Chapter 8 Test

(Instructions: Email me your answer to this essay before the beginning of class on the day of the final exam for Journlaism 61. You DO NOT need to post the answer on your blog. Just send it to me via email).

Essay question: How will media convergence transform the newsroom of the future? Give specific examples in your essay of how this will happen.

Chapter 9: Broadcasting Study Guide

You need to be familiar with the 10 key differences between writing for broadcast and writing for print including the need to be more conversational and friendlier in your tone for broadcast than you would for print.

Understand the reason that broadcast puts attribution before assertion and what that term means.

Why are crime stories the bread and butter of TV broadcast news?

Be able to give examples of how broadcast is written for the ear and not the eye.

Be familiar with the technical terms used in TV such as voice-over, B-roll, anchor, talent, etc.

You should also know the meaning of such common terms as toss, tease, cut, out-cue, sound bite and reader.

Why is broadcast news written in the All-CAPS format?

Be prepared to write a broadcast script in the proper format so that it looks like a professional broadcast script.

How long is the average TV broadcast news story?

(Ignore the section on radio broadcasting for this test. We will focus on TV news).

Another student broadcast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyVoGpi9KNs&feature=youtu.be

Student broadcast example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSO2tO0yERE

J 61 Newswriting Final Spring 2013

Background info: The famous San Francisco corner of Haight Ashbury is synonymous with hippies, drugs and the counterculture revolution of the 1960s. This unique neighborhood celebrates its counterculture history every year with a street fair that draws a unique crowd of tourists, hippies, businessmen, hookers and any and everyone else you can imagine. This year’s Haight Ashbury Street Fair will be held June 9, 2013.

Your final will be a two-part assignment related to this street fair.

Part 1: Write a press release promoting this event. Imagine you work for one of the vendors sponsoring the fair. Write a descriptive, colorful press release capturing the flavor of what makes Haight Ashbury one of the most celebrated neighborhoods in the world.

Part 2: Produce a one-minute news broadcast and write a TV news broadcast script on this unique event. The video will be aired before the event so you will need to talk about the event giving the viewer an appreciation of why Haight Ashbury is so special. You will also need to include basic information such as the date, time and location of the event – information people will need who might want to attend. Incorporate images or video from the Internet that will symbolize this iconic neighborhood. The video needs to be one minute long and posted on YouTube. You need to follow your broadcast script in your video. Stick closely to the script and time your broadcast. The closer your video sticks to the one-minute time limit the better.

Grading: It will be based on the quality of the writing in your press release and your TV broadcast script. The video will be graded on professional broadcast journalism standards based on the video’s creativity, your professionalism and your ability to deliver valuable information within the confines of one minutes. It’s important to stay as close as possible to the one-minute time frame.

Deadline: The video, broadcast script and press release deadline is Tuesday May 7 at the beginning of class. See the website www.haightashburystreetfair.org for additional information.

First person column example

This Chris Erskine column on running his first marathon is a great example of writing a column based on a personal experience. Erskine deftly combines humor with a poignant remembrance of the friend who inspired him to run this marathon. Read this column and look for references of how Erskine feels about his marathon experience. Also look for descriptive references in the column.

Lots of good reasons I shouldn't be doing this. I'm not even a little bit Kenyan. I've undertrained. After an hour, we haven't really even left downtown and appear to be circling back to where we started, Dodger Stadium.

This is my first marathon. And my last.

I was intrigued by the idea of running from the "stadium to the sea," and charmed that it was to happen on St. Patrick's Day, a convergence of pain and pleasure that only the Irish could admire.

Ninety minutes in, my legs feel like Roman candles and I still don't have a beer in hand.

I am with 24,000 other silly souls, dressed in our underwear, through a part of town so tough they even tattoo the cars.

There are port-o-potties everywhere, but never enough, and the lines are 10 deep. Thwack-thwack-thwack go the plastic doors. Thwack-thwack-thwaaaack. And the lines get no shorter.

At one point, I duck into a bar that hasn't even opened (Thanks, Oscar). I consider spending the day there, locked in the loo, which is a better fate than what awaits me back on the streets.

Yet, onward I go.

I have run a lot of races, but never one this far, 26.2 miles, an average of 40,000 steps, they say.

If you've never run such a race, let me give you a little perspective: Imagine running a 5K, which takes a fit runner 15 to 20 minutes and leaves him or her pretty gassed. Now add five hours to that.

That's a marathon.

