I remember my very first television news story. It was a very long time ago. I had a radio news job in Florence at the time, back when local radio stations still did local news. One of the Huntsville television stations had a reporter in the area. She had an office and a car, and that was about all. There was no photographer, no camera gear, no editing gear. Just a desk and a notebook. Shed look for stories to do and when she found one the station was interested in, theyd send a photographer out of Huntsville to shoot it. Hed have to take the tape back to Huntsville to edit, and the first time shed ever see the story was when it was on the air. It was not a good arrangement. I ran into her at various news conferences and such and she encouraged me a number of times to go apply for the photographers job that she had been begging the station to create. So one day I called and set up an interview. Max Tooker was the news director and he and I seemed to hit it off from the get go. It was a part-time job, and obviously not a very important one because he granted me the interview knowing I had never shot nor edited a single frame of video. But as these things go, I was hired and some of the staff began chasing up some odds and ends that would comprise a set of gear. The old tube camera had a grooved metal bottom where once a pad had been. The callouss it left on my right shoulder remained for years. The battery was referred to as a brick for good reason. But it was the other shoulder that bore the worst punishment from the narrow strap that held the video recorder. Back then those things easily tipped the scales at about 40 pounds. By the time you added a 15 pound battery belt to run the 250 watt light on the camera, you were anchored to the ground upon which you stood. I had spent that first day in the station looking at the gear and trying to understand how it all worked when Max came over and asked me to go with another photographer to finish a story they were working on. There had been a daring escape from the county jail the night before as some guy scaled the exterior of the courthouse using a couple of extension cords and bed sheets tied together. Our task was to go interview the chief deputy and let him explain how it had happened. Kevin Ferrell was the photographer and he knew his craft. He set the shot, arranged lights and the two of us for the interview and all I had to do was ask a few questions. As we were leaving, Kevin handed me the microphone and said we need to shoot a stand-up. Okay. Whats a stand-up, I asked? Its where you see the reporter standing there talking, he said. The script was essentially written for me. Kevin set the audio booth to cut the narration and then put the piece together. It would be the lead story on the news that night. I never saw it. As I was getting ready to leave late that afternoon, Max called me into his office and promoted me from a part-time photographer to a full-time reporter. The reporter I was supposed to work with was so incensed she quit a few days later. I was on my own. That was in 1982. I had one sport coat, tweed with patches on the elbows, a hand-me-down from my stepfather that was so out of date the rest of the staff talked of taking up a collection to buy me a new one. Id drive my video tape to Huntsville every afternoon and struggled for weeks to learn how to edit, hanging around for hours after the end of my shift watching the others do their jobs and constantly asking them questions. One night, a producer took me by the arm, walked me to the door and gently pushed me out of the building saying, Come back tomorrow, well play TV some more. Yeah, it was that bad, but thats how it began. Ive heard it said if you love what you do, youll never work a day in your life. Its true. And tomorrow morning Ill get up, and gratefully, go play some more.
Posted on: Fri, 22 Aug 2014 04:34:08 +0000
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