In the previous update, you got to see the New York Film Academy (NYFA) Broadcast Journalism summer students out in the field shooting … but following “production,” there is “post-production.”

After screening and logging your footage, you have to write a script (which is sometimes a collaborative experience). If you look carefully, that’s Olivia Newton-John on the poster for the movie Grease, peeking through the window … No, she didn’t participate in the script writing.

Once your script is approved (perhaps by instructor Lexi Philips, or maybe all-star teaching assistant Catherine Kobayashi), it’s time to record your voiceover.

But audio tracks do not magically record themselves, so your classmates monitor your delivery of the script and make sure it gets organized into digital files.

Then all you have to do is edit the story … and re-edit the story … and re-edit the story … and re-edit the story, making sure sure you make deadline to submit it. (What could possibly go wrong?)

If you work hard, you’ll have the skills that will make you competitive in an always challenging job market. Traditionally that meant going to a small-market TV station to prove you “got what it takes.” That’s exactly what NYFA Broadcast Journalism grad Linda Zhang did. She went to Monterey, California and, as her Reporter Reel demonstrates, she got a chance to “do it all”: live shots, news packages, live inserts from a control room studio. And how well did she do all these things? Obviously very well, as she has been hired as an Associate Producer on the Los Angeles unit of Dateline NBC.

Congratulations, Linda!

By the way, Linda joins fellow NYFA grad Sergei Ivonin at NBC. Sergei was a multimedia journalist at Dateline, then moved on to become a producer of long-form and live NBC News programs. His stories run the gamut from confronting Russian President Vladimir Putin, to pop music superstar Ed Sheeran’s admission: “I am insecure.” 

Fabulous, Sergei!