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The Adham Center supports a two-year masters degree
program in television journalism, which is a specialized option offered to qualified
candidates for the AUC MA in journalism and mass communication.
The Adham Center also offers occasional certificate courses
in video editing and studio management, as well as an opportunity for professionals
to join the broadcast Arabic course, tailored for the center by AUC's Arabic Language
Institute. Studio facilities are occasionally available for on-the-job training
projects.
The MA program teaches students to be video journalistscapable
of producing their own TV news stories start to finish, from researching, interviewing
and shooting video to writing and editing. The VJ approach is used at some of
the most innovative TV news operations in the world, like NY1 in New York City.
Given industry-wide trends such as miniaturization of equipment and reduction
of personnel, the VJ approach is the trend of the future. Even in the Middle East,
where local TV news organizations still tend to be labor intensive, this approach
to teaching TV news gives students incredible flexibility and advantage in a highly
competitive field.
While due regard is given to theoretical understanding, what
drives this program is the centers concern for performancea concern that reflects
the professional background of its principal instructors: center director S. Abdallah
Schleifer, former NBC News producer/reporter in the Middle East and NBC Cairo
bureau chief; and technical coordinator Jan Sandle, former CBS News video editor
and New Zealand TV camera operator and sound technician.
The first year is dedicated to a balance of technical training
courses, in which students get hands-on, in-depth training on the studio, editing,
and camera equipment, plus written coursework. This coursework introduces the
students to theoretical and ethical issues in television journalism, distinguishes
between the nature of print journalism and TV journalism, familiarizes the students
with the problems involved in field production and finally focuses upon writing
news scripts. Students acquire a theoretical sense of the anatomy of a script,
then are provided scriptstranscribed from professionally produced news reportswith
which they closely follow the actual video reports. Finally they write their own
scripts after covering simulated news events on campus staged by the instructor.
In the Studio Management class, taken the first semester, students
learn all aspects of running a small news studio and at the end can do a complete
studio production. Students are trained in vision mixing, audio mixing, studio
camera operation on the centers three studio cameras, effects generation, character
generation, patching and recording, and using the teleprompter.
The second semester includes intensive training on two editing
systems: analog two-machine tape editing, which is still the most widely used
in TV news organizations around the world, and non-linear digital computer editing
and effects using the state-of-the-art Avid system. Digital non-linear editing
is used not only at an increasing number of leading news organizations but it
is also widely used in the production of advertising, music video clips, documentaries
and feature programs.
Students also take one course each semester in their first
year in Voice, Speech and Presentation since a Video Journalist is a performer
as well as a reporter, field producer, camera operator and editor, briefly appearing
on camera in their own video reports. The course is taught by Ms. Carol Ann
Clouston.
In the summer between the first and second year of the program
students participate in an intensive six-week course on the field camera. Students
are trained on both professional Betacam cameras, as well as small digital cameras
that are portable enough for each student to work with alone. Basic lighting and
audio skills are part of both the studio and field work.
In the second year, students put together all the knowledge
and skills in ENG-EFP (Electronic News Gathering and Electronic Field Production)
acquired in their first year of coursework and gain real practical experience
in video journalism by functioning, in a workshop situation, as a news organizationAUC
TV. Each student is issued an AUC TV press card and goes out on assignment every
other week. The product of that assignment will eventually be viewed on a 20-30
minute weekly show called Video Magazine which also includes a studio interview
(generally of Egyptians active in public life or VIPs visiting Egypt) produced
by the students, who assemble the entire package. The show is then aired on AUC
TVthe universitys closed-circuit cable TV station which is transmitted by students
from the Adham Center.
AUC TVs student video journalists are responsible for every
aspect of their stories: they research the topic, conduct interviews and shoot
their own footage, log their tapes, write a script, record a voice-over narration,
and edit the story. But before they voice-over their narration and edit their
story, each student meets with center director Abdallah Schleifer for a one-on-one
script tutorial, that involves less and less rewriting as the student progresses
in mastering the medium.
Similarly, technical coordinator Jan Sandle reviews the students
camera and editing work on a one-to-one basis, which helps students revise their
shot selections to provide a more coherent visual report. Then, after transmission
of the final news product on AUC TV, the entire workshop meets together to hear
Schleifer and Sandle (joined by Voice, Speech and Presentation instructor Carol
Ann Clouston) conduct a post-facto critique. This way all of the students benefit
from the individual tutorial experiences of the other students that preceded the
production of the news story as well as from new observations by the faculty team,
for what may work in a TV news report at the stage of scripting or reviewing shot
selection does not necessarily work when assembled as a final product.
It is not only the breadth and depth of technical skills gained
that distinguishes the Adham Center program, but also the theoretical knowledge
developed to support these skills. Learning which buttons to push on the camera
is important, but so is learning proper shot composition, framing, and holding.
Adham Center students learn both. Students learn the whys beyond the hows
of TV news production, examining the ethics and style of news reporting. This
means our alumni find careers as reporters, editors, producers, directors, and
camera operators with leading broadcasting organizations in Egypt, the Middle
East and around the world.
The Adham Center for Television Journalism: where academic
standards require professional performance.
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The Adham Center for Television Journalism:
where academic standards require professional performance.
Adham
Center Associates
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