How the winners complete this in a little more than two hours boggles the mind — that's just showing off.

A two-hour marathon is, to me, the equivalent of dunking on a 15-foot basket. Of sprinting the 40 in 2.3 seconds.

I'm doing this impossible task in honor of my late buddy Rhymer, raising money to fight the cancer that consumed him, sponsored by a bunch of our knucklehead friends who miss him — like me — more than even an Irish poet could describe.

Miss the guy for a hundred reasons, but especially on days like this, when I want to call him from the course and describe the running Elvises, or the drag queens lining Sunset, or that wonder woman, Julie Weiss, who has run 52 marathons in the last year to honor her dad.

No way am I running 52 marathons, buddy, not even for you. Chances are I might not even finish this one.

Yet, onward I go.

Miss my buddy Rhymer because of the yuks he would get over the communal Vaseline boards. As they go, the runners high-five a piece of scrap cardboard smeared with Vaseline, then apply it to the private parts prone to chafing.

This includes, I assure you, the male nipple, normally so forgotten and alone, some sort of mammalian remnant that — like a vestigial tail, or the show "Two and a Half Men" — has outlived its usefulness.

Let me tell you that after 26.2 miles, the male nipple is very much not forgotten.

My threshold of pain, by the way, turns out to be somewhere between that of Dorothy of Oz (a wandering princess) and Andrew Bynum (also a wandering princess).

I am sustained, fortunately, by the thousands of good folks lining the route, with signs: WHINE NOW, BEER LATER, or the existential KEEP RUNNING RANDOM STRANGER!

By Mile 14, I think I might've sucked down some bad tuna, for I'm not really paying close attention to what volunteers are handing me.

I'm mostly just "in the zone" and focusing on staying clear of the Vaseline boards, upon which I fear I might become permanently slogged.

Splaaaaaaaaaaaat. Take that, random stranger.

There is some sort of mitzvah going on in my intestines, but as I said, the port-o-potty lines are 10 deep. I would pay a million bucks for a porcelain toilet. OK, a million-five, but that's as high as I'm going.

By the way, this was all made possible by my running coach, Shannon Farar-Griefer, legendary in the world of ultra-marathons, who said one day after a seven-mile jog: "Sure, you can do this. We'll just scoop you up with a spoon when it's over."

With stories of 100-mile races so hot they melted her shoes, Farar-Griefer is an inspiring sort, though no real judge of character, obviously.

Because, after finishing in five hours and 20 minutes, I realize that there's only one way for a guy like me to run this race.

And that's to take a taxi.

A journalist's cautionary tale

A cautionary tale for journalists

This column offers an interesting perspective on working in the media by someone who loved her career but did not see a future in it. What's your reaction to what she has to say about choosing journalism as a career?

By Allyson Bird (Former reporter)

I get asked two questions several times a week, and I brush off both with a verbal swat.

One — because I’m in my late 20s, I suppose – is when are you getting married? And the other, because it seems like small talk, is why did you leave the newspaper?

I could answer both with a single word: Money.

But I usually deflect the marriage subject, wrongly justifying it as an acceptable passing question, with a practical reason: I’m not eager to have children.

And I answer the news question with something to which my audience can nod along: “It didn’t seem like a sustainable career path.”

But that’s a cold and detached answer. I don’t feel cold and detached about news, and I only give that response under the assumption that people don’t want to hang around for the full story – ironically, the same reason newspapers aren’t really working anymore.

So here goes. This is the real reason why I left news: I finally came to accept that the vanity of a byline was keeping me in a job that left me physically and emotionally exhausted, yet supremely unsatisfied.

I started working at newspapers in 2005, the tail-end of the good days. During my first year of work, a Florida newspaper flew me down to the Mexican border to write about cocaine cartel murders back at home.

We booked the first available flight, disregarding expense, and arrived before the investigators. That would not happen at a daily newspaper today.

I don’t think the Internet killed newspapers. Newspapers killed newspapers.

People like to say that print media didn’t adapt to online demand, but that’s only part of it. The corporate folks who manage newspapers tried to comply with the whims of a thankless audience with a microscopic attention span.

And newspaper staffers tried to comply with the demands of a thankless establishment that often didn’t even read their work. Everyone lost.

People came to demand CNN’s 24-hour news format from every news outlet, including local newspapers.

And the news outlets nodded their heads in response, scrambling into action without offering anything to the employees who were now expected to check their emails after hours and to stay connected with readers through social media in between stories.

