Panic Before The Storm

I had just come back from my live shot this morning when I'm accosted by our morning EP. "Hey..we're gonna be busy tomorrow morning. Run and gun..run and gun..we're going to be shooting and feeding. Moving from one place to another and feeding stuff back. " This is accompanied by wild arm gestures and faces. Hoo boy...here we go again.

We're supposed to experience a huge drop in temperature overnight with winds becoming a steady 25 to 35 m.p.h. and possibly gusts up to 70 m.p.h. Today our temperature got up to 60 degrees but tomorrow it will only get to 29. Big temp change but what we'll be looking for is wind damage.

There's nothing worse than a producer that has been programmed to salivate live Pavlov's dog over weather. It's like someone rang a bell.

My fellow photog in the morning, Barry, told our EP that we won't be putting our masts up in high winds. And of course our EP asks, "Why?"

"Beacuse they will snap in the high winds.", said Barry.

"Well...we need to feed video back!!", whined the EP.

"Only way will have to be line of sight and then that's no guarantee either."

"But, we'll need to get video of all the damage.."

"I'm not losing a mast and my job because you want me to put a mast up in a high wind.", said Barry.

"I agree, " I said. "We'll go line of site unless the dish on the truck can't take the wind either." And we walked away.

So tomorrow we'll shoot, and drive to a LOS area and feed back, and then drive and shoot and feed, drive, shoot, feed, etc...

While a pool of saliva forms around our producer.