You are a television reporter at a three-alarm fire, and there are casualties. You are given some information and are told that the cameras are about to start rolling, right then and there.This is the scene that many RTV students faced yesterday in a simulation with WB39 photographer and Sam Alumnus Keith Tomshe, who came to speak at the TV News Seminar sponsored by the Texas Association of Broadcast Students. “They had a mic and we got inside, and we recorded them doing their things,” Tomshe said. “They were able to see (the recording) and see how they reacted to getting a story at the last minute, putting it on the air and looking as knowledgeable as possible to the public without looking like you don’t know, because you don’t know very much. They had very few details.”According to Tomshe, the group, which consisted of about 15 students, was split into two groups to see how things worked on both sides.”They swapped to see what it was like being outside with the talent and how it was being inside (the satellite truck) with the engineer,” Tomshe said.Tomshe spoke on photography, editing and live shots to the RTV 263 writing, RTV 270 video production, and RTV 374 broadcast journalism classes, as well as anyone else who wanted to attend, according to Dr. Tony DeMars, RTV associate professor and TABS advisor.”In the photography, we talked a lot about lightinghow to use lights to make your video come out better,” Tomshe said. “We talked about that it’s worth bringing some extra equipment along and showing what a difference it will make in your product.”One of the main purposes of the workshops was to give students real-life experiences, tell them what the market is like and tell them what awaits them after graduation, Tomshe said.”We just discussed different, little quick techniques that (students) could pick from to improve their product here for the cable channel,” he said. “I did three sessions between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. for people that had very small skills and haven’t taken a lot of advanced classes, and some of them were students that are actually a part of the news channel that are putting news on the air right now.”Tomshe also said he spoke at SHSU to give back to the school that he graduated from.”I only go to Sam (to speak) because that’s where I graduated from (in December of 1994),” he said. “I got a bachelor of fine arts in, at the time it was radio and television film, but now it’s RTV, and a minor in broadcast journalism.”Tomshe has worked for KHWB in Houston for a year and two months and worked for FOX for nearly six years before that. Along with working at two television stations, Tomshe owns his own freelance business in Houston and won an Emmy in 1999 for editing.”It was a video for Habitat for Humanity, when they built 100 homes in five days in ’99,” he said about the video that he won the Emmy for. “They took all the tapes from the week of them building these houses to the very end and put that all together and ended up with a like two-minute story. No reporter, just the actual people in the story telling the story.”According to DeMars, about 75 to 100 students participated in the seminar.”There were a lot of people that got something out of it,” Tomshe said. “There were a lot of good questions that people asked.””I think it went really well. (Tomshe) had a lot of really good things to say. It was very practical, real-world things,” DeMars said “It takes a lot of stuff we talk about in books or do around here as practice, but he brought in a professional camera with a professional live truck. People were able to see the real sense about what television news is about.”Many students also enjoyed the seminar and learned a lot from it, according to senior broadcast journalism major Crystal Martin.”You can learn a lot of stuff in the classroom, but until you’re out there, it doesn’t make sense. When someone comes back that’s been out there, every little bit of information from the real world helps,” Martin said. “Each person the in the broadcasting field has a story, so from each person you take each thing they give you, and it helps you somewhere down the road.”Junior RTV production major Jonathan Gillespie said he learned there is quite a bit of preparation that goes into broadcasting.”I think a lot of people, especially some of the younger peoplethe freshmen and sophomores, haven’t really seen a lot of broadcast news and been exposed to the equipment,” Gillespie said. “I think it’s good for them to see what actually goes into a real broadcast instead of seeing the equipment we use on a regular basis and see how much different it is on a professional level than what it is at a university level.”I think people seem to respond to (Tomshe) really well; they seem to grasp what he is saying,” he said. “Hopefully they took away something and will be able to apply it to our newscast here at Sam to make it a little bit better than what it is.”
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