I Interviewed Santa Today!

I’m kind of a “utility infielder” at Wisconsin Public Television.  I’ve been there 21 years now, and for the first 14 I was a full-time videographer and editor.  About seven years ago I was tapped to join what is called the Digital Innovations Unit, mostly because I know about computers and such, but I still shoot and edit fairly often.  And today was one of those days I filled in.

The News Department uses “person-on-the-street” interviews as bumpers in our weekly news wrapup show, and today was my time to shoot them.  I went out with an audio person and an intern (all anonymity will be respected) to a local mall.  We were asking the passers-by about budget deficits and an impending snowstorm, and before long we had enough answers to wrap it up.  But guess who else is in the mall in December?  Yep, Jolly Old St. Nick!  So we figured it might be a good idea to ask Santa what he does when the weather gets rough. 

His response was as flat and monotone as the dialog in any Dragnet episode you’ve ever seen:

“I get on the Web, go to Priceline, book a $35 room at the Mayflower Motel, and hunker down.”

Whaaaaaaaat?  (Note:  The Mayflower is a local flophouse motel.)

We gave him another shot at it.  I mean, it’s Christmas, right?

“Well, I usually have to get rid of all the snow myself.  Nobody helps.” Pause.  “Well, sometimes the elves help.”

And that was it.

Dude.  Think maybe, just maybe, you are in the wrong line of work?  All he had to do was bust out a big “HO HO HO!  I LOVE snow!  Rudolph’s nose shows up SO GOOD in a blizzard!” But no, he was a little too wrapped up in himself that he couldn’t be bothered to boost Santa’s image among the handful of people watching WPT at that particular second.

After we left, I started to think about old Santa, and all the times I might have let attitude get in the way of a job, or even common courtesy.  I’m going to try to remember what I saw today, and use the reverse next time I’m tempted to be a little too tart.

Cognitive Dissonance and the One-Man Band

You ever have one of those weeks where the front part just doesn’t match up with the back part?  I did, just last week.

For months in advance, Monday December 8 had been block-booked for all shooters, audio people, producers and production types at Wisconsin Public Television, to make it possible for them to attend a seminar entitled “Storytelling Is A Team Sport.” It was given by Boyd Huppert and Jonathan Malat, a reporter and photojournalist (respectively) from KARE11-TV, the NBC affiliate in Minneapolis.  While they still have to do the basic news assignments that make up the bulk of a TV newscast, KARE blocks out sections of their shows for longer-form stories, up to 5 minutes in length.  And in a very competitive news market, KARE is always found at or near the top of the ratings.  Huppert and Malat have created a brand for their work entitled “Land of 10,000 Stories,” and the examples they showed us were stellar.  You could tell just by the way they traded back and forth that they had a great sync, one covering the other’s back, then seamlessly switching places.

They spoke for about six hours, and I can honestly say I wasn’t bored for a second.  Some of the tips they offered - put a curly-cord on your shotgun mic, so you can pop it off the camera and get it closer to the subject, or in the dark use a laptop screen as an impromptu softlight - are quite applicable to the work we do at WPT.  And it is always good to get a sense of what the other guys are doing.  I came away with a bit more energy for my next assignment.

Then Friday rolls around, and Jim Feeley sends me this link from the Washington Post. If you don’t want to click the link, I’ll print the headline for you:

WUSA Moves to One-Person News Crews

That’s right. In Washington DC, the ninth-largest TV market, one-person crews will be shooting, reporting, and editing stories for a network affiliate.  From the article:

“"We believe strongly that [this change] will raise both the quality and quantity of the product we’re putting out” on TV and on the internet, said Allan Horlick, the president and general manager of WUSA, in an interview yesterday.”

Oh yeah, one more thing:  The “Mo-Jos” - mobile journalists - are getting their pay cut.  A lot.  FTA:

WUSA—owned by McLean-based media giant Gannett—plans an across-the-board cut in reporters’ salaries as it increases their responsibilities. Multimedia journalists will earn 30 to 50 percent less than what traditional reporters have been earning, with salaries topping out at around $90,000 annually, according to people at the station.

