Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Pre-Dawn Interview


It was 3:30am. I decided not to wait for the alarm clock to sing. By 5am, Kathleen and I were on our way to CTV's downtown studios to tape a segment for Canada AM. Once we arrived, it was suddenly awfully bright for the middle of the night. (Since the show runs nationally, a west coast segment must be taped quite early.)

A "live" remote interview is a strange and awkward experience. Your interviewer in Toronto is visible to you in the Vancouver studio--but on a monitor located several feet from the camera you're supposed to look at to answer his queries. So you find yourself trying to look in two directions at once, while listening to questions in your earpiece that the person on the monitor asked you several seconds ago, about something that was on the screen then and no longer is. Weird.

Despite the built-in confusion, Kathleen and I managed to survive alright. See for yourself - click here (this links to CTV's footage on their site, tell us if it doesn't work for you.) We remembered to say pretty much everything we needed to, except for the URL for this site....but it did get posted on the Canada AM website. And of course, we aren't hard to google. They used a lot of our footage. They spelled our names right--Spider's definition of a successful interview. (Except on the closed captions, where "Jim Sposto" somehow morphed into "Jim Fastow.")

One of my favorite moments came after the interview, as they were closing the show. The co-hosts were asked whether they'd care to try that crazy zero-G dancing stuff. "Oh yes," one woman said enthusiastically. "Oh my, yes. Definitely." Now that's the kind of response we like...

--Jeanne

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

please replace Larry for daivid in the last comment, brain cramp, comes with age and distraction.
doesn't change the fact i love the project

Tom

James Sposto said...

I am a fan of David Niven as well...but on the gripping hand...