THE NEWS IS A JOKE: Week 7 Pitches

For the majority of the week 7 class, each group presented their ‘Pitch’ on the news idea/story that they had been allocated in the weeks prior. After the time we had spent researching and piecing together our news story and pitch, it was a relief to finally have something to show for it and present the idea to our peers.

I genuinely found it interesting to watch everyone’s pitches, some of the news stories I hadn’t really heard of or didn’t know much about, so seeing my friends and peers discuss them from a student perspective allowed me to grasp a better understanding of the stories. Funnily enough, pretty much every single group had taken inspiration from none other than John Oliver himself, who’s personality and presentation is something we are all fond of. I found it interesting that such a majority took influence mostly from John Oliver, his sarcastic, humorous and passive aggressive tone is easily identifiable, his approach to comedy news being heavily reliant on personality, persona and on-screen energy. Oliver’s personality although having similarities to those of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart stands out with a high level of energy and snarky, sarcastic wit. The intensity and

We presented to Ruth, Ed and another RMIT staff member (who I, unfortunately, cannot remember the name of). These 3 were like our ‘judging panel’, after we had completed our 5-minute presentation each of them delivered feedback on how we could expand the story, unpack it and develop it further to create a lengthier segment as well as improve the overall quality of the potential segment. Whilst we had worked on developing our pitch and script for the segment, we found that we may have become so absorbed by the story that we weren’t thinking critically about all the options we had.

We received suggestion from both the panel and class, that we could integrate vox pop footage, which would give a more humorous touch to the segment, and also make for great original footage of Bendigo itself. Although the idea was strong, we quickly realised RMIT would not fund a simple trip to Bendigo, so the idea was greatly appreciated but sadly dismissed, despite how fun it would be.

After the completion of everyone’s pitches, we were to fill out a google form, voting on our top 3 stories we would like to develop into larger news segments for assignment 4. Much to our surprise, Bendigo actually received the most votes, Only a couple minutes before we arrived at class earlier that day, we had said to one another that ‘surely Bendigo won’t get picked’, but here we are. The surprise wasn’t bad, but we were more surprised at how many people were intrigued by a simple story about a country town.

After acknowledging and deciding upon our headlining stories, and discussion of how Assignment 4 was to unfold, we each submitted preferences to a google form about our ideal crew roles for the assignment. I decided, after being Assistant Director in the earlier studio work, that I would like to go a step further and try directing. Although I enjoyed working in the control room and watching things come together separateeperate environment, I had a desire to experience working on the studio floor, and so I listed Camera Operator and Floor Manager as potential roles that I would hope to gain new experience from.