Citizen Journalism Blog

The last few days, since Friday had been most adventurous to me as a citizen journalist.

On Friday, I went to St. Xavier’s Institution with CJ Jimmy Leow to film the school, students and headmaster. Brother Paul Ho was so nice to us. In the school assembly, he told the students…”Today, we have two people who come to our school to make a video. Just act natural and let them do anything they want.” Or something like that. So, Jimmy and I ran wild all over the school compound to do that. Jimmy went up to the third floor to get some awesome overhead shots of the thousand plus students while I was on ground level to film the students.

After our assignment at the school, we had some time left so we headed to Kawan. After that, we went to the Masjid Kapitan Keling but the mosque is not opened to the public due to the Friday prayers. So, we headed to the heritage village. Jimmy and I had another good angle of story at the heritage village.

On Saturday morning, I get my very first assignment to film the press conference of Lim Kit Siang and Lim Guan Eng regarding the police case against Lim Kit Siang and also the Port Klang Free Zone issues. That assignment was rather easy to film because it was just mere sit down press con. However, I also enjoyed rushing with the other photographers and three other videographers to shoot Lim Guan Eng arriving, Karpal Singh arriving, police leaving, police sitting down, police signing LOL and other stuffs.

Before I can finish editing the urgent clip, I went to Penanti. I later found that I had messed up the editing because there were some clips at the back of the timeline which I missed. I had to do the re-editing in the car while Jimmy drove. Then, I had to upload the clip somewhere in Perda, Bukit Mertajam with Maran ‘breathing down my neck’ LOL. Well, not really, he was there to teach some techniques which made life much easier for the CJs.

Then, we head to Penanti. Shuf came along and oh boy….was I nervous. We filmed the independent candidate with Jimmy and my video cameras. I was silently telling myself, please hah…don’t ask me to be the SU or the interviewer. With two Msiakini professionals like Shuf and Maran, I sure gagap and stammer. Sweat lah…. Moreover, I don’t even know the subject at all. Lucky, Maran sat down coolly in his pose as the interviewer and filmed the thing while Shuf was so busy snapping photos with his DSLR. Meanwhile, Jimmy was busy taking shots of millions of flies and I was shooting ferns and dogs with my point and shoot camera.

That concluded the adventures I had for the weekend as a CJ. Of course, I didn’t waste Sunday doing nothing. I went to eat snake and filmed it. Then, I went to the flea market and get more shots.

I am going to be so busy from Monday to Wednesday but I hope I can steal some time to do more video editing, provided I have strength left.