That epic ABS-CBN News music video (Because journalists also dream of singing stardom)

By Andrew Jonathan S. Bagaoisan

“Slow news day?” was the query of the pleasantly surprised.

For how in the middle of a plane crash, fleeting low pressure areas, and robberies caught on CCTV did journalists manage to make a potentially viral music video?

Well, it is as easy as facing the camera atop the PC. Or employing an iPad app that can record and edit in shots to a song.

It took a few days last week of shadowing and persuading a cast to join. Yes, a mini-shoot. Post-work and TV shows, of course.

Jenny (Reyes) cut up the song parts to sing, Chiara (Zambrano) “booked” whoever was willing to sing, and Jeff (Canoy) shot with his iPad.

Jeff was the consummate director who was sold-out to his opus.

He even poked all the way to Eastern Samar where Atom Araullo and our team were wondering if we still had any post-earthquake stories left to report.

“You’re missing out on the best video of all time!” Jeff messaged us. Atom and I got on Skype and Jeff showed us the video so far. And he wanted Atom to perform one part via web cam.

9/11: A mosaic of memories

"Obviously a very disturbing shot..." The first images from CNN.

Sitting through a morning class. Coming home from school. Extended on night duty. Roused from bed.

Filipinos recall how they found out across different time zones ten years ago that the iconic World Trade Center Towers in New York were attacked.

It’s a connection they share with the United States and the rest of the global village that paused this week to remember.

“The sun was on full-dial. I was indolently shuffling through my notes… when I heard a panic-stricken voice yelling from across the hall–’A plane just hit the World Trade Center’.”

Jeff Canoy‘s American History class that morning was interrupted by the cry. His professor soon got a call and turned on a television set. The channel trained live on the burning Tower 1.

In a college writeup he resurrected online, Jeff remembered the confusion, questions, tears, and hysteria that gripped him and his classmates as they grappled with the reality and gravity of what they had hoped was only a film.

They were ordered to keep calm and remain seated in their class as word came that a plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., just near their place in Maryland.

Jeff, now with ABS-CBN, reported on September 10 how Filipino activists observed the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

(Screengrab from TV Patrol. Click to watch.)

“…Right after September 11, the general cry heard across the world was that ‘we will never forget’,” Jeff wrote the next day.

“Ten years later, it seems like we haven’t.”

Sizing up a hostage-taking

Log 1, Live from Agusan

(Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

PROSPERIDAD, AGUSAN DEL SUR–Days, weeks, or months?

Riding here from the airport in Butuan, our satellite team put forward their bets on how long the hostage crisis we were sent to cover would last.

No one was sure when we would return to Manila. With the rural setting, the wait can possibly get dreary.

And it can go on. Our audio man tells of waiting over a month in Basilan in 2007 for the release of Italian priest Giancarlo Bossi. If that was just for one man, he said, what about for 15 hostages?

Jeff Canoy, our reporter, said it might only last 3 days, the length of their stay in this area for another hostage-taking two years back. The culprits and the reasons then and now are, after all, relatives.

I secretly wagered a week, pretty much the length our out-of-town coverages took of late. We arrived here Monday, and maybe we could be home Friday.

(Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

Our vehicles had to trek a rough road and a bouldery trench that seemed like a dried-up creek to reach the uphill barangay of La Purisima, where the hostages were held.

We shortly hesitated crossing our Hi-Ace, Starex, and Kia closed truck over a dilapidated bridge lined with separate or detached planks. It apparently held in place, since we found workers hauling lumber to a 10-wheeler after we passed over.

For more than 30 minutes after, our drivers struggled to bring those vans up the final steep and stony slope before the barangay proper.

(Shot by Anjo Bagaoisan)

Telling ‘people’ stories

Live from Isabela, Day 3

CAUAYAN CITY, ISABELA–Two army helicopters descended on the local airport. Those waiting ran to meet the aircraft and their cargo.

One was a thin 7-year-old named John Paul who arrived with his parents. He sat on the arms of a soldier, hooked to an IV. The boy complained of stomach pains.

A couple of pregnant women also walked out. Cameras and microphones followed. The boy’s mother lamented all they lost in the storm, but said at least her son would now get help.

These were the first human faces we saw of Palanan since it was cut off without electricity and communication due to typhoon Juan / Megi.

Ground shots, top shots

Live from Isabela, Day 2

CAUAYAN CITY, ISABELA–A call from Manila woke us up to a clear sky and a cool breeze. A relief from the darkness.

The provincial capitol was surrounded by open fields, baring a panorama of the devastation we came to the night before.

We had dozed off at our car seats. For the long haul of that night, five hours of shuteye wasn’t enough. But it was probably the sleep of the dead.

Instant cup noodles was only what my teammates could buy for dinner at 10 p.m. I rarely ate them, yet the hot La Paz Batchoy soup gladly filled a stomach that hadn’t eaten a meal since 9 in the morning.

No, Jeff Canoy and I did not take one grain of the lugaw Sagip Kapamilya fed the locals.

