NewTek TriCaster 460 and NDI in the classroom: Election Day TV Coverage
By Jim Bask
Election Day 2016. Polling places jammed with harried voters, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to exercise their rights as citizens and vote for the candidate of their choice. For broadcasters, Election Day can be its own special kind of hell, testing resources, testing nerves, requiring everyone on the team to think on their feet and prepare for any eventuality. Election Day can make or break a young reporter’s career, something Dylan Cleland knows all too well as he stands before the camera grasping his microphone with an unsteady hand.
Cleland is standing just a few feet from a long line of voting booths, ready to do a live report from a local polling station. His throat is dry, his tongue thick. It’s the first live report of the day, and so many things could go wrong.
In his earpiece, Cleland hears anchor, Michael Sciulli throwing to him. His heart begins to race. “Election Monday is in full swing and our reporter, Dylan Cleland, is live in the school library. Dylan?”
Wait. Election Monday? School library?
What’s Going on Here?
As Cleland speaks, voters begin to filter out of the voting booths in the background, and it turns out that all of them are teenagers. The long, neat rows of bookcases lining the room belie the fact that this polling station is indeed housed inside a high school library. From the looks of reporter Cleland, he’s a teenager himself, an eager, fresh-faced young man. Undaunted, Cleland stares into the camera lens and begins his live report. Penn-Trafford High School’s Mock-Election Day coverage is underway.
For the next five hours, the video production crew at Penn-Trafford, a school of approximately 1,300 students twenty miles east of Pittsburgh, will produce live coverage of the school’s mock-election, held a day before America’s official Election Day. But this is no laughable amateur presentation. With a smartly-dressed anchor seated on a chroma-key set, animated graphics cycling through the background showing the latest election results, and live reporters in the field, Penn-Trafford’s election coverage could rival some local broadcast outlets…[continue reading on NewTek blog]