Last week proved to be one that posed its own unique set of challenges, primarily with technology. As I’ve been going through the interview processes for the media clips, I’ve be touching base with Stevon Roberts, who resides in the fourth floor editing bay in Kerr. He has been more than gracious to show me the ins and outs of Final Cut Pro X, the digital editing software. It only varies a little from the program we use at school and so far, seems to be pretty intuitive.

On the other hand, the cameras, microphones, and such, have not. Each camera that I have (attempted) to work with has been different, and each has its own little quirks. For an interview with one of the grad students last week I reserved an interview room in the library that comes with its own camera. After getting lights that work (no windows in the room and on of the lights was burned out), finding out that the camera (which is mounted on the wall) cannot be adjusted, and getting a memory card (which was supposed to already be in the camera), we were able to begin the interview. It wasn’t until I was trying to download the videos that I found out that the Canon handicam I was filming with records in an .mts format, which Final Cut doesn’t recognize. This presented its own set of issues. Finally, after multiple trips to the library, and one very gracious person at the media help desk, I was able to at least get the video onto the desktop in the editing bay. More research and a brief conversation with Stevon, and I was able to get the video into Final Cut.

From this day (yes, all of this took a whole day), I learned that you can never be prepared for everything when working in the field. After making sure my Final Cut folders were ready for the media and calling ahead to make sure the room was set up for the interview, there were still a host of things that went wrong. But, despite all the frustration, I’m glad to say I’ve learned of some more items to add to the preparation list when getting ready for an interview.