Week 5...

Hello all!

Hope all is well stateside and that y'all had a good 4th.
This past week I've been at TVNZ experiencing anything that there is to experience. I've mostly waited around because there hasn't been much happening! It has been a particularly slow news week unfortunately. But I did get to go out on some shoots. Monday, I went to a food bank that recently had to close its doors due to not having enough money for rent.
Tuesday I went on a few shoots where journalists were making some promos for their stories. I also got to see a live feed from the Christchurch newsroom to the main Auckland newsroom.
Yesterday was more eventful. The Dept. of Corrections released a prisoner accidentally. He wasn't supposed to be released until September, but was told to go home Monday. Wednesday morning, he was back into custody. He has four young daughters and his girlfriend was upset that she had to put her daughters through saying goodbye to their Dad again but was glad that he at least got to spend two nights. We interviewed the girlfriend at her home and then a representative from the DOC at the prison. It was an interesting story, but the story ended up being dropped from the 6 p.m. news but I believe it was played on the late news. I got to help the camera man with some lighting issues...in other words I got to hold the reflector. Haha.
It has been an interesting week seeing the behind the scenes operations of a newsroom. You learn a lot from observing. Helped out the operations intern mostly during the week...labelling things, formatting disks (Sony XD...a new format to me), logging feeds, etc. Do I want to do any of this in the future? I don't know...but I definitely know it is a place that I could easily start out at.
The week is coming to a close and next week I will be at TV3. My time here in NZ is quickly coming down to the last few weeks. I'm sad that it's almost over! Hopefully I'll get to do a bit more traveling in the next few weeks.
We've gotten a forecast for a "big" snow here in Christchurch. I'm sure it won't amount to a Boone snow...but it'll be interesting to see snow in July! It hasn't done anything so far but rain and be cold. Next weekend will be interesting, the All Blacks (NZ's rugby team) will be playing at Jade Stadium here in Christchurch and I'm sure it will be super busy!
That's all for now!