By Shanel Pillay
You running from the AMM carrying the tripod in one hand the camera box in another… wait… that would be a lie, I can barely walk carrying both, who am I kidding? Team work is definitely the name of the game, having a partner to help with all the lugging about and capturing makes your job well… oh so much easier… having a partner with a car, well that would be the cherry on the top.
But I’m not here to get into the joys and pains of lugging around camera equipment but rather to share my experience of being a reporter, on the scene (lol). It felt amazing going out to cover a story, knowing that you, and you alone, have the opportunity and power to make or break the story. Being the only TV journalist on the scene made me feel important, especially when everyone was so willing to be filmed and have their fifteen minutes of fame.
Editing proved to be a real challenge. TIME was the main issue. We didn’t have enough TIME. There was so much to say and very little time to say it in. I had to chop and change my transcript a number of times because it just did not fit. I also found choosing the most important visuals very tricky, what do you use, what do you leave out? There were many things I wanted to include, some of which you can view right here, thank goodness for blogging.
Guili’s interview was quite interesting; especially at the end… watch this clip to see what I mean.
Other bits that we couldn’t include was grade 11 comments, they were so overwhelmed by the camera’s they were not sure what to say unlike their mentor for the day, so don’t miss out, listen to this:
[podcast]http://rutv3.ru.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/learners.mp3[/podcast]
And lastly, the Lillian Ngoyi Hall community engagement reps were such troopers. They managed to stay for the entire morning while other halls slowly got away. Find out what they were up… and why they stayed…
Other aspects that we wanted to put in, unfortunately, got lost between capturing it (or not capturing it on film and on the PC), we blame the Bermuda tripod. Shots really didn’t come out the way we planned.
All in all it was a wonderful experience and I had a great time. We have made a few mistakes but I think that will only make us stronger in the future. So look out world, here we come, because as Paddy says… “The world is a tripod” and I have the camera.
Don’t forget to see the completed news package… the final result 🙂