When I was named Mountaineer Playbook producer I knew the long hours and hard work that was ahead of me. But you never really understand it until you do it for the first time. Being a producer all starts the week before the show. You gather everyone’s pitches and make sure everyone is on track to turn in their best product before the deadline. Fast forward to the Friday before the show and the producer's meeting. The producer's meeting is where the student producers as well as Professors Scatterday and Marra watch everyone’s final packages and finalize the show rundown. The producer's meeting for me was all about learning about how to choose the best packages and what a great package truly is. I was proud of my fellow students because they made it hard for us to pick just a couple packages.
It was now on to writing the script which I have already decided is going to be the hardest part of my job as producer. I laughed when Professor Marra said we would probably spend 10-12 hours on the script, but she wasn’t joking. I spent all of Friday and Saturday evening as well as Sunday morning writing and finalizing the script. I spent 3 hours on WVU Stats alone trying to find the correct statistics for one of my Anchor leads! At last, it was show day! Some people might think I am crazy, but this is the part of the process that I feel the most comfortable with. My experience working in the control room for WVU Athletic Video has prepared me for the fast-paced, noisy, and hectic environment that is the control room. With my experience, I can keep a level head and tackle multiple conversations and problems as they arise.
We filmed three takes for this show. My assistant producer and I both did one take of boothing as well as Professor Marra did a take to show us how to do it. I think the problem we had the most that day was timing. Our show has to hit 14 and a half minutes; it can’t go over and it can’t be under. Our show kept going over time which couldn’t happen but finally, we were able to get it to a good time and that is the show that aired!
I'm so proud of the whole crew who took part in this show. I can't wait to see the improvement throughout the semester. Alanna Guertin