Shannon McEnerney | Dec. 4, 2009
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| Photo by Scott Myrick |
| Lab technician Jeremy Lacey worked with one of the new Sony high definition cameras the school recently acquired. Lab director Scott Myrick said students now have access to up-to-date equipment. |
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She can only describe her opportunity in using the video cameras as “amazing.” Foust is enrolled in and is using the new cameras for her video project.
This semester, the School of Journalism added 35 Sony high definition video cameras, along with 35 new tripods, to the inventory available to students through the school’s multimedia lab. Students and faculty say they already appreciate the benefits.
Scott Myrick, multimedia director who also teaches a section of J360 Multimedia Storytelling, said the school needed the upgrade because some of the old video cameras were 10 years old and starting to show their age. Students shot footage with them only to discover that their film was not useable because the cameras malfunctioned while recording. Also, the school had five models of cameras, meaning students sometimes had to learn to use a different model in each class.
Myrick said the school now has as “bank of cameras” that are all the same, and new software, high definition tape decks, on the lab computers means students can make the most of their video learning experiences.
Assistant professor Joann Wong, whose J343 Broadcast News class uses the video cameras, said the transition from the old to the new video cameras was smooth. Students who are new to videography may not realize they are working with state-of-the-art equipment.
“We are lucky to have them,” Wong said, explaining that some universities are having difficulty in affording new equipment.
It’s the assets and the features of the video cameras that are benefitting students the most. Foust noticed this as soon as she returned to the multimedia lab to upload her footage. Her video project focuses on the Bloomington Bleeding Heartland Roller Girls, and the video cameras are making the difference in the quality of footage she is shooting.
“It has basic features like any other video camera,” Foust said, “But the high definition quality is amazing when you look at the footage. Everything is so colorful.”
Myrick said these high-definition video cameras have four and a half times higher resolution of the old cameras, and Myrick reiterates Foust’s experience: the footage shot on the video cameras looks “beautiful.”
Students can now develop a better sense of quality, Wong said, so that when they go out on the job market, they know the quality of advanced technology they are using.
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| Photo by Scott Myrick |
| The Sony cameras already are in use and students are seeing the benefits. Senior Marianne Foust, a student in J360 Video Storytelling, called them "amazing." |
Wong said the new video cameras are the right move and investment to make in the current journalism industry when everything is constantly advancing and changing.
“As technology changes, we try to keep up with it,” Myrick said. “But we’re looking for new technology that meets our needs and helps our students.”
Associate professor Claude Cookman, who teaches the other section of J360 Multimedia Storytelling, said these new video cameras are easier to operate, while the old ones were clunky and cumbersome.
And, the new cameras allow students to use new technological tricks. The video cameras come with two microphones, one of which can be attached to the subject being interviewed on camera. This allows the subject to move and continue his or her routine, with the microphone picking up the person’s speech the whole time. The cameras allow for sound and visual to be combined so subjects are not just sitting and talking in front of a camera, but are instead talking and moving at the same time.
“The soundtrack is as important, or more important, than visual,” Cookman said.
Both Myrick and Cookman said they are looking forward to their students’ stories the most for this reason: the technology is taken care of due to the high quality of these cameras, leaving the storytelling capabilities to be endless.
“The shots are the same,” Cookman said. “What I am focused on is the storytelling more so than the technology.”
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