WSAV Newsroom
Uploaded by peachy92.

Yesterday afternoon, I toured the WSAV studios as part of my Meteorology class. The tour was mainly for us students, friends, and family, to see just what goes into producing the weather maps and information we see on TV. One student brought her entire family of husband and 3 sons. Another student brought her 2 daughters and a friend. A third student brought her friend. I think we all enjoyed the tour. I know the youngest boy on the tour was obsessed with the green chroma key screen. He actually asked my professor if the professor could tell the little girls to quit getting on the screen with him. The child may have found his calling in life.

Yes, we saw the green screen used for the newscasts. One of the students on the tour wore a green shirt similar to the screen's green coloring. The professor had him get in front of the screen to demonstrate what happens when you wear the same color as the screen. While in real life, the screen is just nothing but a green wall, after being fed through the camera and the computer equipment, what is displayed on TV features a weather map behind the TV meteorologist. So, when this student appeared on a TV screen, he had only a head, legs, and arms on the TV. His torso included a weather map. In addition to the screen, we saw the part of the studio where the meteorologists work. Their workstation is actually on the news set. They have plenty of computers and TVs showing what's going on in the studio and what's going on the station's airwaves. Being a techie, I was impressed by the computer system used to monitor the weather and create weather maps. I asked my friend Robert about the computer operating system used on some of the computers. We think the studio uses a proprietary system from a vendor. It looked similar to Linux. I had a chance to draw a weather map on it. Robert was in awe of all the networking components in the studio. It was interesting to see another field that needs our IT skills.

Besides looking at the meteorology specific items in the studio, we toured the rest of the set, which isn't very large. The green screen is behind and off to the side of where the meteorology tools are at. The set they use to perform interviews and demonstrations on the morning show is very shallow and caddy corned to the main set. I couldn't believe how small the studio was. They will have to build a new one out on the Westside if they want to expand anymore. The Victory Drive location is limited with all the other businesses around it preventing expansion. We also toured the panel room where the producers, directors, sound people, and graphic artists are during a newscast. Our final part of the tour included seeing the news room and looking into one of the editing bays. It was not just a tour of meteorology tools, but a short tour of video production. It was something I haven't done since I was 14. Had I not heard growing up that video production is a cutthroat job with low pay, I probably have gone into it.

[♪ Listening to: "Something Like You" - *NSYNC]

Posted by Shawn at December 2, 2007 12:02 PM in Flickr Photos, Savannah, Schooling.