Sunday 23 October 2011

Jack of all trades, master of employability


If you want a job in journalism, or in fact any job at all; you need skills. And you need them now. Although I’m studying to become a newspaper journalist, from day one  the Cardiff  tutors have told us don’t be in a silo; don’t just stick to one type of media.

More than ever journalists are expected to (among other things):
  •  write for a variety of publications and sites
  •  produce, feature in and edit audio and visual content
  •  process, simplify and deliver complex data to the community
  •  cultivate, manage and engage with communities.

And if you can do all that in multiple languages that’s always a plus.

This is a daunting prospect for any budding journalist who just likes writing. Which is why I’m trying to become a jack of all trades, and yesterday I had my first workshop in learning how to shoot video.

We were taught by Tony O’Shaughnessy, who has worked at the BBC and Tower Media. He taught us the basics of how to set up a shot, what kind of shots work for journalism, how to film interviews and action sequences and how to do basic editing on Adobe Premiere software. We were then released onto the streets of Cardiff to put what we’d learned into practice. I worked with my housemate Jo Price (a Magazine student at Cardiff). We got a few shots of the city and managed to get an interview with Ben-the-passer-by who happened to be in a band (thanks Ben). The end result of our first attempt was this:



With more time and more training, we would have liked to record more of the music to extend through the whole clip,  record a narration voiceover introducing the Swn festival to lead up to the interview, and increase the volume of Ben’s voice. I really enjoyed the whole experience and all in all I was chuffed we only got asked to “stop filming and leave the property” once.

Comments and criticisms about the clip are welcome, as are any words of wisdom about what kit is good to use when shooting video.