Amy DiFrancesco

things i would’ve done differently

adz68 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:11:12 +0000

-More input on video from 4804/4806: We didn’t utilize them as effectively as we should have, and they were a wealth of information about topics and coverage.
-I personally would’ve loved to cover another game, but knew it wasn’t really my strong suit. Bowl game trip, anyone?
-More segments: This goes without saying…our original goal over the past semester was to produce 4-5 videos a week. We started pretty strong, but eventually petered out as the weeks passed and, for many weeks, we only ended up with 1 or 2. Personally, the only excuse I can make for myself is that I was in the middle of a fairly demanding scholastic schedule and didn’t always have the time necessary to go film. This is a reflection on how I needed to manage time better with four other classes, but I am proud of the work we did produce.
-More research, and earlier: Again, with both of our schedules, it was really hard for us to schedule time for the kind of research we needed to be doing. If we had a few more weeks we would’ve had a little bit more meat to our research content and more numbers.
-More blog experimentation: Originally we thought of a few Flash-based web features. Obviously those didn’t come to fruition, but I’m also not sure how KMOV’s CMS would’ve handled it.

With that being said, I still had a really positive experience this semester, and I’m very proud of the work that Jessica and I did produce. I learned a lot about dealing with telecommuting and helping lead a team of reporters. Both the content production and the behind the scenes work will be a valuable resource for helping me in the job search.

last assignment week!

adz68 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:10:38 +0000

For our last video assignment, the entire KMOV team for this half of the semester collaborated on a roundtable type show as a season wrap-up. I really enjoyed putting this together because it was kind of what I had envisioned doing for the entire season rather than just several segments each week. Total credit for concept and organization goes to Mike Bittner, who graciously let me produce the segments for KMOV.com. Unfortunately (as I’m writing this, a few days belatedly), the videos haven’t been posted to the website. This is a problem we’ve run into several times this semester where content was created and notification was sent, but it never appeared online. This was particularly a problem right after KMOV switched over to the Clickability CMS, but was remedied after a week or so.

Hopefully those get up sooner rather than later (and I will link them as soon as that happens), because the analysis from the panelists was fantastic. I feel very fortunate that I got to work with a group of extremely knowledgeable and cooperative sports journalists, and I hope that they feel correctly represented in the videos.

Next week is our final capstone presentation, so Jessica and I will be working hard all weekend to make sure all our loose ends are tied up from the semester!

the season’s over?!

adz68 — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:28:07 +0000

I truly can’t believe how quickly this semester has zipped by, and now I only have about 17 days before moving out into the real world.

Since my last post, we did our last weekly videos, and are currently working on a 10-15 minute season wrap-up show. I’m glad we’ll be able to do a more roundtable format, which is almost what I had envisioned for the weekly show each week.

There are several things over the semester that I would’ve liked to have done differently, but that will be reserved for another post after our last show is filmed and posted.

weekly recap

adz68 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:18:15 +0000

Sadly, I was going to make the trip up to KSU for this week’s game, but research papers are preventing me from doing so. Jessica is going as part of her birthday weekend, so I’m hoping she has a good time and takes some great photos for us.

Again, we only had one video this week. Next week, we’ll be producing more because of the vacation week directly after. Really hoping the Tigers can pull out a win this week.

I had originally set up my website on Weebly because of its free options, but after further explorations, I’m finding that there are going to be a lot more fees that go along with it. I haven’t purchased my domain name yet (only have done a few edits on a ___.weebly.com name), so I still have the opportunity to change to a cheaper option.

last week

adz68 — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:44:31 +0000

This past week, I sadly ran into a little trouble in terms of getting things uploaded. Meaning there was no updates posted to the web (even though they were created). Which makes me look terrible and unprofessional. Trying to make up for it this week…

Recently I’ve been doing a fair amount of work on getting my web portfolio updated. The problems I’ve been running into are making sure I’m able to support video and audio content (audio is my problem so far), but now that I received a paycheck today, I’ll be able to buy my domain name (FINALLY!). Being a broke college student has way more repercussions than anticipated.

Update for last week

adz68 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:51:20 +0000

Whoa, totally missed the update there. I’ve been sick for the past week and a half, so things have been a little fuzzy in my head lately.

Mizzou finally got another win this past week, which is awesome. We did a lot of work looking through web analytics, and we found out that the interest is down from last year, and even less when the team doesn’t win. We’re hoping for a spike in readership this week on the blog and on the video site.

Personally, I’ve been so busy that I’ve only had time to be doing one video for myself a week, which I’m not happy with, considering our goal has been to have 4 or 5 each week. Definitely trying to step up and finish the semester strong.

Week 9

adz68 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:36:28 +0000

This week is Homecoming, so of course I’m waxing nostalgic about it already before I even graduate. We already have our trivia video up for the week, but wanted to also do a bunch of Homecoming related features as well. However, most of this is not taking place until tonight and tomorrow, so I’ll be out shooting in the coming hours.

We also got to meet with Bryce this week at the Media Career Fair, where he gave us a good impression as to what he thought of our work so far this semester. I was very glad to finally be able to meet with him and get that feedback.

Halfway done?

adz68 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:59:03 +0000

The past week was our halfway point in the semester, and frankly I can’t believe it. Only eight more weeks left of college for me, and the thought of life after Mizzou is terrifying to me…

We had two videos on the site this week, and are back to our goal of five for this coming week (both of us were bogged down in midterms and papers making it a pretty difficult week). Plus, it’s Homecoming, so there will be a lot of extra content from around town and campus.

We also have a survey made up that we will be distributing soon.

Week 7 Recap

adz68 — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:45:08 +0000

Well, it was a fairly heartbreaking week for the Tigers last week. A cold soggy game that turned up Mizzou’s first loss of the season. As a sports fan, pretty disappointing. At least the Browns won on Sunday (which we all know is a sign of the apocalypse).

As far as our videos from the week, the only one that was posted was our weekly trivia, which can be found here. We did other filming at the pep rally last week as well, but for some reason it was never posted. Now that we are at the mid-point in the semester, I’m thinking the two of us just got bogged down in midterms…

As for me, after the 13th I am free and clear at least for a little while. With the game against OSU coming up this week, we have a few new ideas to put into production. It’s a special game for Jessica, as many of her family members are OSU alums.

Here’s hoping to a successful week and a victory in Stillwater on Saturday.

Week 6

adz68 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:36:24 +0000

I can’t believe we’re already into Week 6…this is my last semester at Mizzou, so I’m getting fairly nostalgic already.

This week was a bye-week for the football team, so we didn’t have any footage for the web. We had our research presentation on Monday, which I think went fairly well. I’m proud of what we’ve been producing so far, and I’m excited to get official research started with the focus group so that we can get a good picture of how our product is coming across.

We are tentatively traveling to St. Louis tomorrow to meet with Bryce about the project. I’m definitely looking forward to finally meeting Bryce in person to establish a better work relationship. We are also planning on shooting all of our footage and posting them up by Monday since our game is on Thursday this week.