Cash for Honours

Friday 02/02/07 

Story:   Cash for Honours

Today was spent filming my correspondent’s report for the above news piece we are putting together.

After having failed to get permission to record it in Westminster’s central lobby and feeling that in front of 10 Downing Street was getting a bit obvious and stale we came up with the idea to record it from a taxi passing in front of Westminster. I then suggested that as the day’s front pages were full of Blair’s picture and headlines about him being questioned in secret that my correspondent should be sitting in the taxi reading a paper showing Blair’s face and then he could collapse the paper and begin talking to camera. The report was to end with him gesturing out the window at parliament and I would follow his gesture with the camera.

The amusing thing was that we had to hire a taxi to drive round and round until we were happy with the shot. I think we did six runs and were happy with the last two. I always knew that the main challenge was going to be the difference in contrast ratios between inside the taxi and the outside. This meant I had to use a camera top-light to (fairly futilely) try to bring them closer.

It was then on to Downing Street for some general shots of the building, windows and famous door before finally going to the south side of Westminster bridge for some other shots of parliament nicely light reversely by the sun. Good I thought as image shots for the darkening situation.

We also had permission to use up to 30seconds of clips from the recent More4 ‘Trial of Tony Blair’ drama and the scenes we had received were very appropriate as they involved Blair being finger pointed, DNA mouth swabbed and locked into a cell.

The edit took quite a while as time was needed to pull desired visuals and audio bits from various times and various sources over the last year. I was ready by 1700 and only had to wait for my correspondent’s narration to be complete. As usual that was to be a wait.

Hoping for a quiet weekend I began packing for the 0500 start on Monday. We are off to Scotland to film about Whisky production and perhaps have a wee dram or two…?