Lit Event Coverage

Michelle Tea and RADAR are undeniably important to San Francisco's literary community. They deserve to be profiled on Culture Wire. The only thing is… it's just pictures of people reading.



There are only a few shots- Wide, Medium, and Tight. Fortunately, there are several authors each night… but it still doesn't add up to much. Three authors times three shots only equals nine shots per night. A camera operator costs me $65/hour, with a four hour minimum, so I'm looking at $1,000 just for acquisition. The only thing that makes this a good expenditure is that the subject is very evergreen. I can play this video for over a year.

Aside from the budget problem, the rest of it was a lot of fun. Michelle is delightful, the crowd was welcoming, and using the 1990s Indie Rock was an un-ironic pleasure for me.

Holiday Special - ODC "The Velveteen Rabbit"

The arts coverage gets a little tricky in December. I always look to create evergreen programs that we can run for a few months on SFGovTV, but there are mostly holiday-themed shows happening now. My answer was to do a story about ODC's "Velveteen Rabbit" which I know we can run again next November and December.



This was a pretty easy shoot. KT Nelson was available 15 minutes before the final dress rehearsal started. We set the camera in a spot where we could talk to her quickly and then swing the camera 180 to start shooting the show right away. John R and I took turns running the the camera and just tried to make best guesses on a program that we hadn't seen before. Later during the editing, I spent 2/3 of my time working out the narrative and the audio. The pictures were fairly easy once there was a natural story to hang them onto.

Culture Wire returns to SFGovTV!

Arts coverage for the City of San Francisco returned to SFGovTV in November 2011 with the re-launch of Culture Wire.



A successful partnership with the SF Arts Commission produced 50 videos between 2009 and 2011. Due to budget constraints, the SFAC was forced to discontinue their support of the program for Fiscal Year 2011-12. After two months of budget evaluation, SFGovTV has committed to continuing Culture Wire by providing 100% underwriting for the next six months.

In the first month of Culture Wire's return to Channels 26 and 78, producer Rich Bartlebaugh has profiled three local artists:

Aron Meynell http://youtu.be/qvZS5Pm5eyM
Sanjay Patel http://youtu.be/nQMm57B7l-U
Jim Campbell http://youtu.be/bxQRLFyVifk

Upcoming programs include a visit to the Meridian Gallery near Union Square, and a look at some of San Francisco's most adventurous dance companies.

The Talking Business Card

Candidate Statements are an annual ritual for government television stations. Last time, we tried to use an HD monitor hooked up to CG with a loop playing out of it. It was "okay…" I guess. The height of the monitor couldn't be adjusted, so there were only two positions- the candidate was either on the floor, or on an apple box. It was a bit sloppy.

This year we gambled on using our small folding green screen. It's a gamble because it isn't being keyed out live, so you can't feel 100% confidence. We did test shots a few days before, and we were very clear that candidates could not wear green. When they arrived we demonstrated how their hands would be "cut off" if they were too animated. It went pretty well.

I was very conservative on the lighting and gave a hard edge on the back light for a clean key. For the rest, I used three chimeras and did dance lighting- people are flooded from both sides. I must admit that one of the short candidates (and one extremely tall one) looked a bit spooky.

During editing, I made a dumb producer mistake. I had the official Department of Elections list of candidate addresses, URLs, emails and phone numbers. I used this for the background info. When I was ready to publish, I felt compelled to be a nice guy and double-check with all the candidates. This meant I had to re-type and re-render 13 of the 25 videos because they had new offices, business phones, etc. The other information would have been "correct" but the new information was more helpful to a voter. I could have saved myself three days of rendering if I had a yellow legal pad in the studio during taping and just asked them to write this all down for me.

In the end, it was a huge success. Every one of the candidates posted the video to Facebook and many put the video on their front page. The view counts were way up compared to last year. It was wonderful positive feedback for me to see the candidates supporters give "likes" to my effort. One of the people called it "Cool… It's like a talking business card!"

I accidentally wrote an essay.

This is a clip from a job application.
The question was: "Describe your experience producing and/or directing live or live-to-tape television productions."
Eventually, I transitioned to answering the question... after the philosophy lecture--


I have directed talk shows, community celebrations, on-location commission meetings and in-house legislative coverage while working for the City and County of San Francisco.

The primary responsibility of SFGTV is to provide live access to government meetings. In-house coverage of city hall meetings generates approximately 30 new hours of programming each week. This coverage must be complete and impartial. Directors do not use dissolves, cutaways, reaction shots or subjective framing that is noticeably different from the coverage given to other speakers. When commissions leave city hall for community meetings, the direction changes slightly; extra cutaway wide shots are inserted at a regular rate to provide the viewer with an understanding of the remote location.

The laissez-faire approach to coverage of official meetings is a conscious choice. The flow of information during the legislative process is a "push" style of information sharing: each person speaks in turn and pushes their information towards their audience. There is not a personal or intimate relationship between the participants. Using an active directing style is inappropriate because it visually suggests nuanced relationships that do not exist.

Events that are sponsored by city departments but are not regular meetings (panels, interviews, seminars) are directed with a more dynamic style, in order to convey the "push-pull" interaction with the group. This includes audience shots, over-the-shoulder two shots, dissolves and on-air camera moves. City departments host these public events to provide a welcoming and inclusionary environment that both informs and entertains the attending audience. The television coverage should have the same effect for the viewing audience.

City-sponsored community celebrations have the most subjective coverage. During speeches and proclamations, the direction is similar to conference coverage. The direction changes to an entertainment style during the performances and includes more dissolves and on-air moves in an attempt to show as much color as possible. This again is to engage the home viewer in the same way that the city department is engaging the live audience.

SFGTV's primary talk show is a weekly political roundtable, shot in a black box studio similar to the Charlie Rose show. The program uses "peaks and valleys": there are scheduled reads from the host that brake the action and frame the topic, followed by argument between guests with opposing viewpoints. The director has to follow the action of the conversation and react to the dynamic of the table.