Dylan’s 2021 Internship Portfolio
I returned to the Longwood Athletics department for the Spring semester of 2021 for another internship, this one as the lead contenet creator of the athletic news show, “Lancer Central”. My fall internship was plagued by issues of the pandemic, in having no sports to film, however thsi time we had sports, and we had a lot of them. During the spring semester the fall and spring teams were playing, so there was alot of games in a short amount of time. I ended up completing five epsidoes all on my own. I was tasked with the recording, editing, shooting, and stand ups of my video shoots. Which was really fun, I got first hand experience with doing everything on your own, as well as seeing with my own eyes how busy athletes can be. Their busy schedules can sometimes lead to tricky interviewing windows, which can cause videos to being delayed. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Longwood Athletic department throughout my internship and gaining knowledge and insight that I will be able to implement in the professional world of sports media. One of the main pieces of information I gained from my four months with the department was the ability to test my skills in a professional landscape. I developed and polish my script writing for a video format. Especially the voice over parts, to make them short and sweet while also progressing the story. I used all of these newly learned skills to quickly shoot, edit, and distribute the video content to fans, players, and students of various Longwood Athletic teams. In my time with the Athletic department at Longwood University, it was not all sunny skies. In this Covid troubled time, game cancellations can and did happen very frequently. Then, with the condensed season, the teams and players are very busy. Resulting in interviews having to be delayed or entirely scratched all together. These struggles due to Covid and the busy schedules of the athletic department were obstacles that were overcame in the process.
Below, I have attached my Lancer Central episodes that I created in chronological order and I will touch on what went into each installment.
The first episode of Lancer Central this semester focuses on the Women’s basketball program and more specifically with the appearance of two of the Lancer starters on Sports Center Top 10. This shoot was a learning curve, I had never really done much like this before, but I feel like it was a good first try. I had one MAJOR error, being the misspelled courtesy lower third. Then, I made some changes to the normal Lancer Central style. The first major one is the runtime. Normally these episodes run up towards 10 minutes, but my big goal for the year was to be short and consense. I also made new graphics for Top 6 since the old ones were no where to be seen. Regardless, I feel like these were all changes for the good.
Next up is probably my favorite episode. I added b-roll over my talking bits during the D-Wade story, I had great b-roll that correlates with my VO, and I had a quick and fun episode. My only negative to this shoot is that I wish Wade was a little more energetic, but I feel like this is my most clean piece.
We move from Basketball to Soccer. I had a quick chat with senior forward, Kennedy Culbreath about her season. This episode I ran into one issues and that was b-roll. Finding clips of Kennedy was tough due to the fact the Women’s squad had only played one game at this point in result of a few covid cancellations. So, I had to dig through a full game to find times she was on the live stream.
Moving into my favorite idea of the series, brings us to Softball. I had the idea while filming a softball game to ask about walkup songs and I thin kthe result turned out pretty cool. I had just filmed a “Guess the RnB” challenge with Moton the day before and figured a similar editing style could work with LC. While the segment is a little long, I figured getting everyone’s opinion on each really worked. There were some specific players I would of liked to interview, but due to players schedules I just took who I could get. So all the responses weren’t my favorite, but I liked the end result regardless.
Finally, the last episode I have is Lacrosse with Dana Joss. Here is where my issues with communication in the department due to scheduling begings. Getting this interview scheduled took a lot. But the final result turned out well. The day we filmed, it was POURING outside, so sadly I had to interview Joss inside in a small tight room. So her interview did not look the prettiest, however she had a great story to tell.