There was never such a thing as an eight-hour workday at newspapers, but overtime became the stuff of legend.

You knew better than to demand fair compensation. If any agency that a newspaper covered had refused to pay employees for their time, the front-page headlines wouldn’t cease.

But when it came to watching out for themselves, the watchdogs kept their heads down.

A little more than a month after I left the newspaper, I went to Key West for a friend’s wedding. I realized on the drive home that I had never taken a vacation – aside from a few international trips – without some editor calling with a question about a story.

 I remember walking down Fifth Avenue in New York on my birthday a few years ago, my cell phone clutched to my ear and mascara running down my face, as an editor told me that he thought the way I had characterized a little girl with cancer needed to be sadder.

To many people, and even to me, part of the draw of news is that it never stops. You wholly invest yourself in a story – until something bigger happens. 

The only guarantee in any workday is the adrenaline rush. And even when the story isn’t terribly thrilling, you’ve still got a deadline to contend with, a finite amount of time to turn whatever mess you’ve got into 12 to 15 column inches that strangers would want to read.

The flip side to the excitement is the burnout. You’re exhausted, and you’re never really “off.”

You get called out of a sound sleep to drive out to a crime scene and try to talk with surviving relatives. You wake up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat, realizing you’ve misspelled a city councilman’s name.

You spend nights and weekends chipping away at the enterprise stories that you never have time to write on the clock.

Everyone works so hard for so long and for such little compensation. The results are dangerous.

We saw it with the Supreme Court health care ruling, as our national news leaders reported the decision incorrectly.

We saw it with the Newtown massacre, when initial reports named the suspect’s brother as the shooter.

Major news outlets are no better than bloggers if they adopt a policy of getting it out first and correcting it later. They don’t have the money to fend off the resulting lawsuits, and they don’t have the circulation numbers to allow people to lose faith in their product.

Newspapers always have been liberal places where people work hard for little pay, because they believe in the job.

They always could empathize with the poor. But pay continues to dwindle to the point that I wonder what kind of person, today, enrolls in journalism school?

I took a pay cut when I moved back from Florida to Charleston, expecting to make up the difference quickly. Instead, I quit my newspaper job at 28, making less money than earned when I was 22.

I can’t imagine anyone outside of an affluent family pursuing a career with so little room for financial growth.

And I wonder: Would that well-to-do reporter shake hands with the homeless person she interviews?

Would she walk into a ghetto and knock on a door to speak with the mother of a shooting victim?

Or would she just post some really profound tweets with fantastic hash tags?

Maybe that’s what people – editors and readers – put at a premium now. Maybe a newsroom full of fresh-from-the-dorm reporters who stay at their desks, rehashing press releases and working on Storify instead of actual stories, is what will keep newspapers relevant.

But I doubt it.

The day I announced my resignation, I had to cover the alcohol ban on Folly Beach. The photographer working the story with me said very little about my decision, except for one heartbreaking statement: “But you were made to do this.”

I had thought so, too. For so long, people had asked me what I would do if my name wound up on a future round of layoffs, if my paycheck were furloughed into oblivion.

I had spent countless hours late at night trolling online for something else that appealed to me. But covering news was the only thing I ever had wanted to do and the only thing I ever had imagined doing.

I started writing stories for my local newspaper when I was 16. I worked seven internships in college, eager to graduate and get into a newsroom.

I left school early, school that was already paid for with enough scholarship money that I took home a check each semester, so that I could lug my 21-year-old life to West Palm Beach and work the Christmas crime shift alone in a bureau. And I wouldn’t change that decision for anything.

People in news like to describe a colleague’s departure, especially into a public relations or marketing job, as “going to the dark side.”

When word of my resignation traveled through the newsroom, I heard “dark side” references over and over, always with a smile and a wink. I couldn’t help but resent them. But I looked over my cubicle each time and flashed my best Miss America grin instead of the middle finger poised over my keyboard.

I now write for the fundraising arm of a public hospital. Anyone who thinks that’s going to the dark side is delusional.

And as my former coworkers ate farewell cake on my last day at the paper, a few of them whispered, “Do they have any other openings over there?”

I don’t know a single person who works in daily news today who doesn’t have her eyes trained on the exit signs. I’m not sure what that says about the industry, but I certainly don’t miss the insecurity.

Sure, it took me a while to get used to my new job. When I go to parties, I no longer can introduce myself as a reporter and watch people’s eyes light up. Instead, I hear how people miss seeing my byline. No one misses it more than I.

