Natural sounds tour of UT

In one of my journalism classes this semester, we are training to be "backpack journalists." Backpack journalist is a newer term for "one-man band." And that pretty much sums up what BPJs do. They report the story, shoot the video, and edit the package--the whole deal.

This is my first "practice" assignment. We had to make a 60-second video tour of UT with only natural sound as audio. I worked with my friend and classmate Brittany Hodge on the project. We had fun working on it even though it took a lot longer than we anticipated to shoot all the video (but hey, we have plenty of campus b-roll that we can use for future assignments). We went out as a team to help each other with finding shots, using the camera, etc., but shot our own video and edited our own assignments. And as I discovered when I was shooting another assignment on my own yesterday, it helps to have an extra set of arms to carry equipment across campus. ;)

Thankfully this assignment was ungraded. The purpose was to give us some experience in shooting video and editing with Final Cut Pro before our graded assignments (working on my first one of those right now). And the video isn't perfect. Somehow we managed to change the setting from full-screen to widescreen, thus the last few frames in my video are in widescreen when the rest of it is not (we're supposed to record in full-screen). And I lost some good video shots because our audio either wasn't plugged in properly or wasn't turned up enough.

But anyway, if you're curious to see some of what I'm learning, here's a sample of my work as an amateur videographer.

Tree collapses in South Knoxville

During yesterday's crazy storms, a huge tree collapsed near a home in South Knoxville. You have to watch this video on the incident. The sound bites are absolutely priceless. I dare you to watch it without laughing...

I now own a video camera!

Yep. I finally bought a digital video camera Saturday night. I've been eyeing it for a while so when I noticed it was on sale, I bought it with my income tax refund money. It's pretty sweet. :)

I've been playing around with it some, but haven't had too much time to do a lot of exploring with it. After the next couple of weeks of school are over, I hope to get out and do more with it.

I have discovered, however, that my outgoing younger brother is a budding movie star and producer all in one six-year-old package. ;) If my camera is out, he is in front of it. And if I'm recording him, and he knows it, he will not hesitate to say, "Hey, Sissy, film this. Now film me. Now film this." I have some funny videos of him--some where he knows the camera is on and some where he doesn't--that I will try to post to YouTube in the near future. When I do I will also post an entry on the blog.

My sister also enjoys the spotlight. She loves drama and acting, so she's not one to run away from my camera either. I filmed a hilarious video of her lip-synching to a Relient K song and totally dramatizing it. I plan to post that one as well.

Owning a video camera is going to be fun and I can't wait to see what memories I'm able to capture and preserve on film.