Jeff and his team “forced” a Jollibee store in Cauayan to serve Chickenjoy just when they were about to close. They had driven 30 minutes to the city, where a hotel and electricity awaited. The manager saw them and insisted letting them in.

The Manila news desk wanted Jeff back in Ilagan by morning and reporting live for Umagang Kay Ganda‘s 6 a.m. newscast.

Common for election and out-of-town disaster coverages: you and your material will likely go on the air for breakfast, lunch, merienda, dinner, and the midnight snack.

Hurdling through Juan and Murphy

Live from Isabela, Day 1

ILAGAN CITY, ISABELA (UPDATED)–Our crew cab raced through the deserted countryside. All around, electric posts hung like torn picket fences. Uprooted leafless trees choked the road. The sky grew darker by the minute.

It was no horror movie, but our adrenaline was amped up.

The wind beat at our ears. Our heads throbbed and our stomachs growled. We already ran on empty, yet we had to finish the stretch.

Our main equipment broke down on us, and our plan B was 30 kilometers away.

In front, reporter Jeff Canoy and his driver asked around for directions to an obscure barangay we could not even spell.

At the back, my MacBook converted Jeff’s voiceover package. I asked his cameraman to set my bags on the other end of our seat. My thumb kept switching on a cellphone that kept switching off.

The time, 5:30 p.m. Our likely arrival, 6:00 p.m., 30 minutes before TV Patrol. Time to send our 71 MB package, God knows how long.

Welcome to typhoon-ravaged Isabela, and another case of the so-called Murphy’s Law–”Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

On the field, it tends to be true. And if you take it from Jeff, it’s always happened to him in Isabela.

It was something that went wrong. A storm named Juan (a.k.a. Megi) tossed and toppled Northern Luzon. But it lashed its strongest fury here. The best preparation stood little chance against our first “super” typhoon in a while.

Photo finish

Live from Lanao, Day 5

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, MISAMIS ORIENTAL–After we successfully transmitted our story for TV Patrol World just as the headlines rolled last night, reporter Jeff Canoy tweeted:

It’s been a month since we field producers at ABS-CBN News switched to non-linear video editing. We’ve already hurdled a historic election coverage with our new touchscreen switchers and MacBook laptops.

I’m still trying to speed up my editing. My batting average for a 2-minute voiceover package, so far, is 30 minutes.

Not bad considering it would take an hour for me to finish it via tape.

Plus, we can now add elements we formerly relegated to the editors at base: video transitions, face blurs, stills, and close ups.

And so that’s how we raced against Patrol these past 4 days in Lanao. Jeff’s stories were always lined up in the first gap, and we would feed the piece minutes before or seconds into the show.

Editing with Jeff and his cameraman Rommel Zarate

Even then, some things never fail to come up.

On the day of the special elections, Jeff and I decided to play our package live rather than feed it so it could land in the first five stories. We finished by 6:30 and quickly had the audio and video checked by the Patrol studio.

Money, money, money

Live from Lanao, Day 3

(Shot courtesy of Ronnie Enderes, ABS-CBN Iligan)

ISLAMIC CITY OF MARAWI, LANAO DEL SUR—Yes, these images are real.

They’re caught by ABS-CBN cameras in 3 of 7 towns here that again went to the polls yesterday.

Most are an hour’s drive from the capitol in Marawi up mountains on narrow, rough roads.

The school yards were filled with voters nonetheless. A number were to vote for the first time, others old to need assistance.

For whatever persuasion, they came. As our reporter Jeff Canoy observes, the scene of long lines, pushing, shoving, and fainting is as familiar to Manila as it is here.

Apparently familiar too in these areas are money, campaigning, and practically many violations of election day conduct. No matter if media members were on guard, along with battalions of men in fatigues and police uniforms.

Jeff’s cameraman Rommel Zarate had to discreetly shoot with his heavy Ikegami cam inside a polling classroom in Lumba Bayabao, but that did not stop one woman nearby from peeking at sheets of campaign leaflets attached to crisp 50-peso bills.

(Shot by Rommel Zarate, ABS-CBN cameraman)

Prelude to rerun

A day before the special elections

Dark clouds and a sliver of light portend over the province's future.

ILIGAN CITY, LANAO DEL NORTE–Another month, another out-of-town. Another election, albeit a repeated one.

The swift flutter of events in the 2010 elections failed to include towns in Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Sarangani. For reasons ranging from violence to technical failures, elections were deferred to tomorrow.

And so, we’re back in Mindanao, this time in Lanao.

They told us we wouldn’t stay longer than a week here. Should things go as planned, that is.

That the special elections in this region were originally scheduled for Friday last week already warns of unpredictability. More so that the recurring image of the last elections here is a precinct incident caught on cam by indie reporters.

The video serves as the attention-grabbing jump-off to Jeff Canoy‘s advancer story on the polls for TV Patrol (as edited by yours truly):

In this region, apparently anything can happen.