Program advertises campus events

With dozens of cultural, artistic and sports events every week
at UCLA, the university has added a new branch of its Happenings
campaign which employs student anchors presenting events through a
broadcast medium.

Happenings TV will air five times a quarter and present segments
on various events available for students on campus, from days to
several weeks in advance.

The first show was taped and aired before Thanksgiving and
consisted of an entire broadcast with segments, each a few minutes
in length, on arts, lectures and sports. The broadcast can
currently be viewed online.

The TV program is the newest in a series of efforts the
Happenings campaign has employed to increase student knowledge
about the opportunities on campus, which also include posters,
fliers, kiosks and a Web site with information about events two
weeks in advance.

“The campus calendar gives the basics of date and time,
but … we wanted to put more of a face on Happenings. It’s
better if actual students address issues of interest,” said
Jean Schwartz, a second-year undeclared student who works as an
in-house producer.

Auditions for anchors took place in the first weeks of October,
where students wrote their own four to five minute piece and
presented it in front of a camera.

“We wanted to get a feel of writing style and
personality,” said Nancy Ozeas, senior executive director of
University Communications.

The program is not expected to increase costs, as it utilizes
the already existing campus resources at resTV, Ozeas said.

Contrary to what was expected, most of the students who tried
out for anchor positions were not involved in film and television,
and some were newcomers to UCLA.

Nancy Wang, a first-year English student who worked in print
journalism during high school, felt many of the skills translated
to the broadcast medium.

“Instead of having a limited word count, you have a
limited amount of time … but the same skills come into play,
being able to ask the right questions, come up with the right
quote, establish the right angle,” she said.

Other students see the program as a training ground.

“I think being with Happenings is an opportunity to
practice your reporting skills and practice looking for
stories,” said Jessica Youn, a third-year American literature
and culture and sociology student who interned at NBC over the
summer.

“At NBC, I got to work in a very professional environment.
… I want to bring that professional vibe to Happenings as well,
but in a more college-friendly, hip manner than the dry, boring
news,” she said.

Sonya Gavin, project coordinator for University Communications,
said shooting the pilot was hectic, as it was the first broadcast
students had to become acclimated to reporting in front of a camera
in addition to the stress of working in an accelerated
timeline.

“The night of the studio shoot, everyone came in, everyone
shot their piece, everything came together,” Gavin said.

According to Gavin, in the future segments will be taped and
aired individually, a process which should make filming easier. She
added that student anchors will have a large say in what stories
are covered, and they will try to ensure that the topics for each
segment vary widely.

“All the stories that we choose have to be events going on
around campus. We choose our own stories, but Sonya really makes
sure that we get a wide variety of things, a news story, an arts
story, a sports story,” said Jenny Ahn, a second-year
sociology and history student and student anchor.

In addition to being broadcast on resTV, each segment will be
available online and by podcasting, enabling students to download
and watch the segments later.

“With podcasting, you can point and click on the segment
you want instead of being fixed into a back-to-back format,”
said Aaron Proctor, web publishing specialist at University
Communications and recent graduate from the UCLA Design | Media
Arts Department.

“The point of all these different options is to give
students different flavors to choose from.”

The Happenings Web site is located at
www.happenings.ucla.edu.