The Bear Den Media weekly videos and articles are put together by a great team of students and teachers as a part of the Broadcast Media class. The students work hard and long in order to produce these videos and articles and the process of doing so can be a lengthy and challenging task. The 6th period class and the 8th period class both rotate their tasks each week, so when one class is producing the Bear Necessities video, the other is working on producing articles for the news website.
When it is time to create a video, the class must all decide on what they want their segment to be, and who the main anchors and the sports anchors should be. The segments are often produced by teams of 2 or 3, and they may include informational news, fun interviews, and recaps of previous events. After the students working on the segments hook up their microphones to their shirts and link them to their iPads, they head out around the school looking for any teachers or students to interview about their topic. After all of the footage is captured for the segment, the team has to carefully compose the clips together using iMovie and sometimes add music to the background. The anchors for the videos have to compose their own scripts to read off of based on any current events happening related to the school. After making their scripts, they’re ready to get in front of the camera for filming in the media room. One of the anchors, foreign exchange student Katie Rink says “It’s a lot of fun and I always hope that I don’t mess up.” Filming often only takes one period to complete, as long as the anchors aren’t having any trouble keeping themselves composed and laughing, as can be seen in the blooper videos on the Bear Den news instagram account. After all of the footage is completed, it is all put together and uploaded to YouTube on Fridays.
When it is time to write an article for the news website, the students must think of a relevant topic to write about that people would be interested in reading. The articles can consist of movie reviews, informational news, upcoming events, and more. The articles must be a minimum of 200 words and have one picture and one quote. The students must write their article in a week’s time and upload it to the Bear Den News website. Once the articles are uploaded, the analytics can be viewed by the members of the Broadcast Media team to see how popular and viewed their stories are. The Broadcast Media class is a hard working team that must put together many great new stories and videos each week, persevering through any challenges that come their way.
