Thursday, July 8, 2010

A Lesson and a Beached Whale

Today I got called to go shoot some video of a beached whale off the shore near Everett. The whale had been stranded for hours by the time I got there. The local TV stations had been there since the beginning.

Things didn't go well.

1. The whale, which had been mostly exposed during low tide, was already mostly submerged when I got to the shore. The tide had risen. I could only get shots of a portion of the whale.

2. I made a rookie mistake. This is what bothers me the most: I messed up the audio. The batteries had run out on the little boom mic I use for my camera. I didn't notice the audio levels when I was shooting. I was too focused on keeping the shots steady because I was not using a tripod - I had to wade about 25 yards into the water to waist-level depths to get the closest shot possible. I didn't notice the audio was bad until after the whale was further up the water. Sigh.

Always. Always. Always check the audio levels.

For the reasons above, we didn't run the video at AP.

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