Last night was interesting, to say the least; while I had initially planned to watch the Office, and cause general havoc around Pittman residence, I instead made $200. And all I did was a little bit of filming.

Ryerson’s School of Journalism played host last night to a group known as The Muslim Project, which was essentially a panel discussion on the portrayal of religion and faith in the media – albeit, with an Islamic slant. While I was only responsible for filming the evening, the entire evening was incredibly interesting, and I even got a few contacts from the journalists in attendance as well.More on that in later, more detailed post.

Yet, last night made me realize, once again, just how much I’d rather not make a career out of broadcast journalism. To be fair, there wasn’t much journalism at play on my part; I set up some tripods, panned around quite a bit, and everything turned out okay. I didn’t even have to talk, or interview anyone. But it was the entire process of filming that had me groaning more than a few times throughout the evening.

Don’t get me wrong – I love filming. Throughout most of my high school career, I took communications tech, and actually made quite a few films I’m proud of to this day. Yet, as a self-proclaimed perfectionist, everything just seemed to be more trouble than it was worth in the end. That particular video – the one linked to above – probably took more than 10 hours of production, and about 2 hours of actually recorded video. All to be whittled down to a 4 minute product.

Part of this I attribute to the fact that, never have I worked with someone on any of my videos. I know things would be different if I were in film school, or even broadcast, but I just couldn’t find anyone to really identify with my ideas and goals while in secondary. Everything was written, conceived, filmed and ultimately edited by me. It wasn’t abnormal for me to spend a good 48 hours awake – straight – simply because I had to edit, render, and edit some more.

Now, I understand broadcast journalism is a totally different beast. You have to factor in the ability to broadcast live, to speak infront of a camera, to report in a specific, journalistic manner. Things are far less artistic, and far more straight forward, and informational But ultimately, I know that, somehwere along the way, it’ll be like high school all over again – whether it be a myriad of tech issues, a lack of footage, or something just not getting done.

For now, I’m satisfied with print journalism; adding film into the mix just seems like more unecessary torture to me.