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.