Funny, but that doesn’t sound like the recipe for increased “quality” in reporting and shooting.  Quantity, yeah, probably.  Quality?  Give me a break.  And lets not forget that reporting from the streets of any major American city can be dangerous, from traffic to camera thieves to basic run-of-the-mill mugging.  It’s important to have a second pair of eyes to keep both of you safe.

Yes, I understand that the dismal economy and future tech both tend to be pushing against the newspaper and broadcasting businesses.  But Gannett actually INCREASED their stock dividend this year.  And a listing of all their newspaper properties show that in 2007 all but one was profitable. Somehow I doubt Gannett is going to disappear tomorrow.

Now, the more aware of you may have already sniffed out the O. Henry ending to this tale.  KARE11, that station where Boyd Huppert and Jon Malat do such great team-driven storytelling?  Oh yeah: it is also owned by Gannett.

So what do you think?  Should video journalism be a lowest-cost affair?  Or is it worthwhile to pay professional wages for professional work?  I know where I stand.

An EX-3 Review In Process, Part 2

In the previous post of this series, I was introducing the Sony EX-3 to the Wisconsin Public Television community, and pointing out some of the potential advantages the SxS-media-driven workflow optimizations might lend.  Yesterday it was time to actually try some out.

With the help of our Avid specialist, we tried to ingest some footage and actually edit it.  So we started out working on the system at his desk.  He downloaded EX-3 Clip Browser, which is essential to converting the EX-3’s files to .MXF, the standard format the Avid speaks.  (If I confuse some terms here, don’t shoot me - I’m not the most knowledgeable Avid guy around.  Ask me about Adobe Premiere Pro - that I can do.) Problem #1:  EX-3 Clip Browser will only run on Intel Macs, not the PowerPC we are working on.  OK, change of venue to one of our PC-based Avid Adrenalin hi-def bays.  Problem #2:  While Clip Browser runs great on the HP chassis, the software in Edit 6 is several years old, and will not recognize anything Clip Browser will spit out.  Back to the desk, where our Avid guy is working with Media Composer 3, in advance of rolling it out to all the suites in the near future when Avid Interplay is supposed to be installed in our plant.  The files work great there...but there’s no hi-def monitor or scopes to really examine the footage.  So here we have meta-problem #1:  Since so much of our editing hardware and software has been acquired over the best part of a decade, versions vary from room to room.  The installation of Interplay is supposed to alleviate this, but is still some time in the future.  So, short answer:  At present, using EX-3-acquired footage in our plant will be very difficult.  Ask again in six months, though, and things may be totally different.  One very pleasant surprise is the speed with which the EX-3 footage downloads off the SxS cards via USB2 - what I had figured would be a hair-pulling long time was in reality only a little less than twice as long as using the native ExpressCard slot on my Lenovo netbook.  And re-wrapping the files once downloaded was a pretty fast process as well.

After that experience, my buddy (and assistant chief engineer) Paul Stoffel asked me to run outside and see how the EX-3 handles faces, motion, and snow.  Since we have a foot of the white stuff on the ground, it is pretty easy to find a white balance source.  I happen to wander out directly into class-passing time on the University of Wisconsin campus, so finding faces in motion was easy.  Unfortunately, in my zeal I get the roll/stop thing backwards, and come back with great footage of my feet trudging through slush.  So back out I go, shooting faces, cars driving by, long shots of campus landmarks, the State Capitol in the distance, flashing traffic lights, the whole nine yards.  Since I didn’t bring a tripod with me, I had SteadyShot engaged.  Truth be told, I have always found Sony’s SteadyShot rather lacking; it’s electronic approach to image stabilization just doesn’t seem that effective, especially when compared to Canon’s excellent optical stabilization on so many of their cameras.  In any event, in the interest of reducing the “queasy” factor on playback, I engage SteadyShot, and it seems to work OK.  It’s only on playback in video control (with an excellent Sony HD monitor and Tektronix scopes) that I see how much detail you lose when it is engaged.  Paul points this out, and seems rather unimpressed, so I go out again and shoot more footage without SteadyShot.  It does seem crisper, if jumpier - the tripod is a magic invention, isn’t it?

So far, it seems that the EX-3 is holding it’s own.  No camera is ever going to be perfect, and trade-offs will always have to be made.  In the next weeks I hope to get it into the hands of many more of my colleagues, including on a shoot this morning in Neenah, Wisconsin, which I have to get ready to leave on.  Have I mentioned it’s 3:30AM?  I just can’t sleep before an early depart.  Arrrrrgh.

