"Welcome To The Northwest Regional Emmy Awards (Getting To Know You)"
Okay so 4-530pm is set aside for checking in and a no-host cocktail reception & hors d’oeuvres. It's also time, apparently, for our formal Emmy photographs, just me 'n the missus.
Dinner doesn't start 'til 530, the awards don't kick in 'til 7, so we have a little time to hit the bar from last night again, ordering up a beer and a ginger beer. Whilst in line for those drinks, we get into a conversation with a photog who works for the Department of Advanced Physics at the University of Washington.
Of course I'm not sure if that's the department name, exactly, but it sure sounds like it.
Still, it's a cozy world running into someone who shoots at the university and actually did look into doing some shooting for our unit.
After scoring our drinks, we take up residence by one of the black clad floor to ceiling posts to indulge some people watching. Also, it turns out, we're there to score some random appetizers wandering by but not before subjecting the server to a raft of nut allergy questions 'cause yeah.
By 'n by, we casually wander away from our post but don't make it far before running into my friend, Richard, who we celebrated the night before when he was honored with a Gold Circle Award celebration. He was near the entrance to the dining/awards room, speaking with a friend of his to whom he then introduced me. His friend's a photographer at a local station, up for an award, hoping to take home an Emmy for Video Essay in his role as a photojournalist.
As an increasingly growing number of our industry colleagues pass to either side of us, we eventually take the hint and head inside ourselves. Our tickets, by the way, are stamped with "Table 3".
All the way up front. As in right in front of the steps you ascend to accept your Emmy if that's in the cards this lovely night.
Richard navigates us around the left side of the room until we reach our table up front where some introductions are in order. First up, the president of NATASNW who's sitting with us tonight.
To his left, a college student from Gonzaga who's won a scholarship. Next to her, her mother. Across from them, a graduate of Holy Names who similarly won a scholarship, her mom to her left, her dad to her right. Eventually, when we're all seated, I'm sitting with the dad to my left, Kimmer's seated with the Gonzaga mom to her right. ☺️
As we sit down, I discover the NATASNW president got his career start as an editor. I know he's super busy being host to everyone in the room, representatives of broadcast stations in Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. I know he's busy but I've gotta ask:
"On what format did you get your start? Film?"
"No," he says, "three quarter inch".
Not a super friendly tape format for editors when that was the cutting edge of our profession.
As he then makes his way into the room to welcome our community, I catch a slice of conversation to my left. The young woman from Holy Names just mentioned something about directing.
Knowing that broadcast directing has changed profoundly over the years, I ask how she sees her role as a director.
"I mean film director" she replies.
She's going to a film school in Southern California, studying to be a film director. So I ask
"Have you heard about the 48 Hour Film Project?"
Turns out she hasn't. She immediately looks it up on her phone after a quick explainer I provide about the competition which, yeah. 48 hours. From six on a Friday night to six on Sunday night exactly two days later. Write, shoot, edit, turn it in before the deadline or you're out. The nights are long and the adrenaline's epic.
My bet right now this very moment is that this young woman has a team together and is already signed up for the July 11 Seattle competition. 😊
Later, her dad's telling me how she shot and edited videos of family camp. He doesn't get the details quite right so his daughter takes up the narrative that she did, in fact, shoot and edit camp videos where there were families for a number of years, figuring out ways to mix things up year to year whether that involved music choices or integrating interviews. She talked about how much longer the videos took to cut once she added interviews to the mix.
In return, I told her about my experience shooting camp videos and how I came to realized how certain people didn't make it into my videos because they weren't active in the moment I passed through their sphere. Of that group, there were campers who had something in mind to do if given the chance... and there were campers who were willing to participate on camera but had no idea what they'd do. For this second group, I decided on an activity in which they did nothing. Together we figured out a moment of some activity, a single moment in which I happened upon them. And so I'd pose them or some would pose themselves and I'd wander through their scene firing off photograph after photograph, sometimes hundreds that, when strung together into a single video file, created a funky sort of stop-motion experience. A little Matrix. A LOT high school.
