View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2007 > October > 02
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Lights! Camera grunt! Action!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Monday is one of those days that, like in most businesses, can go either way. If it’s really good, it’s quiet. If it’s really bad, then most likely, I’ll have already been in.
Monday is often check-in day with local television reporters. Reporters call before they go to reporter meetings. I’ve never been to a reporter meeting but I get the impression that they’re like sales meetings in the car business —when sales are down, pressure.
Reporters and criminal lawyers love cops because we give them stories and we give them clients. You’d think that in this busy town of Atlanta and the metro area, there would be many stories but sometimes things are slow out there in the asphalt jungle. These are dangerous days. On slow news days “Dog Bites Man” gets leading story status even when the dog is toothless and the man can’t figure out if he was bitten or just had a hang nail.
Most reporters, like most police officers or librarians or astronauts, are OK. Professional with fabulous hair. Even on a windy day they’re unscathed. Why? Hair spray that you could glue tiles to a space shuttle with. There’s a better chance of a strong wind ripping a reporter’s scalp off his or her head than two hairs coming out of place. They are in fact, very normal people who work long and hard hours, weekends, nights, and holidays. Off camera, I talk about my family and they talk about their families, jobs, and fabulous hair.
Here is what you don’t see when the camera turns on: the cameraman/woman. These are the unsung grunts of local news. They haul the camera, about the size of a 1959 Austin Healey 6-cylinder two-seater, and the tripod, which weighs about the same as a fairly stout cow, up the hill, in the heat, in the rain, in the cold, and in the sleet, all the while waiting for goobers like me to produce two coherent sentences in a row without forgetting what we were talking about or cutting and starting over again because we mispronounce words like “perpetrator.” Or “Tom.”
The camera folks drive the truck, edit the video, and create most of the atmosphere. He or she is the director. If the story is about police, they shoot video of a police car so that the audience won’t think the story is about the Hubbell Telescope.
The camera operator puts the mike on you, tells you where to stand, tells the reporter where to stand, reminds you to stand where he or she told you to stand, shoots the video while you talk, assures you that you’re not an idiot although you sound like one, shoots your interview from the other shoulder of the reporter, shoots video from all sorts of weird angles, all the while reminding you to ignore the fact that he or she is lying on the ground shooting up at your nostrils for effect, tells you to just talk to the reporter while he or she gets the “Chit-Chat” shot of both of you together, without sound, so it appears you’re still discussing the story. You’re really not.
I like to use this time to pitch my Amway product line, using buzz-words like “multi-level” and “recruiting” while the reporter tries to appear not creeped out.
When it’s over, the cameraperson removes the microphone, packs up the 3,000-pound camera and then heads to the truck to edit or at least set it up for editing. It is not a glamorous job. Reporters will tell you that the cameraperson is the backbone of the team. They do this because they depend on their technical expertise and they know that anyone who can lug a 6,000-pound camera up a hill could seriously hurt them if they wanted to. They are in fact the Marines of TV news.
If you think you had pressure today at work, try this. A reporter was talking about his story and was then supposed to cut to a video shot previously as he talked about the story. He talked and then set the scene for the video and then cut to the video. That was the plan only the video just didn’t happen. The video went to technical La-La-Land.
So, there he was, with dead air, no place to hide, and in his little earpiece, being told he was on his own. Like a true professional, he started talking from the few notes he had made, telling us the same thing he had just told us but in a different manner so that we listened all over again. He actually made it out OK. I e-mailed him and only made a little fun of him. I couldn’t have done that, knowing thousands of people were watching and saying “Uh-Oh,” all at once.
Me, I would have slowly eased my way left or right, all the while smiling as if nothing was wrong … just keep moving … keep smiling … thinking about how I was going to kill the technical guy … smiling … smiling.
