When The Lights Went Out.

On September 8th. at 3:30 pm the power went out. I mean really out. All of San Diego Co., South Orange County,  and all the way east to Yuma AZ. We were all in the dark.

I was editing a sales project when it happened. What the ……. I ran out of my edit bay to see what was going on. Why? This thing called 9/11 anniversary was in three days and reports of a possible terrorist attack existed. Thankfully it wasn’t that. It was a total blackout. No power on the streets . No power in the building. I went back to my edit bay and was surprised that it was on the backup generator. I rebooted and kept editing. About five minutes went by and I got word that this was big. I grabbed my Panasonic AG HPX370 Camcorder and went down to the newsroom to shoot a doc/news style promo.

Within a few minutes the assignment desk in the newsroom was the center of command. The assistant news director gave out the missions of the day. I just followed what was happening inside our newsroom. I grabbed each of our main actors and asked them in first person what was going on and why we do what we do as journalist and people that live in our community. They gave great answers. I haven’t done a promo like this before. I was making it up as I go. Shoot everything then figure out how to use it later. The more typical style is to go out and shoot the reporters covering the story, interviewing people etc. I wanted something different. I wanted a behind the scene look. After several hours the station couldn’t get enough backup power to keep us on the air so we had to broadcast from another studio. What a crazy night.

All the audio was captured with one wireless mic on the subjects. For the news desk sound I taped a wireless lav on the set between the two anchors. Sound is so important for pieces like this. It has to be clean and clear. It helps tell a story.

Edited on Final Cut Pro 7 and graded with Magic Bullet Looks. If you’ve never used Magic Bullet looks you should try it out. Its become my go to effects. When you open the plugin it has its own interface with a ton of presets you can use as well as creating your own looks. Really easy to use. Try it out.

This is the promo .

Filed in: My Videos • Post Production
Tagged with: Panasonic AG HPX370