Our names are José Disla, Carlos Nuñez, and Cristopher Beltre. We are students at Crotona International High School. We are learning media production filming and we went to the Nuyorican Poets Café to film the Nuyorican Student Celebration. Students came from schools that partner with the New York City Writing Project to read their original poetry. It was not difficult to document the live event because we had already practiced and we had done many sound tests before. We also practiced how to focus the camera and adjust the frame and volume. Filming a live event is different because you don’t have time to stop the event and tell the presenter to repeat it because the video or the audio went wrong. The choices we made as media artists was to position the two cameras. One was positioned in the middle of the seats close to the stage, and the second camera was on the balcony. We learned that when we are recording, other people cannot take pictures with a flash because it will change the color of the image in the film recording. If in the future we were to film a live event, we would be sure to check the camera setting for the resolution because we realized that the camera was recording at a low quality and not very focused. Another difficult thing that we overcame was when both the audience and the presenters were close to the mic, the volume of the video was too high, especially when the audience was clapping. We had to adjust the volume on the camera when people were making a loud noise. It was difficult to edit and adapt the volume to the regular level. We also did not have a stabilizer for the mic. When we moved the mic and touched the stick holding the mic, we can hear the noise we created from our hands.
We think that the final project went well because we did a good job and worked as a team. Sincerely, we prepared well and did our best to make the project come out.
I’m proud of the work you did to document this event! I’m interested in what other students on Youth Voices might have to say about the challenges of live videos.