Little Voices
San Francisco
By Mark Neuling
TechTV
Field Camera Operator
I found my usual aerie on the second deck of the train and opened
one of the free papers that populate the rail side boxes at my
train stop. Inside of page one there was a full-page ad. McDonald’s,
the giant food chain company and Intel, the giant microchip company,
were about to introduce high-speed wireless Internet connections
at 75 McDonalds’s restaurants along the West Coast. Gee
I think to myself, this is an interesting story, wonder why we’re
not covering it? It wasn't in our rundown for the day; in fact
I had nothing scheduled at all. My little voice began
to whisper to me.
As I generally do when I start the day I load my audio and lighting
equipment into the car almost first thing. When I pass through
the newsroom several of the producers are discussing the McDonald’s
story. At this genesis it’s in what they call the “yeah
but” stage. Yeah it’s a good story, but do we have
a crew to cover it with and can we make a package out of it. They’ll
discuss it in the 9 a.m. meeting. It’s exactly the
type of story we do.
We don’t cover much in the way of breaking news. Fires,
shootings, arraignments aren’t what we do; there are no scanners
in our newsroom. We don’t cover news in the same sense
that a local television station would. Our shoot and story schedules
are planned out anywhere from several hours to weeks in advance.
I’m expecting the call when my phone rings 20 minutes later. It’s
the assignment desk, “Get over to the McDonald’s on
Front Street and cover the Wi-Fi press conference. The address
is in the rundown.” “Who is going to be the reporter
on this?” I ask. “No one else is going,” I’m
told. Cool my little voice tells me, it’ll be a VO,
easy to shoot, just get pictures and nat-sound. The only
problem is that it starts in less than 15 minutes; I still need
to get
directions, load my camera into the car, and then venture into
the heart of downtown
San Francisco.
Had I not seen the ad in the paper and overheard some of the newsroom
chatter I would have been totally out in the cold on this assignment. Downtown
I get lucky and find a parking space in a loading zone just around
the corner from the assignment, I’m about ten minutes late.
The public-relations people have a table with handout materials
set up outside. It appears to be relatively quiet, at least out
on the sidewalk. I’ve forgotten my Press Pass at
home that morning, but a tripod and TV camera are usually all the
identification I ever need, that and an honest face. Inside
the restaurant though five or six television crews are already set
up and rolling, several print photographers are standing on chairs
getting shots. A covey of reporters, notebooks in hand are
scribbling down notes. The place is packed with media. There
is a podium, a backdrop with the McDonald’s logo and two wide-screen
TV’s for a PowerPoint presentation. Even Ronald
McDonald is there! I’ve got to admit that McDonald’s
knows how to hold a press conference. This is a much bigger
deal than I’d anticipated.
Two more television crews arrive even later than I do. I
shoot the three speakers from the various corporations engaged in
this project listening for usable sound bites. Even while
the corporate guys are still braying away I break off to get my b-roll
shots. There are a half dozen people in the restaurant using
laptops, wirelessly connected to the Internet. Maybe
one is actually a “real” person. Never the less
this makes for good footage. There are some good photo-ops,
care of Intel marketing, outside on the street. I shoot the
usual exteriors just to cover my backside.
After returning to the station I brief the reporter who will be
writing and tracking the story. She asks if I got any shots of hamburgers? I
pause for a moment, “Well I did get one shot of a meal
being put on a tray, and some shots of people at the counter.” She
seems OK with that but I turn and walk away having a conversation
with my little voice about reporters who don’t go on shoots
having no say in what gets shot.
I have a product profile to shoot after lunch. Most of
this package has already been shot but the reporter wants another
opportunity at getting some reaction shots not from people, but from
their dogs. The device we’re testing is a gimmick to
translate what your dog is saying. He barks and this gizmo
translates his mood. I don’t make this stuff up. We’ll
be going down by the beach where there’s a large area for
dogs to roam off-leash.
Becky Worley and I work together often; she’s one of my favorite
reporters. She’s intelligent, funny and totally irreverent.
Teamwork and experience coupled with trust and certain amount of
serendipity can result in some pretty good television. I
rarely laugh at the stories our network airs, especially one’s
I’ve shot, but she usually gets a chuckle or two out of me
on these crazy stories of hers.
We take Highway 280 towards the beach at Fort Funston; I notice
a gray-white plume of smoke rising above the hills. A grass
fire I guess.
