Now that I have finished working on show 5 of Mountaineer Playbook, my time is officially over. Thanks to the experiences I had throughout the previous shows this semester, I was able to use these experiences to help me be efficient while shooting in the field. This helped me to put the best content forward that I possibly could and to continue to give me memories and experiences that will be useful after I graduate.
I started helping reporters when I went with Dax Bolton and Hank Misson to the men’s basketball game against Pitt. Although I was not used to filming basketball and it was an adjustment not being able to have a tripod or monopod on the court, I was able to quickly adjust and focused on getting clips of fans in addition to footage of the game. After the game, I attended and recorded the post-game press conference with Dax and Hank.
On Sunday, I went to the wrestling quad meet with Jarrett to get footage and interviews of the wrestling team for his story on how the team is going to have more scholarships to offer next season. Since Jarrett was working as a sideline reporter for ESPN+, I was the only one filming for his story during the meet and I had to follow the instructions he gave before the meet for what to shoot, as well as being diligent with what I saw happening at the event and keeping in mind what I thought would look good. The one main challenge I had with filming this meet was that since the wrestling team was essentially having three meets in one day consecutively, I had to be cautious with how much charge was left in my camera batteries. This was essential because Jarrett had two interviews set up after the match was over. For this reason, I had my camera turned off for almost the entire third meet to conserve batteries. I was able to still get all of the footage that was needed and be able to have enough charge to do the interviews after the meet. Although this would have been a bigger challenge during an earlier show with the experience I now have filming for Playbook, I was able to get everything I needed to efficiently and get plenty of extra footage in the additional time I still had, so that Jarrett had plenty of options when it came to what B-roll he could choose from when editing his story.
Tuesday, I joined Director Logan Callender when he went to the garage where the Formula SAE Team designs and builds their cars. Logan asked me to join him at the last minute as the story seemed like it was not going to work out, but he was able to schedule everything that he had to and he needed help getting what he needed to turn the story. This was an interesting experience because it was hard to know what to film since it was not an organized practice or anything. It was students working on whatever tasks they individually needed to complete. These were mostly running coding programs and doing other tasks on the computer, so Logan and I had to keep our eyes peeled for students using other sorts of equipment that we could get footage of to help give an accurate image of what the team does. Although it was a challenge to know what to film, my experiences throughout this semester made it easier to find interesting shots that could enhance Logan’s story.
The final time I went out in the field to film during my time with Mountaineer Playbook was to film a VO of the Christmas lighting at Woodburn Hall. I went with producer Hunter Kozik and we faced multiple challenges while getting b-roll of this event. One of which was the lighting problem. Everything looked too dark except for Woodburn itself, but I was able to manage to get shots of the people at the event that were bright enough that it was visible and still made sense with the rest of the footage. Another problem was how large the crowd was at the event. This made it hard to get additional clips that I wanted to get, but instead of going out of my way for them, I stuck with making sure I had Woodburn lighting up. At the beginning of the semester, these problems might have ruined the VO because I might not have been able to adjust the same and know how to make what I can get work. This constant adaptability continues to prove to be one of the most valuable parts of the experience I have gotten at Mountaineer Playbook.
In the studio, I believe this was my best show as a technical director. By staying focused and constantly being aware of everything that is needed, I was able to get through the show smoothly with very few mistakes, and we were able to finish our final show in just two takes.
After my experiences from Mountaineer Playbook, I can now reflect on everything I learned from this experience and be able to find ways to use the lessons I have learned along the way to help me when I soon look to start my career and these experiences will be useful especially how I learned to film efficiently and to constantly be adapting in difficult situations that prove to be challenging and to not let these difficulties set me back and hurt the work I am putting forward.