By the way, my Kensington ExpressCard34 adapter arrived from Amazon last night.  Once my Sandisk 16GB SDHC card gets here, I can start testing the alternative media for the EX-3.  That promises to be a lot of fun.

More later.

Did Jay Leno Just Take Your Job?

You may have heard the news that Jay Leno will not be leaving NBC once his contract runs out in 2009.  Instead, he will essentially lift up “The Tonight Show” and move it from the 11:30P Eastern and Pacific/10:30PM Central time slot and drop anchor at 10PM E/P - 9P Central.  That’s right, a five-night-a-week entertainment talk show strip in prime time on a major network.  This is essentially unprecedented, and carries with it major bad news for lots of people in the production community.  Think about it - if Leno has 10PM five nights a week, what shows won’t be there?  Shall we make a list?

Well, this year on NBC Monday through Friday at 10PM we have:

My Own Worst Enemy, Law and Order: SVU, Law And Order (the original version), ER, and Dateline NBC. 

Four out of those five hours are scripted drama.  These shows employ a LOT of people - DP’s, AC’s, writers, gaffers, grips, makeup, craft services, drivers, the whole thing.  I bet some of those folks read this site, and a lot more of our readers wish they were a part of that community.  There is a reason Jay Leno is being given the entire 10PM hour:  Compared to scripted drama or comedy, producing a live talk show costs NOTHING.  If this trend sticks (and I would hedge my bets on that for a while) this could really tear the production communities in Hollywood, New York City and all across the US apart.

Now, the caveat:  I do have a little sympathy for NBC.  They are mired in fourth place in the ratings, and after the huge run of success they had with “Must-See TV” in the 1990’s that must sting doubly bad.  But now the confession - I do not watch ANY of those shows.  I am so burned out on the 21st-century versions of crime, lawyers, doctors and “reality” that there is really little on the broadcast TV networks I do appreciate (major exceptions:  The Simpsons and Lost.) But instead of trying harder - of developing the next Seinfeld or St. Elsewhere (which really wasn’t a doctor show, at it’s heart) or Friends or you-name-your-favorite, they throw in the towel.  That’s just sad. 

The network that brought us Hill Street Blues, The West Wing, Bonanza and Star Trek (!) is giving up, trying to squeeze a dollar until George Washington screams.  I sort of like Jay Leno, but I can’t wish him luck in this venture - it signals a sad decline in what television has been, and could be again, if someone at NBC would just have some guts.  And I feel terrible for all the talented crew folks that will see a much less lucrative 2009.  Imagine how bad it could get if CBS and ABC go the same way.

An EX-3 Review In Process

I’ve already made it clear that I am a Sony EX1/EX3 fan.  I think Sony may have hit the sweet spot that makes solid-state recording a usable technology for broadcasters, in conjunction with XDCam disc recording for archive and backups.

However, steering an entire broadcast station to a conclusion like that is a much harder process.  There are many more variables involved than “Hey, Bruce likes it!” (And truth be told, in many senses an endorsement from me is just noise on management’s radar.) Our capital budgets are small and constrained by many competing priorities, not the least of which is and was the conversion to digital TV.  But the sea-change that the SxS recording system represents deserves a close examination.  To that end, I have secured a loaner EX3 camera from Sony, with the purpose of showing it and it’s workflow to all stakeholders in the production process.  This includes shooters, audio people, engineers, management, the media librarian and more.  Early reviews are quite positive.

At the same time, I have been starting to play with the bleeding edge of the SxS system - using adapters and SDHC media to lower the cost of recording. (I previously posted about this rather surprising turn of events here.) The adapter and media of choice for this trick is currently the Kensington 33407 media reader card and the preferred media itself is the Sandisk 16Gb Ultra II card or the Transcend 16Gb class 6 card.  (Those last two links lead to Amazon pages.) Check out the prices - the Transcend card is under $30!  For an HOUR of recording time!  Those are the kind of numbers that will make station management sit up and notice.  We currently pay about $25 per tape for half-hour HDCam stock.  That means SxS represents real savings in not just cash costs, but personnel as well.  I dumped an 8Gb SxS card into a Lenovo micro-laptop in about 4 minutes - SEVEN times realtime.  Long waits for digitizing could be a thing of the past.  It is not inconceivable that a switch from HDCam to SxS could pay for itself in less than six months.

