...action

We make our way to Uni to capture the 4 hours of footage we have shot and review what we have. Despite some technical issues, eg needing an HD camera to capture the HD material and lack of space on hard drive, we find we have some very good stuff mixed in with some not so good.
Technically we desperately need to sort sound recording out asap. The mikes on cameras we are using are pretty good but don't handle a noisy environment (eg a busy gym) very well without directional capability. We discovered that said microphones don't respond well to being covered with anorak to protect from the rain either! You live and learn! Much of what we have will be fine with a bit of noise reduction applied in post though, so we're not disappointed.
The action stuff has turned out very well. It's surprisingly easy to make sparring and training look good so plenty of scope for using that material. Have to be careful not to focus too much on that and miss important dialogue though. Some of the camera angles we're able to get are very dynamic and with image stabilisation an option we should be able to produce some visually great action sequences. All bodes well for shooting on the day of the fight too.
As I suspected, my contribution to the dialogue and interview sections sounds AWFUL. My voice definitely doesn't work well on tape so I've devised a new strategy for interview situations where I try my best not to speak over an interviewee to make it easier to cut my part out. Reviewing the footage makes it clear I have a tendency to interrupt in conversations and to make helpful noises which I need to keep to a minimum. I wait till the end of what my subject is saying now and nod silently in reaction to what they are saying when needed.
Just need to cut the bits that work now and export so we can take it all to the Art College when the av suite is open again. Using Avid is useful experience though there doesn't seem to be much that is different to Final Cut in terms of work flow and tools. We shall see.