"NOON BALOON"

I had just flown into Costa Rica.  I was about to meet my crew – well, not really MY crew, but the local news crew my producer had hired to avoid spending the money to fly my American crew down from LA for the documentary I was there to shoot.   I was concerned. 

A good television news crew must be able to quickly capture enough images to provide a reporter with visual coverage for a breaking story.  The FACTS of the story are what is essential to good news reporting.  A documentary film crew has an additional need to find those compelling images that tell a deeper story, often one with strong emotional elements.  But like a news director, a documentary filmmaker seldom has the opportunity to set up every shot or to check playback on every take.   If he is not the cameraman himself,  he must rely on his camera crew to jump into a moment and be ‘self-directed’ in capturing emotionally-compelling images, as well as filming sufficient angle choices to provide adequate material for later editing the sequence.   This kind of photo-journalism is an art and few do it well.   I needed to understand what these guys could do.

I set about to explain the emotional character of the material I was hoping to shoot, contrasting straight news photography (with which I knew they were very familiar) and photo-journalism documentary film-making (of which I had no idea of their experience or understanding).   After a few moments, the cameraman (who I had only met a few minutes before) leaned over and said, “You know Tom, we didn’t just drop in on the noon balloon!”   What he was trying to politely tell me was ‘Shut up, stupid!  We know what we’re doing!”   I said no more.  We went on location.  We shot for several days.  The material would have made great clips on the evening news.  It was not photo-journalism. 

In the end, I had to agree with their assessment.  They had NOT just dropped in – they never got there!   We  somehow  made the material work.  But the resulting film fell far short of what it COULD have been.  I DID come away with an expression I’ve been able to use many times since then.  The next time someone who doesn’t know you is questioning  YOUR skills or ability to do something,  you can gently remind them that ‘you didn’t just drop in on the noon balloon’.   They’ll either smile and believe you or be more convinced than ever that you’re not the one for their job!  Good luck!