You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The hallucinogenic properties of news.
The story I am working is a good one. Cops arrive on scene of lifeless man.
Armed with 1st aid knowledge and an Automated Electronic Defibrillator, the cops save the man’s life.
They do chest compressions. They rip open his shirt. They put the paddles on his lifeless chest.
CLEAR!
ZAP.
The man sucks in a breath and his heart begins to beat in his previously dormant chest.
The man is rushed to the hospital with vitals.
The cops who save his life will go to the hospital 15 minutes later and talk to the man they just brought back from the grave.
Wow. Great story.
Wow. Terrible Visuals.
What’s that mean?
It means I don’t have the cops who saved the man’s life. They are 3rd shift cops. They are all fast asleep somewhere and the chief won’t call them to wake them up so I can personally interview them.
Terrible visuals?
I don’t have the man who almost died. I don’t have a real picture of him. I don’t have a FACEBOOK photo of him. I don’t know if he’s white, black, or from Pluto.
Imagine if you will, a man, one foot in the grave, one foot in limbo.
I got nothing.
I am told his wife did cpr on him before the officers arrive. He was reportedly red and non-responsive.
Of course I don’t have any shot of the wife either.
Terrible Visuals?
I don’t have any footage of the officers on scene, or the transport of the man who was saved.
What do I have?
I have an interview with a fellow officer who wasn’t there.
He isn’t even sure of the officer’s first name.
“We just call him Kennedy,” he muses.
I have a shot of an AED, the portable defibrillator that all officers carry in their squad cars.
It’s a cool piece of equipment, but how long can I show this?
Terrible Visuals?
I have a 10 second recording of the wife’s call to 911.
Visual? It’s a damn 911 call. It’s all audio.
“So what are we going to do,” my camera man asks.
“Sometimes terrible visuals are the best stories,” I say with a sly smile.
We get back to the station and begin conjuring video.
Google Images provides me a 911 logo.
You Tube creates a beating heart with electrical impulses.
We cut out the images of the officers and paste them over the moving sensory overload.
I feel like a video witch standing over a boiling cauldron of creativity.
“Oh mighty demons of video editing…”
The incantation is sudden, silent, poignant.
I watch as the AED comes to life and the imagery of the home explodes with a green heart beat monitor that suddenly flat lines like a Ben Carson campaign rally.
The video is colored sprinkles being blown up by a fire cracker.
I watch the story unfold. It’s visual butter dripping down the screen.
Like neon colored soup, a dreamy menagerie of moving parts liquifies, and explodes.
I watch as the conjured imagery swirls around the time line, sticking to the frame like gum in a school girl’s hair.
“You think we’re over doing it?,” my cameraman asks.
I push myself away from the Edius Editing System before me.
I take a deep breath. I exhale.
I take a moment to give my eyes a break, to let my brain disengage from the digital dynamics before me.
“Over doing it?”
I say the words softly, looking at the swirling confetti of conjured imagery that suddenly has brought the poignant act of heroism and self-sacrifice into focus.
3 pictures. A tepid interview with a superior officer. A shot of a neighborhood.
That’s all I had.
This wouldn’t have been a good Facebook story for a soccer mom eating bon bons.
Instead we got a passport to creativity-land and forged a visual baby onto the screen.
“Over doing it?” I say louder, pulling myself closer to the screen.
“Can’t over do this story. It’s too good.”
My photographer smiles.
“Twist its nipples. Make me feel it.”
“You got it.”
And with that, the story that started with no visuals, leads a newscast, spewing across a spectrum of viewers who will never know what it takes to get a story onto the air.
Conjuring video?
Normal humans don’t get it.
That’s OK. They know they like it.
I know they like it.
That’s conjuring.
Life’s Crazy™