Hunter Kozik is in his second semester of producing Reed School of Media shows. Last semester, he produced the Mountaineer Playbook.
We wrapped up Show #2 of the semester for WVU News LAST week, and I’m proud of everything I learned throughout the process.
For our second newscast, I wanted to try to help my classmates more and be more involved with the group. I knew coming into this semester that it would take time to become comfortable with a new group of people that I had mostly never met before, especially since all of them already knew each other before this class. Going out into the field and working with reporters was one of my favorite parts of Mountaineer Playbook last semester, so this week I tried to volunteer for whatever I could.
The weekend before our production week, I was up at 4 a.m. to meet with Professor Scatterday, a few students from Playbook, and our sports reporter, Nakia Bracy, for an all-day trip to Snowshoe Mountain. After a three-hour drive to get there, we spent the entire day shooting for her story surrounding the USASA competition on the mountain.
Hunter helped Nakia Bracy shoot at Snowshoe Mountain.
Every week, I get to see the critiques and fixes that my professors give to the reporters, and I feel like a big advantage of being a producer is being able to shoot with others and give them feedback from my perspective. Nakia had mentioned to me before that she was nervous about her stand-up, and I did my best to coach her through it. I think, in the end, her package turned out great, and I’m glad I got to have that experience with everyone there.
I also got the chance to go out in the field with our other sports reporter, Brayden Laslo. I shot an interview with him on campus, b-roll, and another interview at a gymnastics practice for his story on mental health for athletes. All the content we gathered came out alright, but one thing I wish I had done better was helping him with planning out the rest of his package. He had mentioned being uncertain about the focus of his story and his plan for a stand-up. He ended up having to reshoot a lot of content to fit better. In the future, I need to be better at helping when someone needs advice like that.
Our in-studio experience this week also gave me a lot to think about going into the rest of our semester together. We faced a lot of issues across the board as a team. I know now that I have a lot to improve about myself to be the best producer I can possibly be for this class. A lot of the issues we had in preparation and on-screen could have been resolved more easily if I had been able to properly coach my classmates and been more in-depth with our checklists before we started.
Overall, this week showed me a lot of things that I will need to fix so that I can properly fulfill this role. However, I think a lot of good came out of everything our team did this week. I’m excited for show #3 and to use the time I have from now until then to become as prepared as possible for what needs to be done.