As I already mentioned, I spent some time at my alma mater today, and I was amazed at the way things have changed, and also how some have stayed the same.
The rooms used for TV have been changed around quite a bit, and the most obvious thing is the presence of Avid machines in place of tape machines. They got new JVC cameras in the studio, and it's kinda neat that they're the HDV cams with studio configurations. Didn't know they made those! Nice prompters and pedestals too. The TV control room was fairly consolidated too, as it just takes less to make TV now.
It's still weird to see the changes in the radio station because they gutted that whole area and started over just after I graduated. It's a much more logical layout now. I have to say, I got a little teary when I got close to that audio console. So many things that helped define my college experience happened behind or near that microphone.
We got to talking a little about how some things really haven't changed too, in that things like shot composition and lighting don't change substantially as the tech evolves. There are a lot of basics that don't change, and they're skills that endure. What does change is the way the media is consumed. When you look at some of the video I've posted over the years on my sites, you would have never been able to pass that stuff off in old school media and still consider it acceptable for viewing.
That led to another conversation about podcasting as well. Talk about a format where all of the rules are irrelevant. High production values don't really count for anything. You don't have to sound like NPR or some shitty Clear Channel station, you just need to have content that people care about. Performance isn't that important either. Good thing, too, because I wouldn't exactly put my podcast on an audition tape!
I gotta say, that walking into that building, just hitting the smell of the building, took me back. It's hard to even describe all of the emotions and memories that overload the brain. Then throw in the passage of everything in my life that has happened since for perspective. What an incredibly rich experience I had there. If the weather can just hold off a little on Saturday, we might go down just to walk the campus, so Diana can see where the Jeff Jones phase of my life began.
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