New video feature: The Record Lounge

I’m about halfway through a video journalism class at MSU and just finished my first feature! It’s not anything amazing because I’m still getting the hang of all this, but check it out!

The current economy isn’t a friendly place for independent business owners, especially those selling music. Lansing-area native Heather Frarey opened the all-vinyl record shop, The Record Lounge at 210 Abbot Road, in early 2008. Since the well-established East Lansing record store Flat, Black & Circular sells a little bit of everything in terms of music format, Frarey wanted to make her shop a little different and focus exclusively on vinyl (the only CDs sold there are by local artists).

Business started out slow, but the combination of being on a Big Ten campus and the rising popularity of vinyl records, she’s been able to keep her humble shop afloat. Frarey has already led The Record Lounge through one student-less East Lansing summer. But even though much of the MSU population is gone, Frarey says she gets more out-of-town customers and also sells her inventory on the Internet to make up for in-person sales. Between that and the free acoustic shows The Record Lounge hosts on Monday nights, she’s not too worried.

Also, here’s another assignment I did a couple weeks ago — we had to film a matched-action sequence. Yes, this was staged, but the purpose of it was to learn the concept of matched action: