Final Presentation

Well last friday I gave my final presentation on The "Not So Extreme Makover' of Titan Town Sports. For the first time in my life I think I actually gave a good presentation. I have never been able to give good presentations because I feel I get way to nervous and stumble the whole way through. That was not the case on friday, I felt I gave a short concise presentation on what I have been doing over the last two semesters. I explain to the people who might not know what TTS is and also explained my role as sports director of TTS. I gave just enough information to get the audience attention but not to much information that they didn't want to take a closer look at my poster and video's. I showed the before and after the makover of TTS. I also showed a video of all the big sporting events I have shot at WKBN like Kelly Pavilick, Indians and Pirates home openner and few other local semi pro teams. After we all presented I had some people ask me some questions and as soon as they finished thier question I had an answer for them. All and all I felt my presentation went good and I feel confident that in all the infromation that I presented.

What a show!

I dont say this normally but TTS was one of the best shows we have had yet this year. It was Melissa Maines first time and she nailed it. Not only was she flawless the show was flawless. We had 7 tapes and not one of them got screwed up. Every graphic played out perfect and I am extremely happy with the outcome. Melissa had one part where she stumbled through a few words but she did what she was suppose to do and just rolled with and kept going. I barrelly noticed she even stumbled because she recoverd so well. My only complaint on the show was I was suppose to have softball highlights and I never recieved them. The reason I complain is because my sports shooter for the week shot the game either monday or tuesday and didnt edit it until yesterday morning. Which I do alot of my editing the day of the show but he edited it in the morning and didn't try to put to tape until an hour before the show. They director cut the video because we already had 7 tapes and the sports shooter said the video wasn't that good. I didn't care that they cut the video but I just wish I would have known earlier than an hour before the show. Instead of what I call a hole in the show because Melissa was just standing there reading her script with no video. I could have put in a graphic so there wasn't a hole but because I was unaware that I wouldn't have the softball footage we had a hole. Other than that I really do think it was one of our best shows. My other sports shooter shot some amazing Tennis SOT's. I know that sounds weird that I'm praising tennis interviews but my shooter set up the interviews in the middle of the court during the practice. During the interviews she had the players in the backround practicing and she even moved each person she interviewed so it wasn't the same backround. I was impressed with her shooting and interviewing skills and I want to thank her for her good footage.

What do I want to do?

Figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life is the hardest things I have ever had to do. I graduate on May 17 and I still don't know what profession I want to go into. I know it will be something with broadcasting but there are so many options to pick from. After my first year of college I wanted to work for the NFL network and be a camera man on the sideline. I still would like to do that but after my junior year I wanted to work for a TV station in their sports department shooting all sporting events. Now I am thinking about doing shooting news/sports for a local TV station. Another thought that passed through my mind this year was becoming a sports producer. And I have also been doing construction for the last 5 years and I would also like to purse that as career. The main reason I would want to do construction is because then I would be able to build my own house. Another thing is I've heard from a few people over the years when your young and you don't have as many responsibilities that is the time to travel and be adventurous. Traveling across America would be fun but making money is also fun. So now with a limited time before I graduate I'm trying to figure out what I really want to do. Everything I have listed are definitely jobs I'm interested in and I have a passion for each one but what do I do?

Winning Awards!!!!!!!!

I'm very pleased to say that I have worked with an award winning reporter. Peggy Sinkovich and who you used to be my chief photographer Nick Rich won "The Edward Murrow award". They won this award for Peggy and Nick's coverage of the Heidi Gill case. The story was about Heidi Gill and how she was tazered over and over again by a warren police man. Peggy and Nick broke this story when I first started working at WYTV. I feel extremely happy to have learned valuable work information from the two of these people. I never got a chance to work with Nick but that is becasue photographers don't usualy work with each other. Although we never worked together Nick has taught me alot about shooting and editing and is allways giving me tips with on different scenarios. I worked with Peggy for the first time a month or two ago and let me tell you she is a pro and she definitly knows what she is doing. She has only been in television business a few years but has been around the news department for awhile. She started out in print and has converted to video. Peggy has helped me become a better photographer because she is so easy to work with and she knows what she wants to see. I feel honored to be able to not only work in the same building with these amazing journalists but to have learned something from the both of them. Thanks Nick and Peggy!

Passing on the tourch!

