Shooting Shop with a Cop

I learned so much shooting video for shop with a cop. It was soooo much different than planning the shot and just shooting a portion of the video fifteen times until we get it right.. like the BIG 72 and ATPI video contests. When I was at Target I focused on the video aspect more than the sound..which was the opposite of what I should have been doing. The event started off with the parade of police cars and fire trucks into the parking lot. We needed the sirens because thats how we opened the video. After the parade, we went inside. I got video of the officers and children getting paired up, but I didn't get hardly any sound. Next I followed officer Erving around with his child, Stormy. And again, I didn't focus on the sound. I wanted to get cool video shots and be all creative and stuff, but it didn't work. The toy aisles were super crowded and there wasn't very much room to get wide shots of the two shopping. Also, there was one point were they were talking about a toy...and there was room for me to get the sound..and it was a long conversation. Where was I? halfway down the aisle shooting video. Its just really aggravating that I didn't get sound. But I learned my lesson. After following Officer Erving and Stormy around I decided to get videos of interviews. I attempted to interview stormy but she was really quiet and I couldn't hear her on the video so I decided to just interview Officer Erving. Rush then interviewed Santa, another cop, a firefighter, and a few kids while I videoed them. While waiting on Santa so we could interview him, the girl scout troop came to the front of the store and started signing Christmas carols. I was really glad I got a few of their songs because we ended up using them for the background sound in the final video. While we were all up front waiting for everyone to finish shooting, I noticed Caroline talking to this kid about the items he got. I wanted to get his reaction to the gifts with out just interviewing him like I had the others. We ended up using a portion of this as background to a few pictures. 

Overall, this assignment taught me that video isn't just about the video. Sound is extremely important. I also learned that I can't just stand far away and miraculously get the sound I need. I have to get all close and personal in order to get the conversations if I want to use them for background sound. This was a good experience because it taught me the difference between photojournalism video and creative video.