Second Practice

The second practice went significantly better than the first. I think probably because the "head coach" attended this one. He's a player who has already graduated, but is still eligible to play, and will be leaving after this semester, name of Eric wright.

He's very approachable. Willing to explain positions or plays or what each part of practice is for. He's very natural around me, doesn't try to clean up his speech, doesn't try to talk up his team. It's actually a lot of fun talking to him. I think the other players saw how he was acting around me and took his lead, so everyone seemed more comfortable on the field. Some players even came up and talked to me.


Now I'm beginning to wonder how practices should be covered. I'm afraid I don't know enough about the game to be able to tell if someone had a good practice or not. I read Dave Matter for my Missouri Football needs, and he tends to pick a player or a position to report on, but I feel like that is because everyone else is reporting on the team as a whole. He has the ability to go into detail. But I'm just starting to cover this team, and I'm worried I wil miss something. So I just tried to cover the mood and atmosphere of the team, as well as give an idea of what I learned, because part of the blogging was to try and explain parts of teh game to give readers an idea of how easy or hard it is to get into the game.

On a more technical aspect, I took a couple more risks this time. I laid down in front of people who were kicking, walked out on the field in the middle of scrimmage and let them run by me as I took pictures. Just things I would not have tried last week. Even if I'm not positive what I'm covering, I am definitely feeling more and more confident in what I'm doing out there with the team.

Sports coverage

I set out yesterday to cover a sports team as a "beat" for the first time yesterday. I wasn't really sure what to expect, or what to do. It's interesting, I spend a lot of time reading sports columnists and team beat reporters, but when it was me out there, I was completely lost.

I had spoken to a few people on the rugby team already, so they knew I was coming out, but they didn't really know me or what I was doing. and they weren't the first players to get to the pitch. So it was me, trying to seem unobtrusive, but at the same time trying to act as though I belonged. quite an odd feeling.

Eventually, word spread around of who I was, and nobody had a complaint about me being there. Luckily, no players tried to monitor what they said or how they acted around me. A few goofed around or tried to pose for images, which I took and then just didn't use. No sense in ostracizing them. Only one player, Phil Hojnowski, seemed comfortable enough to really talk to me, and even then it took all practice for him to open up

On the plus side, I had the freedom to wonder all over the pitch and talk to anyone I wanted, or take pictures from any angle. That worked out pretty well, though I wasn't yet comfortable enough to ask to do things like get on the sled.

My plan is to just try and make myself a normal part of practice, so that the team forgets I'm there and starts talking to me. I'm not sure how long that will take, but I think it's probably a necessary step, especially since this team is not used to any kind of press coverage, like basketball and football players are. However, I did learn a lot in my first day of sports reporting, and I think I did a decent job of taking pictures as well.

Another Clash with Photo

Learned another valuable lesson for the workplace this week, which is communication.

I got thrown under the bus a bit, though I still claim responsibility. When I got to the newsroom, and Andrew informed me that we were going to send Stevie to Hickman to cover a jazz musician who was teaching a small class to do a photo slideshow. It sounded nice, and I was all for it, so I went into the budget with that to pitch.

When asked if Convergence had anything, I said we had a reporter headed to Hickman. At which point the photo editor glared at me and very loudly said "What?!"

To be honest, I was slightly taken aback. And then I made the connection. Nobody had thought to ask if we already had a photographer on the story. It ended up not being a big deal, Stevie just focused on capturing audio, but I looked like a fool in the budget meeting, and the photo editor was pretty steamed up of the rest of the day toward me.

In the end, it worked out pretty well, Stevie got back with some decent audio, even if her segments with words in them instead of music had a faint audio tone, because she had her speaker level set too high. But the end product was nice, and it was a good way to end my shifts with the Missourian. Plus, lesson learned. Ask and make sure nobody else is doing it before you send a reporter into the field.

