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shot of the gavel, we try to anticipate the
Lieutenant Governor’s moves beforehand.
Still, no matter how prepared we were, he
could end up faking us out—reaching for it
and then changing his mind.
When talking about trying to cover a
session live, we often resort to analogies
like Whac-A-Mole. That’s because when the
action gets going during a session, our efforts
to quickly capture the person who is speaking
on camera, insert their correct name and title
graphic, and include the corresponding bill
number graphic before they sit back down
can feel very much like that age old game.
It is live television, and mistakes
happen—that just comes with the territory.
But we take pride in directing and producing
the best show we can each day, and we
feel privileged to be able to take part in the
legislative process by presenting it to the
public.
As Craig Keeton, Director of Central
Virginia Studios, has said, “WCVE has
always been dedicated to informing and
educating our audience. So this service fits
our mission well.” Those of us who help to
fulfill that mission are happy to present a
little of the magic from behind the curtain.
Remember what the guard said when
Dorothy and her friends first arrived at the
palace in Emerald City—“Nobody gets in to
see the Wizard. Not nobody. Not no how!”
Aren’t you glad that’s not the case here in
Virginia’s Capitol?
Sarah Alderson is an award-winning
freelance writer who also works in
the Senate broadcast control room
during sessions and the Capitol Studio
throughout the year. She can be reached
at
and her new blog launches in March at
.
we work with them every day. So our first
instinct is often to respond with a familiar
wave and enthusiastic “hi”, which can result
in a somewhat puzzled look in return. They
may see us in the sea of faces around the
Capitol, watch our work every day on the big
screens in the chambers, and even depend on
our footage to inform their constituents or
promote the work they do…but most of them
have no idea who we are.
The legislator who is probably the most
aware of us and what we do is Delegate
Jennifer McClellan. She has even mentioned
our work while speaking on the floor. And
during one session when House control
room regulars Billy Lamberta and Josh
Kennedy were working on what was their
mutual birthday, she surprised them with
Happy Birthday wishes in a point of personal
privilege.
The thing is, those of us who work
behind the cameras see the legislators on
television every day of each session. And in
watching them every day, we can’t help but
become more than a little familiar with their
idiosyncracies, mannerisms, expressions,
and habits…much like the characters on
any given television show. For instance,
Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling always
inadvertently gave us cues as to when each
day‘s session was about to start. His habits
and mannerisms had settled into a rhythm
from doing the job for eight years, and we
had become trained to notice the cues from
doing our jobs for several sessions as well.
As Mark Helfer would say, “He moved the
magic box (the gift for each day’s minister),
and now he’s pouring his drink (usually a
Diet Pepsi into a cup of ice).” We noticed
these things in particular because they were
the last things he usually did before gavelling
in. And since we start each show with a
in Northern Virginia. Its main purpose was
to show the Virginia Legislature at work, and
it began by covering the proceedings of the
House of Delegates. The studio then moved
its focus to the Senate in the early 1980s.
In the beginning, each session was
simply recorded. But in 2005, WCVE began
to broadcast the Senate sessions on its sister
station, WCVW. In 2007, the Capitol Studio
once again took over the job of recording
the House proceedings. And in 2011, the
services expanded to provide gavel to gavel
coverage of both the House and Senate
sessions online, as well as through closed
circuit television throughout the State
Capitol grounds.
When I began to work in the Senate,
Tim Kaine was Lieutenant Governor, and
the sessions were recorded with a system
that I affectionately called the one man band.
The equipment was set up in a far corner of
the Senate gallery and included one static
camera, one robotic camera, and one manual
camera mounted beside the controls along
with a switcher, a character generator, and a
tape machine in a small rack. Today, the set
up is much more sophisticated. The system
includes five robotic cameras mounted in the
gallery, and it takes two of us to operate the
equipment for each broadcast from a small
control room outside the gallery.
Mark Helfer and I have been the primary
operators in the Senate control room for the
last three sessions. The House has a similar
set up in which Peter Faucher and Ashby
Paca operated the controls this past session.
And Bryant Dameron, Mike Rogers and Dale
Williams are often helping out in various
capacities along the way. Those of us who
work in the Senate and House control rooms
go about the Capitol largely unnoticed. We
are known by some of the regulars we work
with day to day, such as the clerks, police
officers, security guards and other staff
members who work behind the scenes.
But mostly we are hidden away in our
control rooms, essentially on call from gavel
to gavel each day. As long as the legislators
are in the chambers, we are there capturing
the process on camera. This means we are
producing and directing a live television
show each day. And while we use the Senate
and House calendars as guidelines, it is true
reality television with no actual script to
speak of. Most of us have worked here long
enough to feel like we’re part of the process,
and we look forward to seeing old friends
and familiar faces at the beginning of each
year. But those who have become the most
familiar to us, the Senators and Delegates
themselves, would probably not be able to
pick us out in a crowd.
In fact, when we see any of the
legislators around the Capitol it can be a
little disconcerting—sort of like seeing a TV
star in person. At the same time, we tend to
feel like we actually know them—because
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