Friday, April 1, 2016

Living In Multi-Cam

I press the buttons to see the series of camera shots that will best tell the story. It is a process that comes oddly naturally, despite my not having done it at all in a year and not having done it regularly in much longer than that. I just look at all the angles, boxes on the large screen in front of me, and they somehow fall together, as if speaking a language that I learned in my sleep.
 

And as I wonder at the fact that I can resume speaking this "language" so fluidly, I realize that, in some way, it is the language that I speak every day. Not only is it wrapped up with the language of editing together clips from all sorts of sources, it is remarkably similar to the juggling and seeing multiple angles of the life situations that face me daily. As I look at all the angles on the monitor, I realize that it is not so different from negotiating kids' arrangements and life decisions. It is not so different from being able to see the benefits and risks of all sorts of logistical scenarios. Whether my ability to "see angles" came from working in TV and helped the rest of my life, or came from life and helped my working in TV, I don't know. What I do know is that each is clearly enriched by the other.
 

I press the buttons to see the sequence of camera angles that will best tell the story. I don't always press the same buttons, because the story isn't always the same. But I guess that's what life's all about when you are living in multi-cam.

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