Live Stream

I walked into the newsroom last Monday dreading what assignment I was going to have, because I knew I wouldn't have a reporter. My attitude quickly changed. Upon hearing that we would be live streaming the town hall meeting, I got pretty razzed up. It's not every day you get an opportunity like that, after all.

The problem was, none of use really knew what we were doing. We did a little research, a little asking around, told the editors and everyone else we would make it work, found the video camera, and headed to test everything and figure out how to work the program with about 20 minutes between leaving the Missourian and having to leave for the town hall meeting.

Those were some tense 20 minutes. At first we couldn't figure out how to make things work, and then we couldn't get the camera to work. Then more things went wrong with the audio. Finally, with everything appearing to work and not a moment too soon, we headed for the Black Culture Center.

They didn't let us set up where they told us we could. We were off tot he side. Then there were more difficulties getting the thing working again. Turns out, the DV input for the camera is way loose from people jamming the cable into too hard, so I had to hold the wire in, because the weight of the hanging cable was enough to pull it out so that we lost the feed. At times, when I was panning with one hand, and zooming with the other, I was holding the firewire cable with my teeth. I was manually adjusting audio constantly, because although we were plugged into the audio system at the Center, many people weren't using the microphones.

But eventually, it was over. We had lost the feed a couple times, we had problems with audio, and there were a few complaints. But really, I've rarely felt better and more uplifted after an assignment. It's nights like that that make me stay in this major. My heart was literally singing with the thrill of what Andrew and I accomplished. Yes, it wasn't perfect, there were a lot of things that could have been improved, not least of which was getting a better camera. But I felt like I did some good that night, and the numbers said that a massive amount of people logged on to watch our feed.

We made a tangible difference, and it was a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

The Deaf Don't Have It So Bad

The world, as a whole, seems to be very interested in smaller, thinner, sleeker things. Phones, cars, cameras, emissions, computers, independent thought. These are only some of the things that have jumped ship to join the downsize list. It seems now the only big things the world condones are boobs and shoes. And even then, it's go big or go home.
But then headphones said they'd had enough.

Now, there's a time and a place for small headphones. The gym, for instance. A boring class. a funeral. But sometimes you just need a big-ass set of headphones. I, too, have subscribed to this philosophy. And so I obtained a pair. Today, I tested them.

I wore nothing special. Black beanie, blue hoody, black track pants, black, inconspicuous shoes. With roaring headphones. White and black, bulky, shining plastic, huge headband, and skulls. Ah, the skulls. I put them on, and something changed, as I walked down the sidewalk. Students streamed past on either side, but it was as if I had joined the ranks of the handicapped. People immediately assessed the situation, assumed I was hearing impaired, and corrected their path to allow me a straight shot through the throng. I walked for 10 minutes without sidestepping once.

And the looks, ah the looks. Everyone questioned the headphones, because they themselves posessed only their small ones. "What is he doing?" "I have the right fashion, don't I?" "Oh no, should I have a pair of those?" "He looks ridiculous, doesn't he know anything?"

But not a single person said a thing to me. Perhaps because they all assumed I could not hear had they said something anyhow. And that would normally be true. But I can't help but wonder what would have transpired had they known the truth. I forgot to charge my iPod the night before, there was no music.

Plunging

I was asked to go out last weekend and take pictures of the polar bear plunge. For once this semester, I was excited about my assignment. I had mentioned to Andrew and John last week that that would be a really fun event to go and just capture audio for a photo-slideshow. Well, apparently, one of them was listening. I was asked to go capture audio, and possibly take pictures if the staff photographer had to leave early. I would have been fine doing it, but I ended up only capturing audio.

I felt like I did a fairly good job. The only real problem I ran into was that they were moving the media to the side, out of the way. This meant it was incredibly difficult to capture the sound of bodies running into cold water. I could turn my volume way up, but then all the sounds near me were way over-modulated. I settled for sneaking as close to the water as I could. I also really took the time to think of possible nat sound. I got teeth chattering, people squelching through mud, chanting, breathing as people ran to get clothes to put on, inspirational speeches from team captains. It was genuinely a lot of fun.

