It was the Oscars that almost didn’t happen. Between the Writers Guild Strike, and the heavy dark clouds swollen with rain, the 80th annual Academy Awards was not graced with the stereotypical week of sunshine and pre-parties it has known in the past. Luckily, the Writers Guild of America negotiated a settlement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, saving the telecast, and ensuring the ABC network would be able to collect the $1.8 million per 30 sec commercial spot that they were charging.
 
The strike didn’t help my mindset. To be honest, I was never expecting the Oscars would be held and I wanted to take some vacation time that week. Imagine the panic that set in after the settlement was announced. I asked myself, what can we do differently this year? Each year is a challenge, trying to come up with story ideas the competition hasn’t touched, and convincing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to let us try.
 
We proposed to do a time-lapse view of the red carpet that would be featured on Reuters.com. After conferring with Corinne Perkins, who heads up a team of editors for .com in Toronto, we agreed on the best way to deliver hundreds of low-resolution images was through our remote editing software Paneikon. However, day one of the time lapse was ruined due to my camera needing to be reset. The first day collected only 67 frames, one every two minutes  I wasn’t there to hit the button to reset the file numbering system, which happened 2 hours after I set it up. So we scrapped that and pushed ahead.
 
We had better luck the next day, with a full 24 hours of images being delivered from the roof of the El Capitan Theatre. Corinne quickly assembled them into the slide show you see here.  But the weather threw a wrench into our plans for the big day, as it forced tents to be raised to cover the red carpet and there was no chance they were coming down. We would not be seeing time-lapse of celebrities arriving, so we scrapped that project on Saturday.We will try again next year.
 
Load-in for the Oscars began Wednesday the 20th. It was a busy day, confirming the installation of our internet connection, attending media walkthroughs around the Kodak Theatre, and creating editing and processing guidelines for Reuters Staff to follow. And of course, shooting pictures. Coverage early in the week is usually handled by our freelancers. Hector Mata, Phil McCarten and Danny Moloshok provided images tenting being raised around the arrivals area, the installation of the red carpet, and other aspects of the controlled chaos.
 
Also on Wednesday, our out of town staff begin to arrive. First comes technician Rich Garen,, who worked with LA tech Tony Garcia to get the DSL running. My boss, Gary Hershorn, arrived along with photographers Carlos Barria from Miami and Lucas Jackson from NYC. Later in the week, Rich  Clement, Jim Bourg and Pete Jones joined the team as well as techs Sarah Cunningham and Hao Wang.
 
The day before the Oscars, the Film Independent Spirit Awards are held in Santa Monica. It a very busy day for me, so Jim Bourg took over the editing duties assisted by Rich and Pete. The arrivals were highlighted by Angelina Jolie showing the world her baby-bump for the first time; she is carrying twins from partner Brad Pitt. Those pics got world-wide play. Photographer Fred Prouser shot the arrivals using Paneikon running on a mini-laptop known as an OQO. With a sprint connection,we were able to forego an onsite editor and work in the comfort of our Oscar workspace. Using a Tupperware bowl and a TV monitor tray, Fred devised a way to place the OQO safely on the arrival line, protecting it from the gang of shouting, shoving celebrity photographers all fighting for the same images. Danny Moloshok covered the show inside the tent, which featured many of the Oscar nominees getting an early award.
 

Fred Prouser at the Spirit Awards

Back at the Kodak Theatre, Saturday is the final day to test our fiber connection from the red carpet. The major agencies deliver their pictures to their workspace via a fiber connection that is embedded at the theatre. The picture is shot, and sent via Canon transmitter up the fiber and dumped into one of three hubs in the workspace. Delivering pictures in the manner doesn’t allow the photographer to send voice tags with their images, once they are shot they are gone. To assist in identifying celebs, researchers  Kathleen Grathwhol, Hilda Somarriba and Leslie Taphouse will scan the internet and confirm the names of spouses and guests with arriving celebrities. It is important everything tests properly before Sunday, as the window to make corrections shrinks by the minute once the carpet begins.
 
