Friday at 3:00 began the hardest weekend I've had ever. There was a conference this weekend that I had multiple duties at. The conference staff asked me as Vice President of the LGBT group to host a social event at the conference, and they asked me as a production employee of the campus TV station to shoot and edit a video for them.

I started shooting at 3:00. I went through 3 batteries and two tapes that night. That's a lot of video for the 15 minute video it was supposed to be turned into. I had one person there to help me shoot too. So we had two cameras going. It was crazy at this conference too. People were cheering and dancing around before all the actual opening ceremonies went on. It was a long night. My hand hurt from holding the camera by the end of it.

The social for the LGBT was that night. Prior to that was a drag show. There were a ton of people there for the drag show, despite the fact that the show was mediocre at best. We had two performers. One that's semi professional, and the other which was most definitely not. She looked like an ugly, pregnant woman. In the video, I used discretion and didn't include the not so professional one. People generally seemed to enjoy the show though.

The social itself was a huge, huge flop. I was so disappointed. No one came to it. The cleaning staff insisted on cleaning everything up after the drag show, including vacuuming. There were some people that would walk in, see the cleaners, assume nothing was happening, and leave. Their assumptions were right though. Nothing was happening. When everyone rushed out at the end of the drag show, I knew no one was going to stay for the social. I cried. I felt responsible for the failure of it. I knew there were more than a few factors behind it, but it was my event. I went home after that and slept.

The next morning was more shooting until 11:00. At that point I started editing. I edited the footage for 7 hours into a final 18.5 minute video. That was probably the most difficult thing of the whole weekend. Three hours of footage had to be cut down to 15 to 20 minutes. At about 3:00, I started feeling the pressure, since I had about 2.5 minutes of the video done, and had 3 hours left to do the rest. I did get it done though. At 6:30 pm, I ran to the banquet hall and dropped off the tape.

The rest of the evening was fun. It was a live production of the awards ceremony. I got to be the close up camera operator. It turned out really well. After the awards, they played my video. People were cheering and laughing. There were 375+ people there. It's not often you have an audience like that to give immediate feedback. It was a thrill. I got hugs and thank you's all night. Then...I got to go back on camera and tape some more. Finally at midnight, I went home and passed out. I slept for 12 hours straight; I was so exhausted.

Sunday I spent at the TV station editing a different project and doing my laundry. Nothing too special. I went to the meeting that night and actually had the thought of applying for the open station manager position. I think I could handle it quite well. Tonight I'm going to get an application and fill it out. Wish me luck. Time for me to go get some lunch. Talk to you all later. Bye.

Luv,

Jess