Lawsons Blog

     Going into the  2023 school year , I was very anxious and excited. It's my senior year as a broadcast communications major, here at South Carolina State University. I am also a member of the school's football team, and this will be my last year playing at this University. I've enjoyed my time here and have had many great experiences, and I have gained a lot of knowledge in the field that I inspire to be in someday.      I've learned a lot from the very qualified and informative professors in Turner Hall...... This is the Universities main Communications building.  *Click  here  to listen to the audio version of this post*      I have always been a big fan of sports, all sports, especially football. Growing up i played multiple sports and loved every bit of it. I also loved watching sports and talking about it. Almost anything involving sports, I was all for it. So, coming out of high school when I had t...

    For our final assignment, we were instructed to create a TV commercial or Public Service Announcement (PSA), of a topic, company or product of our choice. This project had to be produced in 30 or 60 seconds, and I chose to create a PSA about texting and driving, to raise awareness of a very common and potentially dangerous act that many teenagers and young adults are participating in without any worry or knowledge of what could possibly happen in result of these actions.      Many lives lost, and countless injuries in this country were due to distracted drivers. It's something that I believe isn't talked about enough. I personally am guilty of being on my phone while driving sometimes, and I don't think enough about the consequences. So, I wanted to create this PSA about not texting while driving, to shine a light on this subject to bring more attention to this for future drivers. I took the shots for this video over thanksgiving break, with the as...

In this portion of this class, we learned about the  five creative lighting techniques used in video production. For this assignment, me and another classmate Sharlene Luke, took pictures of each other using these techniques: Flat Frontal Lighting, 90 degrees/Split Lighting, Butterfly/High Frontal Lighting, Rembrandt/45 degrees Lighting and "Scary Face" Lighting. Below are the photos I took of Sharlene Luke using these five lighting techniques:  Flat Frontal Lightning This  produces very little depth and contrast where there are equal amounts of  light  on the  subject and background. 90 degree/Split Lighting    I put  the light to the side of Sharlene, so that it shines directly at her face. The light should be at a 90-degree angle towards the way the camera is facing, this can be on the right or left. I placed the light source  behind her head to create the full split affect. I then m oved the light and requested for Sharlene to ...

 For this assignment, we learned about the process of Three-point lighting. When using this process, you have to have three different lights. Key light, fill light and back light. All three have an important role in this light process. Key light is the main source of illumination to whoever is being captured on camera, and this is used to give definition to the person being recorded, the key light should be 45 degrees to the right of the subject. However, this can cause shadows to appear to the side and below of the persons face. That's when fill light is used. Fill light should be 45 degrees to the left of the subject being recorded and shouldn't be as intense as the key light, so they don't compete with each other. This is used to "fill" in the shadows on the persons face from the key light to give a much more even light around the whole face. Finally, back light. This is used to make the subject stand out more from the background to focus more on them. The back...

 A collapsible bounce light reflector is an important tool in video production. Lighting on a person being recorded can vary, determining on where the video is being produced. In class, we learned about how to use a reflector disk to provide good lighting while doing a production. Me and a couple other students in class went outside and demonstrated how the light reflector provided to us is used in video production process  Here's a photo of fellow classmate Sharlen Luke only using the sun as a light source. You can see that no other light is being reflected to her face. Here's her again, but this time light from the sun is being reflected to her face using the bounce light reflector. Notice the improved lighting, giving her a more defined look. Here's a wide shot of the bounce reflector, reflecting sunlight to the subject. Fellow classmate, Juan Foster is holding the reflector. He's in front and to the left to get a good angle of light towards the subject. Here's a...

At this point of class, we have been learning about how to create videos of any sort of action being done. We learned that the best way to record an action affectedly, is to record multiple shots of the whatever is doing an action. For this assignment, I was instructed to record an "action sequence", which is a recording of someone or something performing an action. I decided to record a  South Carolina State  University student walking from the Student Center to  Turner Hall  for class. I was required to take a least 10 different shots of this student performing this action.

 For this assignment, we were instructed to create a five questions interview project with Spotlight on South Carolina State Communications . This project was done with groups of three, with one person directing and recording the video, one conducting the interview and one being interviewed. This group consisted of myself conducting the interview, Essence Adams being interviewed and Jared Kirksey directing and recording. My professor,  Mr. Harwood instructed us to create different angled shots during the interview, having the camera on the person asking the question only, then switching the camera to face the person answering the question in a different shot.