This week was interesting, with the snow and all, a few plans got cancelled.

After the holiday Monday, I started Tuesday by working on an editing project, the Tumwater History Talks. It was an interesting experience to learn multicamera editing on Final Cut. Not only did I have to switch between video, and I had to switch between the two audio tracks, sometimes matching one audio track to a separate video track. Later that evening, I worked on the Tumwater City Council Meeting. This night was a lesson in how to fix disasters. EVERYTHING went wrong.

We pulled up with the truck and plugged it into the building, and made all the connections. But audio wasn’t coming through, the switcher program wasn’t loading ANY of the CGs, and worst of all, the camera controller wasn’t connecting to the robotic cameras. All we had was three fixed shots which weren’t even pointing in the right direction. One by one we were able to fix things, switching out all of our cables to find bad ones, restarting computers. We managed to get the audio going. The graphics were all gone, but we were able to find the template for the graphics in the computer’s hard drive and remake the graphics by hand. But the cameras never quite worked. At first we just stood on chairs and manually pointed them in the right directions. But then someone restarted the rack mounted camera brain, to try and fix it, and once all the cameras rebooted, they returned to their default setting, zoomed all the way in and totally out of focus. There are no manual zoom and focus controls on these cameras, and the controller still didn’t work. Ultimately someone had to run back to the station and pick up a camera and a long HDMI cable. We just filmed the meeting with a single camera on a tripod.

I took the rest of the week off until Friday, where I planned to have a long day (9 am-9pm). I was supposed to shoot an interview for my Community Media Matters Doc in the morning, work on a field shoot with Robert in the afternoon, and return to attend the Studio Production class in the evening. Unfortunately my interview subject, and the class were cancelled because of the snow. So I had a short day. It was a fun afternoon, however, filming interviews. We did a standard technique, two over the shoulder shots, so we could see both the interviewer and the subject. It’s always good to learn new techniques.

Also, as an aside, on Saturday I did my first shoot in the studio for a personal project. I recorded a live set with the JNX! I produced and directed the shoot, and was able to get a few volunteers to help on camera and the sound board. I got to put together my experience from video production and my audio recording classes.

Last week marked week 6 at TC Media this quarter. I made lots of progress on my “Community Media Matters” Documentary.

I began the week by Finishing the promo for the Alliance for Community Media Summit. It was a great learning experience involving chroma keying, after effects, titles, graphic design, and studio shooting.

Next I worked at the Thurston County Commissioners meeting where I again got to work on the switcher! It’s fun to sit in the director’s chair.

I shot two parts for my sort doc, first an interview with the executive director, Deb. Second, I shot B-Roll for my first interview, a behind the scenes shoot of one of the members working on their show. It has been great to watch over my footage and refine the script. My first two interviews have been very long, about 30 minutes each. But after taking some time to refine my work, this next interview should be much more concise.

Well, thus far I’ve failed to give regular updates about my experience as an intern at TC Media. So here I’m going to dump  5 weeks worth of updates in one post. From here on out, it’s my goal to give weekly updates at the end of the week.

Week 1: This quarter I started by just jumping right in. I walked in on my first day back after the break and, after a brief discussion about schedules, proceeded to edit a program that someone had shot the previous week. The next day, I got right back into the government meetings which I had been doing last quarter. However, aside from the all the usual things, I wrote and got approved a pitch for a documentary which I’ll be working on all quarter long. Entitled “Community Media Matters”, this doc features interviews with community producers and station staff members about why community media is important.

Week 2: This week I had my first opportunity to do a Tumwater City Council meeting, which means using the mobile production truck. It was quite an experience driving out to the city hall, plugging this truck into the building’s wall mounted robotic camera system, and connecting it into the truck which acts as a portable (and very cramped) TV Studio. Then, I got commissioned by TC Media’s Community Relations Director, Andrea, to make a 30 sec promo video for the upcoming NW Media Summit, organized by the Alliance for Community Media. Finally, on Friday I worked on a studio for Thurston County Connection.

Week 3: A bit of a down week, I started by shooting the Media Summit Promo, featuring Andrea. I spend the rest of the week editing this video. Additionally I did the usual government meetings that Tuesday. I got to spend some time doing pre-production for “Community Media Matters”.

Week 4: After reviewing the promo, Andrea decided it needed to be reshot, so I began my week with a reshoot of this promo, and a re-edit. Also this week, I shot my first footage for “Community Media Matters”, an interview with one of TC Media’s Community Producers. It was quite an experience to write, direct, shoot, light, and record an interview on my own. I’m still learning, but from I’ve been hearing the industry is moving more and more toward one person doing all of the work themselves, so I think I’m on the right track. I finished the week by working on a contracted production in the studio. A series of interviews shot in an all black null space. Very intimate and intense.

Week 5: This week began with a practice session for the Tumwater Council Meeting in the mobile truck. The usual director of these shoots was out of town, and we decided to go a night early to practice to complicated set-up process. The following evening we executed it well! And, aside from a bit more work on the Media Summit Promo, I did an all morning field shoot on Friday with our creative director, Susan. We shot footage of the “Poverty and Economic Development” conference sponsored by the city of Olympia. It was an interesting process to craft a video out 8 all day-long small group discussions. I shot B-roll all day.