Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

I was driving home from work Wednesday night, enjoying the night, totally relaxed, and I had a realization…

I can’t even begin to remember when the last time I drove home from work relaxed.  The daily grind of churning out fodder for the news beast just beats ya down, to where eventually you can’t take it anymore.  I’d be cranky, or irritable, or tired, or all of the above after a day in the newsroom.  I haven’t felt any of that since I left.  And I like it.

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And now for something completely different.

Tonight driving home, listening to my Ipod,  I heard “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” from Styx for about the millionth time.  The song is from “Brave New World”, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t sell very well, but being a huge Styx fan, of course I bought it.  And I like the album.  Sadly, it was the last album before the big split with Dennis DeYoung.

Dennis wrote “High Crimes”, and it was mostly about the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton.  But, listening to the lyrics, you can see that the song can be applied to just about ANY politician, especially now with the election year politics hitting high gear.

Here are the lyrics…

High Crimes and Misdemeanors (Hip Hop-Cracy)
Written by Dennis DeYoung
Lead Vocals by Dennis DeYoung

They want you to believe
The unbelievable
They say you should accept
The unacceptable
Forget your common sense
It isn’t sensible
Good times for fools and dreamers

Watch ‘em all deny
The undeniable
See how they refute
The unrefutable
They’re ready to defend
The indefensible
High times for lawyer schemers

They say we must forgive
The forgivable
They want us to respect
The unrespectable
The pious and the hip
So hypocritical
High crimes and misdemeanors

Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop

See how they explain
The inexplicable
Watch ‘em debate
The undebatable
Apparently a lie
Is never liable
Prime time for talk show screamers

They say we constitute
The Constitutional
With justice here for all
So justifiable
I’m tryin’ not to laugh
But man it’s laughable
High crimes and misdemeanors

Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop

And so
Today we find
They’ve changed their minds
They’ve switched their points of view

Oh what tangled webs they weave
When their beliefs ain’t really
What they believe

They’re trying to divide
The indivisible
Because they think we’re fools
So foolable
I’m tryin’ not to laugh
But man it’s laughable
Boom times for Wall Street dreamers
They want you to believe
The unbelievable
They say we should accept
The unacceptable
The pious and the hip
So hypocritical
High crimes and misdemeanors

High crimes and misdemeanors
High crimes and misdemeanors

Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip hop hip hop-cracy hip hop
Hip

This isn’t the first time lyrics from Styx has made me think.

A few months ago, I heard”Fallen Angel” by Styx.

Now, most of you probably haven’t heard the song, but listening to the song got me thinking about stuff.

For instance, here’s the beginning of the song…

Hell nobody’s perfect
One hundred percent
No saint, no Pope, no King no Queen
No President

But our hunger for heroes
Has made us blind
We seek salvation
From the cup of human kind

But every time we hear the voice
Of some new Abraham
We wake too late to realize
It was just another scam

I’m a fairly independent kinda guy. I do my own thinking, trying to find things out for myself instead of following some other person’s ideology blindly like a lot of people do today. In my opinion, that’s a huge part of what’s wrong with society today. Republicans are blindly following their logic, while the Democrats blindly follow theirs, with nothing of significance getting done.  And, again, with the election coming up, it’s even worse.

I guess I’d like to see politicians actually do what’s best for their constituents, not necessarily what will only get them re-elected.  Pie-in-the-sky dreamin’, I know.

Wow, kinda wordy tonight, huh?

Update

I know you all have been waiting, breathlessly, for an update on the new job.

Well, wait no more.  Here ’tis.

I walked.  I walked a lot.  I mean, I walked A LOT!

Mott is not a big campus.  Walking from one side to another takes about ten minutes.  But when you walk back and forth, numerous times, the mileage quickly adds up.

The first day I met about a thousand and a half people,  of which I remembered about a dozen.

The second day, I worked a thirteen and a half hour day, minus a half hour for lunch.  It made me nostalgic for news again!

Morris Dees, a prominent civil rights attorney, spoke on campus that evening.  Which meant we spent a sizable part of the day setting up.  We set up the audio system, including a mult-box, and worked a long time getting the hum and hiss out of the audio.

Then, we set up the modulator to sent the video and audio to a second location for the over-flow room (which, it turned out, we didn’t need), and had to spend another sizable period of time getting the static out of the video.

He started talking about 715pm, finishing at about 830, and we spent an hour tearing down everything. That was a long day.  When my head hit the pillow at home, I was out like a light.

Friday was a relatively easy day, just trouble shooting stuff, getting acclimated to the  campus some more, until just before quitting time when we discovered a problem in a conference room.  We decided it didn’t need to be fixed ’til Monday morning, since no one would be using the room ’til then.

I like the place.  The people are friendly, the campus nice (of course, autumn is my favorite time of year), and the hours are good.  I’m happy to have made the move.

Last Day

So, should I call myself “ex-photogguy”?  Nah.

