My first day...

So i've just started a new position at a local council as their multimedia officer, a fancy title for what basically means the councils photographer and videographer. I arrived fresh faced, excited and early on my first day expecting a relaxing morning filled with meeting all the right people, tour of the building etc but to my surprise, five minutes after arriving i was presented with my first job for the council! They were running a Sports Awards ceremony for local residents who had shown a dedication to local sporting groups as well as tremendous solo achievements. Where i came into this involved contacting all nine winners, arranging an interview, filming, editing and production of a DVD for the following friday. Now under most normal circumstances this would be fairly straight forward, not today!As my post is only 20hrs a week i have to juggle my jobs over three days!Having only just started i had no phone, computer or email access and no clue as to where any of these people lived as the entire area was new to me. After acquiring a desk and a phone i began phoning round and arranging suitable times and places to meet, luckily for me all the winners were very understanding of the situation and agreed to help in anyway they could. By my first lunchtime i had arranged 5 out of the 9 interviews!Hurrah!
In between the manic phone calls, i inquired about what kit was available for me to use(this is were i got a tad excited). I was pointed in the direction of a large metal cupboard, upon opening it i was confronted by about five different sized camera bags, a tripod bag and a full flash lighting kit. My eyes glazed over!i then proceeded to empty the cupboard onto a near by table and open every bag to inspect the contents. Christmas had definitely come early!On the video side of things they have a wee canon HV40!It does what its meant too and has manual controls for almost everything its just so much smaller than video cameras im familiar with!I also ended up with three canon DSLR's one of which is a 5D!full frame happiness!then every variation of lens i could imagine!there was a 24-105mm, a 24mm and 50mm prime, a 15-35mm wide angle and about three telephoto lens going up to 300mm!i didn't know what to do with myself, i also felt i had to act professional as being the first day on the job i was eager to make a good impression. Having covered the only spare table in the office with camera bits and bobs i put everything away and calmly asked my boss if i could take the cameras home, as i felt i should acquaint myself with them, 'no problem, do what you need to do'!ha!okay!:)
In the afternoon i was shown my desk and my new computer!This had also crossed my mind on my way in, as i'm an apple fiend and could not imagine going back to using a windows based operating system!To my absolute happiness, i was presented with a mac pro with two apple monitors!Happy days!the only downfall to this was the lack of editing software, i had the option of imovie or nothing. Don't get me wrong imovie is great for what it does but its like a designer going from photoshop back to Microsoft paint!It could be worse!i'm also in talks with my boss about trading up for Final Cut if i can put forward a good enough argument for buying it, so i'm currently scouring the apple website making mental notes! The rest of the day was spent arranging interviews for the following days and meeting some important people such as the Provost of the region, who will be one of my main subjects for photography.
Over the next two days i managed to interview and film five of the nine winners, all of whom were very welcoming and enthusiastic as well as interesting. One of them was a snooker player, who is the only amateur ever to have a 147 break recored on camera another was a nine year old girl who gained a black belt in karate when she was only eight!bizarre!This also gave me a chance to get to know the area, as it consists of a lot of small towns and villages very close to each to other but very different at the same time.
Having a had a fairly manic start to my new job i was glad of a day off, to give me time to recuperate and plan a new personal project. Im hopefully going to enter something for the http://www.onedayonearth.org/ collective, so i've been brainstorming with various creative people over what to do. I would recommend this to any budding filmmakers (or even just to people who want to show the day in a life of something/one/where interesting) as it is a great cause and it sure to produce some inspiring films.
Watch this space...