Well wasn’t THAT fun?

Yesterday Larry Nance and I moseyed on over to our local community college campus in search of a good backdrop to shoot illustrations for The Basics of Videojournalism and got more than we expected. Former McNair broadcasting student Louis Martinez and Larry’s son Amani accompanied us as both models and assistants. We shot Louis shooting an interview with Amani…then shot Louis walking (very proudly) with my HMC150 and tripod. Got shots of Amani in bad and better light.

Everyone pretty much ignored us until a middle aged lady stopped, pulled out a point and shoot and started pointing and shooting. We stopped for a minute to chat and discovered we knew each other – former (Stockton) Record reporter Paula Sheil is now on staff at the college and is researching and getting ready to set up some multi-media classes. (She got shots of us because she wanted to show students who used multimedia – little realizing that, well a couple of us have out of college for a while.)

All this for the Beta test of the Shooting chapter of the book. Still aiming at late spring/early summer to finish the writing and get the rest of the visuals.

Two lessons our young charges picked up yesterday: when shooting, find a safe home for your gear. Meaning, if you are lugging a lot to a location, find a well-lit spot you can keep an eye on while you are shooting. Protect the gear. We stored excess gear behind a statue in the middle of an open grassy area. If anyone even began to walk up the rise we’d see them. Second lesson – TALK to people. We sent Louis and Amani out to do interviews…but the bigger lesson was when Paula stopped and we talked to her. With luck she can become a resource for us and maybe she’ll even consider our book for use in her classes (fingers crossed).