 

Mario Anzuoni, Tony Garcia and Sarah Cunningham check their cabling - photo: Lucas Jackson       

Also on Saturday, photographers are allowed 2-two hour windows to setup their lights in the photo room. At 10am, two dozen photographers scramble through the security check-in and dash to the end of the hall, where they throw open the cases they dragged in and climb the riser. Everyone is scrambling to put their lights on the furthest corners of the light bar, to cover the widest area possible. It is chaos, with polite barbs being thrown around the room full of veteran photographers and negotiation for positions being made. Mike Blake handles the set up calmly, finding a spare inch on the bar or swing his light out over the floor using a magic arm bracket. Within minutes, the bar is full and it looks like no more can be squeezed into position. Mike set up four strobe heads, wired and synced them together with a pocket wizard remote trigger within an hour. This left an hour to test his Ethernet connection, as these picture also come straight out of camera and into our hubs in the workroom
 

Remote shot of Daniel Day-Lewis meeting Helen Mirren backstage - photo: Mike Blake   

Sunday comes around with the entire team on site at 9am sharp. Any last minute details must be worked out by 11am, at which time we will be kicked out of the workspace for a bomb sweep and to allow the caterers to set up. We have our team meeting outdoors at Hollywood and Highland, 20 people in a circle staining to hear above the Muzak that the blasting through the speakers. Maybe next year I will find someplace quieter. Last minute advice is offered, and questions answered. Messengers Jeffrey Borman and Missy Bochatey are old hands at this, having assisted in many awards shows. They are our backup plan in case we loose power on the red carpet and have to run cards back to the workspace the “old-fashioned” way. The crew heads off to a hotel restaurant for some breakfast and to wait until the 2pm call time.

Sam and Mario plot - photo: Peter Jones
 
I can’t eat. I get too keyed up before the event, and if I eat then bad things happen. I spend my time outside enjoying a momentary bit of sunshine and talking to local photographers who smoke and wait as well. I struggle with smoking, but today my nicotine patch is in full effect and has satisfied those urges.
 
There hasn’t been rain at the Oscars in over 15 years, so an overall view from above was part of the story. Lucy Nicholson braved the weather to climb the roof of the El Capitan  to make the shot, and found company with other photographers bundled against the elements. She then came back into the work space, changed into a formal dress, and covered the Governors Ball at the end of the night with her usual high quality.
 

Lucy Nicholson (C), AP photographer Damian Dvorganes and LA Times photographer Bryan Chan on the roof of the El Capitan theatre across from the Academy Awards - photo: Lucy Nicholson

 
By 2pm, our photographers are in place on the red carpet and by 3pm the arrivals are in full swing.  Lucas Jackson is in the first spot, the deadline spot. It is from here we look for the main nominees and A-listers. Anyone below the line can be filed from the second or third spots, or on second edit from Lucas’ images after arrivals are over. I was responsible for his edit, and things were going well. Then one of his cameras stop sending. His wide angle images disappeared, and we found them at the end of arrivals in a completely different folder from what they were destined. That set us back a bit. As the show was starting and I had to move on to photo room, Fred Prouser finished editing Mario’s pictures from the second position and plowed through Lucas’ new images  to balance out the report.Meanwhile, Carlos Barria’s images received Jim Bourg’s careful attention. Carlos shoots in the Orchid court, which is the last photo position before the stars enter the theatre.

Gary Hershorn shows first-timer Carlos Barria how to pose with his Oscar - photo: Mike Blake
 
The lights go down, a hush falls over the audience and the show begins. Gary Hershorn is in the balcony with a 400mm lens, connected to the fiber line, and the pictures are dropping into editor Pete Jones, who is sending his crops to Rich Clement sitting on his right. The arrival photographers return and jump right in, bringing our total number of processors to eight. Winners start arriving to the photo room, and Mike Blake is shooting studio quality portraits and timing when to shoot a remote camera on the side of the stage. I can only listen to the show on the monitors, my ears perking up for the announcement of the big acting awards. I won’t watch the telecast until I get home. In the meantime, the Elton John Oscar viewing party is in full swing in West Hollywood. Thankfully, its not on my plate as Brendan McDermid is editing Danny Moloshok’s images from NYC with the assist of processors Keith Bedford and Fred Greaves.

Fortified by nicotine patches Sam stares at his screen - photo: Gary Hershorn
 
And before you know it, its over. three and one-half hours flash past you in a blur of poses and onstage antics.  The Singapore desk re-files the stage and photo room pictures for online clients at the end of the Academy mandated embargo, and I cut loose our offsite processors. We sit tight for Lucy’s pictures from the Governor’s Ball to arrive by messenger, and mop up the last few straggling photo room images. At night’s end, everyone collects their coats, camera gear and laptops and one by one, they are gone. I am left with my boss Gary Hershorn at the end of the night, who asks me the same question each year - “Are you happy with how it went?”

Rich Clement - photo by: Lucas Jackson
 
All told, it was a gruelling 18 hour day for everyone. With no possibility of a Writers Strike next year, I better start thinking about coverage in 2009. Well, maybe I’ll get to it next week. Or over the summer. Or…
 

Sam Mircovich Reuters LA-based Senior Editor in Charge, Entertainment Pictures reports back from the recent NPPA Multimedia Immersion bootcamp. 
“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium / that is, of any extension of ourselves / result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” - Marshall McLuhan
 
To hear the National Press Photographers Association tell it, still photojournalists must adapt to the demands off the new medium - online journalism - or risk losing their jobs in a Web 2.0 world. Earlier this month, the NPPA held its Multimedia Immersion boot camp in Portland, Oregon, where traditional still photojournalists were faced with the reality that their role in the newsroom is changing.

