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Shawn, Charles and I met at La Jolla Cove Tuesday morning, talked about the shots they wanted, and then geared up in our SCUBA. I suddenly realized the pressure was on me to find the school of Giant Sea Bass. I gave them 50% odds of finding the fish given that the water visibility was down to 10-15.. It was almost Noon and the station was already running promos for the story on the 5PM news that same day... we had to deliver!
Charles locked and loaded the KFMB underwater camera on shore and we jumped in the water. We had one hour of tape... the clock was ticking. I led them out to where I had last seen the Giants a few days earlier. After 15min swimming out on the surface, we dropped down to take look... I started rolling my tape. We descended into a school of Mackerel and Charlie quickly got a shot of me photographing the fish. He was smiling... worst case, now all he needed were some shots of Shawn in the kelp and the editors could make it work. Less than 10 minutes into the dive, we spotted a Giant Sea Bass... I pointed. There were four more GSB just out of Charlie's sight... I heard him shouting into his regulator when he saw them. Everyone jumped into action. We had talked about the .shot list. before the dive... the priority was to shoot Shawn with a bass, then shoot me photographing a bass. We stayed with the GSB group for about 15 min. Both Charlie and I shot some great video. Now Charlie only had about 10 minutes of tape left, so we left "The Nest" and got some shots he needed of Shawn and me swimming.
When we surfaced, the three of us were cheering the high-fiving. we new we had a winner. After a short 30 minute dive we had all the shots we needed. and they were great shots! On the swim back to shore, Shawn and I talked about the story and I started to think about the interview we still needed to do. I hoped we could make this pro marine reserve story. Shawn was on the same page. It was clear he already knew he had a winning story.
By 1PM we were done with the interviews and the video was on its way to the studio for editing. 4 hours until air. The story ran at the end of the KFMB-TV 5PM news hour that night. It was a great feel-good story about an endangered giant fish returning to the La Jolla marine preserve. Much of the GSB video they used was mine. including the famous rotating head.
The next day, CNN picked up the story and by the afternoon it was the #1 most popular video on the www.CNN.com website! Wow!
The local KFMB (CBS) TV piece including Shawn.s toss-in and close-out is here:
http://www.kfmb.com/features/special_assignment/story.php?id=63836
You can watch the CNN version here (better resolution). It does not include Shawn.s toss-in:
http://www.cnn.com/video/partners/clickability/index.html?url=/video/tech/2006/09/20/styles.ca.giant.sea.bass.kfmb
And of course, you can watch the Giant Sea Bass videos below to see my raw video that went into the story.
| Click to Play | Resolution | Plays On | Runtime | File Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ipod (640x360) | Quicktime 7, ipod | 6:00 | 69 MB |
or download for video ipod.
New Version Updated 9/18/2006 |
|
| 480p (852x480) | Quicktime 7 | 6:00 | 234 MB |
or download the video to play later.
New Version Updated 9/18/2006 |
|
| 720p (1280x720) | Quicktime 7 | 6:00 | 478 MB |
or download the video to play later.
New Version Updated 9/18/2006 |
| Click to Play | Resolution | Plays On | Runtime | File Size | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ipod (640x360) | Quicktime 7, ipod | 9:30 | 112 MB |
or download for video ipod. Updated 9/17/2006. |
|
| 480p (852x480) | Quicktime 7 | 9:30 | 240 MB |
or download the video to play later.
Updated 9/17/2006. |
|
| 720p (1280x720) | Quicktime 7 | 9:30 | 408 MB |
or download the video to play later.
Updated 9/17/2006. |
These video works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.