The last two semesters have been fun being the Sports director of TitanTown Sports. I have had a lot of ups and downs but all and all it has been a tremendous experience. When I first started I knew I was going to be very busy and it was going to be crazy every week. Each week got easier and easier. I don't mean I didn't do as much what I mean is I started to get into a rythm. I would set my rundown on friday and mapout when I would have time to shoot and edit feature pkgs or just that weeks highlights. At first it took me all week to get everything done. Once work at WYTV picked up I started doing the show on thursday and know I don't do anything until 4 or 5 hours before the show on thursday. I still set my rundown on friday and I do have sports photographers so I tell them what to shoot but I edit and produce the show on all on thursday. Its been fun being the sports director of TTS but it is time for myself and David Greig to pass on the tourch. The lucky person who gets to take over anchoring will be Melissa Maines. She has been doing a little training with David and I over the past couple weeks. She will anchor for the first time this next Thursday. We were plaining on having her pre record for the first time like I did for the mock convention but she has taken great inntitive and will be anchoring live instead. She feels she will have to do this next year when she takes over so she might as well get started now. I think this great and this makes me feel like we picked the right person to take over TTS. All great things come to an end and I hate to say it but it's time to move on a pass the tourch.

Shooting to edit!

This weeks blog is about my goal as a photographer. One of the hardest things to do as a photographer is shooting to edit. You might wonder what does that actually mean? Well it has taken me alittle while to catch on to shooting to edit. It is when you shoot each shot as you would edit it in your timeline. That way when you get back and your ingesting your video all you have to do is ingest it and send to the sever. I have been practicing this everytime I shoot but it is sometimes hard to do if there is alot of movement going on. I went to a shooting the one day and there was so much going on that I would just see something that looked important point the camera set the focus and hit record. What I should have done is looked around and thought in my mind this shot will go with another shot for a good sequence. I have had people edit my raw footage and sometimes I will really nail my shots and they can just lay the video in with a few changes. Other times they might have to go all the way back to the beginning of the tape to match up a shot that was at the end of the tape. My ultimate goal in shooting is to perfect this art of shooting to edit everytime I go out on a story. This might take me sometime but I think I'm definitly capable of perfecting it.

Trial and error!

Since september I have experienced alot of trial and error. What I mean by this is when I took over Titan Town Sports nobody told me how to produce a show. After the first couple shows I started to catch on and I also was getting some advice from Bob Hannon and Bill Castrovichi. They have really helped me to mold TTS into an apealling segement. But it was through trial and error where I found out what worked an what didn't. For instance get graphics for the show was definitly something new for me. I had no idea that I had to double check spellings and tell our graphics artist I need large text with pictures. I quickly found out after my first show that I needed to spend more than five minutes into my graphics and make sure everything is how I want it to look.
At work its kind of the same since day one I really haven't been told this is how you shoot a fire or this how you shoot a street sign for locator video. I started shooting strickly sports for two months but everyonce in awhile i shot news. With sports you dont really need to be told how to shoot it because all you do is follow the ball. So when I started shooting news I would experience trial and error because I wasn't sure how to shoot a banquet or house. The way I learned was every time shot something I would try to do as many different shots as possible to see what worked. Another thing I did was I watched other photos raw video to see what they did. The biggest thing I learned was USE A TRIPOD. Nothing looks worse than video that is shakey. The first time I shot locator video I didn't take a tripod and I got burnt because I was trying to shoot a sign that was at weird angle. I tried and tried to get to not shake but it was shakey. From now on I try to take a tripod everywhere. I even shoot some sporting events with a tripod.

Art Show Poster

The end is coming soon. My final presentation is April 25th in the Art show at patterson hall. Right now I have been trying to finish up my poster for the presentation that shows what I have been doing for the last two semesters. The poster so far has turned out great. The backround is a bunch of sporting event pictures from this past year such as a basketballplayer slam dunkin and a girl spiking a volleyball. I turned down the opasity level so its not to distracting and you can still read what I wrote. The hardest thing about making this poster has been that I had to do it in photoshop. I took digital photography four semesters ago and I know how to use it. Its just I forgot what some of the special functions are and I have been spending more time learning the program than actually working on the poster. I'm also building a poster in a power point presentation but its not nearlly as artistic as doing it in photoshop. The easiest part for me was writing out the description of my project and explaining what I did. That makes me feel very comfortable about presenting this project because if a proffesor drills me with a question about the project I feel I will be able to fire right back at them with an educated response. This might be the first time in my academic career that I'm passionate about what I am presenting. So bring it on I'm ready.

So far this semester Titan Town Sports has been flawless other than a few mistakes here and there. Each week Dave and my self have been extremely ecstatic at how well the show has done. In four weeks we have only had one tape play wrong. I don't mean to toot my own horn but I have been impressed with my self too. What I mean is I have been working six days a week for WKBN and I have been basically putting the show together on Thursday afternoon. Last semester I would start putting the show together earlier in the week and I know that if I was to get a Producing job I would do the same thing and put a show together in a couple of hours. The other difference between this semester and last is that I sports shooters now. Last semester I was shooting my own highlights and PKG's and editing them all. Now I usually have one to two shooters and they are making my life a lot easier. I have only shot a few things this semester and I still do the majority of editing but there is usually two stories that I don't have to shoot or edit. At first my shooters put me in a rough spot by not making the deadline or not doing what I suggested to them. But after I made it clear that I'm depending on them when their to shoot for me they have really picked up their game. Another aspect of the show that I think has really improved is the graphics. Since I talked to Bob Hannon and he said if you don't have any video for your topic throw in a graphic so it's not just Dave standing there talking. Katie Hillard and my self have been communicating better and have been sharing ideas with each other and our final product has emensley improved because of it.

