Working with Sarah Campbell

On my course at University there are two students, myself and Sarah Campbell. Where I am simply just a student doing part time work on the side to support myself, Sarah works as a Digital Media Co-Ordinator with Torfaen County Borough and uses her training at university to develop her role at work.

It had been discussed previously that I would be welcome to attend some of her filming events and to work as camera man. The orgional project that I was going to attend has not yet made it to a stage where I would be able to be involved. However, after working with our tutor on a different project and being present for the discussion on how the filming had not yet been completed, I advised that I could be available to help her continue the piece.

The project was to advertise a secondary schools peer mentoring scheme. The video would be written and acted out by the students and staff from the school. It would be sent to primary schools in the area in order to encourage younger pupils to attend the secondary school knowing that they would not be alone and people would be there to help them throughout their education in all matters.

 On the evening before I contacted Sarah to confirm I would be available, she arranged to pick me up with all equipment already in her car.

During the car journey she filled me in on all of the scenes that needed to be completed and a brief over view of the project. I was shown a story board and well plan out timetable for the the day. With these things in place, everything from arrival went very smoothly. I did all of the filming on that day, we both shared sound and lighting, with Sarah on boom when needed and us both agreeing lighting setups. The students were wonderful and everyone was extremely co operative. For a short period some students came to watch and together we got them involved with holding reflector boards, boom sticks, listening to sound and guarding lights!
It was a different experience to be working with younger people, I was pleasantly suprised at how attentive they were and full of ideas and suggestions as well as understanding concepts such as 'consistency'. In the past, working with younger people was not something I was concerned about but at the same time I had not gone out of my way to work with anyone from schools. From doing this I would welcome children to participate more and will consider working with them more than I did before.