At the Spirit of St. Louis Air Show & STEM Expo this past May, I was given the opportunity to conduct my first professional interview for AirshowStuff.com's coverage of the show. While on assignment there, we ran into Lieutenant Colonel Ron “Elvis” King of the 82nd Aerial Target Squadron, Detachment 1, while he was displaying one of the 21 remaining US Air Force McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs. I had recently purchased a wireless lavaliere microphone for use with my Canon 70D to use for interviews, and with very little prep and testing time, I went in and with the help of fellow AirshowStuff shooter Patrick Barron, shot and produced our interview with Lt. Col. King.

It was a success for a first run interview, but a lesson in what to do differently for next time. We posed Lt. Col. King well with the F-4 in the background on both angles, the questions we had prepared were well picked to give us excellent information, and my editing stitched it together well with spliced footage from our archives and clips from public domain Department of Defense videos. The audio is going to need to be changed a bit next time to give better volume to softer voices that come up at the trailing end of sentences as well as a better wind screen for windy days like it was then. I will be able to achieve these improvements by moving the mic closer to the speaker's mouth and upgrading the wind screen sock for the microphone, as well as changing audio sensitivity on the 70D.

My article can be found here.