Back to work.

I'm still trying to remember how to do my job. Things are so different now.

Some people were let go, others were moved around.

It's really starting to hit me that these guys are exppecting more from me. Especially after this trip, they are starting to give me more respnisbility. There's a sort of new guy I have to look after. He's been woring here for almost a year, started out as an editor and could barely do that. Then they started having him fill in every once in a while as a shooter.

....they seemed surprised when I told them he can't shoot...this is after they promoted him and are now letting him work half a shift 5 days a week.

He's only shot like 2 things this week, but both of them were blue. He atleast called me once and asked what filter he should be in, but it was still blue.
< to white balance and what color temperature is or even what a kelvin is over the phone....but they won't give me or anyone else time to train him.

Oh, and even though he can barely shoot, we are supposed to starting teaching him how the live trucks work.

Kinda like climbing mount everest before crawling

Rain

Well I thought we were going to get another rain delay, but it looks like we are going to luck out. From the weather channel it looks like the worst part is passed us.

When we got up this morning I took a picture of the forecast which looked pretty grim. Like we were going to be here through the weekend.

We have either 2 more wins, or 1 more loss tto go before we can head home. What sucks about these rain delays is that they want 3 stories from us, but only 1 if the game is on.

So we have to start working early to get ready for the chance they might not play, or we wait as long as possible to keep us from having to shoot stories that will never air.

This has been an awesome week, but i'm ready to come home.

Editing video...

Watching him edit video is like watching someone mow their lawn with a pair of scissors.

Dogs Win!

The Fresno State Bulldogs are 2 games away from winning the college world series.

That means that we are still in Omaha until Thursday.

As much as I want to be home, this is so awesome to be here covering this. There is no way these guys could come all this way, make it this far, and not win it all.

Way to go.

Arrived in san francisco

Now we get to hang out for another 2 hours before the next flight. Coming into the bay was wicked, we passed through this really thick cloud layer that was really low. It was like gliding across a sea of cotton balls...

George was out right away, but i'm wired, new experiences and all. I should be able to sleep on the next flight to denver.

I just found out the hard way that the copy of hot fuzz I put on the ipod is in russian....

Leavin fresno

College World Series

Leaving Saturday for Omaha. Going to cover the Fresno State Baseball team. First game is Sunday, if they lose the first 2 games I could be home as early as Wednesday. If they go all the way it could be 2 weeks.

I'm gonna try and document as much as I can. I'm thinking of taking my camera on the plane...er planes.

We are flying Fresno-San Francisco-Denver-Omaha.

Probably gonna be a long day, but it will be loads of fun.

From getting creative....to getting a little hot in here...

Today started off easy, as most hard days do, I didn’t even have a story assigned for the first half hour. Then my reporter and I got sent out to do another story about the price of food going up. We never have good luck with these stories because no one wants to let us shoot in their story when the story might show the store in a bad light. Like say, they have expensive food,(even though everyone is raising prices and they aren’t alone.)

Whatever, anyway, they make a million calls and finally find one small market that will let us shoot. We managed to get all of our interviews and video pretty quick leaving, about 6 hours until the story was going to air. I wanted to drive around for a bit until the bosses went home and to make it look like we were working really hard, but the car decided it was done for the day and the temperature warning light came on.

I switched out into a new vehicle back at the station and promptly sat on my butt for about 2 hours.

While waiting for my story to be written, so I could start editing it, I was sent to Selma to get some video of a post office closing. I barely made it out of the city before the desk called, asked where I was, and if I saw smoke. Off in the distance a great big plume of smoke. From the drive in, it looked like the thing was going to be leveled when I got there, but it was still going hot and surprising less than a 3rd of the place was even burned. The fire department was able to save most of the building, letting the add on burn out.

I’m not sure what happened, but one of the hoses must have knocked some boards off or something because off of a sudden the fire doubled in size and things were getting a little warm.

Between the singed hairs and the constant rain of embers blowing from the surrounding trees that had caught fire, it was time to leave.

Got my shots in Selma and made it back to the station in time for me to put my story together.

