Chapter 17 (1/2)

“Xiao Se, I’ll help you with the video editing

to give you more time to focus on your script. I know your writing speed is

quite slow.”

Hai Dong gathered the camera tapes

after looking at his watch.

Se Cai’s Sony Dsr-150p used

obsolete dvcam tapes. They were similar in properties to the old ca.s.sette tapes

but were smaller in size.

Unlike newer models which

utilized flash drive or storage cards, the video files in such camera couldn’t

be directly copied. It needed to be first converted using professional

video-editing software like edius or adobe premiere.

The conversion process was long and

tedious. It required someone standing by to prevent the tape from clogs,

incomplete conversion and the like.

The fact that Hai Dong as the

program producer volunteered to help Se Cai with such a menial work showed how

much he set store by this news and Se Cai.

“Alright. Thank you, Director

Bai.”

Se Cai thanked Director Bai for

his gracious help and flipped open a laptop to get started on his writing.

County S Tv Station wasn’t

prominent enough to be able to directly send their news to the central station,

they had to go through the station in province city Z. The detour ate into the

time Se Cai had, which was about 1 hour.

Unlike other current news

program, <focus tonight=””>’s beat was society and lifestyle. In other

words, they didn’t have a strict format in their reporting style as long as the

news followed the accepted 5W1H structure.

The common structure for any

news article could be distilled down to this 5W1H. They are What, Why, Who,

When, Where and How. They can form either a pyramid or inverted pyramid structure

to lead the readers and viewers into the details of the news while keeping them

hooked.

Se Cai was skilled at writing

codes but it was a completely different case when it came to writing script. Multiple

times his works were rejected by Director Bai because they were too amateurish.

“This is such an important news…

I shan’t fail now!”

Se Cai took a deep breath as he

opened Microsoft Word. Sadly, there wasn’t even a news outline in his mind.

Se Cai’s fingers hung helplessly

over the keyboard, he couldn’t even form the introduction.

He was struck by writer’s block.

The more he panicked, the more his mind wandered! He couldn’t focus!

Se Cai stared nervously at the

computer screen after he forced out the sentence, “A nerve-wrecking scene

unfolded atop County S’ commercial building this morning…” He was stumped.

“Se Cai, if you can’t perform

under pressure, here, use my script.”

Xu Ran poked his head out to

stare at Se Cai’s blank screen and drawled gleefully, “After all, you don’t

have any journalism educational background. Instead of drawing a blank, might

as well use mine to save the news!”

Xu Ran came back earlier than Se

Cai so he had an ample time to finish his script. Furthermore, even though he

might not appear like it, he did grow up under the influence of his father and

had a degree in journalism.

“Thanks but no thanks, I’m sure