Thursday, December 3, 2015
20 Steps Challenge
One of my most recent projects was when I filmed the "20 Steps Challenge, " which I filmed by attempting to stop every 20 steps in any direction and shoot a short clip of what I'm doing. The point of this project was to give an insight on what it's like to be me on a regular day. I started at my house, where I filmed myself feeding my dog, then doing my homework, eating dinner, then eventually going to my uncle's house where my cousin just recently celebrated his birthday. I actually didn't end up filming my cousin who had the birthday because when I got there, I wasn't walking around too much because we were mostly just having snacks and desserts and talking with each other. I did, however, film while him and a few of his friends went out to celebrate some more because my younger cousin came over with his dog and we just hung out. I stayed there for about another two hours where I filmed us leaving and arriving back home. Once I was at home, I also filmed myself watching T.V. with my Dad, and then finally going to bed. I thought that this project went very well, however, I felt that I could've done better by shortening some of the shots and there was a small part where I left a shot out of focus for about 3 seconds, but I sped it up a bit and cut it in half. I thought that I did really well in some parts of this video, like when I used different pans to make cool transitions. My favorite transition by far, was when I filmed myself doing homework, and when I looked at my backpack, I panned upwards to my parents and I eating dinner by using the table as a transition point. Forgetting about the out of focus shot and the length of each shot, I think that this video turned out fairly well.
A Day at Fox4 KC
On November 14, 2015, I had the opportunity to job shadow at the KCTV5 news station. It all started when my AVID teacher assigned us a long term project which required us to job shadow someone that had a job we were interested in. Because I am interested in filmmaking, specifically cinematography and editing, there is unfortunately not many options for me to choose from, so I decided to ask around and find out if anyone worked in the field of photography. One of my good friends ended up having an uncle who was a photographer in Kansas, so I immediately jumped at the opportunity, but before I did I found out that him and his Uncle did not get along very well, so out of respect I decided to find someone else.
After having no luck, I thought that I would have to shadow someone with a job I have no interest in at all, but then my mom actually suggested that I at least try to get in contact with someone from a news station. It sounded like a good idea to me, however, I thought that an email from a random student at a random school would easily get lost on their to-do list. So I tried getting in contact with various news stations such as KMBC9, Fox4 KC, 41 Action News, and finally, KCTV5. After a few days and no reply, I came to the realization that I would just have to make do with what I had. But then on Wednesday, November 11, I received an email from a woman named Jana Calkins who was a managing editor at KCTV. She said that although my deadline (which was November 20) was tight, she would still be able to help. She offered me a few dates on the weekend which started at 2pm and ended at 6pm, depending on whether or not I wanted to stay to watch the news in person, as well as the weekdays which would require me to show up at 4am. I almost questioned why she chose to respond to my email, but then she explained that she has a son that goes to ONW, and that she donated their old news desk to our school which is used for ONW NOW. She also said that she had worked with Mrs. Morris before on some sort of project. I chose to come in on Saturday because I figured that I would at least like to be awake when I'm entering a professional environment.
Saturday came and I was really excited because it was an amazing opportunity that doesn't come around very often. I arrived at exactly 2pm, which was a bad idea knowing that it is more professional to arrive at least 15 minutes before, and it seemed a little empty. I saw a sign on the front door that read, "Visitors must dial 1000", pointing to a phone on the wall. I dialed the number and I heard a very faint voice that was saying "hello", so in response I told them that Jana Calkins was expecting me to arrive. They understood and said that they would send someone to come down and let me in, as their was no receptionist in the lobby. About 2 minutes or so passed when a man came down to greet me. His name was Randy Parrott, and he was the Executive Producer. We walked up a spiral stair case to a large room with a large desk and a lot of other small desks with computers. There were about four other guys there who looked like they were working on something, which I assumed was part of that evenings broadcast. He introduced me to some of the workers and even a few of their anchors. I sat down with them as they were reviewing what their plans were for that days broadcast. After about 20 minutes Randy showed me around a little more and where the editors worked. There were only two editors there because weekends only require about a half of the usual crew. There was an editor there named Jason who I spent a good portion of the rest of the day with. I watched him edit that days news package while I asked him a lot of questions and he talked about how he got into doing what he does. While we were talking he asked me what program I use for editing and I told him that I use Final Cut Pro 10. I was surprised to find out that they actually use Final Cut 7, and he said that in mid-December they would be switching to 10. He also said that they had a room where they installed FCP10, but only one other person uses it. About 45 minutes later he took me to another room with a computer. It was the computer with FCP10 and he said that I could edit a news package just for fun, so he showed me a script to write to and some footage for a car wash fundraiser. After about 15 minutes of leaving me alone to edit, he came in and I showed him the finished project. He said that he thought it was very well done, so he was going to put it into that days show, but once he tried to find the story on that days schedule, we found out that the producer had decided to cut it due to time constraints. Although it was cut, it was still a good experience to have.
