With show 4, I am now heading towards the end of my time in Mountaineer Playbook. By using the lessons I have learned to my advantage, while still learning from new experiences and challenges, I was able to contribute my best work yet to the show. With a variety of challenges and experiences, some as close as the engineering campus and taking me as far as Charleston, I had plenty of adventures during show 4.
The first reporter I helped for show four was women's basketball reporter Calvin Kleppner when I went with him to the women’s basketball exhibition game. I had never filmed basketball for b-roll before, and although Calvin gave me a good idea of what we wanted, I was not fully sure how I was going to get footage of the specific players he wanted. Including the fact that I was not allowed to use a tripod on the court, and I had given my monopod to Calvin, so I pivoted and filmed from the stands. I was able to get most of the player ISOs he wanted, since he wanted footage of all the players who had transferred to West Virginia this season. This experience gave me a better idea of how to film basketball, and I am now better prepared for going to the Coliseum to work on future basketball stories.
I went with adventure reporter Brandon Kubiak to the annual Pumpkin Drop on the engineering campus. This event happens every year and is an event that brings high schoolers and middle schoolers to the university to do the egg drop challenge, but with pumpkins. Brandon and I faced three major challenges when trying to cover this event. The first of which was the wind; it was extremely windy the morning of this event, and it kept messing with everything, especially Brandon’s hair, when we were trying to film his stand-up. He used an entire jar of hair gel, and it was still blowing with the wind. The second challenge was that the boom mic on my camera was not picking up sound, so we were having a hard time getting natural sound at this event. We were able to use Brandon’s camera and get enough natural sounds, and then I was able to later figure out what was causing the microphone not to work. The final challenge was getting a second interview. We already had one set up with an event organizer, but we tried to get an interview with a parent, but none of the parents who were present wanted to be interviewed. We were able to pivot and interview three different students until we finally felt we had a good quote. This would have been a much larger challenge during an earlier show, but with the experiences I have had throughout this class, I have learned enough about problem-solving that Brandon and I were able to constantly pivot and still turn a story that was worthy of making the show.
Later that night, I went to the Mountain State Derby, which is the rivalry match between Marshall and West Virginia in men’s soccer. This was the biggest soccer match of the regular season for both teams. At the time I had gotten there, I was not there for a specific reporter because no one had taken the story yet, but I was asked to be there to get footage of the game, just in case. It was a good thing I was there because after an exciting first half, director Logan Callender decided to pivot to this story. I was able to get all of the specific shots he asked for while he was working the game for ESPN+ as a handheld camera operator. After the game, I attended the media availability, and we interviewed announcer Nick Farrell. Thanks to the experiences I have already had, I was able to get all of the footage that was needed, even with a quick turnaround of the focus of what I was shooting and what I was doing it for. We then went on Wednesday to Charleston to go to Charleston University to interview their Athletic Director, who was there when Chris Grassie, Marshall’s head coach, was a coach there, and she had hired Dan Strafford, West Virginia’s coach, to be Charleston’s head coach before he was hired by West Virginia. Since both coaches of this rivalry had coached at Charleston, it was a major part of this story, as these coaches have brought both schools to an elite level in college soccer. We also got b-roll of the campus for his story while we were there.
A few days later, I went with anchor Jarrett Wilson to the wrestling pavilion to get his interviews and stand-up for his story on the Wrestle-offs. Shooting interviews at the Wrestling Pavilion is difficult because there are not many places to interview the subject, so you always have to settle for the same background, but I was able to spot a poster of the Mountaineer, and interviewing head coach Tim Flynn helped to add just a small detail that helped to make the interview more interesting. We also filmed Jarrett’s stand-up, but had limited time in the facilities, so we were unable to get his teases done and he had to figure out another way to film those. Thanks to having been on a tight schedule before, we were able to get everything we needed to do in the wrestling pavilion done.
At the editing lab, I got there around nine, but I didn’t spend much time in the editing room itself because I went to the rec center with Dax. Since he had to reshoot his stand-up and shots at the last second. When we got back, I then helped Parker film his stand-up. Filming in the field twice took up most of my time at the editing lab this week.
In the studio, I am continuing to improve as a technical director. There are still some mistakes, but they are getting out of the way more quickly, and I am more polished on later takes. By doing so, I am helping to improve the in-studio product with each show.
After my experiences from show 4, I can continue to learn from my experiences in the field and am able to continue to put a better overall product forward for show five. The time I have spent learning and thinking on my feet for Mountaineer Playbook will help me in the future because I can continue to use these learning experiences to prepare myself for working in this industry in the future. I look forward to proving what I have learned throughout the production of Show 5.