Brief intro of my internship life at VOA

I should have recorded all my internship life since June, when I first went back to Beijing, but the days have flied away before I realize the two internships will soon be officially ended and I will graduate in about a month. Fortunately, I keep my worklog in my diary. So here it is, without timeline order, my brief life of being an intern at CCTV and VOA.

It's been two weeks since I started my internship at VOA (Voice of America) Mandarin branch. I enjoyed it very much as how I did with the days at CCTV. The biggest challenge so far was my work schedule -- 4 a.m. to 12 p.m., Monday through Friday.

I am working with a group of 7 people for a 1-hour TV show called "Issues & Opinions." 10 minutes current events, and then a discussion on certain topics with guest speaker(s), during which audiences can call in to join.

Normally, we will be assigned news by an editor to translate and edit into TV news style around 4 a.m. The news could come from different agencies, such as AP, Router, or VOA Central News, etc.

By the time 5:15 a.m., all the text editing part should be finished, and we will go downstairs to the video editing room to record the VO (voice over) and do the footage editing. Here borns the news packages we use in the show when you hear the news announcer says "VOA reporter has more..." or something like that.

At the same time, another person will be preparing the B-roll for the discussion, which is the video you will see during the discussion of the host and guest(s).

By 7:30, the producer of the day should be in position in B-control room, where all the technic parts happen. There usually are:

Director - who controls the whole show
Chyron - who takes care of captions and headlines
Camera - who switches the cameras (there are 4 cameras in the studio 47 at VOA)
Phone screener - who answers phone calls and register them in system (usually the news announcer after he/she finishes the broadcast)
Producer - stand-by for any emergency

(To be continued...)