All the World's a Stage

Forget all those buttons you gotta push, the hardest part about working a TV news camera is knowing where to put it. Take this shot of a Vegas attorney glowering at a few volumes of his law library. A staple of any law office, those heavy books in the foreground instantly contextualize the interviewee: He is so obviously a lawyer; albeit one with a slight case of indigestion. Thus, the photog responsible should be commended for so properly framing his subject ... unless of course said shooter stacked the books himself - in which this case, he did. It may not seem like a big deal to you watching at home, but to those of us with tripod blisters, it represents a fundamental debate over what we're out there doing with our cameras in the first place. Don't believe me? Check out the four pages of piss and conjecture this rather pedestrian shot is generating at on-line watering holes. But you'd better pack a lunch, some of those photogs are long-winded...

You didn't read the whole thread, did you? That's cool, even I skimmed over parts of it. The core of the argument is: What some cameramanthropologists consider harmless room rearranging, others call shameless 'staging' - a taboo practice among those committed to shooting the truth. But then again, what is truth? Is it a homeless shelter director swathed in perfect three point-lighting? Is it a stroke victim hobbling alongside some nodding reporter in a backyard rose garden? Is it a swim team coach hamming it up with a wireless microphone attached to the whistle around his neck? I ask these questions because it is easier than answering them. All three scenarios are variations on the kind of themes I've been shooting for going on eighteen years. In that time I've committed every kind of cinematic excess there is, until I whittled it all down to minimalistic schtick.

Of course you have to strip down your production techniques when you roll through the door alone. How else ya gonna squeeze through the threshhold? Most days I travel light and fast, with just enough tools to capture reality with flare, not stage an off-Broadway re-imagining of CATS. Sure, I'll kill the overhead lights, tweak your blinds and ask you not to squint, but I'm not about to fudge up your feng shui. That's for those Dateline crews - the ones who spend whole afternoons replacing the detritus of someone's hovel until the setting glistens with their trademark sheen. I'd much rather contort my lens and self around the existing clutter, find the best way to showcase the true environs of whatever talking head I'm pretending to listen to. That's not to say I've never shifted a knick-kack or two. Was a time I insisted on shooting every interview at a crazy Batman angle with purple light shooting through whatever office plany I could round up, but we all go through phases, right?

Don't bother answering. Just know that we TV news photogs put an alarming amount of thought into the images we serve up every night, both those we garnish and those we don't. Now if you'll excuse me, I goota go rustle up a giant thermometer and the backseat of an abandoned Buick. What, like you've never done it?

In Search of Ill Chili

Ever bum-rush a convenience store counter with a camera on your shoulder and a health inspector by your side? I spent yesterday doing exactly that and while it didn’t shatter my malaise, I did giggle a bit. You would too, if you spawned the kind of reactions I did today. From the flock of migrant workers who fled their shade tree luncheon as soon as I popped the tailgate on Unit 4, to the young mother who threatened me with a beat-down should I foolishly point my camera at her ‘hot-mess self‘, to the geezer by the freezer who insisted on giving me unsolicited directions to US 421, it was a great day for a connoisseur of the absurd.

It began, like so many good stories do, with a hot dog chili recall. Seems the fine folks at Castleberry’s dropped a little botulism into their marquee condiment and before you could say ‘Roll that beautiful bean footage’, a full blown recall was in effect. Bulletins, buzzers and a few belches rang out as the Department of Agriculture scrambled their forces to yon horizon, in an all-out quest to find, document and eradicate the troublesome foodstuff. Trouble was, Castleberry’s makes an uncanny canned chili; its popular Bunker Hill brand considered an essential accoutrement for the self respecting frankfurter. Aghast at how much sour chili still sat on shelves, the Ag Department goons called for back-up. That’s where I come in…

“Sir, I’m from the Department of Health. Can you show me to your hot dog chili?” A tiny, otherwise wisecracking woman, Sandy Ellington was all business at the counter. It worked too. Every time she approached a hapless cashier with her just-the-facts demeanor, they politely complied, few ever asking about the goofy cameraman trailing her every move. I can accept this kind of reality suspension on an episode of COPS, where not once so they show the shirtless felon look directly into the lens and ask “Just who the &^@% are you?”. That’s happened to me plenty, so much so I’m a little surprised whenever it doesn’t. This time I’ll chalk it up to Sandy’s authorities softness. I guess when you’re being quizzed about the squalidness of your toppings by an insistent Den Mother, you don’t notice the dude behind her with the loud shirt and heavy lens.