Busy busy busy!!!!

Back to tape to tape editing. I went on a trip to Columbus with Peggy Sincovich for a 911 dispatch meeting. A few police chiefs and a dispatcher were unhappy with how their trustees were running things and they went to Columbus to plead their case with the 911 dispatch board. Peggy and I started our trip at 8 in the morning and followed the chiefs to Columbus. Once we got there we only had 20 minutes to get our interviews and then the meeting began. I shot the meeting and we only stayed for a half hour. We left during the meeting because we had to drive back for the 6. Here is where it got a little crazy because while I'm driving back Peggy is in the back seat looking through the viewfinder of the camera and listening through head phones to the interviews we did. She was finding the time codes of the soundbites so I knew where they were. After she finished writing the script for the package we pulled over and she voiced her package into the camera. Then we switched spots and she drove while I was in the backseat editing the package on a tape to tape suitcase editor. Now I have done tape to tape but it had been a year or two since. I practice the day before but you never know how stuff like that is going to work until you start doing it. It took me about 45 minutes to cut the package but the real kicker was having this suitcase editor on my lap that weighs about 30 to 40 pounds with two ten pound batteries on top of it. So it got kind of heavy and very awkward. We got back to the station about 40 minutes before the 6 so I ingested the package cleaned it up a bit sent to the sever for the 6. It was definitely a great experience but it was crazy because Peggy and I were flying by the seat of our paints. Well I was she knew what she had to do.

Making connections!

I had a great oppurtunity to make a connection with an amazing woman and also a very motivated sports Anchor\Reporter Tara Pachmayer. I was on a trip to visit my sister who works at Miami University and is the Associate Sports Information Director. Her main sports are Men's Basketball and Football although she pretty much works with every sport. They had a game the night against Akron University. Thats when I came in contact with the best contact every. Tara was also at the game covering them for her station WKRC Local 12. My sister introduced me to Tara and after that we talked for the entire game about sports. She told me about her station and what all the responsibiltes of a Sports Anchor/Reporter are. Through conversation I told her about myself and how I work in youngstown shooting news but also that I'm the Sports Producer of my own show Titan Town Sports. For a while I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue to do news or if I wanted to take the sports route and after talking to Tara for hours on end I feel I want to get back into to the sport side of news. Even though there are no positions open at Local 12, I met an awsome and extremly driven woman in the Sports department. I had a great oppurtunity that fell into my lap to make a new connection with someone six hours away. I hope that in the futue Local 12 will have an oppening but until then I will continue to stay in touch with Tara.

Long but fun day!!!

I had a great opputunity to go out with two verteran anchors, Ryan Allison and Bill Castroviche. We started our day at seven o'clock at the station and traveled to springfield high school. The reason we were there was because it was High school letter of intent day which means all the football high school allstars were giving up their John Hancock to whatever school they would be attending and be continuing their collegic career playing football. We went to 10 different high schools, putting 159 miles on our vehichle and also getting over 20 some different interviews with about a hunderd different cutaways. When I was told that I was going to be shooting this I didn't know what to expect but everyone said have fun with it and make it look MTV'ish. So I would go from a tight shot on the kid to a fast movement of him signing, to a logo of what school they were going to. We ended our day around 3 and I then traveled to YSU for a press conference with the Head football coach. It was a great day of experience and just a fun day in general. Not only did I get more shooting experience but I never knew that this day was as big as it is.

It's just how the business is!

You can either run with the flow of life or get left behind in the dust. That is how the business is and you better be able to accept that or get out while you still can. It's true that my company has called me in to work some odd hours and be in a stress induced environment but hey like my title says "It's just how the business is!". Ever since I started I've have come to realize that some people are just not cut out for the business. I feel so far that I am and I also feel that I have done what has been necarssy to get the job done. Yeah, I dont go out like I used and party with my friends but hey you got to grow up and respect your priortys and for me that is going to work when they call me in and missing out on all the sweet partys. The other day I was called in again to work an earlier shift than I was schuduled and that was fine with me. I ended up going out with a well respected reporter and it was a great experience. I shot a package and some vo/sots. When it came time to edit them it was crazy because I had the package which was really two packages because we have two stations instead of one and then a couple vo/sots plus one of the producers gave me a list of a bunch of national stories to cut. I didn't cut every story but I did a bunch. I was in the middle of cutting the one package and I realized I didnt have two of the reporter sound bites so while our 5 o'clock news was going on I had to have this person redo them and then finishing cutting the first package. Well it was really coming down to crunch time and I didn't get my one vo/sot in and some of the producers weren't thrilled with me but they said if you need help cutting stuff just say so. I thought that I would have been able to get it done in time but I didn't and I have to learn from my mistakes.

