Cam’s TV News Debut

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About a month ago I received an email from a TV news producer who wanted to interview me for a segment about online florists who scam people. Long-time readers should be aware of my extensive write-up about my experience with the ultra-scammy UrbanFlorist.com, based out of Vancouver, Canada.

On January 30, a freelance TV news crew showed up at my apartment in Brooklyn and shot about 30 minutes of footage of me at my computer, talking on the phone, etc. The end result (Quicktime | WMV) is not bad and I realized they used only a few seconds of material from what turned out to be more than two hours of setup, filiming and equipment breakdown.

I pretty much flubbed my interview portion but they managed to pull out a few quotes that sound OK after the editor had put everything together. The interesting thing was every question had to be paraphrased back to the producer in the form of an answer. You can’t just answer “Yes” or “No” since any soundbites pulled out for editing would then be out of context. You needed to answer something like, “No, I would not use an online florist that is not based in my city.” It sounds easy but in practice is pretty hard. If this had been live, the entire thing would have been a wash, but you get several shots at answering the question and by the 3rd or 4th take you sound OK, if not a little bit scripted.

It was an interesting experience, though I’m not sure if I would do it again. I think maybe I would be more comfortable the next time now that I know and understand the process better.