Some pics to help me remember the last day…

Exciting stuff, huh?

Nearing the end

As I enter my last week as a professional television news photojournalist, I’m getting a bit contemplative. I keep looking back at the last 19 years with just a bit of nostalgia…ok, maybe a bit more than “just a bit”.

I remember my first day working in a television newsroom. October 17, 1988. I was a senior in college, and Dr. Schock got me a job at WWMT (oops, I meant to type WWTV.   Stupid call letters((Thanks, Steve, for pointing that out.)) in Cadillac, Michigan, better known as the Great White North (summer is three weeks of bad sledding!). I would spend five hours a day, in the evenings, five days a week essentially interning (although getting paid) at the station, after a day of higher learning at college.

My first day, and many days thereafter, was spent recording and logging the evening feed from CBS. In those days, it was easier to have someone sit in front of the record deck and log what was on the feed. This did a couple of things. It gave the anchors/producers an idea of what was actually fed from the network, where on the tape the stories could be found, and showed me what professional video should look like. Well, for the most part…there was (and still is) some really bad video on the network feeds.

After the feed ended on that first day, the anchor, Kathy Pulaski (I think…it was nineteen years ago) showed me what needed to be done, which meant that day I just followed her around like a lost puppy. Eventually, I learned how to edit the videotape (I did editing in college, but honed the skill there), how to write stories, and essentially how to produce the newscast. The hard part was after taking classes, I would drive an hour to Cadillac, be at the tv station by 445pm, work five hours, drive an hour back to Mt. Pleasant, go to bed and repeat. I don’t remember a lot from the last year at school…I was tired!!!

I look back on that first day, about three lifetimes ago, and wonder what it was about this business that sucked me in. There’s a lot of things I could say grabbed my interest, but I think the thing that really grabbed me was the camaraderie of the newsroom, the sense of belonging. We were for the most part young kids just getting started, learning the business together, living in a town with not a lot of stuff to do. Suffering together, we hung together, sharing our misery, our accomplishments, whatever.

I look back, and realize I miss those days…even though I know I wouldn’t want to relive them.

You’re doing WHAT?!

I got a new job.  And it’s not in tv news.

I’ve been working in tv news since October 17, 1988.  I’ve often asked myself if I’d still be standing in the rain, snow, sun, whatever, until retirement.  And the only answer I could come up with was…yeah, probably.

This business doesn’t prepare you for a lot of jobs not news related.  A photog could freelance, feel a little freedom.  Or he could find a job at a video production house, which wouldn’t be too bad, still shooting video without having to deal with the bullshit of the news business.

I’ve loved shooting tv news.  It’s something that just gets in your blood.  The thrill of doing stuff “regular” people don’t get to do.  The adrenaline rush of spot news, rushing to the scene, shooting the video, getting the live truck set up, and kicking the competition’s ass!

But 19 years.  Man, a body gets tired.  The pysche gets beat down.  While tv news allows a person to not have to do the same stuff day after day like factory workers, after 19 years I feel like “been there, done that, don’t want the t-shirt anymore”.

I’ve been offered a job a the local community college, working in “Educational Services”, which is the fancy way of saying I’m going to become one of the A/V guys.  There’s a LOT more to the job than that, but that’s the easy explanation.

I gave my two weeks notice today.  Two more weeks of shooting news, getting up at 2am, rolling the live truck out for morning live shots, shooting two more weeks of stories I just don’t have the enthusiasm to want to shoot.

I’ve been really lax about the blog since the beginning of the year.  That’s mostly because work discovered the blog, and I just didn’t have the NEED to blog.  Maybe that’ll change.  I’ll still be visiting B-Roll.net.  I still think like a photog, and dig reading what other photogs think.  I’ll still be visiting the photog blogs, for the same reason.  I’m just not going to be doing it from an insider’s point of view anymore.

The Change

Big changes are coming.  Earth shattering even.  Stay tuned.

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Today, however…

Whereas yesterday rocked, today was it’s antithesis.

Kevin and I spent five hours in court to shoot just more than 20 minutes of video.  Two and a half hours were spent on the hallway floor reading a book.  Two hours were spent waiting in the courtroom for something to happen.  A half hour spent shooting video.

Oy.

This is my day.

I like working early mornings. The drive in to work is peaceful, the big-wigs in the newsroom aren’t yet in, and I get to spend the afternoons and evenings with my family.

However, there is a downside. Most of the stories I shoot are pure vanilla, filler vo/sots to stack a newscast. Even the packages are “boring”. While the stories are worth being in the newscast, they usually are boring video-wise.

Today for example. Kevin and I did our morning live shot in front of Flint Central High School, a preview for the release of the TB testing that was done last month. An important story, but very interesting video.

As we were tearing down the live shot, Randy called us to say that Bay City schools were closed today because someone had vandalized each and every school bus at the bus barn. Ok, a decent story, decent visuals. We head up north.