Updates...

When I started this I thought it would be easier to post pictures and updates about stories I'm working on, but the camera on my phone doesn't work well at night and well I'm usually too busy with the bigger camera I have shooting my story. I've also been having some reporter issues that have left me drained everyday from holding back and not telling them what a horrible person they are.....but anyway...

I've been covering some interesting things lately like this thing that happened up in Merced last week.

This guy ran into a court house with 2 kitchen knives, 1 in each hand, and stormed into a court room. He didn't respond the sheriffs deputies and they opened fire killing him. Everything happened so quick, it was hard to put together what happened. For our station we sent 2 reporters and 3 photogs, which is rare, and we had some awesome team coverage up there, blowing everyone away....except that for the 5 (whenever I refer to a number as an object, I'm talking about our shows at 5, 6, and 11) we had terrible audio because we weren't able to tune in a good enough signal from where we were I tried to tell them that is was where the truck was parked and we needed to turn it 180° and it would be ok, but they just had us use it anyway and setup another truck that actually got a worse signal. They finally cracked and listened to me almost an hour after I told them what the problem was.

Well we got the 5 and 6 taken care of and then had some time to rest and prepare for the 11.

One part of this job I could really do without is the dead bodies...and having to get video of the coroner taking them away. We won't air video of a dead body, but we will show a dead body in a body bag. I was 5 feet from this guy as he was being wheeled into the coroner's van, it smelled, and it was weird.

Anyway, more will come, but until then if you have any questions feel free to email me or comment below.

Zzzzzz....

Posting on a regular basis is seeming harder than I thought it would be. I don’t know why …I’ve been to more boring meetings in the past few weeks than I have in the past 2 years. Meetings about everything from housing developments in Lemoore, budget cuts in Madera, to something in Merced I can’t remember. The hardest part is a tie between trying to stay awake and sorting through all the crap for the few bits of info the reporter needs for the story.

 

I’m starting to see that the smaller the town, the bigger the turnout when it comes to something people in the town don’t like, but most of the time the people holding the meeting aren’t prepared for it. I was at this meeting in Madera a few days ago in the gym of a high school. From past meetings they learned that people get mad when they can’t here you telling them you’re taking something away from them, so for this meeting everybody was mic'd up.  From where I was standing it looked like the guy knew what he was doing, everything looked clean and professional….then he turned the mics on.

 

For like 20 minutes it kept going from too quiet, to ok, to ear bleeding feed back. They whole time I’m thinking man this guy sucks, why isn’t he doing anything. I move over to where I can see the guy sitting at the audio board and it looks like he’s checking levels and trying to fix it. This guy giving a presentation was getting pissed because he had to stop talking everytime the feedback would start. Then they started bringing him new mics, I thought good, they are going to use the house systme and bypass this setup, but no, they just swap it out and the feed back continues.

 

I tell my reporter that I used to set stuff like this up all the time and she’s practically pushing me out of my seat to go fix it. (Did I mention that we sit around for atleast an hour duing these things? It only takes a few minutes to get the video I need and there’s always a huge gap between the city or school or whatever’s statement and the community reaction or oposing view.) Anyway, I’m sitting there looking over everything trying to figure out what the problem is before I go up there…and that’s when I see it. One of the speakers it pointed out to the crowd like it should and the other is pointed right at about 8 mics. Now I’m faced with the task of walking up there and doing this guys job for him, but how do I do it and not be a dick?

 

Where this guy is setup is right in front of the whole crowd, so as I walking up everyone can see me. I ask the guy if everythings ok and he says “yeah, no problem”, uh buddy, maybe you’re already deaf, but you’re about to put us all in the same boat. I tell him I used to set this stuff up and ask him if I can help. He says no, but I say anyway, “Do you mind if I turn the speaker out?” he replies “Do you think it will fix it? (WTF?) “I think it will help!” He says something about them not being able to hear last time, I don’t know if that means that’s why the speakers and mics are there or that’s why the speaker is turned in.

