Feeling Official

Today was the day that Dana Priest, reporter for the Washington Post, held a lecture on campus. She is the reporter who brought the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital to the light, among some other important news stories of recent years. For my studio production class we set out to do a mobile show, trucking 3 cameras and tri-pods, audio equipment, a full intercom system, two tape decks, a mobile switcher/graphics generator and a ton of cables.

I volunteered to direct the show and Mike signed up for Technical Director, so we had a lot to do during the show. Since the show was on location at Hall Auditorium we were extremely limited in what we could do. All of our cameras were set up in the balcony, which made for some awkward angles. Dana Priest also decided to talk for over an hour and a half, which, when you're shooting three stationary cameras (or sitting in the audience, for that matter) makes for a grueling experience. There's only so much you can do with tri-pods, so we had our cameras searching for interesting shots all night, mostly to no avail. We got some interesting stuff going about half an hour in, when Mike suggested adding some camera movement. We panned across the crowd and eventually ended up with one shot that was a pan, a tilt and a zoom all rolled into one (that is every possible thing you can do with a camera on a tri-pod without messing with the focus). Long story short: we were desperate for something interesting.

At one point Stephanie said," Is camera 2 on air?"
"Yes, you're still on," I said.
"Ok, I just wanted to show you something."
I laughed and had Mike put a different camera on. "Take camera 3. Okay camera 2, what was it?"
On the preview screen, camera 2 pulled off of Ms. Priest and passed over the heads in the darkened theater, then zoomed in on a guy in a brown shirt, completely conked out. His head had rolled over and come to rest on the shoulder of the guy sitting next to him.
We all started laughing and someone said, "That pretty much sums up the night."

I just checked my e-mail and Glenn has made an announcement:
"Hello Folks, Due to the unbelievably long program at Hall Auditorium on Monday night, I have decided to declare an official COM312 Skip Day. There will be no Com 312 class on Tuesday Feb. 10. Enjoy the day and don't say I never gave you anything. "