Monday, August 13, 2007
Tina Brown
On Friday we finally got Tina Brown to sit down for an interview based on her book, The Diana Chronicles, excellent summer reading. As you may imagine, Tina's terribly busy and could only talk with us at 8am. Not usually an ideal time for an interview as most of us can't form cogent thoughts before 11. Not Tina Brown. She is a star. The former Editor of Tattler, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair completely has her act together at all times I suspect. She helped us fill in lots of blanks for our Diana Conspiracy Theory show and gave a clinic on clever, concise responses. I asked Tina off-camera what she was up to next, and she asked me who I'd like to read a book about. I mentioned our current President, and she agreed it would be fascinating but clearly had some reservations about an in-depth exploration of our ongoing national nightmare. I should add that the interview was filmed at New York's Women's Republican Club (lovely location) so our chat was sotto voce. You never know when the walls might have ears, and at the Republican club their likely to be extra-large. That's an elephant joke.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Production
Okay, now we're into the fun part (kind of) of the whole production process. We're moving forward with the Diana project with some changes to the overall story which I won't bore you with. I'm also doing an hour on Charles Manson for MSNBC, so my dreams are going to be really weird this summer.
Diana comes first and we're shooting interviews for that now with "experts" in different fields. I try to think of the interview subjects as characters, and ideally your characters are passionate and animated, because if they're not excited about what they're talking about then Elma in Iowa's going to change the channel. My stand-up teacher (story for another time) talks a lot about the idea of joyous communication and it helps me with casting.
I can't get specific about characters because that's proprietary and I could lose my job :( I can, however, tell you how I cleverly found them. I used the internet. See how clever we are at NBC. Actually, I started with the internet and found authors and journalists who sounded authoritative and then called them up to get a sense if I would want to interview them. Youtube is a real boon to Producers because now you can see subject interviews and get a read on how they deal with lights, camera and action. Some people are scared to death of cameras. I had a Doctor in Zambia who was a warm and articulate, but just before we sat down for the interview she warned me that she was "photophobic." The poor woman proceeded to blink like you read about for the majority of our 40 minute interview. I can't tell you how painful that was for me.
That's all for now, more on production next time around.
David
Diana comes first and we're shooting interviews for that now with "experts" in different fields. I try to think of the interview subjects as characters, and ideally your characters are passionate and animated, because if they're not excited about what they're talking about then Elma in Iowa's going to change the channel. My stand-up teacher (story for another time) talks a lot about the idea of joyous communication and it helps me with casting.
I can't get specific about characters because that's proprietary and I could lose my job :( I can, however, tell you how I cleverly found them. I used the internet. See how clever we are at NBC. Actually, I started with the internet and found authors and journalists who sounded authoritative and then called them up to get a sense if I would want to interview them. Youtube is a real boon to Producers because now you can see subject interviews and get a read on how they deal with lights, camera and action. Some people are scared to death of cameras. I had a Doctor in Zambia who was a warm and articulate, but just before we sat down for the interview she warned me that she was "photophobic." The poor woman proceeded to blink like you read about for the majority of our 40 minute interview. I can't tell you how painful that was for me.
That's all for now, more on production next time around.
David
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Research and Development
Greetings Fords! Thanks for coming. Hope everyone's having a great summer. So, I'm a television producer in the greatest city in the world, New York. Sorry Philly, but our offer to make you the 6th Borough still stands.
At the moment I'm working at NBC Media Productions developing hour-long documentaries for MSNBC. I like to think of this part of the job as feeding the beast. "The "beast" in this case is 24 hours of air that need to be filled so that MSNBC can sell advertising and we can all get paid. There's probably something about working in the public interest in there too, but it's often lost in the shuffle (more on this in later posts). Anyway, I'm looking at doing a show on Lady Diana. One rule of television is that stunning, dead, late-princesses rate like you read about, especially when it's the 10th anniversary of their spectacular demise.
So, my job is to research and learn as much as I can about Diana via internet, books, youtube, etc., and then pitch story-lines to MSNBC. Right now I'm thinking the story of Mohammed Fayed's obsessive drive to prove that there was a conspiracy to kill his son Dodi and Diana would be a good hour. Another rule of television and film is that obsessives make great characters. A quick glance at the works of Werner Herzog will bear this out.
That's all for now. Will do my best to tell you all about the breathtakingly fabulous production stages that lie ahead.
Peace,
David
At the moment I'm working at NBC Media Productions developing hour-long documentaries for MSNBC. I like to think of this part of the job as feeding the beast. "The "beast" in this case is 24 hours of air that need to be filled so that MSNBC can sell advertising and we can all get paid. There's probably something about working in the public interest in there too, but it's often lost in the shuffle (more on this in later posts). Anyway, I'm looking at doing a show on Lady Diana. One rule of television is that stunning, dead, late-princesses rate like you read about, especially when it's the 10th anniversary of their spectacular demise.
So, my job is to research and learn as much as I can about Diana via internet, books, youtube, etc., and then pitch story-lines to MSNBC. Right now I'm thinking the story of Mohammed Fayed's obsessive drive to prove that there was a conspiracy to kill his son Dodi and Diana would be a good hour. Another rule of television and film is that obsessives make great characters. A quick glance at the works of Werner Herzog will bear this out.
That's all for now. Will do my best to tell you all about the breathtakingly fabulous production stages that lie ahead.
Peace,
David
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