(click the picture above for
the high definition
video - but also click
YouTube
for me!)
9:34 AM, Friday,
June 22nd 2007:
Surreal
moment yesterday taping the tag for the
piece:
"For
the Early Show, Adam Kontras, CBS News,
Tulsa"
I
remembered being 8 or 9 years old watching
the evening news with Dan Rather at my
grandmother's house. My grandfather always
watched CBS and I must admit,
I haven't watched network news since
the mid-90s. Welcome to cable news and the
internet I guess - but saying that tagline
almost gave me chills because it had
literally been 20 years since I heard
that... and of course, now I'm doing it.
The definition of surrealism. It's really
too bad that network news is declining
like it is. I do miss the days when there
was pretty much one way you were gonna get
up-to-the-minute accounts of what was
happening. Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan
Rather. They were around forever.
Blah, blah - I could ramble
forever...
So in
my first experience with seeing what goes
into producing a 4 minute bit for network
news, I must say I'm floored by the
manhours involved. From the days in both
Coweta and LA, to looking over all the
footage, to sitting with an editor and
piecing it together, to writing and
recording the voice overs - whew. It's an
incredibly expensive endeavor when it's
all said and done, and I have quite a
bit of respect for Jim as he does this
consistantly day in, day out.
Granted,
Jim is a bit of a perfectionist like me,
so the fact that he took 4 hours of
footage and we interviewed the entire town
of Coweta Oklahoma, makes perfect sense to
me. Ha. And of course my involvement is
hardly anything. I mean what a
great gig this is. Letting someone
else write, produce, and edit everything?
Damn. Sign me up. Heh.
And how nice to
follow someone else's lead. Like when I did the
voice-over he told me to be much more
"radio-voice" than I thought was needed. As
I left the booth I thought: "Ugh, that may
have been a bit much..." but watching the piece it
really doesn't come off too "Casey Kasem". Good call
man...
Oh and putting the
headphones on and grabbing that mic from the min-jib
arm. Whew, WTVN all over again. I really do miss that
feeling man. Grabbing that mic - hearing yourself over
the air talking about whatever... it's a rush. I keep
telling myself that I know it'll be there when I'm 60,
but I do wonder if there isn't a way to do
something before that while continuing to pursue other
things. Just throwin' that out there Journey
Gods...
:-)
As
expected, the band keeps on keepin' on. 13
folks, 13. As I mentioned before,
only the tide of musical taste will keep
them from making it huge but I
gotta say, they even have the ability to
influence that. With the people
behind them they could very well change
music and start a new, harder sound in the
mainstream. It just feels like its time.
And they're just so technically advanced
right now you can't help but be intrigued.
In several songs they're voices certainly
sound younger - but that's changing even
now and all it does is make the music
sound that much more impressive. Your
first reaction is: "Is some kid singing
with another band?" Heh.
Amazing.
Magazine
covers, touring with Ted Nugent, Alice
Cooper... the sky's the limit boys. Pretty
cool we had our first network "package"
together. I hope to see you guys in
Oklahoma for a look at things "A Year
Later..."
...yes,
when you'll be the ripe old age of 14.
So the
package
turned out
great. We actually got an extra minute we didn't think
they'd allow - so that's purty nifty, and I really
hope there's a few more in the future. Now however
I need to go pace a bit as I'm waiting for a new
XDCam unit to arrive (the first one was faulty,
they're sendin' up a new one) so I can load my footage
into this beheamoth of a computer. Heh, but I thought
I'd finish up the 5 Part Oklahoma series. I really
need to make a section where you can sort through just
the "series" on The Journey. That'd be kinda
cool.
Christ, just what
I need - another fuggin' project. Adam, stop
writing.
