Just Waiting For The Foot Bail.

We finally made it out into the field on Friday. We even made it into the newscast with a liveshot from in front of the nice Target store on Balboa in Granada Hills.

It's not always easy doing nightside stories that involve elements we might need from big companies. We have to get permission to shoot inside and interview employees.

Often these folks have gone home by the time we're assigned.



It takes a little more legwork, but it's not impossible. Target was nice enough to cooperate even though the story didn't relate to them directly.

The story was a sidebar about the hot topic of how much it costs to raise kids. This all in light of the octuplet births last week.

Funny, we needed footage to help illustrate where households spend money on kids. I would have just shown a vacuum cleaner sucking the cash out of my wallet.



It was my last day with the trainee. Technically, I wasn't even there. I was just along for the ride to answer questions and coach through the edit session.

Doesn't make for too difficult of a night. Very rarely does anything go wrong. We shoot and cut a package, set up for a couple of liveshots, go live, break it all down and then head back to the station to sign out and call it a day.

Very rarely does anything interfere with that routine.



WE GOT A PURSUIT! HIGH SPEED PURSUIT!

All crews ready to go live, stand by and maintain your positions!



That was the call for us just before the 11:00pm newscast. The helicopters were following a pursuit and all we could do was be ready if the pursuit ended and the newscast continued.



Sometimes it's fun to get the call to break down the live shot and try to catch up with a pursuit. That will happen if the pursuit is close enough to a crew's location. I've followed pursuits for many miles and wound up pretty far from the station. I like it better when they run out of gas in nice neighborhoods that are close to the station.

Well, I assume I would like it better, because it never really happens like that.



When the weather's really bad, you don't want to be standing around waiting to go on TV. Also, if they happened more often, I could easily see myself getting bored just waiting for a pursuit to end.

Since they don't happen too frequently, sometimes it's not too bad (when you're not on the lead story) to just hang out at the van and watch the show.

No more training this week, so I'm probably going to have a full plate of news to work on. Not a problem.

It's not the same as standing around, but actually working can be fun too.