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.