 

I walk over, turn the speaker about 90 degrees and give him the nod to turn the sound back up. The guy up front asks if everything’s ok and he tells him yeah, not a word to me. He starts in on his presentation again, loud and clear, no feed back, and our ears stop bleeding. I make my way back and get a few claps from the crowd and a bunch of ladies sitting next to us giving me a thumbs up mouthing thank you.

 

The highlight of my week.

Car chases, staged wrecks, and a lack of sleep...

The past week has been a little busy, lots of breaking news, working a second, and even a third job. Last night I got an exclusive on a car chase that ended with 4 arrested and 1 on the run.

A few days ago I shot a staged drunk driving accident. Meant to scare kids into not drinking and driving. It's kinda hard to shoot if you don't know what your getting into. There is so much going on with cops, firefighters, and paramedics running around. You not only have to catch the action, but the dialogue too. Nothing is scripted, so you really have to listen to what they're saying in order to keep up with the action.

Freelancing isn't free...

I got a call at ablout 10pm Thursday night from guy saying he was down a shooter and needed someone to help with hockey on Friday. Though I shoot hockey pretty regularly for my station, it had been over 2 years since I shot for these guys. I've been trying for a while to get higher up on the call list, but working weekends makes it tough because there are a lot of games on the weekends that i've had to turn down because of my regular job.
Things went pretty good, picked up the way they flow quick, and the game flew by. I was running one of the cameras that gets put up on the big screen. I was assigned the main game camera, so I was providing most of the closeups. It was pretty fun going from chasing the puck, couples for the kiss cam, to chasing down crazy people dancing. Everyone said I did a good job, hopefully on the list. I really like doing stuff like that, I just wished my schedule worked with me enough so I could do it more often.

Dog day afternoon....

In at 3 and sent by myself to Selma for a story about car port covers and how they're violating some code or something I don't really pay much attention to these things. What sticks with me is that I have to cover the council meeting about it which starts at 7, but between then and 7 I had to find houses that had the covers. I hit the drive-thru, hook up some trance piped in from France, and I'm off.
I get to Selma, find a residential part and start circling the neighborhoods. The whole while trying to not look like a predator/prowler and making sure not to double back. By the time I find my first one, my phone starts ringing. I shoot it really quick and I'm off to Del Ray for another story about a man who beat his mom and said she fell.
All I'm told is the block that it happened on and I need to try to talk t lock, but it's in the middle of a bunch of farms. There are about 5 houses as far as I can see in each direction, I made it to 3 before I found his house. These are tricky/scary situations, you never know what's going to happen, how people are going to react. I'm not there to badger anyone, if they don't want to talk, that's fine, I'm just there to give them a chance to tell their side of the story.
I pull up and because of mud, I have to park a little ways away. As I'm walking to the house I hear this noise, I look up....and Cujo is running full speed. My heart does a couple of beats when I think he's chained up, but freezes again when I see the chain goes from the doghouse to nothing...
So the dogs getting closer, and I'm inching back to the car, sweating bullets, about to crap myself. I'm searching for my keys, the dogs setting me in his sights, I get the keys to the door, but it's too late and he's right on top of me. I turn to face him, ready to fight off this beast.... this ferocious beast, I'm face to face with the biggest cutest puppy ever.
He's jumping all over me, tail wagging, all excited, starving for attention. I make my way up to the door trying to play with their dog as little as possible. No one answers, so I move across the street and get some shots of the house. The dog sees me and decided to join me, but not before almost getting hit running across the road. The dog really wanted to come with me, the thing was a small horse, so it took some effort to push it back enough to close the door. Then as I tried to drive away, it was almost herding me. I was afraid I was going to hit it, so I floored it to try to get ahead of it. Right when I think I'm in the clear he hangs a right and a swerve to avoid him, now I'm in the on coming lane. I'm finally like fuck it, I scream at the dog and go for it. He finally gave up and just stood in the lane as I drove away. It was the saddest thing, to look back in the rearview mirror and see that. Che , and went back to Selma, found some more houses, went to the meeting and brought it back.