Pitches

All of my story ideas are town-gown issue based because that is the story subject I'm covering. Here are my ideas:

1) Follow a custodian, who is enmeshed in the lives of OU students from the "at-home life" perspective, then returns home to a local township.

By following a custodian, I want to catch what his perspective of OU students is. He sees how students actually act in their living space (polite? spoiled? messy? rude? etc). Then there could be a comparison as to how he is actually living at home, whether he tries to ignore his day at OU or comes home & tells stories.  (Bear with me through the tech stuff, because I don't quite understand it yet). From a technical perspective, I imagine this as a documentary style, where said custodian is leading the audience through his day, with mainly his comments voiced into the footage. Maybe it could be introduced with a few shots of his family/at home hobbies, then switch into "this is a janitor who cleans up your dorm bathroom!" I think the idea itself is kind of different because students kind of forget that the blue collar workers around here actually have lives other than picking up their trash, and it will emphasize that the workers have a perspective if we make it from the custodian perspective.

2) Intertwine a night at a campus bar and a townie bar.

I think it might be cool visually (& also make a good transition,  Greek to Townie) if we get some footage of activity at a campus bar, and then somehow fade it into the activity of a townie bar in Athens or something. We will either show the audience that a bar is just a bar, and the students are a lot like the townies now, or we'll get the perspective that Athenians respect their town a lot more than the students do. During this one it might also work to get some shots of Court Street vs. a street with bars on it in Athens. I think it would really be an effective shot if we could find a way to fade the two together, but that's coming from no tech knowledge whatsoever.

Bonus!: The perspectives of Athens High School seniors on choosing a college: pro or con OU.

From what I hear, students at AHS either love or hate OU. So we should get their opinions on why they're applying where they are, and thoughts on students at OU and how they feel about transitioning from townie to student. This is crucial because THEY are the ones who have the clearest perspective of both sides. It also might be cool to find an OU senior who lived in Athens all through life, and ask whether he preferred being a townie or student, ideas on that.