Lighting a press conference

[A Step Above Productions]

1) You never know if a speaker is going to leave right after the presser.
2) You never know if there's going to be a great SOT at the podium that can't be matched from a 1 on 1.

What it comes down to is this...no one involved in news is going to look at badly lit press conference footage and blame it on the organizers...just the photog.

Also many of my clients who hold pressers do it so they don't have to do 15 ono-on-ones - they don't want to do the ono-on-ones and do the presser.

 

[satop]

I always brought in lights when I shot news. My job was to make it look good. I couldn't believe the guys who wouldn't ever bring in lights, then ask me to leave mine up after the presser so they could get one-on-ones. "Sorry, I'm leaving now."

Now that I'm freelancing, and often light press conferences for clients, I have respect for those that tote lights in, and none for those that don't.

It's a work ethic thing.

Take your craft seriously.

The line "my job was to make it look good"....is bugging me.....Our job is to cover the news.....to report what happened.....weather someone looked good or bad should not be our concern. Now we have an obligation to make someone look like they actually look.....but using lights might make someone look better than they do, I don't know?

I allways light interviews, live shots, ect....but if pressers are events, not interviews.......should we be changing the event?

I am not saying I won't light a presser if I have time, and the main reason i stopped at my current job is because of time constraints.....but this thread has brought some others issues up and I am wondering now, when we are doing news, should we be changing events with lighting, moving things around so they look better? Just wondering what others think.