Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Home Stretch

So this is my last two weeks as an intern at CBS4. Time seems to have gone by way too quickly, but I wanted to give whoever reads this an update as to what's been going on lately.

Next week (Saturday, to be exact) is our Intern Newscast. Basically this is a full thirty-minute newscast produced and performed completely by the interns at WFOR. Obviously, this includes anchors and weather/sports talent. The interns who wanted to be anchors had to submit an audition tape to the intern supervisor, Stephanie. The day I taped my audition, I woke up late, was stuck in traffic and was having an overall bad morning. I wanted to blow dry my hair the night before, but I simply didn't have the time, since I didn't get home from the station the night before until midnight. So that morning I blowdried just the front of my hair (hey, it's all you folks see anyway!) and went over the script about a million times before going in to tape it (we were only allowed to tape it once).

I was "OK" with the outcome. I tried incorporating all the things that Stephanie told me to work on. Let me tell you, anchoring is really not all that simple. You have to constantly be aware of what you're saying, how you're saying it, how your face looks, how your inflection is, and how you're interacting with the viewer. It's exhausting trying to remember all of it! Anyway, I was looking over my tape and I was able to catch one of the photographers, who has been so helpful to me over the course of this internship. He's no-nonsense, in-your face, tell-it-like-it is. I love him. Anyway, I knew he would tell me if something wasn't right..... well, he loved it! I took his word for it, left it up to God and pushed my tape into Stephanie's mailbox.

The following Friday, Stephanie commented on how much she loved my tape. She said she was so impressed with my audition and she thought I did a good job. I'm actually very quiet around the newsroom, so I think this made her even more surprised. The next day I got an e-mail... I made anchor! :)

I was so excited. My hard work had finally paid off! The newscast is on Saturday, and to be honest, I'm a little eager to get it out of the way. I'm pressured to do a good job, because a couple of days after the newscast, there's a watch party which everyone in the newsroom is invited to (this includes, reporters, anchors, and managament...eek!). They'll be able to critique our work and give us pointers on what to improve on. It's so exciting! I still have a lot of work to do on my resume tape, and I'm polishing my resume so that I can give it to the Executive Producer tomorrow. I'm nervous. I really, really need this job. Please continue to pray for me to finish strong and be able to show everyone what I'm capable of. Most of all, pray for this job opportunity. I can't tell you how awesome it would be.