Some kids, during last week’s spring break, had taken the valve stems out of one tire on the school buses, meaning there could be no school because the buses can’t hit the road. We shoot video of the buses, the flat tires, get sound from the superintendent of the district, and call it a story. After editing the package in the Saginaw office, we head back to the bus barn for the noon live shot, which goes off without a hitch. Easy, and while not pure vanilla, not exactly Emmy award winning stuff.

After a quick stop at Mickey D’s, we head south for home. We hear on the two-way radio a garbled conversation between the assignment desk and one of the Saginaw shooters, something about “quick”, and “I-75″. Since we’re headed south on I-75, and wanting to know if we’re driving into traffic, I ask Kevin to call the desk and ask what’s going on.

Wait, I’ve gotta back up just a bit. Earlier in the day there was a shooting at a workplace in Troy, which is in the Metro Detroit area. Two people dead, one injured seriously.

Kevin gets told by the desk that the suspect was being chased by the cops, northbound on I-75, and the cops had set up a road block with stop-sticks at M-81, just south of the Zilwaukee Bridge. Hell, we’re on the Z-bridge, just a mile or so north of the road block. We tell the desk we’ll shoot the chase going by.

I get to the exit, set up on the southbound side of the freeway, “acquire a high spot” to shoot over traffic and the median wall, and start shooting. The cops at the road block are obviously agitated, waving traffic through, holding some serious guns…

…when a Ford sedan blows by the road block at easily a hundred miles an hour, followed by about a dozen cop cars! And I get great video of them going by.

The police had stopped him about five miles or so north of the road block, so we head there to shoot more video, of the suspect in the back seat of a cruiser, being taken out and searched, then lead to another cruiser to be taken to the gray bay motel.

I’ve never had an opportunity to shoot a high speed chase before, and it was kind of exhilarating! And since there were no other shooters at the road block, the only video from there is MINE!

Today was a pleasant departure from my normal day.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been excited about shooting something.

(Here’s a link to the raw video I shot. The car speeding by is about 1:15 in.)

Edit: I just saw the first afternoon newscast, with this story leading, and none of that video aired! I’m not naming names, but the reporter really dropped the ball. The video that aired was just of cops standing around after the suspect was arrested. Lame

Busy days are better

Have you noticed that busy days (not hectic days) are much better than slow days.  Today was a good, busy day.

One part of the busy today started yesterday.  The station has a franchise piece called “Good Kids”, which oddly enough is about kids doing good things.  A local high school puts on a daily newscast run by the students.  This group won the Michigan Association of Broadcaster Best High School newscast award.  Needless to say, they’re good kids.

So I’m sent there to shoot the story about them solo, to be edited as a nat-pack.  After shooting the story, I didn’t have time to edit the story because I had to edit the noon show, which meant I would have to edit it today.

This morning, when I arrive to work, they tell me we’re doing a live shot in Owosso, doing a follow up on the big fire from last week.  Kevin tells me he has a 930am shoot in Owosso for his pack.  Obviously, I can’t edit my nat-pack from Owosso, so I tell them I can’t stay there all day.  Lisa, our morning show EP, comes up with a good compromise.  Kevin and I head to Owosso, I’ll set up the live truck, and Eric will head there after he gets in work.  Good idea.   Eric arrives just after the 530am hit, and I head back to Flint, leaving him and Kevin with the live truck.

When I get to the newsroom, I try to start editing, only to be interrupted to shoot an interview with Congressman Dave Camp in the newsroom conference room.  I hate conference room interviews, so I try to make the interview look like it’s  not in the conference room.  I two-point light the room, put up a black cloth for a background, and finish up just as the Congressman gets done with the studio interviews.   A quick seven minute interview, and we’re done.

Now, I can jump into my project with focus.  I love editing nat-pack.  It can be a real challenge finding the right sots to tell the story, and tell it well, all without a reporter to lead the way.  And I have to say, I did it well.  It’s been a while since I was happy with the challenge of a story, and happy with the outcome.

Then, I start in on editing the noon show, until…

We hear on the scanner about a possible hostage situation.  The dispatcher says a woman was stabbed four times in the stomach.  Josh and I jump into a live truck and head out.  Except that when we arrive, the cops tell us that the woman was just trying to get the attention of her mother, that she was beaten last night, and exaggerated what happened when her mom asked what happened.  Back to the newsroom.

I continue editing the noon show, at least as much of it I can before I have to head out to shoot a live shot at district court.  We have a crew in the courtroom getting the arraignment of a suspect in the homicide of a guy, who was shot in front of his kids.  I tune in, and Stan (photog in the courtroom) edits video to feed back.  The shot goes off without a hitch.

Then, it’s time to go home.  The day just flew by.  I like day like that.  All too often I’m stuck in the newsroom editing the noon show.  While that’s kind of nice when it’s cold (as it was today), I still prefer to be out in the fresh air, rushing and crushing video together for the next feeding of the beast.