Producing the News on High School TV

You can teach them how to focus a video camera or when to cue the anchorman. That’s easy. But learning what to do when you’re on the air and a monitor goes blank or the cue cards suddenly seem to be written in Greek--that comes only with grueling experience, says high school television production teacher Richard Quinones.

This morning, Quinones is trying to give his San Marino High School students a feel for the “down and dirty” part of television news.

It’s just six days into the semester, and, as an exercise, Quinones has his classes producing their first news broadcasts. Each class has just 50 minutes to mark its script with production notes, set up graphics on a display board, plan a series of camera shots and turn out a finished show on videotape--like, say, a segment from Eyewitness News.

The pace is hectic, but in Quinones’ class, stress is a virtue.

“It’s good to put them up against the wall like that,” says Quinones, a short, buoyant man who moves commandingly around the classroom like a basketball point guard. “They’re not used to it. In the class, they can get a sense of what it feels like to be stressed out.”

Feverish Ambiance

For the past eight years, the high school’s television production program has been providing San Marino students with both broadcast skills and the feverish ambiance in which those skills are usually practiced.

Quinones’ more advanced students tape all the school’s football games, produce public service shows, tape band concerts and fashion shows--most of the time for broadcast by the local cable television station.

“The program has had a dramatic impact,” says Barbara Bice, director of school relations and development. “It has broadened the availability of broadcast equipment to the rest of the faculty.”

The experience of producing a kind of pictorial record of the school for broadcast to the public has not only transformed San Marino High School but some of the students as well, school administrators say.

The class has a real-life quality to it that some academic classes lack, contends senior Karie Baker. “In a history class, say, you take a test and it’s, ‘Oh, boy, I got an A,’ ” says Baker, who plans eventually to be a film director. “But with this, it’s actually seen by other people. I’m not the only one seeing it.”

Inevitably, comparisons have been made between Quinones’ pressurized classes and the CBS-TV show “TV 101,” a weekly drama about a crusading high school video news program.

“It’s kind of true to life,” says Baker of the CBS show, with a shrug which indicates she’s unimpressed. “We learn what television news is all about. But I don’t think it (the CBS show) is as real as this class. We’re not out there trying to learn who the drug dealers in school are, if there are any drug dealers. This is hands-on experience. We’re not out to get anybody.”

The San Marino program started eight years ago, with hand-held puppets and a collection of cameras like the ones banks use as security monitors. Now Quinones’ classroom holds more than $30,000 worth of broadcast-quality equipment.

So far, Quinones has used his program more as a public service vehicle then as a provider of news. But he wants to branch out eventually to regular news coverage.

Ask Quinones about the CBS show and he becomes pensive. “ ‘TV 101?’ ” he says. “It’s a very interesting concept.”

A News Show

The idea of student reporters patrolling the school’s hallways for news appeals to Quinones and some of his advanced students. Junior Jason Meagher talks about buttonholing teachers to elicit their opinions on the grade-withholding job action by teachers in Los Angeles or doing an investigative piece about the recent arrest of eight San Marino High School students in connection with the theft of a Chinese business sign.

“The question is whether it’s feasible to start a show like that,” says Meagher.

Quinones thinks so. He talks about starting a program to have video teams covering newsworthy events on and off campus. “We’ll have field reporters feeding stuff live to the career center (in the school),” Quinones said.

Since television production was introduced at San Marino High School, about 97% of whose graduates go on to college, some students have sort of stumbled in and discovered themselves, says Cathy Mencer, the school’s coordinator for the Los Angeles County Regional Occupational Program.

“There’s a little bit of career exploration there,” says Mencer, whose program pays teachers’ salaries and provides the equipment. The regional program also runs other occupational programs in the school, like fashion merchandising and small business management

They Can Do Everything

“Kids see they can do everything--in front of the camera, behind the camera,” adds Bice.

About 750 students have taken at least a semester of Quinones’ class in the past five years. More than 60 have gone on to major in broadcast production in college or to take jobs in the television industry. Quinones teaches four classes a semester, each with 18 students, and there’s a waiting list to get in. “It’s caught on like wildfire,” says Bice.

