Thursday, October 18, 2012

On Being A Media Whore

"Media whore" is what we labelled a buddy of mine in Afghanistan who inadvertently wound up as the focus of a news video clip.  He'd taken the reporters out to the field so they could film a segment on Afghan agriculture; instead, the report showed a lot of him and very little agriculture.  So, naturally, we accused him of pandering to the media in order to get his face on TV.  That was completely wrong, of course, which made harassing him with it so much fun.

In the past week, I've had two video segments about me posted onto YouTube.  In both cases, I am not entirely innocent - I had to do some coordination with the news teams to get the clips done.  So, yes, I'm a media whore!

The first segment was shot in Kabul by the Embassy's public affairs section.  I wrote about it in an earlier blog post.  This report (done by an American reporter and an Afghan videographer) was a human-interest story done to show an Embassy official (me) doing things not normally expected of a government official.  We did it in a small park over in the ISAF compound, across from GEN Allen's headquarters.  The reporter's questions are not heard; rather, you just see me drawing and hear me talking about the whole process.  It was a fun project and you can see the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWjY9FlnJ8I

The Embassy offered the video to my local TV station, WLOS.  They loved it, but decided to send a reporter out to shoot their own segment.  So yesterday, the reporter, John Le, and cameraman Todd, came out to my house.  I am matting and framing the artworks for the show, and they wanted to get some images of the process.  So I matted and framed, and they shot video and asked questions, and then put together a news clip that ran last night.  It turned out pretty well.  Here's the link to the YouTube clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYanwCcKwrk&feature=plcp

I normally do not like being the focus of attention and having cameras and microphones in my face.  I'm more of a behind-the-scenes guy.  But these two clips were fun to do.  Both the Embassy and the WLOS teams were very professional and enjoyable to work with.  I would do it again, just not anytime soon.  Being a media whore is not my cup of tea!

1 comment:

  1. You have a book there, brother. I can see those sketches in a book with a story, small or not so small about each one of them. Their face do say a lot and the story behind the face, for each one, is compelling. The story of the Afghan people needs to be told, and you can help do that. Blessings!

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