My First Shoot
Today was eventful. After doing a VOSOT on yet another Palestinian bombing in Gaza and a VO on evangelist Benny Hinn visiting India, I joined my good friend Nidhi on a shoot.
They don’t call it being “out in the field” here. Instead, we were “on a shoot”. It sounds so Hollywood to me.
Nidhi has become my closest friend at the station. She’s a frustrated video ingestor that sometimes forces her way into a reporting role for Aaj Tak, the Hindi channel. She loathes the office politics at Headlines Today, and she’s secretly scrounging up the money and courage to apply to a graduate school of film in the U.S. NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts is her top choice. I pray she succeeds.
She’s helped me record my VOs and packages when they air, and she’s taught me where I can and can’t eat. She also offers me this oddly blended vegetable juice every afternoon. “Haaaave it! It’s goooood for you,” she says in a heavy Indian accent.
It tastes horrid every time.
Today she’s managed to get her story idea approved. It’s an arts piece for Aaj Tak on a Hindi play that’s headlining a theater festival at Delhi’s National School of Drama. Of course, I realize the chances of this play having English subtitles are rather slim, but I decide to tag along anyway.
After I get off work at 3 p.m., we wait for over an hour for the cameraman to join us. By the time we arrive, the play’s already started and there’s a crowd of people fighting - no, literally clawing - each other to squeeze in through the auditorium gates. I half-expect the security guards to start clubbing away, or at least release some pepper spray into theater-starved wolf pack.
I try to think of the last time I ever saw U.S. theater security guards in riot gear. I can’t. This is awesome.
Except for the fact that they’re not letting the press in either. Nidhi and I try to wedge our way to the front of the line, but the “bouncer” doesn’t believe our convenient story. I tell Nidhi to slip him some rupees - the ultimate equalizer in India. She can’t reach into her purse amidst the mosh pit of theatergoers. Then I suggest showing him our camera, but this has little effect. He’s not impressed. He tells us to come back in two hours when the crowd dies down. Then maybe he’ll let us in.
Nidhi wants to go home for a while. She advises me to do the same. I offer to come back at 7:30 when they might let us in, but she encourages me to get some rest. I’m amazed she’s so relaxed; I feel like we should do something more to get the story. At least film these people fighting to get in, or get some soundbites from the crowd. Instead, we just leave.
I find out later they did get the footage. But the cameraman was beaten up in the process. Apparently the playwright though they were filming his show for commercial purposes and he proceeded to whack the photographer over the head. And I missed it. Damn.
Just another day in Indian journalism. It’s a contact sport over here.
They don’t call it being “out in the field” here. Instead, we were “on a shoot”. It sounds so Hollywood to me.
Nidhi has become my closest friend at the station. She’s a frustrated video ingestor that sometimes forces her way into a reporting role for Aaj Tak, the Hindi channel. She loathes the office politics at Headlines Today, and she’s secretly scrounging up the money and courage to apply to a graduate school of film in the U.S. NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts is her top choice. I pray she succeeds.
She’s helped me record my VOs and packages when they air, and she’s taught me where I can and can’t eat. She also offers me this oddly blended vegetable juice every afternoon. “Haaaave it! It’s goooood for you,” she says in a heavy Indian accent.
It tastes horrid every time.
Today she’s managed to get her story idea approved. It’s an arts piece for Aaj Tak on a Hindi play that’s headlining a theater festival at Delhi’s National School of Drama. Of course, I realize the chances of this play having English subtitles are rather slim, but I decide to tag along anyway.
After I get off work at 3 p.m., we wait for over an hour for the cameraman to join us. By the time we arrive, the play’s already started and there’s a crowd of people fighting - no, literally clawing - each other to squeeze in through the auditorium gates. I half-expect the security guards to start clubbing away, or at least release some pepper spray into theater-starved wolf pack.
I try to think of the last time I ever saw U.S. theater security guards in riot gear. I can’t. This is awesome.
Except for the fact that they’re not letting the press in either. Nidhi and I try to wedge our way to the front of the line, but the “bouncer” doesn’t believe our convenient story. I tell Nidhi to slip him some rupees - the ultimate equalizer in India. She can’t reach into her purse amidst the mosh pit of theatergoers. Then I suggest showing him our camera, but this has little effect. He’s not impressed. He tells us to come back in two hours when the crowd dies down. Then maybe he’ll let us in.
Nidhi wants to go home for a while. She advises me to do the same. I offer to come back at 7:30 when they might let us in, but she encourages me to get some rest. I’m amazed she’s so relaxed; I feel like we should do something more to get the story. At least film these people fighting to get in, or get some soundbites from the crowd. Instead, we just leave.
I find out later they did get the footage. But the cameraman was beaten up in the process. Apparently the playwright though they were filming his show for commercial purposes and he proceeded to whack the photographer over the head. And I missed it. Damn.
Just another day in Indian journalism. It’s a contact sport over here.