Harley Cochran and Lilly Reisenweber on set for West Virginia Today. Credit: Brogan Dozier/WVU Reed School of Media
One thing about Lilly, though, is that she is not very experienced in reporting. This is all still new to her. Lilly is taking the prerequisite course for the class on top of taking the capstone course at the same time. With this lack of experience, I knew Lilly would be nervous on show day. Because of this, I made more of an effort to rehearse with her and prepare all the anchors for our recording on Wednesday.
During our first episode of West Virginia Today, I did not feel that our on-air talent practiced enough to be confident with the script. It was by no means a bad show, but it was not as great as I knew it could be. Because of this, I was tasked to rehearse with the anchors several more times than our usual meeting time on Mondays. We rehearsed for several hours on Monday during two meeting times and another few hours on Tuesday to ensure everyone felt confident in their delivery. Because I wrote the script and must know it intimately to run the show, I am able to understand the anchors’ needs.
During this episode, I tried to focus on the needs of each of the on-air talents. For Claudia, it was about emphasizing the places in the script where she needed to be more light-hearted and upbeat. For Hannah, it was more about memorization because the more she knew the show, the more she felt confident in her read. It also helped to go over our plans for the live interview segment so we were on the same page for how we wanted to guide the interview. Regan’s needs were similar in that the more she practiced, the more confident I could feel she got with her delivery. For Lilly, I helped mark up her script. This included telling her exactly where to breathe or what words to emphasize. It entailed a lot more practice from her so we could develop a tone and pace that felt natural to her. After we got the delivery down, it was all about practice. I explained the difference between speaking from the mouth versus the diaphragm and helped her feel the difference in the delivery based on that.
On show day, I felt confident that everyone was adequately prepared – it was just a matter of convincing them that! While boothing, I try to be extra upbeat and positive to keep them calm and excited despite whatever may be going wrong behind the scenes. Characteristically, I am not naturally a super optimistic person, but on show day, you wouldn't know that. I become everyone’s cheerleader and do whatever it takes to get them camera-ready.
Because I have no interest in being on camera, I never realized the importance of understanding how to markup scripts and have good delivery for a producer, but this show taught me that those abilities are great tools to help teach newer students. Because I had the knowledge, I was able to read portions of the script as an example for the anchors and know what I could reasonably ask of them.