I also had a new experience, when I was out recording sound. The reporters sent from other media outlets, like KOMU, and KBIA, and the Tribune, I knew. It was a weird feeling walking around a huge group of people, with competing journalists all around, but being able to just walk up and talk to them. I suppose this is an industry standard I should get used to.

When I got back is when the trouble started. There is definitely problems in how the convergence desk works with the photo department. It wasalright at first, they just set me to the task of editing my audio, which I gladly did. However, because their photographer was on assignment elsewhere after the plunge, they couldn't give me an accurate estimate of how long the should be. Luckily, I had vaguely discussed it with the photographer before capturing, so I sort of knew. Then when I finished, I had to wait around for over an hour for the photog to get back. I used the time to tweak little things with the audio, like really getting the fades right and things like that.

Then when he did get back, he wanted huge swathes of audio restructured. I... dislike... how the work that I do can be discounted and changed on the whim of the photographer. I understand that the visuals he had he would like to put a certain way, but my audio also works best a certain way. I definitely prefer doing both portions so that I have final say.

Eventually, though, we hashed out the slideshow. I learned a little bit, as I always do when I report int he field, about technical things, like how to capture far off sounds, and working crowds. But even more so, I learned a valuable lesson. I really dislike working with people who don't have a background in alternative medias. I guess that means real life should get interesting.

facial hair

It has come to that point in the winter when the average person starts recalling hot summer days with nostalgic, altogether too graphic descriptions of pouring sweat. When the remembrance of a heat haze drifting upwards of the white-hot cement brings a smile to the lips. When pit-stains were in fashion. The icy wind whipping at the face forces a connection with days when people began making up new gods to pray to for a warm breeze. The silent, cold nights make a man long for the stifling warmth of a bedroom less the air-conditioning to save on electricity.
It is at this point that the male gender is forced to make a decision in his life. Let the facial hair grow, or cut if off. Now, this might seem like a simple choice. Either look ragged, or look clean cut. Some people can pull off a rockin’ beard, but most of us just look silly. But there are some hidden cons to be found in looking foolish.
For one, if it’s been a windy day, and you’ve been spending a lot of time outside, chances are your skin is dried to about the same consistency as a few of the more recent Pharaohs. The last thing you want to do is take a really sharp razor… or five, in the case of the Gilette Fusion… to your face. Cue the blood, the tears, the bumps and the curses. And then, once you have shaved (and applied a liberal amount of any kind of lotion you can find), when you go back outside, you no longer have that line of defense against the wind. It’s like a prairie. The wind whips away at the ground, and tried to erode the soil. If you cut the grass to short, it rips up your roots and turns the land into dry, scratchy desert.
Second is warmth. Sure, you could walk around with some kind of cotton fabric rubbing and chafing against your skin all day. Or, you could grow the beard. It’s the body’s natural insulation (aside from that holiday weight you put on). The wilder you grow that facial hair, the more skin you cover. It’s a Snuggie for you face. All the warmth, with none of the hassle.
Third, conformity. Walk around and look at all the ridiculous beards and mustaches. Shaving makes you stand out, in the frigid depths of winter. Do you really want to be “that guy” who is so worried about looking good that he sacrifices warmth and comfort? Sure, maybe you shave for a job, but if you’re not working, or your boss doesn’t care, I defy you to present another argument for shaving that doesn’t involve some kind vanity. It’s a case of the looks to survival ratio. You can only look so good without sacrificing your ability to realistically survive the temperatures, but at the same time, you can only look so ridiculous before your friends decide it is no longer socially acceptable to be seen in your presence.
With these thoughts in mind, I have decided to lead a movement. No Shave November should be extended and repurposed. From now on, men should have the option to participate in Stop Shaving till Spring. If it’s cold, this facial hair aint getting cut.