Tyler Kendall
Editor-in-Chief
Even though senior Johnny Osterndorf was seated in the back of the NCHS auditorium during the Paul Simon and Harry Connick Jr. benefit concert, he still thought he had the best seat in the house. Johnny was part of a team of NCTV students who were working alongside professionals to shoot and produce the event. “The professionals have been showing us the equipment they use and the way they do things,” Johnny said. “It’s interesting to see how they do things similar to what we do, yet somewhat different.”
The students got a first hand experience of what it’s like to work during a big production. “For me, I’m with the director of all the cameras so I’ve just learned so much from him,” senior Kelsey Rowley said. For this event, Kelsey was in charge of the “robocam,” a remote control camera that was set up backstage. “Being next to him, he is able to help me with my job and show me different angles and different shots to get while I’m actually working.”
The event was a larger production than what the students usually cover. “It’s definitely much bigger,” senior Brendon Baker said. “For example, for the audio they are doing 15 different cables, where as we for a football game, which is our biggest production, wouldn’t have more than 4 or 5 cables. The scope of everything is a lot bigger than we are used to.”
In addition to the size, the event also had the added pressure of being a live production. “I think that there’s always added pressure when there’s a live event, especially because there is very little opportunity for rehearsal,” producer and director of the event Gary Russo said. “I would say the students were aware that it was a live event, and I think they felt it, but I think it was a good experience because a lot of these kinds of projects are live. Even though they are planned, these projects are very much an experience where you are flying by the seat of your pants and the students had an opportunity to see that and work with that and I think they did very well with it.”
Despite the magnitude of the event, the students noticed the organization displayed by the professionals. “I’m just really impressed with how organized they all are,” Johnny said. “They literally have the show teed up to the minute, every second of this hour and half show it booked and slotted, and they know where each camera is going to be and where each microphone is going to be for every moment of the show. This is so there are no surprises during the production, I think we need more of that at NCTV.”
Brendon agreed. “I think that it reaffirms what our [TV Broadcasting teacher Roman] Cebulski tells us all the time in class, which is the importance of preparation and being set up early,” he said.
The importance of cooperation was another aspect of production the students were exposed to. “For things to go well, it happens pretty often that people spill over and fill the cracks that they see,” Mr. Russo said. “I wanted the students to see that people in the production do more than what the minimum requirement is, and there is a very positive and cooperative energy.”
Despite the big names performing, the students were able to focus on the production. “For me I just try to think of them as normal people,” Kelsey said. “I want to treat them like any normal person would and give them the obvious recognition of who they are, but being calm, cool, and collected during this production is very important.”
Being around the professionals helped to assist this focus. “The professionals are really calm about it,” senior Juan Pablo Rivera said. “Even though these are big names, and everything seems really chaotic, they are always professional. I think that’s a good lesson I will take away.”
The professionals noticed high quality work from the students. “Working with the high school NCTV students has been great,” camera operator Tim Foster said. “They’re really confident, they have great attitudes, they’ve been really efficient in the jobs they’ve been working, and they’ve been a nice addition to the crew. It’s a community based project so it’s nice to see this niche in the community really helping out and doing this great of a job.”
The event gave students an opportunity to experience all aspects of professional production. “One of the things that still turns me on about this business is that I could walk into a project and be working with a crew of maybe 15 or 20 people, many of them who I don’t know, and by the end of that project they are almost like second family,” Mr. Russo said. “I hope that the students who helped picked up on that, that positive energy and professional attitude these kind of people bring. They want to perform their function well, but more importantly they want the whole to go well. I think the students saw that and that they got a feel for that.”
All photos below contributed by Kristen Jensen:
