Onward, To The Capital

Well, it happened again.  Rosemary had yet another surprise for us.  “Do you guys want to go cover this story?” she asked as we walked though the door Wednesday morning.  We all jumped with excitement at another opportunity to cover a developing news story.  This time, we were to shoot a press conference in the Capitol Building Visitor Center.  The press conference was to discuss how the Social Security and Marriage Equality Act is gaining traction not only within Congress, but amongst the public, gaining over 150,000 petition signatures.  Immediately, we said yes, gathered our stuff, and rushed out to the metro.  We only had an hour and a half to get to the Capitol building, find the correct room, and set up.

When we finally arrived at the Capitol we had to go through security, which is always an ordeal with video equipment, but we managed to get through and find the pressroom desk.   We ran into our first hiccup when the press desk secretary asked for our press badges; we looked at each other and gave him our driver’s licenses.   As if we were joking, he found this amusing but gave us temporary passes anyway and directed us to the pressroom.  As we entered, it immediately got real.  It felt like we were on the set of “House of Cards.” It was a very professional and diplomatic setting.  However, surprisingly the room had some serious flaws that I wouldn’t have expected from such a professional venue.  The biggest problem was with audio. Our intention was to draw an audio feed directly from the in-house system.   But none of the designated audio outputs were providing any signal. This was because we didn’t know the press signal outputs were located at the back of the room.  At this point the conference was about to begin, so we didn’t have time for a mic check.  Of course, as soon as we got signal it was terrible, extremely distorted and virtually unusable.   We only had time to attach a shotgun microphone.  Though the audio was not ideal, something is always better than nothing.  However, we prevailed.  This unexpected problem showed that our intern team could stay calm, focused and troubleshoot through our technical issues.  To make up for the awful audio, we were able to get interviews from a congressional representative, an affairs director, and volunteers who are petitioning for the SAME act.   In all, I think this shoot was a great experience and my fellow interns and I learned a lot.