Inspiration

On Tuesday and Wednesday I had a chance to meet the most inspirational people I have ever met. These extrodinary men and women are blind and go through life just like any one else would. Myself and Paul Wetzel interviewed a married couple that was blind on Tuesday and another blind man who worked at the GoodWill in youngstown. The men worked in a radio news department while the woman worked in another department putting clothes on hangers. It was amazing filming them while they worked because you would have no idea they were blind. The next day Paul and myself headed to Akron to a Vision center to meet another blind woman and a blind def man. It was truly amazing to watch this blind and def man with his interperter. The first thing he said was that he was happy. I then also filmed him working, he put rubber malet's together and he was fast at what he did. He also found his own locker and hung up his coat. After meeting with these amazing people Paul and I were so happy that we had a chance to meet them and interview and also see what they do. They are just like anyone else and can do pretty much everything that you and I can do. These stories I did made me realize why I shouldnt take anything for granted and they truely inspired me to go out and appreciate all the good things of life.

Flying by the seat of my pants!

This week was a very interesting one for myself. Thursday night I recieved a call from my news director asking me if I could possible come in for work. And of course I said sure what time do you need me in by. I ended up working from 12:30 am to 8 am that morning after being up all day and getting about 2 hours of sleep before I went in. The shift wasn't that bad I drank a bunch of coffee and went out on a story that never happened and edited a bunch of national stories. Then I came in the next day for my regular 3 to a 11 shift. I covered a hockey game and shot some highschool basketball that night. Saturday I shot some more hockey and a few other local stories. Sunday is like my Friday and after the rest of the week it was nice that knowing that I would have time to sleep Monday morning. When I looked at the assingment board it had me down for a LIVE shot at this Fire Vigil. I was shocked to see I was doing a live shot but I knew I would have some help if I needed it. I did the live at 6 but it was alot more than just setting up a camera and standing there. There is a million things that go into a live shot and I quickly found that out. I had some help from my boss John Skolada which was huge. The only real problem we ran into was our IFB earpieces werent working and I was on a cell phone talking to our producer having him tell me when to cue our reporter. I had the cell phone in one hand a camera straped around my shoulder and was pointing the live shot camera at our reporter and her interviewe. While the live shot was going on I would lock down the tripod and camera and try and get shots of the Fire Vigil for Mandy Hackmans PKG. Needless to say I was very happy when the sunday was over with.

Getting my foot in the DOOR!!!

No matter what you do in life you must take advatage of the oppurtunites that are brought before you. I have figured out that one of the most important things in life in my eyes are when an oppurtunity is displayed in front of you, you better take it or you will miss out. At the end of August I recieved a phone call from D.J. Yokley asking me if I would be interested in a part time job filming mainly sports for Youngstowns channel 33 WYTV. I was curently in an Internship at channel 21 WFMJ in the sports department and I wasn't sure if I should accept the postion or stay loyal to WFMJ and stick out there. I talked with several proffesors to see what should I do. Each one told me something different and after hours of thinking about it I decided to go for the WYTV job. If I would have stayed at WFMJ I would have ended my intership in December and might have gotten a part time job or just ended my intership making some good contacts. But I didn't I took the risk and went after the WYTV job. Instead of staying in my confornt zone I breached out and put myself in a new environment. I feel the broadcast business is very cut and dry and if you don't jump at the opputunites in front of you might miss out on something great. I know I would be kicking myself right now if I never took the WYTV job.

Coming to an end!

Finally Christmas break is coming to an end and I'm definitely ready to have classes again. I never thought I would say I want to be back in school but ever since I started working last semester I never had much free time so now that I had free time I didn't know what to do with myself. So it will be nice to be back and have a crazy schedule again. Even though I only have one class this semester it is not a blow off class by any means and I will be just as busy. The main reason I will be so busy is because I will still be producing my sports show Titan Town sports. Monday through Thursday will be devoted to shooting, editing and writing for the show. Like I said in my last blog entry I hope to be doing a feature story each week on not only Westminster athletes but also young athletes around the county. Last semester I anchored once and I thought it went pretty good for my first time. I would like to try it out again on a rotating basis with Dave and maybe Chris Norris if he would like. I feel if I can make my writting and on air skills more improved I will really be able to put myself out on the market and hopefully get a Sports directors job someday.