Name: One, Two Three… Draw!
Reporter: Lauren Burgoyne
The Story – The United Way teamed up with The Cowboy Fast Draw Association to hold a charity quick draw competition. While some modern technology helps these modern day gun slingers tell how fast their drawing out their weapon, the principle is the same: see who the fastest gun is. Local “celebrities” in portage county came by to help raise money and have a little fun outside the office.
Erik’s Notes – This package is going on a year old, but it still stands up as one of the best looking pieces I’ve shot. I’m sharing this package this week because it took second place at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Awards for Excellence just recently. A very proud moment for me to be certain. So this is sort of a special piece for me.
This is also the day I realized that Lauren Burgoyne is an amazing journalist.
I always respected Lauren, she was one of the most veteran reporters as WSAW when I first started as a photographer. But it was this day that I saw that she is a damn fine television journalist. Not in the “holy cow look what she uncovered way” but the “wow, she puts 100% into everything she does.” This is a puff piece, a nice feel good story to show there are good things and good people out there in our communities. I love these stories personally, but some folks have a tendency to blow them off because they’re not “big news.” To watch Lauren pour herself into this piece made me work that much hard on this piece. She’s since moved on to bigger and better things in Tucson, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes even higher than that.
I remember when our assignment editor picked this story to cover, he got some guff from certain people in the newsroom about it. They thought it was a waste of time. I hope the recognition this piece has brought the station has changed their minds, because I’m proud of this one.
This is my oldest package that I’m really happy with. It was the first time I got done for the day and was truly happy with my work. That’s still not even a weekly thing for me, there’s always things I could’ve done better. Even in this piece, there’s a lot I could’ve done better. But at least I was satisfied with my performance.
I should have known this piece as something special, it has by far the most views of all my work on my YouTube channel.
Commentary – 0:00 – I like these “worm’s eye view” type shots where the camera sits on the ground. Unfortunately there’s a rack focus, that is moving what’s in focus during the shot, in this shot. I like those, but in this package I used it WAY too much. 0:10 – I love natural sound pops in pieces. This one allowed for a lot of that, and it was fun to smash cut some guns firing in it to open this one. Lauren wrote these in for me and taught me the value of doing them on my own without being prompted by the writer. 0:13 – I don’t like this cut because I cut off the cheering, I should’ve taken it out much more slowly. 0:21 – Yes, I edited in laughter after that horrible joke. I’m sorry >.> It was laughter from the scene to be certain, but not in response to “make my lunch.” 0:29 – This is one my most favorite shots I’ve ever done. Period. 0:55 – You can see the microphone on Lauren’s hip here if you look closely. I also like that I did this stand-up in what’s called a “cowboy shot” or “American shot.” Back in the days of Westerns directors wanted to show the guns in holsters on their characters, so they would shoot them from the guns up. Because Westerns were made so much in America and those were the films that went overseas most often, this shot was dubbed “the American shot” by internationals. 1:06 – Hilarious. But Lauren wrote that in herself, she knew that making high status player like herself get a little embarrassed would be good fun. That’s just good writing. 1:12 – Rare handheld shot in this package. 1:15 – Too. Much. Rack. Focus. 1:32 – Originally this was supposed to be a shot of this guy calling out the commands, but we were really rushed while editing this. Some where between laying this shot out and putting in Lauren’s voice over I must have forgotten that I was going to use his sound so it’s just a shot. 1:35 – I really wanted to use this shot, but had a hard time finding someplace to put it. Zooming in to an extreme is a very valuable part of photojournalism: showing people something they have a hard time appreciating with the naked eye. Also I should point out that Lauren would’ve won “The Bad” had we been able to stick around. They asked me to try to get her to stick around for it, but we were already rushed.
Closing – Overall, as I’ve said, I’m proud of this piece. Three shots I would’ve changed may have very well made the difference between first and second, but that’s all in the past now. This piece is very much the proto-Erik feel for my photography. You can see a lot of the tricks i Use now taking shape in this piece.