Quality Control: Re-Evaluating How Good We Actually Are...

TigerTV Ep 305: Spring Swing Brought Great Things! from Ewa Makai Media on Vimeo.

Most of the time when I'm talking about Advanced Media to other teachers or to my regular classes, I try to be as humble as possible and will usually breeze over our accomplishments. I don't do this because my students aren't worthy of praise (they most certainly are when they put their mind to something). Most of the time I do this because I believe that the quality of our work speaks more than the awards we've picked up could ever mean.

Most people outside of Advanced Media have no idea how hard it is to win an STN award, get their video to air on TV, or even how difficult it is to make a good video. But we do, and we should always hold ourselves to a higher standard because of that knowledge. Most people will watch our last TigerTV episode and think it was good enough. I don't think it's even close to the level I know my Advanced Media students can produce and I for one am not satisfied with being "good enough." Below is my critique and random thoughts about my class and their recent show linked above.
​

Background:

Spring TigerTV Show Feedback:

• Extended Time to work on the show after Feb. was cancelled.
• Much less work this quarter when compared to last quarter.
• Strong team of 8th graders in Broadcast that received help from Creative.
• Talked about show improvements after January's show.
  
• Printed out multiple copies of student feedback.

Random Thoughts:

• STN is 16 days away, if this is the quality of work we can produce when given a 7 week work period, do we really have what it takes to be competitive in the STN Crazy 8's News Magazine competition? 
  I'm not so sure now to be honest, but I'm hoping that the Advanced Media members really take some time to reflect and turn this around. I think I've done everything possible I can do up till this point, their success is in their hands now.
• 
  
• What made this show so bad? Was it the director? Was it because of extra-curricular activities? Was it because I didn't make enough of a big deal over January not being that great that everyone was OK with this new lower standard for TigerTV? 
  I think it was a combination of things, but it's really disappointing that this was the outcome.
  

Where to go from here?

That's up to you to decide. You can check out and fake your way through your student-led conference, rush through your sizzle reel, and just bid your time until the year is over. Or you can push yourself to be better, make our last show something special, prove yourselves at STN, and do something to make yourself proud. 

1. Opening/Closing Anchoring segments - background music is too loud. This is a rookie mistake and not something I think we should be making in the 3rd quarter of the year.
2. Tigerfest = Opening Segment/Lead. This should be the strongest segment but most shots are out of focus, video is less than 75 seconds long. Is this really the quality of video we want to open the show with?
3. Anchoring is a HUGE improvement - lots of personality and lines are spoken clearly and cleanly. Great job Noah & Ilima, I almost wish we were doing the Anchoring competition because I was blown away by your anchoring skills. 
4. Editing has become a lot more flashy, but it doesn't make up for a lack of quality shots. Count how often a shot is out of focus or framed/composed poorly. Content > Flash. We really need to work on getting clear, clean, and beautiful composed shots before you start focusing on flashy empty transitions that anyone can download for free of the internet.
5. Talent Show Tryouts = less than 75 seconds. Back to back segments where there's only anchor audio plus b-roll, AND it's relatively short. Where's the interviews? How can this be a report if we're not really talking to anyone or even see an anchor reporting on the event (other than the lead-in shot)? Why no shots of judges? It's got some great nat sound, but it's really lacking in terms of content. This is NOT the direction I want our reporting to go. 
6. Giveaway video is a really fun segment and I hope to see more of this I think audience interaction will take our show to the next level in terms of viewership. But the timing on the questions needs to be worked out. Try to think of it from the audience's perspective and how fast most people can read a screen. Most shots filmed in the back were out of focus (this seems to be a common theme in Advanced Media and is growing to be one of my pet peeves).
7. Music cuts in/out on the dance video (CORE) during sound bites. I really like the concept but would have wanted to see the whole performance, the structure was also weird since we don't hear an anchor soundbite come in till nearly the end. I'm not sure I like the "even though they didn't win," it seems out of place and a bit like it's throwing some shade. No one would have even cared or known they won/lost if it wasn't mentioned. The message of the video isn't dependent on winning/losing either, it's about growing in themselves through dance.
8. Career Day hits most of the right notes. It's informative, visually interesting, well-edited, narrated, and doesn't feel too short or too long. But it's still missing something. This is now the 3rd out of 4 segments in this month's show that recaps an event, but doesn't even talk to the people who participated in it. This makes it feel like we are missing part of the whole picture. Is this how a news-type show should feel?
9. Entertainment went from Spring Cooking to STN info. to Hiki No. This just feels lazy and wasn't even in the planning document at the time the show was published. The theme of the show was: "Bringing some great things into a spring mood," what part of the show even covers a spring mood or is even spring related?
10. For a "SPECIAL" episode this doesn't feel very special. We skipped February and like the Winter Special, this show should be twice as long as a normal episode. Instead it's barely as long as a regular episode. This makes me wonder what your time was spent on in class especially considering there were less assignments given this quarter.
11. Your credits = HOW NOT TO DO CREDITS. The point of credits is to thank every single person who helped in the show inside and OUTSIDE of the class for every single segment. Your credits either indicates we didn't do our jobs very well of including people outside of the class, or that someone was too lazy to type out the entire credit's list. This shouldn't be how the show ends.