I have fourteen minutes to tell you how VJ training is going. Class begins at 9 o’ clock.

Yesterday I cried. That’s right, broke down in tears right there in front of the trainers and my other three classmates. How about that shit? I later asked the trainer who made me cry if that had ever happened before. It never had.

You see, my first day of shooting was sort of abysmal. I went out thinking I had my head wrapped around what I was supposed to do, but I was all wrong. I came back with seven minutes of footage when they asked for twenty. Except I don’t remember that part. I think I must have been in the bathroom. I made the best of that footage with the editing software (which is easy to use and fun) and was kind of proud of the crappy one minute piece I produced. Especially since I had never done any of that before. After the trainer watched the finished product I looked at his face and it was pitiful. He was shocked by the badness of what he’d seen and was trying to come up with anything constructive to say.

"Pitiful, isn’t it?," I said. "Yes, it’s pitiful," he replied.

But I went home excited. I had learned so much. I went home and thought up great people for my profile the next day. All of whom turned out to be off, indisposed or in Atlanta.

So at the last minute I thought I’d shoot a barista. Making coffee can make pretty pictures, so I barged into Portland Brew and asked this girl if I could basically get in her way and piss her off.

See, I don’t like bothering people. I certainly don’t like making them feel uncomfortable. And our trainers say DNZTFC (Do Not Zoom The Fucking Camera), because it makes shakey hands more evident. So they want you to get all right up in people’s grill and shit. And I just can’t do that.

When I write it can involve as little as a pencil and a piece of paper. I’ve never had to worry about whether the microphone is on or if I have a tape in the camera (had to drive back to the station once). I can barely hook up a DVD player, so you can imagine how I look with this camera in my hand. I hold it like it is covered in poo. Which is to say very carefully. Anyway, my mind is on a hundred different elements or technical glitches and all those rules from class and trying to get any sort of story goes right out the window. It is so overwhelming.

So I get back with my barista footage and I’m pretty pleased. At least I got the requisite 20 minutes this time. I pruned it to what I thought was a much improved 1 minute 20 second piece. I went to pee while I let the trainer look it over.

I came back to hear, "Well, it is almost exclusively jump cuts." What?! No way! I know what a jump cut is and those ain’t it! I mean, sure the first day I had jump cuts because I didn’t have enough material, but those are not jump cuts! I thought all of that in my head.

But apparently you can have a medium shot of someone in Canada then a medium shot of someone in Mexico and that is considered a jump cut. Who knew?! So I didn’t have good closeups or POV shots (point-of-view) because a) I hate being pushy and b) I’m not tall enough to get over someone’s shoulder. I am afraid I am going to drop that many thousand dollar camera.

The trainer suggested I go out and shoot new footage and start over. At 6 pm. That is when the tears came. I couldn’t help it. My eyes just got hot and wet all the sudden and eventually I had to blink and so the tears came. I just couldn’t take the thought of all that hard work wasted. I’m not used to busting my ass on something and STILL it sucks.

Lights are on in the classroom. Gotta go. Oh God.