A was assigned to comms without much discussion. For most of us I guess it was thought of as a smart talent allocation. Until sharing the clips with news outlets came up. For A, media corporations should not be allowed to profit off of independent artists, and a negotiation was required every time an outlet requested vroll from us. Seriously? The request was vague, so I managed to put it down to details, but of course no one wanted to deal with that, nor had the time for it. Windows of opportunity for ethnic media usually is 2-3 hours, while bigger studios could afford to do stuff a few days in advance. You need to arrange the interview, prep the speakers, exchange contact info and on top of that what? Negotiate payment arrangements?
Just look how the CNN coverage came out. Comms couldn’t be bothered with the extra procedure, so they kept myself and A out of the loop. The inteview itself was a strange one. B was trying to elevate the discussion by going above the pre-staged frame of “omg this is so worrysome, so scary”, which is good but it came out strange in its execution. Specifically, to the inattentive viewer it could be someowhat unclear, offensive even, whether this smiling guy is just a political commentator with a twisted sense of empathy, or someone in the movement with an unusual way of viewing things. “They will show the WH protest, that should clear things up”, I think. The MC mentions it briefly, which is better but often not enough. Then the v-roll moves to.. latinos protesting in major cities across the US. Excellent. We just made it harder to tell whether Asians have been part of the movement or whether there was some random Asian pundit on screen. Because we didn’t share our vrolls. Because fuck media corporations, right? We really showed them.
What a waste of everyone’s efforts.
I never want to see someone like A fulfilling the primary cameraperson role for us again. I’m going to draft rights waiver agreements for camera and video volunteers for future events.
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