Читать книгу That Wasn’t the Plan - Reg Sherren - Страница 13

I first learned that early in 1985. I was assigned to tell a story about the spring planting. Many farmers were having a tough time of it and some were on the brink of going under. I had been asked to find a family in exactly that situation. I quickly discovered that people in the farming community were a lot like people in the fishing community. Coming from Newfoundland, where many of my relatives fished, I found that these were my people—fiercely proud, down-to-earth, honest and hard-working.

Eventually I found myself on the phone, talking to a family near Vulcan, Alberta. They had farmed for generations, but each season in recent years they hadn’t quite been able to break even and were always losing a little more money. It was becoming a slow and painful demise for this family’s farm. Even so, they invited me to come for a visit.

I could feel the financial strain the family was under just to get the ground seeded. I felt bad that Mom had cooked a big roast beef dinner for us, spending money they probably couldn’t afford. But they were determined to be good hosts. As we sat around the kitchen table eating, Mom was polite, but somewhat quiet and withdrawn. She had also steadfastly refused to do an interview—that big imposing camera was just too intimidating.

Like many kitchens, it held a table, a kitchen counter island with cabinets above, and on the opposite side, with a big window over it, the kitchen sink. I knew that she had spent a lot of time at that sink, just like my own mother, washing dishes, looking out the window—and thinking.

We set up the camera where the kitchen table was. I asked my cameraman to shoot through the space between the counter and the hanging cabinets; I wanted a profile shot of Mom at the sink with the window included. Then I asked her if I could help do the dishes, where we could talk without that big camera in her face. She agreed, and while she washed and I dried, we began talking about the good old days.

Every time she looked up and out that window, she was seeing another time, a much happier time. As she talked about preparing a big lunch and driving out in the family station wagon to the fields where the men were harvesting, you could see her emotion building. “Everybody sat around the tailgate enjoying their dinner,” she said. Then she paused, looked down into the sink and began to cry. “Nowadays everything is so different,” she sobbed. “You try to keep everybody happy and you can’t.”

I was choking back tears myself. Her words would have moved anyone. I could feel them. I knew if it was half as powerful on videotape as it was in that kitchen, it would do more to illustrate what this farm family was going through than anything else we had taped that day.

Writing the script, I realized everything had to build to that moment. In the edit suite, the magical talents of editor Annie Churka helped bring it to life. She created pauses in the script, allowing time for viewers to absorb the story, which gave the actual moment even more impact. And she added music to squeeze every ounce of emotion from the videotape.

Would it work? I got my answer back in the newsroom. We were all young, career-addicted journalists, working stories right to deadline, and we’d sit around the newsroom yakking and watching as the show went to air. It could be a hard room. If your peers didn’t like what they saw, they had no problem pointing it out.

My piece came on. It grew quieter in that newsroom as the story progressed. When the emotional mother began crying at the sink, there wasn’t a sound. Some of the people watching had tears in their eyes. The piece had moved even these jaded journalists.

It was one of the most valuable lessons in my young career. Really, it was about two things. People—characters—are critical in any great story. Do everything you can to make them comfortable enough to tell you how they really feel, even if it means perhaps not having the best shot or the right lighting. Do everything possible to make the camera seem invisible.

Second, emotion is the most powerful thing television can deliver. Anger, fear, sadness, joy—the camera will show it all if you do it right. Television is not like a newspaper or magazine. You can’t pick it up and read it again. It goes by so quickly that you have only one chance to capture viewers’ attention, and if you can deliver real emotion, the story can have a lasting impression.

Learning those lessons served me well many times during my time in Alberta. A one-year contract stretched into two.