Poetic Justice

Sarah, my weeknight reporter, has a bad habit. When we're doing man-on-the-street interviews (in which we ask random people their opinions on whatever subject we're covering), she likes to take off without me, run up to people, shove the microphone into their faces and start interviewing them before I've caught up with her. I'm still setting my frame and rolling the camera during the first answer. The result is that I either don't get the answer on tape, or I get just the audio, while the video is unusable and has to be covered with some other pictures. Either way is a headache that could be avoided if she would just show a little patience and not run ahead. I mean, it's not like we're going to miss our one chance with one of the hundred or so people in the Target parking lot.

She can only do this because I have a wireless microphone. For those who aren't in the television business, I might explain the purpose and usefulness of this little gadget. When a reporter shoves a microphone in someone's face, the sound it captures has to get back to the camera somehow. Before wireless systems, the sound had to travel through a cable connected directly to the camera. That system tethered the reporter to the photographer. But with a wireless system, consisting of a transmitter in the reporter's hand and a receiver on the camera itself, the reporter has freedom to roam around in a greater area without clotheslining little old ladies or getting tangled up in a nest of cable herself.

As I mentioned last night, Sarah broke my wireless transmitter. She was making a big show of being in a hurry, slamming doors, stomping around and shuffling her papers violently to show her irritation with me. She was fumbling around with my transmitter the same way and dropped it. It promptly said, "To hell with this!" and refused to transmit another sound in protest of her rough handling.

As a result I had to resort to my trusty standby XLR cable. The biggest problem with "going hard-wired" was that my shortest cable was 20 feet long. Having the camera on my shoulder only leaves one hand free to wrangle the cable. It doesn't help that Sarah winds back and forth on the end of it the way a shark on a hook trying to get free will foul all the other lines on a fishing boat. Last night we weren't even working in any kind of crowd, and I still ended up with my cable all fouled.

So today my first priority upon arriving at work was to get my transmitter up to engineering to get it fixed. Robert, our main electronics guy, was happy to take a look at it.

"You have a long enough cable to use until I can get it back to you?" he asked.

"Actually, it's too long," I said. "I wish I had something shorter, so it wouldn't get tangled up so bad. Sarah tried to hog tie me with it last night."

"I don't think I want to know about that," he said, "but let me see what I've got." He filed through a pile of cables on a workbench and pulled out a six foot cable. "Would this do?"

"Perfect," I said.

I took the cable and my camera out to the Hate Van, grabbed my microphone and hooked it up. It worked fine. Not only that, but the cable is short enough that I can simply drape the mic over my left shoulder without fouling the cable, so that the mic itself hangs against my shoulder blade, then flip it over my shoulder into my left hand in one swift motion when it's needed. Quick and simple. I practiced my quick draw a few times before heading back in to meet up with Sarah.

It so happened that tonight's story actually involved man-on-the-street interviews, and we went to the Target store to get them. One thing people outside the news business usually don't know is that, in contrast to other stores like WalMart, where security chases away anybody with a camera, Target has some kind of standing policy to accommodate news crews. It's really a smart policy, because Target ends up getting all kinds of free publicity whenever a reporter is doing a consumer or retail story. That's why you see so many news stories shot in Target stores; it's not because they're paying us off, but simply because they give us easy access on short notice when nobody else will.

As we entered the store, I had the camera on one shoulder with the mic draped over the other the way I described above. I was feeling quite proud of my little mic wrangling system. We checked in with the manager, then headed for the checkout lines in search of interviews. As we approached, I skillfully flipped the mic over my shoulder with my left hand, instantly ready for action. I felt so cool.

Sarah, however, wasn't impressed in the slightest. In fact, she didn't even notice my slick little move, because she was already impatiently homing in on her first victim. As usual, she yanked the mic out of my hand and took off, forgetting that she was tethered to me.

I instantly realized what was about to happen and braced for it, grabbing the top of the camera with my (now free) left hand. After two short steps the line went taut. The camera lurched forward and twisted to the right on my shoulder, but I held it.

Sarah wasn't so lucky. She had such a death grip on that microphone that she never let go, and the force of her own impatience jerked her clean off her feet. She landed hard on her ass, legs spread out in front of her. The fairly large crowd of shoppers who witnessed it first hand let out a collective gasp.

My first thought was, "Holy crap, is she okay?" Before I could ask her that, however, she turned her face to me, bright red, with a look of fury that simultaneously accused me of every act of evil ever perpetrated on the human race. When I saw her face, any concern I had evaporated even more quickly than she had fallen. I probably should have been frightened by it.

Instead, it was all I could do to keep from laughing. I had to busy myself with checking the camera's audio connection for damage, so that I wouldn't have to look at her. If anyone else there had laughed, I would have lost it. A couple of people were trying as hard as I was not to let it out, and I had to look away from them and concentrate on my cable connector.

It really was funny.

She collected herself up from the floor, her dignity more bruised than her tailbone, and steeled herself to approach someone who had undoubtedly been witness to her clumsiness for an interview (for our story, not about her clumsiness). For once she just stuck to the pertinent questions and didn't ask anything strange or irrelevant. That was the fastest I think I've gotten through a series of man-on-the-street interviews since I've been here.

She didn't talk to me the rest of the night. Of course it's all my fault.