Coach Ruth’s Blog

San Diego City College produces Newscene, a half-hour news show that broadcasts every Friday at 6:00 p.m. on ITV Channel 16 (Cox Cable).  As students in the Newscene program, we do it all:  shoot, produce and edit news packages, work behind-the-scenes in production (directing the show, technical directing, running cameras, audio), and so much more.

You can say Newscene is our training ground.  I enjoy working with my fellow classmates, instructors and technical professionals who help us create and deliver the best news product we can, given whatever limited resources we have.

Here’s a behind-the-scene look at Newscene, a 30-minute student-run TV news program which we produce at San Diego City College.  I shot this with Pure Digital’s Flip Ultra HD camcorder and edited the video with the latest version of iMovie.  Super easy!  I’m thinking we can turn the simple footage we shoot into a reality web series.  What do you think?

APTRA Academy 2009

I’m so excited!  Three friends (Katie Anceravage, Steven Commer and Victoria Johnson) from my Newscene class and I are heading up to Calabasas for the APTRA Reporter Camp this weekend.  We’re driving up to Agoura Hills right after Newscene and taking a two-bedroom suite at Homewood Suites (a Hilton property) the night before the two-day camp.  The reporter camp will be in Calabasas at the Cottontail Ranch (Katie, Victoria and I are going to that one) and the anchor camp will be at Pepperdine University (Steven will go to that camp.)  I’m sure we all will learn a lot, make new friends and grow from the experience!

Fireworks in Santee

Your critiques would be greatly appreciated on this story on fireworks and budget constraints.  I already can see that I’ll have to tweak the b-roll audio so that it doesn’t drown out my voice over track.

I used the fabulous (and cheap) Flip Ultra HD camcorder, a QuikPod, a Marantz audio digital recorder, Sennheiser microphone and iMovie HD.  (I used my son’s Intel MacBook, which is a lot faster than my MacBook Pro G4…although I do prefer the editing ease of Final Cut Pro.)