A second career

I have reached the 'arghhh' week in the 511 Video Production course. I have decided that although I love the editing part of the work, I am not a camera person at heart. I struggle to assess what's in the viewfinder of the camcorder with an educated eye, but I haven't figured out what the various light presets do which makes that difficult.

How is 'beach' different from 'snow'? or 'waterfall' different from 'profile'? (How often do you shoot a waterfall after all?) I have a colleague who says to look these things up in the manual, but there isn't much there to help me distinguish between them well enough to know what setting is best for say -- inside a white-walled living room on a sunny afternoon? That is where I did the shooting for the final project for this course. This week we have to look at all the footage and create a story board that goes shot by shot through the entire final video.

I did start with a shot list and a list of questions, but I've been reluctant to actually look at the footage because there isn't time to reshoot if I didn't light it correctly (there never was -- that would have tried my subject's patience too much) and I don't have the time to comb through it all this week before I get on the plane for Australia.

The conversation that I recorded was with my teaching partner and friend, Debra. We talk a lot about how we want to spend our last years in teaching and our early years out of it. She said she wanted to work at a local plant nursery because it isn't a people job. I used to say I wanted to tune pianos whenever the job got to be too much for me, but now I think I'd like to edit videos. The power that rests in your hands to pull the threads of a story together is amazing. You can literally put words in people's mouths by deftly rearranging what they've actually said to suit your own theme or purpose.

This week's slide show assignment has been fun from that point of view and I didn't have to take any of the pictures -- just find them and thread them together to create a story. Here is is for your comments and suggestions. I hope you enjoy it.