Written by: Kathy Le
I wish that BBN was considered an honors class because of all the work we do.
My production group contains Viet Vu, Tiffany Quach, and myself. We all prefer to plan and organize a script in one day, film everything in less than 4 hours and edit in less than 2 days.
Filming everything in one day is quick and efficient- that is, if we pre-plan correctly. It takes a lot of mental brain stamina to foresee what to film, such as certain angles, tight shots, movements, pans, etc. Not only do we need to have brain power, but we also need to carry around heavy tripods, monopods, cameras (also while being cautious not to break them), bounce cards, light providers and many more essentials to create the perfect package.
We usually wake up at 7 am on a Saturday or Sunday morning to film until noontime. This class constantly comes up with ideas to pitch and produce every 2 weeks nonstop. With approximately 16-17 episodes, that’s a lot of ideas to be pitched and some ideas won’t even get approved by the producers. So what do you do when they reject your idea? Start back from square one.
Not only do we have to constantly come up with ideas, but we have to withstand the criticism that we get from our fellow students and peers. “Oh BBN wasn’t good today.” “I thought it was boring…” “Last year’s BBN was way funnier”..etc. I do understand that we can’t always appeal to every single student that watches the BBN, but it still hurts to put all your effort into something for two weeks only to be shot down by criticism. I do like constructive criticism but the insults that I receive aren’t backed up with reasons or key points to help me improve my packages.
In a nutshell, I just believe that people should appreciate the fact that our school is so privileged for having a Baron Broadcast News instead of shooting us down with insults and comparisons without knowing the actual effort that we BBN members have to deal with all the time.