News was never this gray, aging entity to me. It was more like young love, that reckless attraction that consumes you entirely, until one day – suddenly — you snap out of feeling enamored and realize you’ve got to detach.

I left news, not because I didn’t love it enough, but because I loved it too much – and I knew it was going to ruin me.

Trend features

Ultimate Fitness feature

By Norma Rubio, Producer, NBC News

While running a marathon used to be the ultimate way to push your body to the limit, there's a growing trend of pushing your body to more extreme levels of fitness-- such as obstacle racing.

These races combine trail running with tough physical and mental challenges such as crawling through mud under barbed wire, climbing over slippery walls, running with heavy objects, and even jumping over fiery hot coals.

The Spartan Race is one of several obstacle competitions around the world that have recently exploded in growth. "People like change and this is primal.

It's getting back to our roots of playing in the mud and being a kid again. So, it's different, it's fun," says Mike Morris, vice president of production at Spartan Race.

At a recent race in the desert of Fountain Hills, Ariz., Spartan racers trekked through nearly five miles of trails and 18 man-made obstacles.

 At the end of the race, runners fought one final battle with a Spartan before getting to the finish line.

But if you're thinking you're not cut out for this type of competition...think again. Spartan race organizers proudly pronounce it's an event for all people.

"We have a kids' race, we have grandmothers, 70-year-old grandmothers, we have people that this is the first race they've ever done and they've lost 50 pounds and they show up and they can't believe the accomplishment," says Morris.

And then there are professional athletes like 35-year-old Hobie Call from Utah who quit his job to pursue racing full-time and has become arguably the most famous obstacle racer.

"No matter how many times you do these races, like I said I've done over 30...and every time it's a unique race. You never run the same race over again."

For Angela Reynolds, a divorced morther of three, each race is an opportunity to overcome challenges. "When I first started I couldn't climb the rope and I had to learn to teach myself and set one up in my garage so I could learn how to do that."

Other extreme challenges include the Tough Mudder, where racers run through live wires or plunge into icy pools.

SealFit mimics elite Navy Seal training, including lifting massive logs.

And if you prefer a fear factor, Run For Your Lives, takes you on a 5K race from zombies -- well, people dressed up as zombies. 

For the artistic-minded, Cirque School offers training in acrobatics, aerial fabric tricks and trapeze. Aloysia Gavre, founder of Cirque School LA, insists this type of workout is for anyone.

To participate in any of these events, however, you'll likely need to sign a waiver indicating the risks. 

But it's clear that these days, many are more than willing to take on those risks and face the challenges that extreme fitness requires.

Wearable Technology (San Jose Mercury News)

You can wear your heart on your sleeve. Why not your electronics?

In a burgeoning trend that has captivated Silicon Valley, a mind-boggling array of "wearable electronics" has begun to arrive, not just at a website or clothing outlet near you, but on an arm, a face, a wrist and even a pinkie finger.

"Everyone's recognizing that tech's next great, innovating chapter is more practical and intimate use of computing power in our everyday lives," said Scot Herbst with San Jose-based design firm Herbst Produkt. "And that means not having to reach into your pocket, grab your phone and put in a password. It's all about making computers more organic in their interaction with you."

Hold on to your hats, which also happen to be undergoing digital makeovers of their own with things like snowboard helmets decked out with a pair of $599 Oakley Airwave goggles with GPS and streaming audio.

From Apple's (AAPL) rumored iWatch to Google's (GOOG) in-the-works eyeglass-like "Glass" ($1,500 for an early pilot version) to tech-embedded clothing from Uniqlo that uses the body's evaporating moisture to heat knee-high socks that cost $12.89 a pair, the wearable digital revolution is upon us.

"The trend is gaining momentum because the cost of chips, along with sensors like gyroscopes and heat- and light-sensing devices, has dropped dramatically," said analyst Avi Greengart, research director for consumer devices at Current Analysis.

He knows firsthand the wonderful allure of this wearable technology. Greengart uses it himself.
"Unlike a lot of bleeding-edge tech, these things work," he said. "I have a Fitbit, which is a little clip you put on your belt and it's a glorified pedometer.

But it does much more, and it makes it easy for me to see how much physical activity I've had during the day, for example, and that motivates me to exercise even more."

