Big Deal Video Production

By June 1989 I was very much into

video production.

I’d produced and directed a dozen or more live-switched two and three camera shows.

Here’s a short version of a story from my video production book Circumstances Beyond My Control chapter 26:

“A producer I’d worked for as a film AD was [doing s video production] of the Anne Frank Memorial Concert at St. John the Divine on the 14th. I shamelessly begged him to hire me as Associate Director for the shoot but he said he couldn’t do it. He needed a guy with experience on this type of shoot and as good a film AD as he thought I was, this was a different animal altogether. The film AD and the live video AD are radically different jobs with different skill sets. I fruitlessly pled my case explaining how much I’d learned directing these live video shows. He said that there was a big difference between a two or three camera shoot in a studio or small auditorium and a ten camera shoot in a cathedral. I admitted that he was right.

“On the eighth or ninth of June Bernie called me.
‘Did you once tell me you had a degree in music?’ he asked. ‘Yes.’
‘Can you read an orchestra score?’ ‘Yes.’
‘You get the job.’

“This is the only time in my life that my college degree actually resulted in employment. The director needed an associate who could alert him to certain imminent musical passages – such as, say, a viola solo – that he wanted to cover with one of the roving, hand-held cameras.

“An hour later a messenger arrived with a large package containing scores and cassette tapes of all the orchestral pieces.

“With my Walkman, my headphones and the Mendelssohn #1 score spread out on the dining room table I went to work. I had not looked at a full orchestra score for over twenty-five years. These things are monstrous with a staff of music for every instrument in the orchestra. What I was hearing and what I was seeing had no comprehensible relationship. I felt panic rising in my stomach.

“So I started at the beginning again and on the third or fourth pass I had an epiphany. Abruptly I could see what was going into my ears. The old neural pathways that had long lain dormant, filled with cobwebs suddenly opened and the sense of relief was epic. I could read music again.

Click here to get Circumstances Beyond My Control

…

“On the day, I arrived at St. John’s at 10:00 AM. The crew was running cables, setting up cameras and lights – I knew a few of the grips and electricians – and other than the shape of the cameras and their tripods, it could have been a film shoot so I was right at home.

“I went in the control room truck and introduced myself to the TD and other techs who were checking their equipment and positioning the cameras.

Inside the Video Truck
Once inside it was easy to forget that I wasn’t in a studio control room.

“Bernie was right, this was a whole different animal. I told the guys that I was a virgin and would take all the help I could get, explaining that I was a film AD and had some live switching experience but nothing on this scale. I had long since learned the idiocy of trying to fake it in situations like this. A couple of hours later the director, whose name I’ve long forgotten, arrived. He was nice yet intense and very focused, around ten or fifteen years my junior, and seemed to know what he was doing. … [H]e told me that my main job would be the positioning of three hand-held cameras in conjunction with keeping him apprised of what was coming up musically. I showed him one of the scores with my highlighter markings with camera cues. He was impressed by my preparation but the score may as well have been an ancient Sumerian scroll. But he joked, ‘That’s why you’re here.’ I liked the guy. Then we went inside the cathedral. … The interior is immense.”

St. John the Divine is a Gothic cathedral, a work in progress since 1892. Its sheer size is amazing. The nave stretches two football fields and a seating capacity of 5,000. It would be full that night.

“… A stage was being built at the front and just behind it we had a camera on a crane and at the back we had another camera on a crane. In the balcony at the rear there was another, stationary, camera with a sports zoom lens. … There were four other cameras positions around the space and three roving handhelds.

“… Lucas Foss and his orchestra were rehearsing. … I stopped to listen. In that space which was, at that point essentially empty therefore extremely reverbaratory, the music was – no other word for it – heavenly. I was enthralled. The piece finished and Mr. Foss looked around and spotted me. He walked back, I stood and introduced myself. He saw the score under my arm. It was the piece that they had just played. “How was it?” he asked. “Beautiful”, I replied. …

“I must admit to a bit of apprehension at this point. I was not used to being the newby. I was nearly fifty-four years old and an experienced professional … at something else. I had talked and wheedled my way into this gig and was harboring some doubt about my ability to cut it. But I was here now and it was happening so I tried to relax.

“Before the rehearsal I had made sure that I met the guys operating the hand-helds so they were more than voices on a clearcom and pictures on monitors. It helped me to know, at least to a small extent, the men themselves. … [During the rehearsal] My notes on the scores worked and we got all the handheld shots just fine. The director and I meshed well and he was pleased with my cues to him and how I worked my cameras. Therefore I was able to relax a little bit and begin to enjoy the experience.

“One hour dinner break at 6:00 and everyone at their stations by a few minutes past 7:00 when the place began to fill with people. We in the control truck had stocked up on cokes and smokes and were eager to boogie. We rolled tape at about 8:05. I looked up from a score at around 10:30 to see that five cokes were gone from my six pack, half a box of Shermans (what I was smoking in those days) was missing… and the concert was over. It seemed as though no more than ten minutes had passed. That was one of the most intense one hundred fifty minutes of my life. And I hoped I’d get an opportunity to direct one of these someday. It was an amazing rush.

“PS: I never saw the video program and do not know if it was ever broadcast.”

Click here to get Circumstances Beyond My Control

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