"Tough love"

The 'Camera and Sound' session with The Don went practical this week, with a quick recap on white balance and how to balance audio levels then a dash out of the door to film a package on 'how technology has impacted Higher Education/University learning'.
Although we felt the pressure, it was an exciting process, consisting of firsty attempting to get an interview with anyone who had an opinion on the impact of 'technology' or simply someone of status at the Uni that wasn't on their lunch break.
Unfortunately we were unable to grab a main interview but we filmed three Vox Pops and managed to shoot three (really quite short) PTCs, as well as a few GVs of the KKB, Learning Cafe, MMC and the new TV Studio.
This was my first opportunity to go out and film a package. I love the buzz  and the pressure of the deadline and even though we did not complete the brief to the level we had expected, I learnt a lot by simply being out there, doing the practical stuff. Small things like setting up white balance, keeping to the rule of thirds and monitoring sound levels are made a lot easier to understand when you are able to put it into practice.
I wasn't too nervous about Don and Brian seeing our unfinished package because it is now whilst we are at Uni when making mistakes is ok and simply another way of learning.

Now we have to be more pro-active, taking every bit of the constructive criticism from the lecturers and working on it; watching tons of regional news programmes and  using the University's facilities as much as possible whilst we are here. We need to practice with the equipment until it becomes second nature so that when we do step out into the big scary world we can be confident in our skills and not make the silly mistakes that we are making now.