Monday, February 14, 2005

I'm The Media Guy

I'm starting to become The Media Guy here at Healthcare Central.

At work, we recently bought a new SOTA video camera to use in shooting stock footage, interviews, and other video features. These primarily have been used in our interactive kiosk at West Town Mall, but lately we've been shooting for other things. TV commercials are becoming more called for, and I've been out lately taping participants training for the 2005 Knoxville Marathon.

Today was a first - a press conference was called to demonstrate a new robotic surgery device, and I was asked to not only video the event for later broadcast on our local PBS affiliate, but run mikes to all six speakers at the event, and integrate the sound into the camera.

Now I've run sound and used sound board for years in theatre and choir, so I certainly know my way around the various switches, toggles and displays. But today was a first in that I'd never used external audio for the video camera.

So there I was at 8:45 am this morning, lugging in a rented 12-channel mixer, the video case, tripod and bag 'o assorted gear. I met Teresa/Hatamaran (who was taking still pictures of the event, and also uses the video gear a good deal) to begin setting up.

The press conference started at 10:00 am, and it wasn't until 9:45 that I'd worked out all the bugs and actually gotten an audio signal :) From there on, the event went smoothly and I got some great footage.

Trials by fire are never fun while they're going on, but it feels good after knowing you can take on a new project and succeed.

However, there's the old saying - nothing succeeds like success. I now seem to not only be the Website Coordinator, but I pretty much the new Media Guy. And I have a feeling I'm going to be asked to do this again someday :)

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