ENG DP

In less than 24 hours, I will be all packed and ready to go! Where, you may ask? Why, to the sweet city-village of Decatur, Georgia for our Atlanta ATF event. I am quite thoroughly excited for this event, because my first 8 months as an intern were spent calling every youth pastor in the beautiful state of Georgia to invite them to the 08-09 Here Comes Trouble tour when it pulled through there in April. So you could say this is my baby event!

I will be going as a ENG DP, which translated, is a camera operator/producer, collecting b-roll (raw footage: crowd shots, bands, incoming teenagers, etc) and interviews of attendees throughout the weekend. This, I feel, is a very exciting job. I'm a bit of an extrovert myself, and my job this weekend allows me the privilege of talking to dozens and dozens of people, as "work related conversation". It also allows me to go places like right in front of the stage, backstage, and basically anywhere, in order to get the footage we need for the event highlights (a quick 2-3 minute video of the biggest things that happened for that specific event, shown back on campus during chapel for the rest of the interns).

I think my favorite thing about this weekend is that it's a Red event. What's that? During the spring semester of our tour, we hit two towns every weekend, double teaming it. The team that's been doing it since August is called the Blue team, and Atlanta will be the birthing event for the Red team, which formed in January, and has been practicing and practicing and practicing and... well, you get the point! This is their first event, and I'm very excited to see how it will turn out. Alot of my closest friends from my first year are on the team, so during break times and such I'll be able to spend some good ol' Quality Time with them! They'll be on the road for the next several months after that, so this is precious time for us.

For today though, aside from packing, I will be stretching and working out my ENG Producer muscles, which haven't had much action since last summer's GE and XC summer stretch. Should be interesting, because as creative as we are, CCMers don't give very good practice interviews! I suppose I shall just have to make up some funny questions to keep them on their toes. Oh, yes, one of the biggest things about doing ENG isn't necessarily good camera skills, though keeping the camera steady and focused IS important. I consider an engaged conversation to be far more important however. Many people like being in front of a camera, but you won't get good interviews to use if your interviewee feels like you're not listening, because you're just running through a list of pre-thought out questions that aren't personal. My thoughts are ask a rather broad but semi-focused question, like "Tell me something you've experienced at the event so far", or "What do you see God doing in your youth group at this event", which will get them talking for a little bit, and give you pieces of information about them or their youth group that you can glean further, more detailed questions from, which gives you an organized personal interview, and them feeling special for their short 15 minutes of fame. :)

Gotta fly!
~Char