Town Meeting is something that I had no idea about until I started doing news in VT. Last year for Town Meeting I was a photographer. I bounced from town to town trying to capture the very best moments. It was hectic and it was a long day.
For Town Meeting this year I did not go out and shoot because I was the director of the 5:30 show. On a normal day, as a director, I arrive at the station around 3:30 but on Town Meeting I was in at noon. I probably could have been in earlier. Along with working with the producer to put a show together I edited the footage that was constantly coming in. As 2:00 approached it became apparent that the newsbreak director was not going to make it back in time so I picked up the responsibility.
The newsbreak was very different on Town Meeting. Instead of a 2 min broadcast it was 5 min long and included a liveshot. The newsbreak the day before took the same format and there were some complications. Luckily for everyone the newsbreak went smoothly.
Deadline for the show was fast approaching and there were still several reporters and photographers still out in the field. I had never had a liveshot in my show before so I was nervous. The producer had more stories than he knew what to do with and cuts were still being made at 5:00. On a normal day I have my scripts at 4:30 but today they finished printing at 5:10 giving me only 20 min to read through my scripts and mark them acroding to the rundown. I wasn’t able to mark my entire script only the A and B block, the first half of the show, which were the more important ones because they had the liveshots. From C block on I just had my rundown to guide me basically looking at it for the first time.
The beginning of the show was crazy. We had a liveshot in A block and one in B block. We needed to take a full PSA break to prepare for the second liveshot. The producer wasn’t prepared for this so instantly the show wasn’t timed correctly. Because of the content of the show went a little longer than expected we had to cut the weatherman, Andrew, short…twice. That was actually bad timing because of the storm coming Tuesday night/Wednesday which voters might have been concerned about. The weather didn’t turn out to be much so I guess it all worked out in the end.
Town Meeting was an exhilarating experience and if I am not in VT next year I will really miss it.
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