An army of engineers, fashion designers, futurists and gadget geeks, many of them clustered here in the Bay Area, is hard at work, trying to extend the reach of computing power along those precious few inches from pocket and purse to forearms and ears.

At Intel (INTC) Labs, user-experience researcher Cory Booth said his team is looking even beyond that, "past the near-term fascination with specific locations on the body, like the wrist, to a more long-term view. We see an entire new ecosystem of devices that will multiply over time and interact with one another."

Many of these gadgets will simply piggyback on the muscular computing prowess available in the cloud, said Mike Roberts, an engineer with PARC, a Xerox-founded research-and-development center in Palo Alto.

Computers take the mountain of input from your device, crunch it, and immediately suggest ways for you to, say, improve your athletic performance.

Roberts talked about one very human application of wearable technology, a beta version of a head-mounted computer that PARC worked on with Motorola Solutions.

 It connects a user in the field, say a sailor trying to fix a broken generator on a naval ship, with an expert thousands of miles away.

"This remote collaboration enables the expert to help someone in the field solve a complicated problem in real time," Roberts said. "The helmet's video camera captures the generator, then the expert takes stills from the video and annotates them to show the guy which bolts to remove to fix the generator. This gives you expert advice anywhere in the world, and it's all hands-free."

Over time, experts say, consumers will be dazzled by an assortment of electronic gear woven into their clothing, strapped to their limbs, wrapped as thin membranes over their fingers, or hung from their belts.

Challenges with wearable tech abound, from harnessing enough computing power onto ultrathin devices like pieces of tape to persuading average consumers to wear silly-looking glasses and bulky watches without "nerding them out" too much.

As futurist Paul Saffo puts it, "I'm convinced the Segway failed because no matter who drove it, they looked like a dork."

Cool tech toys are one thing, but merging them with fashion raises all sorts of issues for designers. Said Saffo, "Wearable technology is absolutely the way we're heading, but the secret is how designers work out the details.

The genius of Apple is that it's a fashion company that also does tech. Look at the iPhone -- it's a beautiful polished talisman, even when it's just sitting there."

John Edson, president of San Francisco-based design firm Lunar, said that with the proliferation of these devices, "my smartphone becomes just the collector of all the data coming from the sensors I've got on me. Like the swipe and pinch features on the iPad, we're just starting to scratch the surface of things we can do with gestures."

Edson said test audiences seem to love wearing the devices his firm has worked on with BodyMedia.

 "Some of these tools help users achieve weight loss through a wearable sensor," he said. "They have really proven algorithms that can clearly and accurately tell you about your calorie burn, just by wearing a device that tracks a few different body metrics."

The road ahead will undoubtedly be littered with the detritus of wearable electronics that consumers will refuse to wear. But engineers and designers will keep throwing ideas against the wall until something sticks.

"You got the iPhone," said PARC's Mike Kuniavsky, "then you got the apps, and now the apps are jumping off the screen and becoming devices you can wear."

Personality profile from Los Angeles Times

He runs with a cellphone pressed tightly against his hip, but she never calls, so for 26.2 miles he runs with his memories.

In the first hour, she is walking again through the German countryside. By the middle of the race, she is dancing again to their classical favorites.

At the finish line, she is strolling with their two children into the best years of her life.

Then John Creel, 77, towels off, catches his breath, and returns to the marathon that is his life as a full-time caregiver for wife Ingrid, whose body has been rendered helpless by the evils of multiple sclerosis.

"My life is pretty simple," Creel said. "It's all about taking the next step … just take the next step."

The Brea man's next official step will be taken in the Dodger Stadium parking lot Sunday as one of 24,000 runners in the 28th L.A. Marathon. In what is annually trumpeted as the human race, Creel will be one of the most human of runners.

When his wife's degenerative illness confined her to a wheelchair in 1995, Creel made the decision that he would be her primary caretaker.

When the stress from that decision became overwhelming, he began running for relief.

That was 59 marathons ago. He has run at least one marathon in each state. He transports her in her wheelchair to most of his races, twice even making sure somebody pushed her to the finish line.

She doesn't understand running, but she likes the company. He sometimes weeps over her losses, but he still loves her smile.

He feeds, bathes and clothes her. Yet after 53 years of marriage, he says she is his strength.

"Honestly, I don't know what I would do without her," he said.

And he doesn't know what she would do without him. If he dies first, she probably will have to go into an assisted-living facility, and he can barely tolerate even the thought, so he keeps running, for her, for him, for them.