Among the new skills photojournalist must possess are the ability to shoot video for the web, gather clean sound, and program flash multimedia presentations. Many photojournalism students in the United States are being schooled in these programs already.

Rich Beckham, a professor of multimedia design and production at the University of North Carolina, put it bluntly. “Still photojournalists have been whining about video for years’ he said, “Shut up and get over it and learn Final Cut Pro (a video editing program) and get back to journalism and story telling.”
The Immersion program offered a 4-day hands on workshop for still photographers, who put down their Canons and Nikons in favor of video cameras and sound equipment.
 
For newsrooms struggling with their web presence, Regina McCoombs from the Minneapolis Star Tribune offered tips on how the photo department can lead the way rather than follow. She suggests the photo departments must collaborate more with print reporters and web designers, and build good ideas from bad ones. Richard Martinez from the San Jose Mercury News and multimediashooter.com ( http://multimediashooter.com/ ) also suggests that the photo department ‘be the bridge to build relationships” to share information, train and communicate. He warns photographers “…don’t be an ass…(the idea) that photographers driving news scares the crap out of the newsroom…”.

Jim Seida, senior multimedia producer for MSNBC.com, gave tips to how photographers should collect good audio on their subjects. “When you read a caption (on a still image) you read your voice into the caption, not your subjects voice.” Clean audio allows the subject to tell their story, which he feels is more important than the same story being filtered through a reporter. He also suggests that pictures have inherent sound, and photographers should chase down that sound to lead to more pictures.

Veteran White House photojournalist Dirck Halstead, editor and publisher of The Digital Journalist ( http://digitaljournalist.org/ ) feels photographers have the opportunity to move from their “second class citizen’ status.” In this new mode of visual storytellers, (photographers) “could be the saviours in web transition.

Tom Kennedy Managing Editor for Multimedia for the Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and cited the work of communications theorist Marshall McLuhan and is blown away by his vision 50 years ago, which predicted web story telling “with accuracy and fidelity” “We are creating and reviving an alternative language… telling stories with a minimum of filtration.”
 
 
So what do you think? Is this the end for still news photography as we know it? Is video just a faster motor drive or is this the dawn of a new age of visual story-telling?

Reuters Senior EIC, Entertainment Pictures Sam Mircovich recounts his experiences running Reuters coverage of the Oscar Awards, illustrated by some of his favourite images from the event…

Actor Forrest Whitaker arrives for the Vanity Fair Oscar Party at Mortons in West Hollywood February 25, 2007. REUTERS/Chris Pizzello

It’s over. The red carpet is rolled up, the stands have disappeared and the long night of anticipation and parties has ended. The 79th Annual Academy Awards will go down in the annals as the year an American Idol reject outshone a superstar and one of the most talented directors of our times was finally recognized by his peers.

Martin Scorsese (L) hugs Stephen Spielberg in front of George Lucas after winning the Oscar for best director for ‘The Departed’ at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California, February 25, 2007. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn

From my own perspective, months of planning dissolved into a slow-motion dream as I focused on selecting the best of the thousands of images streaming from our four photographers covering the red carpet arrivals.

The red carpet is first and foremost a fashion show and can be completely overwhelming for a newcomer. Nominees, other A-listers and the occasional oddity all compete for attention and it is essential to know exactly who you are looking for.

Actress Jodie Foster arrives on the red carpet at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California February 25, 2007. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

On the inside the Academys decision to delay the actor awards until later in the show this year increased the deadline pressure on our photographers waiting for the winners backstage. When the first of them finally arrived two hours later the editing team leapt into high gear, then waited with baited breath with UK papers snapping at our heels for Dame Helen Mirren to show up only to find that when she did she was accompanied by three other winning actors which delayed solo pictures of her by a further 15 minutes. Fortunately, our pictures of her accepting her Oscar onstage were already moving.
Director Stephen Spielberg (R) takes a picture of host Ellen DeGeneres (2nd L) and Clint Eastwood (C) as singer and actress Beyonce (L) looks on at the 79th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California, February 25, 2007. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn

Dozens of stars, hundreds of pictures and three after-Oscars parties later I headed back to my hotel room, the last of the Reuters onsite team to leave. On the way I found a pair of abandoned designer sunglasses which next morning I left in my hotel for the maid, hoping to pass on to her a little of the glamour of the event.