![]() Emily Sartin Staff Writer Oh my goodness! CougarTV launched as Apex High’s first video news broadcast on Nov. 18. The pilot episode of CougarTV featured announcements regarding activities/clubs around Apex, a sports report, and a feature on the Cougar of the Week, Anna Parrish. The idea of CougarTV had been discussed for the past two years, originating from the concept of live broadcasts of sporting events such as football, basketball, and lacrosse. Coach Lockwood brought the idea to Coach Hayden during lacrosse playoffs last year; Hayden liked the idea but was hesitant of opposing teams seeing the footage. The idea was resurrected this year and quickly developed into a weekly newscast during homeroom with the hope of live streams of sporting events for the future. The general process for creating an episode of CougarTV is similar to the process followed by a regular newscast. Three to four topics are chosen, and students conduct research, film the piece, create the necessary voice overs, edit the piece, and send it in. The news broadcast, the sections featuring John Mitchell and Michael DeSantis in the previous installment, is filmed as if it were live, and then all the clips are pieced together like a puzzle. CougarTV hopes to report on anything and everything. Ideas that are being planned include a who’s who of teachers and free commercials. CougarTV is currently working with the yearbook on a commercial. The Cougar of the Week (COW) is standard segment in every episode that showcases students, faculty, and staff individually for their accomplishments. Hayden pointed out that the achievements of Apex Cougars is endless; there is “more than any of us know.” In seeking out the first COW, Lockwood asked teachers and received an incredible response. The acronym COW came out of this inquiry for stories. Lockwood accidentally left out the “t,” but the acronym COW stuck, and now every COW will pose by the cow in courtyard.
CougarTV hopes students are entertained, appreciate what is going on around Apex, and have a better source of information after watching an episode. They hope to be able to give recognition to activities and individuals of Apex in a better way. The ultimate goal of CougarTV is to create a full academic, hands-on video production program. Such a program would encompass many different areas of interest including tech, performing, video editing, graphics, et cetera. The hope is the program would have mulit-level classes that build. If students are interested in getting involved with CougarTV, contact either Lockwood or Hayden through email or Twitter. There are quick ten-minute meetings on Mondays in the media center, but students should know that CougarTV is not a class, so everything is done on one’s own time, with the maximum time spent working on CougarTV projects being thirty minutes per week. However, there is one requirement when one joins CougarTV: one must be in front of the camera at least once. This is just the beginning of CougarTV; every week there will be improvement. “You never know you might be the next Cougar of the Week,” Lockwood noted. Comments are closed.
|
Archives
March 2017
Categories
All
|