TV Story Complete

Well after two hard days of work, my first original piece is now done!

With the help of my classmates Anna and Andrea, we were able to shoot, edit, and pull this thing together. Tomorrow is d-day in front of the class so we shall see how it is received.

My story was on the Special Olympics of London. It was a bit of a cheater topic for me, but one I felt very compelled to do. Why a cheater? Well I am a coach with the London Special Olympics "B" soccer team. But this is a story that is not told enough, so any chance I can to promote this amazing group of athletes I take.

I chose to cover how the athletes are training for the Ontario Summer Games. After discussing this with Cliff Lonsdale, one of our profs for the TV section, he said I need more focus. So I chose to focus it in on a special athlete and his specific preparations.

Gary Gray, 59, has been involved with the Special Olympics for over 25 years and 10 with the soccer team. He is part of the "C" team that is going to Windsor to represent the Forest City. He is contemplating retirement at the end of the outdoor season, but I have sneaking feeling that he'll be back for the indoor year.

Shooting went well, but we battled a setting sun and intrigued athletes who were all more than willing to make their on-camera debut. All went great and after a couple hours we walked out with about 25 minutes of footage, that needed to be trimmed down to around 90 seconds.

I did the shot listing and laid down the voice to pictures this afternoon. I began to cut, paste, edit, and re-edit, and in the end, I had just over 90 seconds of story!

I definitely realized how difficult it is to shoot sports stories with one camera among other things.

That brings our TV rotation to a close, and ON TO RADIO! At this point in time, I'm not all that thrilled about radio, but open mind and open heart.

I'll post again about the feed back I get tomorrow