Assignment Prepares Broadcasting Teacher to Teach Broadcasting

One would assume a broadcasting teacher would know how to produce a video story.  Not this one!  Almost the entire school year has passed with Broadcast Journalism I on my schedule, but we’ve encountered endless delays in ordering equipment.  In the meantime, I’ve learned very little about video production (and that through my friend Louise, a former broadcasting teacher at a nearby school)—until now.

With no real video camera equipment (see paragraph above), I had to use my trusty Nikon D3100 camera and figure out how to take video with it.  It was perfectly serviceable for a brief video story since it can film in segments up to ten minutes in length.

Sisters in Crime: Palmetto Chapter from Stephen Milligan on Vimeo.

Capturing audio was another matter.  The Nikon’s microphone captures sound, but when I played a few test videos, the sound was rather faint and tinny, so I went to Best Buy one and purchased a small, relatively inexpensive Sony clip-on microphone that would plug directly into the camera just to be on the safe side.  It appears to have done the job, but I wish the cable had been a bit longer to provide some more wiggle room (literally and figuratively).   

Setting up the video shoot taught me the wisdom of keeping multiple options open.  I reached out to a contact person for each of my two ideas, and one didn’t get back to me after almost a week had passed, by which time I had already committed to the other because of the time factor involved.

Upon arriving to set up for the event, I realized I would be filming a meeting, which does not necessarily make for exciting B-roll, but again, time was a factor, and the organization’s leaders had expressed interest in using the final video story on their website, so I felt I should make the best of it.

The filming location wasn’t ideal, but I had no control over it—the organization holds monthly meetings at Grecian Gardens in West Columbia.  The restaurant had just opened, so the clatter of china being stacked can be heard in the background, and the Greek music started up midway through my first interview.  Luckily, the group has a standing reservation in a private room, so at least we were away from the bustle of the main dining room.  This room was rather small, but the expected number of members didn’t show up, so I had room to maneuver but still less that I would have liked, particularly with the tripod.  Despite these obstacles, along with the hardship of watching plates of Greek salad, spanakopita, and baklava passing by while I was working, I persevered.

I conducted the interviews first, and only after everything was said and done (literally and figuratively) did I remember I should have positioned the two interview subjects on opposite sides of the frame for visual variety. 

I have realized through this experience that filming is very different from photography.  Many times I had to resist the urge to turn the camera to get a vertical shot, and I had to take more care with framing the shots because distracting or unwanted elements couldn’t be cropped out as they can be with photos.

The editing stage was pretty straightforward, thanks to the previous training on Audacity—Adobe Premier Elements 14 is similar to the audio-editing program in many respects.  At first, I didn’t see the need for the set-in and set-out points, but they are used to pare down the clip before placing it on the timeline (as opposed to placing the entire clip and then cutting), and fine editing can be done on the timeline as needed.

Now I’m totally prepared to dig in and teach broadcasting this fall.  Wishful thinking!  But I now know more than I did three weeks ago, and I have a better idea of how to start and where to start.  Action!