SOMETIMES
I WONDER
By Mark Neuling
Videographer for TechTV
I’m the first photographer in most mornings. I like the
quiet time before the office starts to buzz. I can get my gear together
without having to rush, drink a cup of coffee, and visit the restroom. I’m
such a creature of habit. Of course since I’m the first one in,
I’m usually the first one sent out. And sometimes we get sent
way out.
I’m puttering around my desk one morning when one of our young producers
ambles by and asks me if I want to drive up to Beale Air Force Base outside
of Sacramento. This is a loaded question, tread carefully I think. “I’m
already scheduled for a shoot a ten o’clock,” I tell him, “but
if you need me to go I’m yours.” “We need this done
fast,” he says to me. My original shoot is given to another
photographer and I’m assigned a reporter. Another crew will work
on getting get the “expert opinion” sound bite from a professor
at Stanford.
I type “Beale Air Force Base” into Yahoo Maps and get a location
just blocks from the state capitol in Sacramento. Not a likely place
for an Air Force Base I conclude.
The only reporter available is our biotech reporter. This is not his
beat but he’s such a veteran that this shouldn’t be much of a
stretch for him. “What’s this about?” I query. I
get briefed on the story. There are U2 aircraft stationed at Beale. These
planes could be used in Iraq for reconnaissance purposes when and if we go
to war. The U2 of today is not the U2 of 40 years ago. The modern
version of this plane has been modified and has more sophisticated gear. The
producer who has assigned this story has high hopes that the Air Force is
going to let us shot video of one of these birds. Nothing has been
confirmed yet. This is pure speculation on the part of the producer. We
don’t have permission from the Air Force to take any video, we don’t
have a contact person yet nor do we have directions to the base. Never
the less the producer wants us to leave ASAP. This is to be a day-of
story. My reporter is pretty relaxed about it all because he thinks
there is a good possibility that we’ll get a call to turn around and
come back, that the desk will “scrub the mission” so to speak. Off
we go with this recipe for disaster.
Maybe 35 or 40 miles out the call from the desk comes. An officer from
the Public Affairs Division will meet us outside the gate, where he will
speak with us. Directions are still forthcoming. And then the
producer suggests something to the reporter so outrageous that I really wonder
if he was joking. He alludes that maybe we could drive around the base
and get some shots of a U2 on the runway. Here we are on the verge
of war, the country has gone to an Orange Alert and this producer thinks
we’ll just be able to spot a U2 out for a little joyride as it taxis
down the runway. I guess the words Military Police and confiscated
camera gear are not a part of his lexicon. This is one suggestion that
we are going to ignore.
Finally we get some partial directions from the desk, north on I-5,
then east on Highway 20. I have rough idea of where were going now. Basically
we're headed to the middle of nowhere.
The long drive gives the reporter time to read through the background
information he’s been provided with for the story. After another
45 minutes or so we exit the Interstate and make a right turn down the two-lane
country road, Highway 20; the airbase is supposed to be located somewhere
down this stretch of asphalt. The blowtorch news radio stations out
of San Francisco crackle and sputter as we pass under the high-tension power
lines. About all we can receive are the Country and Western stations
that so dominate the airwaves throughout most of America. We shut the
radio off. As we meander through the countryside we call
the base for further directions. We’re still three small towns
and maybe 30 miles or so from the base. To make a long story short,
we eventually get lost.
Since this is essentially a joyride we’re not too concerned. This part
of Northern California is almost savanna-like with small scrubby trees and
rock outcroppings dotting the low hills. In mid-February it’s
green. We crack jokes about “Area 51,” if you wanted
to hide an airbase this would be the place to do it.
We find a spot where the cell phone works and get more detailed instructions
on how to find the base. We turn around and take another highway that
will lead us to the North Gate of Beale Air Force Base. This minor
mix-up in navigation will add at least another 30 minutes to our trip.
We make out the control tower and other buildings rising just above
the crest of the horizon shortly before we reach the gate. There isn’t
a whole lot else around. We snake through big yellow protective barriers
the last few yards to the base entrance. There is a small empty
parking lot across from the guard shack. The guard on duty doesn’t
seem to recognize the name of the captain from Public Affairs who we are
scheduled to meet. He asks if we’ll be doing some filming, “Not
on the base,” I tell him. Then he asks for an ID and directs us to
park in a gravel lot just off base, outside the yellow barriers, maybe
fifty yards distant.
While we wait we watch a big jet practice touch and go landings. The
reporter seems excited at the prospect of getting some b-roll of this. I
want to wait before setting anything up. I have no desire to deal with
the Military Police. After a short wait a civilian-looking sedan pulls
up. Out get three uniformed members from the base Public Affairs Office. All
three are wearing camouflage fatigues, black boots and baseball caps. The
captain must stand six-five with the boots and cap on. His hair is
cropped close to the skin. He has a relaxed and cordial attitude towards
us. It seems that my reporter had interviewed him for a story years
ago when he worked at CNN. Plus it turns out that the captain’s
son is a huge TechTV fan. Recognition is sometimes hard for us to get,
but it feels nice to have some credibility with the Air Force. They
hand us two invaluable tapes of U2’s on the ground and footage shot
from a lipstick camera inside the cockpit of one of these spy planes. This
footage will provide the bulk of the b-roll for our story.
