Broadcast Critique - Spirt Squad

Kim Velarde

Art of Video AS 2

Mr. Bigue September 6, 2011

Broadcast Segment Critique

For our very first broadcast segment i had the pleasure of working with Ashley Hoenisch, and i knew almost at the start that we’d be a great duo. We both had the same ideas, and had creative criticism and opinions to give to each other. We came up with your topic for the broadcast segment, because we had realized that the spirit squad (aka cheerleaders, because i had no idea that they were called that) had never been covered. Mutual agreement. We then dispersed, two women on a mission to hunt out as many cheerleaders as we could. Finding them was no problem since we knew who they were, but actually sitting down and scheduling a time to fit them in was more daunting of a task. We had decided it would be best just to visit them during practice, so we came prepared with question that covered the events they did in the summer and what they looked forward to during this year. Our main goal for the segment was to reshape the whole idea of cheerleaders. We banned them from saying the words “like” “Umm” “totally” and we asked them to be super macho and reinforced that if they wanted to change their image it would be up to them.

We chose a specific place to shoot most of our segments, and that was at the track/football field where they practiced day after day. Our background was the field, and the bleachers in most of the shot. Our B-Roll focused on their workouts, and their fancy formation techniques. we wanted to strengthen their unity as a team and make it look like they were a legitimate cheer leading team. Our most creative shots was at the beginning of the footage, we had asked extreme closeups of them to drink water like a boss, to smear charcoal on their cheek bones, and to do push ups... however we only got them to smear the black marks. There is variety, we had changed the location for each interview and we made sure that nothing repeated. We had relied on the tripod for most of our shots, but if there was something i felt we could have done was the use of zooming. The rule of thirds comes natural to us, so had nothing to worry about. Since there were very sunny practices, we made sure to point away from the sun, but utilized the sun to make lighting effects (flares.) Our audio was fabulous, nothing was too inaudible and our music wasn’t too overpowering.

Oh dear, the voice over was a whole new story all by itself. Ashley and I had struggled, since I, who had the voice of a pubescent 12 year old boy, could do nothing in this category. I had to rely on Ashley that she would be peppy and spirited, and i was absolutely right to depend on her. We approached voice overs by being fluent and enthusiastic, and our segment benefited from that. We simply used voice overs for the interview questions, opening, and closing. I thought it blended very well, surely better than my voice! For our final closing, we ended the clip on an exciting note where the coach said that we’d be cheering in professional football games. We wished them luck, and told our Mustangs to look forward to another great year. And the scary thing was that we meant it, my views had changed after interviewing the cheerleaders! Cheerleading is as serious as many other sports, the memorizing, the mile every day, the smiles they were forced to wear, it took a lot to be a cheerleader. Plus, they aren’t as scary as people assume, they’re friendly just like everyone else, they just want to give CAP a good reputation!

Our B-Roll was well organized over all, each B-Roll that made it into the broadcast was well thought out and was actually relevant to our focus. Our audio was really well done, since we had no problems hearing the interviewees and Ashely’s voice overs were very clear and enthusiastic. We used cross dissolves at the beginning at the end, and when introducing a few B-Roll footage leading back into interviews. We had used bars to bring out the names that we added at the bottom of the screen, and text was included while the questions were being asked. Special effects weren’t really necessary, since we focused mainly on the cheerleaders doing activities and formation so the only effects we used were the colored bars on the bottom. One of our classmates reviewed the film and noticed some of our editing was sloppy. We quickly fixed them, and had to export the film a total of five times (because we did it wrong)! However it was truly a great segment!

What i like best about the broadcast segment was the people i got to meet and the people i worked with. Without them, and without the cheerleaders’ extreme effort to step up their repuation none of this would have been possible. If we could have added something, maybe we’d like to include some shots of people trying to do the cheer, but failing miserably. The most important lesson was that you should make sure the camera is always charged before you start recording. I don’t like running, and i especially don’t like running back to the art of video room from the football field in extremely hot weather.