In the end, Sandy got her ill chili and I got my story. Along the way we visited wildly diverse retailers, from the squat brick building at the corner of Crackpipe and Drive-By, to that roughneck outpost just off the highway, to the Middle-Eastern feel of the little gas station at the end of Dingleberry Road. Only twice did I get any static, once from a gentlemen who felt my presence was delaying the purchase of his forty ounce adult beverage (I acquiesced. He imbibed.) and an ugly brush with a cashier’s wingman (You know, that creepy old dude who hangs out by the register and pulls Marlboros through the hole in his throat?). Seems Tex didn’t like Sandy’s questions, the logo on my lens or the cut of my jib. Profanity ensued. Sure, I could have stuck his dumb ass on the news, but hey - I’m a uniter, not a divider.

Vaudeville In a Box

Shrinking lenses, magic laptops, on-line video - it’s an exciting time to be in television news ... then why the hell am I so bored? Wait! Don’t answer that. Just sit back and read and we’ll both get through this. See, I’m on the cusp of my Late Summer Malaise and the only recommended treatment is to pound out my every frustrations on this coffee-stained keyboard. According to my wife, it’s nothing new. Every time July turns to August I get waylaid by the crushing heat, the thankless grind and all those vacationing newsmakers. Soon I find myself skulking about the newsroom fully disengaged, cloaked in melancholy, utterly apathetic to anything outside the white-hot focus of my daily assignment. Yes Sir, I’m a real ray of sunshine this time of year.

Okay, so maybe it ain't all the weather’s fault. Rain or shine, I been over my chosen profession for a good five years or so now. Chalk it up to arrested development: a prolonged sense of career stagnation brought on by the feeling your best TV news stories are somewhere far behind you. For what it’s worth, I know that’s not the case, but its awful easy to feel that way when you’re babysitting hair-do’s at The Felony Factory. I’d much rather be off by myself in Unit 4 somewhere, erecting vignettes no one deems very important (not counting of course the newscast producer, who counts on me to fill ninety seconds of real estate each night). It’s on those solo forays only that I find redemption. For better or worse, I do my best work all by my lonesome, a condition I blame squarely on my very first news director Roy Hardee - who more than encouraged my loner tendencies.

Still, it’s tough being an unaccompanied auteur in a newsroom full of team players. See, most of the fine folk I toil alongside thrive on collaboration. Reporters and photogs plot their next masterpiece with unparalleled zeal, one focused on merging words while the other riffs on the visuals. It’s a great way to commit quality television but it so ain’t me. Having cut my teeth as a one-man-band who specialized in crime and grime or outright fluff, I got certain ideas about video architecture and rarely do they involve cloying two-shots or extended stand-ups. That particular shtick is all well and good I suppose, but its team coverage I’d rather view than produce. Having sad that, I must admit my co-workers regularly put their heads together to make for some very interesting Tee-Vee. Too bad I have such a hard time making myself watch any of it.

Reading back over those three paragraphs, I realize how disgruntled I must sound. I’m really not. What I am is a realist, a cynic too perhaps: a kind of reporter but mostly a photog. And therein lies the rub. Nowhere near as enterprising as our accomplished reporting staff, and not nearly as technical as our illustrious photogs, I am, if anything, justly underrated. That’s only just I suppose, payback for playing dumb camera punk whenever some toothless rube approached me with a passel of stupid questions. (‘Couldn’t tell ya man, I just drive the truck.’) Not that photogs are dumb. Far from it. But the public’s misconception that we’re merely caddies to the semi-famous makes it awful easy to go all Caveman. Sorry ‘bout that, Geico.

Let’s wrap this up, shall we? But before we go, what have we learned? Oh yes, August in the Carolinas is so muggy, your friendly neighborhood lenslinger fantasizes about life as a bank teller. I, Stewart Pittman, prefer to work alone (with nobody else!), a tactic that’s left me miscast me among my fellow broadcasters. I watch little to no local news, not counting the stuff I see in various edit bays. No longer a real enthusiast of the form, I now view my workaday life as fodder for an ambitious set of never to be completed memoirs. Resigned to the fact I may very well have peaked professionally , I still think I can out-news-gather you with one eyelid tied behind my back. I merely reserve the right to whine about it on-line when I'm done...

There - I feel better already!

Heckuvajob, Dandy...

Proving we're not all surly loners, Canadian cameraman Bert Dandy recently warned a group of first responders about a speeding fugitive headed their way. Once his station got hold of the tape they made great hay of it of course, but the resulting footage does serve as a kind of public service spot: If a dude with a TV news camera is urgently trying to get your attention, give him a listen. He's either trying to save your life, quiz you on an odd topic or bum a light. Either way, you're the hero. It all reminds me of the time I stopped a local traffic cop from blindly stepping in front of a speeding bus. It was the least I could do, as I was the one who distracted him talk of wireless microphones and fleeting stardom. Powerful thing, fame...