Not Catching Things On Video

(From The Avid|DS Google User's Group -- By Shannon Dunn)

As an editor, here's a lesson in not catching things.

We were doing a spot for a yearly arts festival and crafts show in Kansas City which was promoted as a real family fare event.

We had a stand-up talent down at the stock yards (which used to be in Kansas City) doing a :30 second on camera read with no edits -- all one continuous shot.

Picture a camera on a big boom arm that starts high looking down at these thousands of cattle and it sweeps gently down to our talent walking slowly along the fence, extolling the family virtues of this great upcoming festival.

The talent gets to the end of his walk and stops to finish his wonderful description of this marvelous family outing, and how great it is for the kids. Then up comes end-slate and fade to black.

A room full of ad folks and others sharing a suit, as well as the editor and assistant editor all work to finish the spot for an on-air run that night.

They all check it and send it to the dub room for duplication and then quickly run it out to the local stations.

At about 5 pm when it starts it's local run, the phones start ringing off the hook.

Turns out that when the camera settled at the end of the talent's long walk, off in the distance behind and just to the left, this bull climbed up on this cow and just started humping to beat the band.

So, for about the last half of the spot, the nice kids of
Kansas City got an eye opening biology lesson.

Nobody even noticed it in the edit suite!

[I was behooved to tell you that story. And that's no bull!]