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.