I shot, edited, produced and fronted between July 13-19, 2011.
The first story is my ride along with the California Highway Patrol in Winterhaven, CA. Except for the interview with Ofc. Steve Gronbach, everything else was hand-held. You have to just “go with the flow” when you’re riding with the CHP. I found traveling 124 m.p.h. to catch a speeder quite thrilling! We use a pro-sumer Canon Vixia-type camcorder at our small-market station. To compensate for our equipment’s shortcomings (namely audio quality), I created the subtitling in Adobe Premier. (We work with both Premier and Grass Valley Edius at our station. You become “fluent” in both systems because you have to work with whatever edit bay is available.)
The second story deals with U.S. Army’s emergency preparation exercise at Yuma Proving Ground. Weeks before the Army installation’s actual “table top” exercise, the YPG Public Affairs Office asked our station to create a simulated “breaking news story” for its training event. The YPG Emergency Operations Center gave us this scenario: high winds cause a train derailment north of YPG (as confirmed by Union Pacific)…toxic chemicals on-board are blowing towards the installation…base communications are down…only forms of working communications are Twitter and Facebook. KSWT News 13 anchor Jennifer Jones, our production crew and I completed the “breaking news” simulation two weeks before YPG’s live exercise on July 18. I set up and shot my simulated “live shot” in one take, as YPG Public Affairs’ Yolie Canales and Operations Center Manager Robert Berocio will attest.
I shot, edited and produced the last two stories (Boxer Pup Adoptions and Yuma Millionaire) in an eight-hour work day. Our assignment editor wanted me to shoot a VO/SOT of Ted Gaffin, who won $1.9 million in the Arizona Lottery before I headed out to interview Billie Ciotti, a 13-year-old aspiring veterinarian and volunteer at the Humane Society of Yuma. After shooting the interview with Gaffin, I called our assignment editor while en-route to Ciotti’s house. “Hey, let’s make this (Yuma Millionaire) a pack!” I just love how things worked out for the two stories. I need to have more days like this! 