So what am I seeing here?  Is this a real revolution, or just a mirage?  Am I being blinded by “gear lust?” I sure hope not, because for less than $9000 the EX3 is an extremely impressive camera.  The fact that it could pay for itself with cost savings in very short order is icing on the cake - a very thick, creamy, flavorful icing.

Or am I nuts?

The Golden Triangle Of video Production

I love short, pithy sayings.  I love them even more if they happen to be true.  I learned this one early on in my career, and it is iron-clad, inviolate and forever correct.  And it goes a little something like this:

“Good, Fast Or Cheap - Pick Any Two.”

There is a ton of truth there.  Think about it - if a client wants something fast and cheap, it isn’t going to be good.  If a client wants something fast and good, it isn’t going to be cheap.  And if a client wants something good and cheap, it isn’t going to be fast.

Learn it.  Live it.  Love it.  Because if you ignore it, it’ll still be true, and you (and your business) will suffer.

The Greatest Business Advice I Ever Ignored

While it is true that I am not a full-time freelancer - that is to say, I have a day job, and I use freelance work to augment my salary - it is still true that the cratering economy affects me, and even more all my friends that ARE full-time freelancers.  And while my day-job is at a statewide public television network, I actually got my start in TV at a commercial station, the ABC affiliate in Orlando, FL.  Back in the early 1980’s, Orlando was still in the early part of the Walt Disney-fueled population explosion, and in the six years I was at WFTV, the market grew from #38 to #26, which is astonishing growth (it is #23 now.) I consider it my great good fortune to have run across a few mentors in my time there, and one lesson I learned comes to the top of my mind on a daily basis.

I was lucky to land at WFTV, a place that at the time that still did a lot of local production.  I worked on an early-morning live variety/news show, a movie strip/game show called “Dialing for Dollars,” many, many newscasts, and I got to work in the field on live remotes and on single-camera shoots of commercials, promos, and all kids of programming.  What I was blissfully unaware of, however, was the relationship between the production department and the sales department.  I could never seem to grasp why we couldn’t produce some of my epic programming ideas, like live coverage of a 100-mile bicycle race, or a nightly all-field-tape documentary series based on WCVB-TV Boston’s outstanding “Chronicle” series (that is still running to this day.) Once in a while, I would drop into the office of the local sales manager, a great, friendly guy named Bruce Baker.  For whatever reason, he took mercy on this callow kid, patiently explaining - over and over again - the relationship between producing a local extravaganza and being able (or, more often, unable) to sell ads within it. 

One day, I plopped my butt down on his couch, and waited for him to get off the phone.  It was then I noticed something on his desk I had never seen before, a very small sign with a very big message.  It read:

“In good times, you should advertise.

In bad times, you MUST advertise.”

Wow.  That is a really important concept, and is especially true in the brave new world of the Web, where everyone can look to be as big as anyone else, if you build the message right.  Of course, it is a lesson I have stubbornly refused to take to heart - if you need proof, just surf over to www.ppmm.com, which has been un-modified in several years at least.  I guess the old saw - you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think - is true in spades for me.

While I haven’t spoken to him is over 20 years, I have watched Baker’s career from afar, thanks to the World Wide Web.  As befits a man of his knowledge and affability, Baker has risen through the ranks of WFTV’s ownership group, Cox Communications.  It seems that he will soon assume the title of President of Television Stations for Cox, after stints as general manager at WSOC, WSAN and WSB-TV and executive VP for stations with Cox.  This is one of those times the old saw “it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy” fits like a glove.  And the message I noticed on his desk over two decades ago is as true today as it was then.  Sounds like I have an early New Years resolution to fullfill.

Confession:  I Don’t Get The RED.

OK, so here is where I shoot myself in the head, but I just don’t get the clamor around the RED cameras.  Yes, I can appreciate their fabulously advanced technology.  Yes, I admire their clever naming schema (whoever came up with the “Mysterium” sensor should get a big raise.) And the accountant that invented “$17K to start...$50k to actually shoot frame #1” is a genius as well.

But…

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