Mud, Camera… Action!

My friends participating in a Tough Mudder jump

We live in a time where people want to share their experiences with more than words; they want to share them in photographs and videos. And they want to share it with more than just their friends and family; they want to share it with the world. Technology has allowed us to do just that. This was evident to me when I was a spectator at a Tough Mudder event recently.

I saw several participants with GoPro cameras attached to their heads. No doubt they were going to share footage from these small, HD cameras on an online platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. I think that’s pretty cool, especially since I would never participate in such an extreme event, to see what it’s like to complete these mud-covered obstacles from their point of view.

I spot some GoPros!

I also saw some other cool video and audio technologies on my first day of my internship. After filling out some paperwork and signing in, I was shown around the offices, storage rooms and studio. There were cameras, computers, microphones and switchboards. There was a lot of things new to me, too, so I don’t remember what all the equipment and systems were called. I haven’t done any work yet, but it sounds like I will be doing some editing soon.

In my Post-Production class, we’re learning how to work in 3-D space in Adobe After Effects. You can create layers, say, with city skylines, and zoom through the space between them. You can also take flat images, give them depth and animate them. I’m working on a project with an After Effects icon I built in the program for practice. It’s really awesome to picture something in your head and create it in a program exactly how you imagined it.

Speaking of brining a concept to reality, we’re learning the beginning stages of how to do just that in my Pre-Production class: Taking an idea and turning it into something visual. During our last meeting, we looked at commercial scripts and learned how to line them. This is what you do to plan what shots you need. From that, you can build a storyboard. Our assignment this week requires us to do these activities on our own.

Between homework, classes, the internship and work, I’m trying to get some friends together to play disc golf at the West Bend campus. I played for the first time last year and it was a blast. I figured we should do it now while the weather is good enough to enjoy being outside. Let’s hope I can squeeze it in soon because it looks like Mother Nature might race through the fall season.