Quinones’ graduates tend to be downright rapturous about the experience they acquired in high school. “Mr. Q.’s program taught me more than I’ve learned in college,” said Keith Forman, a sophomore at Loyola Marymount University and the news director of the the school’s FM radio station.

“Loyola has a great communications program, but we (San Marino students) have learned so much already that we’re above the preliminary classes. Beginning editing classes and all that stuff--what they’re doing is below what we were doing in high school.”

“Mr. Q shows you how to use the equipment, then he throws you right into it,” adds Will Bortz, another San Marino graduate attending Loyola Marymount. “He has a great respect for the students. If you get to a spot where you’re stuck, he’ll help you. But basically it’s in your hands. It teaches people responsibility. It gives you a lot of self-confidence.”

No Skills at All

Quinones’ current students generally concur.

Jason Meagher says he arrived in the class last year with no skills at all--”nothing besides knowing how to operate a VCR,” he says. But by now, he has a virtual resume of credits behind him. He has produced a half-hour show on runaways, served as a member of the football broadcasting team and hosted talk shows for other student producers. Quinones--who, besides teaching, is a partner in a small independent production company--has even used Meagher as a paid production assistant on a cable television talk show and on a commercial.

“The class has definitely inspired me to go further with it,” says Meagher, who plans to attend a college television production program after he graduates from San Marino.

Most of the students participating in today’s exercise are green recruits, with less than two weeks in Quinones’ class, and they’re a little befuddled by all the equipment. The classroom bristles with track lights and robot-like cameras on wheels. A small room in the back is set up as a control room with a switcher (which can transfer the broadcast image to any one of the three cameras in the studio), an audio mixer, a videotape machine and a row of television monitors.

The trick to running a class full of beginners is to have a handful of experienced technicians in each class--students like Meagher and Baker, who have had at least a semester under Quinones’ tutelage--operating the equipment while the new students look on.

Students Take Over

After a day or two of that, the new students take over at the controls, says the teacher.

“Tomorrow you do it,” he says to one student.

Quinones prowls the classroom studio, adjusting spotlights, moving the desk-like prop on the newscast set, peering critically over students’ shoulders and offering quicksilver comments.

“Hey, look at that headroom there,” he says, checking a shot of student anchorwoman Alyson Sedan on a monitor and noting that there is too much space above her head. “That’s terrible. Tilt down.”

Misdirected cameras come under the category of aesthetic problems, says Quinones. “If the audience is conscious that something doesn’t look right,” he says, “it detaches them from the content of the show. You can’t have those kinds of problems.”

During a side lecture on displaying graphics, one student has a blank look on her face. “You have this look on your face that tells me you’re a little confused,” says Quinones.

The early part of the semester serves as a weeding-out process, Quinones says later. “I can be real hard on them sometimes, but they respect that,” he says of his students. “They can see that obviously this guy is not here to pull their strings.” Students who don’t catch on are asked to leave, Quinones adds.

‘Keeps Me Sharp’

One by one, each news show moves on a rocky course toward a conclusion, and at last, as his fourth-period students file out, Quinones collapses into a chair. He’s generally happy with the results of the day’s project, he says. “The idea is to give the students as realistic an experience with television as possible,” he says.

Overseeing four news broadcasts before noon even provides a special professional benefit for himself, the teacher says. “It keeps me sharp,” he says.

There’s a kind of exhilaration among the students as they move on to their next classes. “It’s really exciting,” says Liz Stratford, a senior who has served as producer of one of the shows. “You have to stay on top of things and be confident in yourself.”

“There’s a lot of pressure,” adds George Rees, another classroom producer, who had to contend with a sputtering piece of equipment. “All the attention was focused on the malfunctioning audio mixer, so I gave the command to dissolve.”

The student broadcasters have confronted a reality and, more or less, conquered. For Quinones, who wants to give his students a taste of the down and dirty, mission accomplished.