Quinten Seghers first discovered his passion for journalism at his high school newspaper — The Phoenix. There, he witnessed firsthand the value of storytelling and decided to make a career out of it. Now he is a sophomore majoring in journalism at University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. If you are on campus, odds are that you will catch him in either the Daily Trojan newsroom or in the Annenberg Media center. As a proper news junkie, Quinten from a young age was going online not to play video games, but rather, to read articles from outlets like CNN, Vox and the NYT. At USC, he found out that he had a soft spot for broadcast news, and hopes to land a job in that sector.
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PHOTO ESSAY
For the photo essay, we had to cover an event, an activity or a group and create a five-shot plan following the photography principles we learned about in respect to light, composition, and technique. We also had to conduct interviews and write up a 500-word article to accompany the photos.
I chose to cover La CASA’s opening celebration event for the Latinx/e Heritage Month kickoff celebration event which took place just days before their new place in the student union center opened up. Before going to the event I contacted and met up with one of La CASA’s Undergraduate Culture Ambassadors to get a better understanding of the significance of the month as well as get a little tour of the new place. I went to the event armed with my iPhone and my press pass, and I simply walked around and around the event room, snapping pictures whenever something interesting happened. I did ask Micaela Zamora, the RCA I had met up with earlier, to pose for one of the shots. I learned a lot from the assignment, namely, I learned how attentive one has to be while on assignment. Getting perfect, natural shots always is possible, one just has to be in the right place at the right time. For a journalist on deadline though, that means constantly scouring the event and having your head on a swivel. A moment of hesitation can make all the difference. I missed out on a couple of potentially really good shots because I got caught up talking to another reporter from Annenberg Media who was also covering that event. In the future, I will make sure that that never happens again.
Looking back on the experience, something I would do differently is getting closer in for my photos. Yes it can be awkward to randomly take photos of strangers and yes they may ask why you are taking photos of them but I just have to remind myself that, at the end of the day, I am trying to get the story out. It is always better to take the shot and then explain why you are taking the photos, instead of immediately asking for permission, thus ruining the authenticity of the shot and therefore the impact of the photo too *granted only when the subjects are in a public place where photography is legally permissible.*
MIDTERM EXPLAINER VIDEO
For the midterm explainer video, we could choose any topic or question to explain that we wanted, so long as it had a visual component to it. The video had to be a minute long max and it had to be formatted to fit the Youtube shorts aspect ratio. I chose to explain what the terms Latinx/e meant, and I peppered the video with opinions from some students who were in the La CASA student center.
I secured the interviews by befriending La CASA center supervisor Leticia Delgado. Once I had gained her trust, I was given permission to roam the La CASA student center to hunt for interviews, to ascertain general sentiments on Latinx/e and to film from inside the center. That was a crucial step for me because by having access to the center, I therefore also had easy access to lots of Latina/e/o/x students. After all that, I went to the Latinx/e Heritage Month Celebration event — a different one from the photo essay — to collect all of my b-roll shots. Editing this project was the very first time I had ever worked on Adobe Premiere Pro before. So, while the learning curve was quite steep for me, it only made the reward — a well-executed minute long explainer video — even sweeter.
This assignment, more than any other this semester, taught me the importance of building and maintaining professional relationships and potential contacts for future stories. I never would have gotten access to those great interviewees and therefore those great sound bites if I had not introduced myself to Ms. Delgado at the Latinx/e Heritage Month Kickoff celebration earlier this month and initiated a conversation with her about La CASA. I showed her on that day that I was intrigued by and legitimately committed to covering La CASA. Thus, I was able to get this great story because of that connection.
INSTAGRAM STORY ASSIGNMENT
For the Instagram story assignment, we had to pretend to be a reporter from a news outlet of our choosing. We then had to choose one of their stories, and distill the pertinent information from that story into an easily consumable Instagram story format. The original reporting had to have a text story, some visual component and interviews for you to work off of. We also had to follow the “story slides” format shown in class whilst attempting to create a cohesive and interactive Instagram story following the same design principles we were practicing with throughout the semester.
Armed with this knowledge, I hopped onto my preferred news source — Vox — and I chose a video report they had recently done on the rise and history of brutalist architecture on college campuses. The story was multi-faceted and getting all the information not only on the slides, but in a way and manner that flowed easily for a scrolling Instagram user was a challenge. I ultimately felt I was able to — thanks in large part to Canva’s easy to use interface — get the information I wanted on the slides. However, I did not realize that one has to be mindful of keeping design elements away from the edges of the screen so as to prevent anything from being cut off by Instagram’s user interface. In any case, I was impressed by the fact that one could on Instagram combine both regular still slides with video slides, and I used that to my full advantage.
Whilst putting the final touches on my slides, I came to appreciate the time, effort and energy that today’s multimedia journalists have to take to ensure that their content is compatible with as many platforms as possible. Walking away from this experience, I learned that every single social media platform is different. Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses in terms of which type of content thrives on it. Before going into this project, I just thought of all social media platforms as being in the same big bucket and that all types of media would work just as well on any given platform. In retrospect, I now know just how faulty that thinking was.
FINAL VIDEO PROJECT
For the final video project, we had to choose a character or issue that was somehow related to the theme of adversity. Then, we had to get b-roll, interviews, natural sound, soundbites, sequences and edit it all to create a strong, accurate and compelling story arc. I chose to do my video Unsent — The Letter Project, which is the passion project of a USC senior Isabella Escalona.
I went onto the USC event calendar and decided to stop by the tent one regular morning to get some b-roll and footage. However, I soon realized that there was no tent to be seen next to Hecuba! So I went on Friday to Hahn Plaza like the event calendar said, but, yet again, there was no tent to be found. It was only after going to Isabella’s Instagram page did I realize that she had changed all the times for the project and that the USC event calendar was outdated. Finally, on the third try, I succeeded in getting to the tent. Not only that, but I caught Isabella in the process of setting it up! I talked to her at length and proceeded to talk b-roll of her continuing to set up the tent, took some more shots once people started streaming in, and got some interviews. I had to go to class but I came back after class and took even more b-roll shots just in case. I was so glad I did because I could then use the closer to the end of the day, darker footage to cue to the reader that the story was coming to an end. What I had originally thought to be a negative (having shots from different times of the day) actually turned out to be a huge benefit.
Walking away from this project, I learned two very important lessons. One, there is no such thing as too much footage and two, always do your homework so as to prevent yourself from going on a wild goose chase around campus looking for a tent that is not there.