You think a director's busy??
Yea, as directors, we get busy in the control room. In addition to directing the 6 & 11pm news today, I also served as the remote coordinator for the 5pm newscast AND had to build and refine graphics for special sports coverage.
The building of the graphics wasn't that big a deal, but it does get time consuming. I was able to finish that in time for the 5pm broadcast.
Then, I had to move to remote coordinating. Basically, I was the contact person in the control room for all our reporters in the field. Today, we had five reporters. Doing this position, requires me to establish contact as I mentioned and then telling everyone who they're talking to and getting roll cues to their video.
We had a sports live shot with Brett Haber AND Sara Walsh. Brett was in Cooperstown, so his shot was a satellite shot. That meant that we had to be out at a certain time, otherwise, we lose the shot. Since it was Cal Ripkin's induction to the Hall of Fame, losing the shot was NOT an option.
In between talking to the other live shots, I was on the phone talking with our sports executive producer, talking with our microwave unit, talking with CBS Newspath in New York, and of course updating the producer on my activities. It turned out that the 5pm newscast was running a bit long, so we had to extend Brett's window of time, which we did successfully.
It also turned out we didn't have audio from our CBS reporter, from the Johnson Space Center. It was time to put out the fires!
The 5pm producer did move Brett and Sara up in the broadcast to avoid the extention, but as it turns out, we still went long and luckily, we had the extra time. In case nobody has ever seen this, if a tv station is on a satellite shot and they go past their time, you could be looking at hash on the air...not a good thing.
As for our CBS shot from the Johnson Space Center, that one was an easy fix. The audio signal coming in was low, so our microwave operators cranked up the audio and we were fine on that end. On a side note, CBS was doing a live shot for their station in Richmond, Viriginia. They had problems with their IFB and they were going long too. As such, the guys in New York, told Richmond they would have to finish their story with CBS from the set and not live from the Space Center.
At any rate, everything went off without a hitch...now, I get to concentrate on my primary job of directing!
One of these days, I'll have to do a glossery of terms for those of you not in the business!
The building of the graphics wasn't that big a deal, but it does get time consuming. I was able to finish that in time for the 5pm broadcast.
Then, I had to move to remote coordinating. Basically, I was the contact person in the control room for all our reporters in the field. Today, we had five reporters. Doing this position, requires me to establish contact as I mentioned and then telling everyone who they're talking to and getting roll cues to their video.
We had a sports live shot with Brett Haber AND Sara Walsh. Brett was in Cooperstown, so his shot was a satellite shot. That meant that we had to be out at a certain time, otherwise, we lose the shot. Since it was Cal Ripkin's induction to the Hall of Fame, losing the shot was NOT an option.
In between talking to the other live shots, I was on the phone talking with our sports executive producer, talking with our microwave unit, talking with CBS Newspath in New York, and of course updating the producer on my activities. It turned out that the 5pm newscast was running a bit long, so we had to extend Brett's window of time, which we did successfully.
It also turned out we didn't have audio from our CBS reporter, from the Johnson Space Center. It was time to put out the fires!
The 5pm producer did move Brett and Sara up in the broadcast to avoid the extention, but as it turns out, we still went long and luckily, we had the extra time. In case nobody has ever seen this, if a tv station is on a satellite shot and they go past their time, you could be looking at hash on the air...not a good thing.
As for our CBS shot from the Johnson Space Center, that one was an easy fix. The audio signal coming in was low, so our microwave operators cranked up the audio and we were fine on that end. On a side note, CBS was doing a live shot for their station in Richmond, Viriginia. They had problems with their IFB and they were going long too. As such, the guys in New York, told Richmond they would have to finish their story with CBS from the set and not live from the Space Center.
At any rate, everything went off without a hitch...now, I get to concentrate on my primary job of directing!
One of these days, I'll have to do a glossery of terms for those of you not in the business!
posted by Scott Rubens at
5:19 PM
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