El Presidente

It appears that most people are enjoying a nice day off. How wonderful for them; meanwhile, all of my assignment due dates seem to have converged on the span of a few days, which explains my nonexistent postings as of late.

In fact, I had it all planned out. I had a story due on Friday and the second draft of my master’s project due today (eek!). After class on Friday, which generally lasts until noon or 1, I planned to finish working on my story (about diamonds. Ooh la la) and then I would have the whole weekend to work on my project. After turning in my project today, I would work on reading and critiquing my classmates’ 16 stories due in cultural affairs class at 3.

Except that when I went to class on Thursday night, I received an unexpected assignment: I had to (with a partner) find a story, shoot it (with a video camera, not a water gun), and edit the footage into a nice little 90-second package. The assignment was due at 6 on Friday, which pushed my diamond deadline back to Saturday at 6.

When I heard this news, my heart sank for a number of reasons. 1. I hate shooting video, mostly because 2. I kind of suck at it and 3. this would limit the time I could work on my master’s project.

So on Friday morning I met with my partner Lorenzo and we decided to focus on a recent news story: the new NYC condom. The contraceptives were created by the city, packaged with eye-catching subway-like logos (you know, the colorful bubbles) and distributed at different locales throughout the city. Lorenzo and I headed to one of the distribution sites, which we found out was a barbershop in Harlem.

We planned to interview the owner and intersperse the interview with shots of the inside of the store as well as close-ups of the colorfully-packaged condoms. We shot inside of the store, we shot the street corner to show where we were, we filmed the edifice of the building and we captured a very informative interview. After I had asked the owner a number of questions, I asked Lorenzo if he had anything to add. In his soft-spoken voice tinged with a bit if a Colombian accent, he queried, “ummm. do you use these condoms?”

At first, the owner didn’t seem too amused. “Well no, since I’m married and I’m faithful.” But he did give a little chuckle at the end. Lorenzo and I then shot a few more images and headed back to school to edit the footage.

Once we got back to the computer lab, we were both prepared to get things done quickly so we could work on our other daunting assignments. But as we began to capture our video onto the computer, something strange happened. We had footage of the inside of the store, which we shot before the interview and we had shots of the outside of the store, which we shot after the interview. But where was the interview?

Oh God NO! We had taped over the interview. We had rewound the tape to make sure we had gotten the full interview, but didn’t subsequently fast-forward. I told Lorenzo to fast-forward to the end of the tape to see if we caught any of the interview. In fact we had. Except only two of the owner’s answers. One was a commentary about the design of the condom packaging (“a condom is a condom. I don’t care about the packaging as long as it protects you”) and, of course, the infamous “I’m faithful” line.

In the end, we just had to go with what we had. I ended up narrating the whole thing since we no longer had the owner’s commentary. I sat in the computer lab with my best NPR voice, saying “here we are in Harlem” into the microphone of the camera. And, of course, the whole thing culminated with the interviewee's ode to his wife. We finished the assignment on time, thankfully, which allowed me to spend one rockin’ Friday night working on a story about diamonds. Such is the pathetic life of a j-school student, I suppose.

Speaking of journalists, I received some pretty amazing news from my friend Emily who writes for the Dallas Morning News. She’s going to be on the side of a bus and on billboards. Well her slightly gray visage will be at least. Here’s hoping that the bus pic doesn’t suffer any Carrie Bradshaw-esque defacement!








Our little emo is all grown up!