Rush rush all day long, rush rush while I make this song...

Was given the assignment to shoot stills and video of a "walking school bus." What's a walking school bus you ask? It's where several elementary school children and their parents gather up in a group as they walk to school in the morning. But looking back on the day, I wonder if it wasn't the opening of Pandora's evil little box.

The route was barely a mile. I knew it wasn't going to take long to walk a mile in the cold and snow. One issue was that I forgot to grab a video camera in my dazed fog of editing a beast of a video for another story the night before the assignment. I was already a bit perturbed that I had to do double-duty, so I grabbed my audio kit and decided I would make an audio slide show.

After working on that vicious beast of a video, which was a two-camera video shot with only one camera, I learned that stills allow for a wider scope of wiggle room in the editing process. A still can be stretched out a bit longer or shortened as needed and the time viewed is not based on the action or for the most part the audio track. A video clip has a C-130 load more influence from the motion and the audio in most cases. So back to my bus project....

I was feeling that doing the audio and stills would lend to better maximization of the brief time given to gather content. Well, looking back on the morning and in the editing area –which is not the quietest environment to be in nor void of distraction– I decided that I may have been wrong in thinking that I was better off shooting stills and gathering audio. I've determined that in many respects I should have driven back to the office before the assignment and grabbed one of the Canon XH-A1 cameras and JUST shot video. Then pulled frame grabs for the paper to run through the VooDoo Tool. All the audio and visuals would have been gathered at the same time. I wouldn't have "missed" a shot or three. I wouldn't have "missed" a great sound bite. I wouldn't have been so damn stressed out and sent a pathetic and out of line text message to my boss.

Lessons learned. The hard way. Sometimes the best way really. The countless possibilities present in multimedia also present countless learning possibilities that can make a very structured and eager person feel humbled after a bit of rage. Not that I would apply the notion of shooting only video and pulling frames to every assignment, but it will be something I will take into consideration and appraise the final possible results given the situation.