S.T.A.N.D.

Our 2nd to last assignment for the semester was a news package we put together about S.T.A.N.D. which is an anti-genocide club assembled on campus. My job in this cycle was to be the camera man. The main footage we as a group wanted to capture was of an event that S.T.A.N.D. was putting on that represented a refugee camp.

Students spent the night in the quad on our campus, sleeping in tents, and painting messages of hope on a giant tent that will be sent either to Darfur or a museum that represents genocides throughout the world. It was difficult to get a lot of good footage because not many kids participated during the day in the event. I went to the quad while the sun was still out and there were only about 5-10 kids there.

I took this time to interview the President and Vice President of S.T.A.N.D. It was very hard to interview the two girls in a quiet place. The event had very loud music blasting over speakers and the two girls could not travel very far in case more people came to sign up for the event. We walked to the end of the quad and I got about 10-15 minutes worth of interviews from the two of them.

I went back later in the night to get some more B-Roll. It was difficult because the sun was going down and there is no light on the flip video ultra. I tried to get some up-close shots of two African Drummers that were brought in to perform but none of the shots came out good enough to use in the final package.

I was able to get some very good shots at this time of kids painting the tent. By this time, many more students made their way to the quad to take part of this great event and they showed their messages of hope on the tent. It would have been nice to get extremely up-close shots of each individual message, however their were many kids around the tent, still painting, without leaving me much space to film. I thought I did a good job of getting the shots I could get with the time, and sun allotting.

A few days later, Brittany recorded her stand-ups and voice over, and Greg spent a great deal of time picking through all the video I had recorded in order to put it all together. So without further a due, I present a Channel 4 News Team Exclusive : S.T.A.N.D.

Dan Roberge Has Talent

Our third assignment was to film someone with talent. I assumed the position of producer this turn around, Greg was our camera man and editor, and Brittany was the interviewer.

When we set out to try and find someone with real talent at Roger Williams, I figured who better then Dan Roberge, a sophomore pitcher for the baseball team, who is fresh off the first perfect game in school history, and 14th ever in division 3 baseball.

Dan was nice enough to sit down with Greg and Brittany a few hours before he had to take the mound in game 2 of a double header. The biggest problem we had with the interview was the wind. While using the flip video ultra has many perks, one big problem is there is really no way to block the wind. At RWU, there is always wind. Below is the video, and below that is some more information of what we did during the video, enjoy.






As you noticed, we used "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" in our video to add some element of "pizazz". Although we initially thought it was a great idea, we now realize that it does make the overall video seem a little choppy, but we still like it. We could have turned the audio of the song down a bit and played it throughout the entire interview but we felt it would muffle Dan.

We feel like the interview came out really well, and I really enjoy the cutting from the interview to the B-Roll, and back. I thought the sound of the music matched up perfectly with the B-Roll, especially the 3 strikes and your out.

We want to thank Dan for his time, and congratulate him on his perfect a few weeks ago, and his 1 hitter that he threw on Tuesday. I had a lot of fun trying to find different angles for our B-Roll, and I think Greg did a great job of picking what ones to use. I love sports and baseball especially so I really enjoyed this project, I hope you all do as well.

What to do after college?

For our next assignment, we set out to find out what students plan on doing after life at RWU. We originally planned on finding two or three stories, that were completely different from each other. Maybe we would find one person who had their whole career planned out, and others who haven't even began looking. Instead, we found that the majority of the people we talked to were extremly uncertain at what the future held for them.

My job for this assignment was to film all of the B-Roll and find the kids to interview. I spent about an hour to an hour and a half walking around campus trying to film anything and everything that would represent everyday life at RWU. Luckily, it was a beautiful day and I arived in the quad, right when lots of people were coming to and leaving classes. Getting shots around campus was very easy, besides the people who kept trying to walk out of the shot, thinking they would get in the way, even though I wanted them to walk in the shot.

I then found a bunch of my friends and some other people and begged them to let me interview them. Many obliged, so I set out to ask them questions. They were all very cooperative and each interview took about 5 minutes tops. I got a lot of good answers out of all of them, and we ended up using all the interviews except 2.

On Wed, (project due Thursday) Brittany and I brought our cameras to Greg so he can start editing. After we shot Britanny's voice over we noticed President Nirschel walking around outside of the WQRI booth. We ambushed him and asked him to give us a quote or two for our project and he politely agreed. The hardest part of the project was filming the President without a tri-pod as I had to hold the camera as steady as I could, and I think I did a pretty good job with it.

Well heres the final project. I think we all did a great job, and some of the shots we got came out even better than I thought they would. Hope you all enjoy learning about what RWU seniors plan on doing upon graduation.

RWU prepares students for the real world

Over the past week, we have been planning, writing, filming, and editing news stories across the Roger Williams University campus. The class has been broken up into four teams in which we are responsible for coming up with our own story idea, and then after pitching it to our teacher, we set out to make the story happen.

My team consists of Brittany Costa, Greg Walsh, and myself. Our team name is Channel 4 News Team. For our first cycle we decided to do a story on a class offered here at RWU, called Finance 450. The business class is aimed to help prepare students for the real world of buying, trading, and creating a stock portfolio. The students use real money to invest into real stocks, and create a real portfolio.

It is believed the success of the class is not whether the students make money or not (although that is a huge plus) but rather the gaining of real world experience using this hands on learning technique. There are a few new classes here at RWU offers that is creating this unique learning style, which is different than having a teacher lecture at you.

Our next video will be on Roger Williams Seniors, and what some plan on doing after they graduate. We hope to compare and contrast a few students who either have no clue or planning on what they will be doing in the coming months, with a few who are over prepared and maybe already have a job lined up.

Below you will find a Channel 4 News Team Exclusive of Finance 450. This is our first real news package we have put together and we are all very happy with the result. A lot of time and effort went into this and we all hope you enjoy.