On Starting Work With Television.

We started the Television section of our course today. I didn't really know what to expect from it, but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

We were introduced to our lecturer, Sean, whose first piece of information was to be on time, and never spell his name wrong. He ran us through the course, telling us what to expect from the three years to come, if we choose to do the television unit. Like all units, we were eased in. He listed off some technical terms, to which none of us knew the answer, and showed us a piece of second year work for us to critique.

I'll be fair, in my opinion, it wasn't very good. Though I understand the students making it only had limited resources and did the best they could with what they had. It would have been stupid of me to expect BBC News standard. The piece itself was a sports piece, and students went out to Twickenham to try and gauge post-match feelings, even though they weren't allowed to film there. To their credit, they managed to snag an interview with former England Rugby captain, Phil Vickerie.

We were split into groups of 3, and tasked with producing a short story relating to today's announcement that Prince William and Kate Middleton were to be married. Though the female of our group was the designated team leader, she had a more relaxed management style and pretty much let me delegate. I'm not taking credit for everything, but I feel I more than pulled my weight.

I wrote down an introduction to our story, which I then read to camera. Nobody in my group wanted to be the first to speak, but I was more than happy to. I managed to get a Vox Pop, and squeeze an answer from someone who didn't know about the announcement. When we couldn't agree on where to film as a team, it was I who made the final decision. I also did my best to encourage the other members of the team, and gave them my honest opinion whether they asked me for it or not.

Though our battery ran out halfway through filming, we managed to get another camera, and made it back to the room with over 15 minutes to spare. We would have got on with editing the piece, but for some reason, whilst the clips would play perfectly fine if we loaded them directly, when putting them into Premier Pro, they only jumped around, not playing very well at all.

We moved to several other computers, and had the same problem with each. In the end though, we had to concede defeat, and finished the lesson with only a few raw video files, and nothing resembling a piece.

What I Did - See the 5th Paragraph
What I Learnt - Many technical terms, including Rushes, B-Roll, and SOC to name three. I also learnt that technology can't be trusted, wheter it be batteries or Mac computers.
What I Could Have Done Better - I could have been aware of battery life in the camera. I could have left more time for us to get back to deal with the problems that arose when trying to edit.