Said Ingrid with a grin: "Sometimes I don't understand why he has to run so much, but it makes him happy, so let him run, let him run."

Said John with tears: "She's the best thing that ever happened to me."

You can glimpse strands of their enduring affection in a back room of their Brea home, the place where Ingrid spends her days watching television, the channel tuned to episodes of "Little House on the Prairie" and "Bonanza."

All around the room there are vases with purple orchids, some blooming, some decaying, gifts from weekly visits to Trader Joe's.

"I love orchids," said Ingrid. "He still brings me orchids."

She still calls him "Johnny." He sometimes calls her "Mom."

During a recent weeknight interview they giggled at each other from across the modest living room, he in his shiny running shoes, she in her black wheelchair, their lives having taken them to different worlds, their spirit forever connected

"When you get older in a marriage, things change, but the caring just gets deeper," John said.

They still laugh about how they met in 1958 on a snowy night in a small town in Germany. She didn't speak English, he barely spoke German, yet a year later they were married.

At the time he was a member of the U.S. Army's Green Berets. Today he runs his marathons with the actual green beret atop his balding head.

It reeks of sweat and has been tattered by moths, but, like his devotion, it is unmoving.

"He is an amazing man, so determined, so faithful," said former longtime running partner Denis Paez. "On a daily basis, it's hard to imagine doing the things he does."

The former systems engineer for Kaiser Permanente awakens with Ingrid every day at 4:30 a.m. He spends the next 90 minutes dressing and feeding her.

He then puts a cellphone near the left hand that she can still use for dialing and leaves the house for his morning workout.

Except for a brief return home to check on her, he is running or lifting weights or simply exercising for the next couple of hours.

"Running is the only time he's completely relaxed," said daughter Karola. "He goes to another place."

Sometimes that place is filled with anger, the slap of steps along the pavement punctuated by screams to the sky.

"I get mad at God a lot. I yell and scream," Creel said. "What has Ingrid ever done to anybody? It doesn't seem right that she has to suffer."

But mostly that place is filled with calm, and by the time he returns home for good, his mind is clear and his body is amazingly untaxed.

He will spend the rest of the day pulling his wife's wheelchair up and down the several steps in the house — a 150-pound task — yet he says he never feels it.

"You know that 'He ain't heavy, he's my brother' thing?'" he said. "It might be a little bit of that."

When they attend an out-of-town race, he will arrange for a caregiver to watch her in the hotel room during the race. Then there were those four glorious moments when they actually raced together.

Yes, for four 5K races in the area, Creel pushed her through the course. She said it felt as if she were flying. He said he was most happy about the ending.

"She always finished ahead of me," he said with a grin.

On Sunday Ingrid will not attend the marathon, remaining at home with her son Greg and his family. But after her husband finishes his 5 1/2-hour run, sits in a cold bath, and rejoins her late Sunday night, she will again feel like a winner.

Before they fall asleep, John will lean over and hold her hand. Ingrid will stare at the ceiling and, in a voice softened by age and slowed by disease, give thanks that she married a man who will finish the race.

"God, you know what you are doing," she will say. "I don't know why I am sick, but you know what you are doing."

Proper format for J61 students

Attention J61 students:

You must write in the inverted pyramid style using one-sentence paragraphs for your blog posts. Some students do not use the inverted pyramid style on their blogs. They use long, 6-8 sentence paragraphs that are not in keeping with the style of media writing we're learning.
You will not receive credit for the assignment unless you write in the inverted pyramid style for your blog posts. AP style should also be followed when writing blog posts or hard-copy assignments.

Below is an example of the one-sentence format you should use for your blog posts:

Cinequest director John Burgess' movie "One Small Hitch" indulged us on what it was like to be a USC graduate student and what it took to get a movie into Cinequest.

"The Powderpuff Principle" was Burgess' feature film as a graduate student in USC.

It depicts the story of a high school nerd that grows up to become the principal and decides to get revenge on his students that remind him so much of his past tormentors.

I have not seen his Cinequest film "One Small Hitch" but I really enjoyed his student film.

What I found interesting was how many known actors were used.

The star of the film was Clint Howard and it had an appearance by Linda Blair as well.

According to Burgess, it was not easy to get known actors to appear in a film directed by a student. He had to lie in order to get what he wanted.

The sacrifices that he had to make like selling his condo in order to produce his first Cinequest film seem to be paying off.

"One Small Hitch" will be shown on international flights and Burgess was even asked to direct a film.