I was offered the opportunity to try something a little new for me. Journalism.
Filming a video is one thing, but creating news is an entirely different beast which I got to tackle under the mentorship of Copper Beacon's editor Joshua Vissers.
Accessibility is a really big topic and I was only able to barely skim the surface of it with this video. I learned a lot and now I can say that I'm actually a journalist!
You can view my story in context on Copper Beacon.
Researching the Story
The first thing I had to do was figure out what topic I wanted to cover. I wasn't given a story to tell, I had to actually go out and find a beat with only the loosest of guidelines. My editor wanted a story that was timely or relevant to the Keweenaw community in some way. I ended up broadly choosing "Accessibility at Michigan Tech" and got to work.
I met with a number of students and staff members trying to figure out who would be the best interviews for my story. In the end I had a meeting with the Dean of Students, President of the Graduate Student Government, as well as the Campus Architect. I had to work around my interviewees schedules and drag all of my gear with me to campus, but I managed to secure the three interviews.
After filming though, I wasn't done. I had to find supplemental information such as images from the MTU Digital Archives to help illustrate my interviews.
Editing the Video
The actual editing (a.k.a. flailing around in adobe premiere) was a fraction of the overall work on this story. Once you've got all the pieces, they tend to come together pretty quickly. I only spent a few hours actually cutting and arranging the footage, audio, and graphics.
I spent a lot of time trying to make this part of my project as easy as possible by being meticulously organized with my files and with my filming process, which really paid dividends. There's definitely room for improvement.
Follow Up?
There was so much I couldn't cover in a five minute video. I wanted to talk through the history of Michigan Tech's campus to explain in more detail how we ended up with some areas of extremely poor accessibility as well as look into the future at what plans are in the works. I also really wanted to get more voices (particularly student voices) to help better illustrate this story, but the practical limits of my time and resources ended up forcing me to scale back.
I'd love to revisit this topic in the future though, so we'll see!
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