This was the first day to dumping all the footage from the day before. There were 3 interviews with video and audio, and B-roll from two other cameras. The night before, I tried to prepare by gathering up as much footage as I could and start to label the files. But no matter what, it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day with technology.
We woke up on time and made it to class with warm pastries as a welcoming treat. As we try to cram our what seems to be like 15 laptops on two small desks. The chairs were packed around the table as we claim our ground. People started to plug their many power converts and plugs into a power strip that would only be willing to accept three plugs at a time. The plugs looked like they could come to live and be a Megazord (Power Ranger reference).
If they were lucky to force the fourth plug in, they would hit a switch that would turn off the whole strip. This was especially unlucky for the girl at the end of the table for her G-Drive would lose power during her multiples of trying to gather the footage. I started to pass around my hard work from the previous night. After a couple of teammates completed dumping footage, we were never supposed to rename the files. Luckily, we didn’t have to start all over, but it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day with technology.
The hard drives compatibility with each computer was a challenge in itself. Macs don’t like working with PCs and PCs can’t view Macs information. It was a brain teaser on how to hop through each hoop for each computer. Other people had issues opening the editing software and no access to Wi-Fi. Luckily, someone has unlimited data and used their phone as a hotspot for those in need.
Even though we had issues with technology and we started to get frustrated with each other, we eventually worked things out and accomplished our goals for the day. We work well together even in the crazy moments. We still find enough time to have fun! I love my SOIC Study Abroad family!
Brandon Rigdon