Other than some bad luck getting started on Thursday, I had a great time VJ-ing the weather! It was definitely tricky not having any help with running the camera, or self-filming, but at least editing was easy. *WHEW!*
I tried my best to make the weather segment more than just reading the “Five Day Weather Forecast”– weather has colour and big picture predictions. I tried to add that into my script, but it’s hard when you only have 50 seconds max.
This week brought the surprisingly fun combo of weather camera (morning) and audio technician (afternoon). The day is kept rather busy on this double duty.
Weather Team: Feb 5-7. Jon Mace (reporter) and Kateryna Barnes (camera). The blizzard made for a fun first day. 🙂 Photo by K.Barnes
Schedule:
1) Weather Camera– film tease, report and credit roll. Try for pretty nature shots.
2) Edit– film tease, report and credit roll. Add weather board from CG. Hand over to VTR.
3) Food break, if lucky.
4) Audio control booth for Sports and Entertainment pre-tapes. Hope that you can see what happens next on the teleprompter’s screen in front of you.
5) Possible secondary food break if the first didn’t happen. Chances are, this one won’t happen either.
6) First show record. Usually a little calmer than pre-tapes, but rolling music, mikes and pretapes all at the same time makes me wish I had a third arm. Also, don’t forget to hit record!
7) Definite 1/2 hour break. It’s 2:30 pm by this point.
8) Final show.
It’s hectic indeed, but so far, a lot of fun! I definitely like weather camera a bit more, but part of that has to do with the time I get to spend with one of my favourite people in the program, Jon Mace. He’s a very cool cat and you should check out his over-night traffic reports on 680 News; trust me, his voice is the perfect definition of dulcet tones.
[Update] Here are the weather reports by Jon and I:
Not my first choice, unlike many of my classmates. I really just wanted more writing experience, and my prof Joy Crysdale listened and “raised” the bet, much to my surprise. I was the anchor assigned to the national news beat; my co-host extraordinare Corey (aka “Bring the fear Weir”) wrote international news. We definitely had some stressful and hectic days, but we survived intact, even if I was up at 5 a.m. both Thursday and Friday.
Still, I could not have asked for a better bud on the anchor desk, a more superb studio director (Josh), or fantastic camera techs/hair-fixers (Espe and Hugh).
With a lot less technical hiccups, Kiah and I got two more reports to air! It was a pretty slow news week at Humber, but we made due with our assignments. I’m so happy I was paired with Kiah; we made a great team!
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
Parts two and three should be available after each jump.
Our first show made it to air! Kiah (producer) and I (reporter) had many technological failures (bad luck; nothing we did wrong), but it still made it to air! 🙂
After 35 live @Humber shows, one evening special, numerous newscasts and many more adventures, my tenure in Advanced Radio is over. As a recap of the semester, here’s some of the bigger moments.
Most fun story: Doctor Who’s 50th Anniversary
Best Chase: Toronto City Councillor James Pasternak, Ward 10, after Mayor Ford admitted earlier that day to using cocaine
Hardest story to cover: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women
Most nostalgic interview: Dave Feschuk on his and Michael Grange’s new book on Steve Nash
Most moving interview (tie): White Ribbon with Jeff Perara NWAC President Michele Audette after UN Special Rapporteur’s visit Remembrance Day interview with Anna Rijk (Dutch Embassy in Ottawa)
Best Indigenous Word of the Day:
Best reaction from my classmates:
Radio was fun, but I’m looking forward to TV next semester!
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair speaking to officers in the processional at Const. John Zivcic’s funeral. Photo by Kateryna Barnes
It was cold today, but thousands of officers still lined up in a processional and many marched to the Toronto Congress Centre for the funeral of Const. John Zivcic.
Zivcic was killed after his cruiser struck another car. He was 34 years old.
The funeral brought out all the dignitaries, including Chief Bill Blair, Premier Kathleen Wynne and Mayor Rob Ford.
Lynda Webb, a retired nurse came from Pickering, Ont. for the funeral, despite not knowing Zivcic or his family.
“My heart breaks for this young man; I just want to say thank you to all of the men and women in uniform.”
A couple of the officers from 14 Division I sat next to said it’s a hard part of their job to attend police funerals.
I called into @Humber, after running to my car (quieter) and nearly giving myself an asthma attack for this story.
On December sixth 1989, a lone gunman targeted and killed fourteen women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique, shocking the nation.
According to a Statistics Canada Survey, 51% of Canadian women over the age of 16 have experienced gender-based violence.
Many groups want to change that reality. One such group is The White Ribbon Campaign, an organization focused on motivating men and boys to end gender-based violence.
Jeff Perera is the community engagement manager with the White Ribbon Campaign and I spoke with him about the campaign.
For more information on the campaign, you can visit whiteribbon.ca
Fourteen victims of École Polytechnique
Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student
Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student
Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student
Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student
Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student
Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student
Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student
Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student
Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student
For my final story in Advanced Online, I was very lucky– I got to host Humber News Express. HNE is a more casual and quick dose of the top headlines of the day. I was responsible for choosing the stories, writing them, lining them up, hosting, and cutting the video. I did have help from my friend, Justin Vasko, who was a fantastic videographer and human teleprompter.
Pro tip: make sure your human teleprompter holds your sheets of paper *just below* the camera lens. Or make sure you have a real teleprompter. Either way, I’m still pretty happy with how it turned out, -17 C and all.
For two minutes of Friday’s top headlines, check it out:
“The main issue we’re concerned about whether or not Canadians were caught up in this surveillance,” said Sukanya Pillay, the executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“We’re also concerned about allowing a foreign agency to come on our soil and potentially surveil Canadians.”
The briefing notes don’t detail the targets of the surveillance, but they state that the American embassy in Ottawa was turned into a security command post during a six-day surveillance operation by the NSA during the summit in Toronto.
There were two groups that the surveillance targeted: foreign diplomats and “extremist groups”.
“During the G20 many peaceful protesters and many non-protesters were swept up in the mass arrests,” said Pillay.
“Given that this is what was going on the ground, we’re concerned with what was going on in terms of surveillance.”
When asked by Humber News about the surveillance, the NSA declined to respond to the question.
“While we are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, as a matter of policy the U.S. government has made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations,” Vanee Vines, a publicist with the NSA, told Humber News in an email statement.
CSEC aslo declined to comment.
“Under the law, CSEC does not target Canadians anywhere or any person in Canada through its foreign intelligence activities, ” Lauri Sullivan, a CSEC communications advisor told Humber News in an email.
Sullivan also said CSEC also cannot ask their international colleagues to to act in a manner that circumvents Canadian law.
Pillay told Humber News that there needs to be greater accountability and more transparency, as well as more oversight into Canada’s surveillance agencies.
“We have to guard against unwanted and potentially unlawful surveillance of perfectly innocent Canadians going about their business.”
CSEC has authorization from the Department of National Defence to surveil Canadians, but the authorization is at the department’s discretion, said Pillay.
Both the NSA and the Security Establishment were implicated in widespread surveillance at the 2009 London G20 summit, a year before the Toronto G20 summit. The surveillance in London included the hacking of emails and phones of foreign diplomats. The US documents leaked by Snowden describe this type of surveillance as an aspect of their mandate at the Toronto summit as “providing support to policymakers,” CBC reported.
Kateryna Barnes 