These shoots are easy and tricky at the same time. We
have an intern along to help; his job will be to hold a shotgun mic
on a boom so that we can get sound from the dogs and their human
companions. My job consists of more than just pointing the
camera and composing the shot. Since Becky will also be wearing
a mic there will be two audio channels for me to monitor and if need
be adjust. I need to keep one eye on the intern who’s
never done this before, all amidst dogs of all sizes and personalities,
some of who are suspicious of strangers with big cameras on their
shoulders. And I’ve got to listen closely to Becky and
anticipate what she’s going to say and to whom before she even
says it. Our little voices have to be working in overdrive
to pull this off.
The shoot goes pretty well, Becky gets the added sound bites from
the humans and reactions from the dogs. The intern has the mic
in the near vicinity of where it needs to be. We even get one
funny unplanned moment. As I’m kneeling in the sand to
get a cut-away shot of Becky she suddenly squeals. One dog
owner is furiously calling his dog. I notice a flash of black
fur dart along my left side. As I to stagger to my feet
I keep the camera rolling as Becky, in giggles, attempts to compose
herself as a dog has just tried to pee on her cameraman. Apparently
this pooch had decided to define me as his territory and had taken
a three-legged stance but decided I wasn’t worth the “effort”. With
that we wrap the shoot.
On the way back to the station I point out that the grass fire
we saw an hour or so earlier seems to have gotten even bigger. Becky
decides she wants to go cover it. She has a story on the tech
of fires and thinks maybe we can get some shots. The little
voice says this is not such a good idea, but Becky isn’t a
gonzo reporter, she’ll scrub this shoot if we can’t get
what we need. The intern is silent in the backseat.
So we do what news crews always do when they see smoke, we drive
in the direction that it’s coming from. Since this isn’t
the type of story that our coverage normally encompasses our newsroom
would be of no help. We tune the car radio to KCBS- News instead
and listen for an update; in a few minutes we get our answer. Listeners
have been phoning the radio station asking about all the smoke blowing
across Highway 101. Supposedly this is a “controlled
burn” on San Bruno Mountain. I turn to Becky, controlled
burn my rear end. I’ve been around controlled burns and
if it’s too hot or there’s even the faintest hint of
wind they postpone it ‘til another day. It’s not
hot but it’s real windy. Someone has made an enormous
blunder.
We exit the freeway; I know there’s one road up San Bruno Mountain
so Becky cracks the map book open and finds the proper route for
us to take. In minutes we come to an intersection where a lone
white pickup blocks any further progress. The trucks agitated
driver stands furiously waving back traffic. I flash my Media
Parking Pass at him but it seems to make no impact. This guy
must have taken crowd control lessons from the Marines in Baghdad. He’s
going ballistic on any cars trying to pass. Give a guy a little
power and it goes to head. Becky gets out of the car and
says something to him and he meekly waves us through.
Smoke and ash blow across our windshield, I shut the vents to minimize
the smoke inside the car. Our little trio rolls up the mountainside
just a short distance before we come to three or four fire trucks
parked by the side of the road. The lone firefighter won’t
let us go any farther. What we don’t know at the time
was that about 15 minutes earlier this fire had been declared out
of control and would go to five alarms and burn 30 acres before
being contained three hours later.
I don’t see any flames but there is plenty of smoke. The
two fire trucks I parked in front of nearly disappear from view as
the smoke billows across the road; they can’t be more than
60 feet from my car. I can just discern the outline of other
fire fighters huddled from the smoke.
Our eyes immediately sting from the acrid smoke when we exit the
car. Becky wants to shoot a stand-up. The wind is constantly
shifting and I can feel the heat from the fire on my neck. I
have no idea what has happened to the intern. Becky’s
eyes water and her mascara runs but we manage four or five tries
at the stand-up and decide we’ve had enough. The little
voice says it’s time to leave. I get a few b-roll shots
before we abscond but have no desire for more.
This was one of those days that when I get home and my wife asks
me how my day went I tell her, “Had a shoot at McDonald’s
in the morning, drove out to the beach after lunch and then got caught
in a wildfire on the way back. By the way honey, I’ve
got some laundry that smells a little funky.” The little
voice is still after a full day of having nothing scheduled at all. The
smell of smoke lingers inside the car for more than a week.
Mark Neuling 2003
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
© Mark Neuling 2003
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
Email info: markneuling@techtvcorp.com
TechTV is the world’s leading cable and satellite television channel
covering technology news, information, and entertainment from a consumer,
industry, and market perspective 24 hours a day. Available in more
than 75 million households across 70 countries, TechTV is also the world’s
largest producer and distributor of programming about technology.
Copyright TechTV 2003 TechTV Inc. All rights reserved.
|