I go to work setting up my camera and tripod. There isn’t much
of a background for me to work with. The yellow barriers bracket the
sign at the entrance to the base. If I crop my shot tight
I can frame the Public Affairs Officer with the sign over his shoulder excluding
the barriers. Fortunately it’s slightly overcast because the
sun is directly behind him. Too bad he didn’t have any hair because
it would have been nicely highlighted.
The captain is using this interview as a training session for the young
female lieutenant and sergeant accompanying him. He points out
how I’ve selected the background, how the shot will be framed, the
lighting conditions and how he’ll stand during the interview. He
knows his stuff. Since he’s using this interview as a training
exercise I draft the lieutenant to hold my reflector so it will kick in just
a little bit of light under the brim of the captain’s hat. You
don’t learn these skills at the Air Force Academy I think to myself.
The interview starts and stops. Fighter jets scream off the end of
the runway next to us. The captain can’t or won’t answer
many of our questions about the U2’s based at Beale or about the technology
in the planes or how they might be used in Iraq. There are four 2-seat
trainers there and their mission, of course, is to help in the defense of
America. His job is to give us usable sound bites and he tries; but
we leave feeling more like high paid couriers than journalists.
The reporter wants to eat lunch. We had spotted a Subway Sandwich shop
several miles outside the base, closer to civilization. As we turn
into the parking lot I notice that the business across the street is flying
a Confederate flag; actually about a half dozen Confederate flags. Guess
we weren’t as close to civilization as I’d thought.
It’s around one-fifteen. Against my better judgement we sit down
to eat lunch. I don’t consider wolfing down a meal in the car
a lunch break, but sometimes it’s the only way you’re going to
meet a deadline. Who needs to chew anyway? The reporter calls
the desk and tells them what we’ve got; he says we should be back by
around two-thirty; at that point I choke on my turkey sub. He has no
idea how far out we’ve traveled. We are over 120 miles from San
Francisco, with luck we’ll be back by three-thirty. Another twenty-five
minutes is wasted eating lunch.
After two minor U-turns, both of them legal, we find the freeway that
will take us back to “The City” via the shortest route. The
way we should have come if someone had bothered to research our destination
before we left. Thank God the managing editor phoned with a better
way home.
Lunch must have made the reporter drowsy. He seems to napping, but
usually he reclines the seat back. This brief interlude doesn’t
last long; soon he’s busy working away on the script for his story. He
mumbles parts of the copy under his breath. Whole sentences are scratched
out and re-written. He reminds me of the kid on the school bus hurriedly
trying to complete the homework assignment from the night before that he
didn’t do. Before too many miles slip past he’s done. “That
was pretty easy,” he exclaims confidently. “Usually I have
to simplify my scripts more.” Then he says something that I wish
more reporters would do; but that only seems to happen after many miles together
in a car, “Let me bounce this off you,” he asks.
My traveling companion reads his script, describes what b-roll he’ll
use to cover his voice-overs, and where the sound bites will fit. The sheaf
of papers resting on his lap cascades between his legs and onto the floor
of the car as he reads. The darn thing sounds pretty good. We
debate a minor semantic point. He defends his position but admits that
the managing editor will probably want him to make the change. All
this without seeing a frame of video or logging a single interview. This
is what I call experience with a capital “E”.
Now here is my two cents for those of you contemplating a career in
journalism. Even photojournalism. Don’t ignore your history
and English classes. One day you may be writing a script in a car going
eighty-five miles an hour trying to meet a deadline and you won’t be
able to do a Google Search. Current events seem to have a way of repeating
every few decades. You work long enough in this industry and you’ll
cover a story more than once. It’s called history. It’s
what we do every day, even if it is in only a small way.
The reporter phones in his script to the managing editor for approval. He
places calls to the editors briefing them on what video will need to be digitized
and when to expect us. We make great time until our little lark ends
about 45 miles outside of San Francisco. Abruptly the traffic comes
to a halt. Only brake lights and bumpers stretch out before us. It’s
past 3:00 PM by now. We turn on KCBS radio to find out what might be
the cause for the slowdown. In a few minutes we have our answer. There
has been an accident with two fatalities a short distance ahead of us. By
now I can see both a traffic helicopter and a plane circling the accident
sight. We’re moving at such a glacial pace that my speedometer indicates
no speed. I ask the reporter if he has a “Plan B.”
Emphatically he declares that there is no “Plan B.” He
has never missed his slot and has never been bumped. “Just get
me back by four-fifteen and I’ll make it,” he states. Another
25 or 30 minutes tick past. As we skirt the wreck I wonder
if speed had anything to do with the accident. My stupid sense of duty
pushes the needle on the speedometer past eighty anyway.
Near Richmond he calls the edit bay to update them as to our whereabouts. “We’ll
be at the Bay Bridge in ten minutes,” he asserts. Pessimist that
I am I tell him it could be 20 minutes if we hit traffic, which we are likely
to do that time of day around Berkeley. But 20 minutes later I’m
dropping him off in front of the studio, it’s not quiet four-twenty. He’s
got 40 minutes to cut his voiceovers, pick his sound bites, digitize his
clips and get the piece edited. It runs as the second story in the
newscast that evening at 5:00 o’clock.
So what’s the moral here? I learned nothing new from the story. I
wasn’t inspired, informed or educated. The U2 flies high
and takes reconnaissance photos; I knew that when I started out. We
drove 250 miles so that I could contribute one brief sound bite to the piece. Why
drive like a maniac and risk our lives and livelihood for a 90 second
story that will most likely only run once never to be seen again? Some
days I really
do wonder at it all.
Mark Neuling
Email info: markneuling@techtvcorp.com
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
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