Randy then came to me right before the show started and told me that I could go down into the control room to watch half the show and then into the studio for the other half. The control room was really cool.They had a lot of T.V.'s that showed different reporters and different studio cameras. After about 30 minutes, I went down into the studio right across the hall and watched the show from there which was very interesting. It was cool to see all of the equipment they had in use, and I was surprised to find out that only one camera operator was working at the time, but then again it was the weekend.
At just about every commercial break the news anchors would always ask me questions about what I liked to do film wise and what I thought about their station. I also had the opportunity to take a few pictures with the anchors and they took a few pictures of me shown on their weather green screen, which was awesome. Once the show ended, Randy took me back upstairs because it was time for me to leave. Job shadowing at KCTV5 was a great experience and I'm thankful to everyone who helped make it happen, as well as all the crew who made it a fun and interesting experience.
After having no luck, I thought that I would have to shadow someone with a job I have no interest in at all, but then my mom actually suggested that I at least try to get in contact with someone from a news station. It sounded like a good idea to me, however, I thought that an email from a random student at a random school would easily get lost on their to-do list. So I tried getting in contact with various news stations such as KMBC9, Fox4 KC, 41 Action News, and finally, KCTV5. After a few days and no reply, I came to the realization that I would just have to make do with what I had. But then on Wednesday, November 11, I received an email from a woman named Jana Calkins who was a managing editor at KCTV. She said that although my deadline (which was November 20) was tight, she would still be able to help. She offered me a few dates on the weekend which started at 2pm and ended at 6pm, depending on whether or not I wanted to stay to watch the news in person, as well as the weekdays which would require me to show up at 4am. I almost questioned why she chose to respond to my email, but then she explained that she has a son that goes to ONW, and that she donated their old news desk to our school which is used for ONW NOW. She also said that she had worked with Mrs. Morris before on some sort of project. I chose to come in on Saturday because I figured that I would at least like to be awake when I'm entering a professional environment.
Saturday came and I was really excited because it was an amazing opportunity that doesn't come around very often. I arrived at exactly 2pm, which was a bad idea knowing that it is more professional to arrive at least 15 minutes before, and it seemed a little empty. I saw a sign on the front door that read, "Visitors must dial 1000", pointing to a phone on the wall. I dialed the number and I heard a very faint voice that was saying "hello", so in response I told them that Jana Calkins was expecting me to arrive. They understood and said that they would send someone to come down and let me in, as their was no receptionist in the lobby. About 2 minutes or so passed when a man came down to greet me. His name was Randy Parrott, and he was the Executive Producer. We walked up a spiral stair case to a large room with a large desk and a lot of other small desks with computers. There were about four other guys there who looked like they were working on something, which I assumed was part of that evenings broadcast. He introduced me to some of the workers and even a few of their anchors. I sat down with them as they were reviewing what their plans were for that days broadcast. After about 20 minutes Randy showed me around a little more and where the editors worked. There were only two editors there because weekends only require about a half of the usual crew. There was an editor there named Jason who I spent a good portion of the rest of the day with. I watched him edit that days news package while I asked him a lot of questions and he talked about how he got into doing what he does. While we were talking he asked me what program I use for editing and I told him that I use Final Cut Pro 10. I was surprised to find out that they actually use Final Cut 7, and he said that in mid-December they would be switching to 10. He also said that they had a room where they installed FCP10, but only one other person uses it. About 45 minutes later he took me to another room with a computer. It was the computer with FCP10 and he said that I could edit a news package just for fun, so he showed me a script to write to and some footage for a car wash fundraiser. After about 15 minutes of leaving me alone to edit, he came in and I showed him the finished project. He said that he thought it was very well done, so he was going to put it into that days show, but once he tried to find the story on that days schedule, we found out that the producer had decided to cut it due to time constraints. Although it was cut, it was still a good experience to have.
Randy then came to me right before the show started and told me that I could go down into the control room to watch half the show and then into the studio for the other half. The control room was really cool.They had a lot of T.V.'s that showed different reporters and different studio cameras. After about 30 minutes, I went down into the studio right across the hall and watched the show from there which was very interesting. It was cool to see all of the equipment they had in use, and I was surprised to find out that only one camera operator was working at the time, but then again it was the weekend.
At just about every commercial break the news anchors would always ask me questions about what I liked to do film wise and what I thought about their station. I also had the opportunity to take a few pictures with the anchors and they took a few pictures of me shown on their weather green screen, which was awesome. Once the show ended, Randy took me back upstairs because it was time for me to leave. Job shadowing at KCTV5 was a great experience and I'm thankful to everyone who helped make it happen, as well as all the crew who made it a fun and interesting experience.
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