Today was the day to put our new video production skills in action – lights, camera, action!  A better phrase for it might have been “sink or swim.”

In pairs, we were told to tackle any story we wanted in New York City and spend the day producing video that we could edit later in the week into a 2-4 minute piece.

All the video skills we learnt in Day 1 and Day 2 were now to be put in practice: interviewing, shooting B-roll, and practicing the 3 x 3 rule (3 angles and 3 distances for each shot, with a minimum of 10 seconds of filming for each). Like chicks flying the nest, we were on our own to make this happen.

My partner and I decided to cover the smoking ban in New York City Parks that went into effect earlier this week. Ambitiously, we contacted the press office of the New York City Health Commissioner for an interview, but not surprisingly, they declined to accommodate us.  A shame as I would have liked to question them about the epidemiology data that supported the open space smoking ban.

We were not alone in being ambitious in who we wanted to interview. That’s what I like about my fellow classmates even though we are on a video bootcamp, we all want to cover our stories as extensively as possible.

The upside of a lack of formal interview is that I don’t have to lug a box of three lights and set them up, although other groups did, to their credit.

Armed with the list of shots we developed before leaving class yesterday, my partner and I spent the morning filming around Bryant Park in New York City.

We started with background shots of the park from different angles then progressed to interviewing the “man on the street” for their point of view on the smoking ban.

Duy Linh Tu, head of digital media at Columbia J-School who teaches the course, told us earlier in bootcamp:

“Remember what you need to get visually as you can’t go back and get it later”

That’s an important learning, as with video you can’t make the phone call later to clarify or ask a question you missed.  The result is one shoots more rather than less.

Over the course of 3 hours, we obtained:

• 27 mins of video
• 51 clips
• 3 interviews with the public
• 1 piece to camera shot in 2 locations
• background shots from 3 sides of the park

Back at Columbia School of Journalism, we transferred the film from camera to computer and logged our results. You do this by reviewing all the clips for what I would describe as the “good, bad and ugly.”  A few of the shots have ended up underexposed, others out of focus, but some look good and are useable (to my relief).

After my first review of what was shot, I have whittled it down to 30 clips and 19 minutes of video that I want to keep and edit. I’ll have another look tomorrow and plan to bring this down to around 15 minutes that I’ll work on in Final Cut Pro. As they say, the editor’s decision is final.

Today has been fun, I’m glad to have some video in the bank that I can use. Tomorrow is all about learning Final Cut Pro and how to use it to best effect. Hopefully there are a few tricks of the trade that will correct some of the camera exposure challenges that we faced in the park with its mix of brightness and shade.

Can’t wait for Day 4 to start.