Friday THON Cut-in

This was the first of 3 cut-ins anchored by Kayla Blakeslee and James Gherardi. Penn State's IFC/Panhellenic Dance Marathon is the world's largest student philanthropy. 10 minutes before dancers stood up to stand for a cure for pediatric cancer, I produced a cut-in on campus to preview the weekend. Every bit of the show had to be perfectly executed to show the first moment of THON as over 400 dancers stood up and remained standing, and awake, for 46 hours. I started out with a set-up time lapse by Ernie DiLullo of how the Bryce Jordan Center transforms to support over 400 dancers and all of the volunteers that it takes to make THON run smoothly. Kayla then continued with an on-set interview with Melissa Ginsiorsky, who designed the THON 2011 logo. Every year, dancers have to fill out a questionnaire. Just minutes before dancers walked to THON, Mallory Gadye asked them what they wished for this year at THON. Kayla and James then spoke about the history of THON, including some interesting facts. The Centre County Report had three members dancing in THON through other organizations. Throughout the weekend, we followed them. For this first cut-in, we spoke to Allison Hedges, Arielle Soriente and Emily Yermack about why they chose to dance in THON 2011 and what their organization was. Afterwards, we went to a VOSOT by Brittany Boyer about what dancers bring with them to THON. Due to the fact that dancers are on their feet for 46 hours, they have to change numerous times. The final event before THON 2011 kicked off in the Bryce Jordan Center was a VO human tunnel, filmed and written by Bill Thomas, where dancers walked from the multi-sport complex to the Bryce Jordan Center. The key to all of this is I had to make sure that we took the video of all of the dancers standing up at 6pm on Friday. At exactly 5:59pm, I noticed the overalls begin to countdown and had the director and anchors cut to the beginning of THON 2011. After all of the dancers stood up and we allowed some natural sound so viewers fully understood what it was like at the beginning moments of THON, James and Kayla wrapped the show up with announcements of when they would be back. This was a standard outcue used by all three THON cut-in producers. I worked with two anchors, two other producers, one executive producer, and numerous reporters in order to make sure that not only the first cut-in, but all three, went smoothly and flowed together.

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News & Politics

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• Centre
• County
• Report