Inauguration 09

Though I was not fortunate to be on the mall for Barack Obama's historic inauguration, I was privileged enough to view the event from a different perspective..well, 18 different perspectives to be honest. Though my internship for the semester is with NBC's Meet The Press, on inauguration day the entirety of the NBC Washington bureau was dedicated to assisting the efforts of MSNBC's broadcast of the inauguration. As a lowly intern, I was far away from the festivities on the mall and instead deep below the earth in a windowless NBC camera control room. A few technicians and myself were in charge of the 18 HD camera feeds and fiberoptic camera pools covering the inauguration. Our job was to make sure that these feeds were being captured on to expensive HD betacam tapes so they could be archived and used for NBC Nightly News as well as MSNBC replays. This was, for technician nerds, a historic event as it was the first time more than 10 HD feeds have been used at once. Believe it or not, most technicians are still unfamiliar with HD technology as it is all digitized and sometimes problematic. As a result of this massive HD setup, I was able to view the inauguration from 18 different camera angles...some of them more entertaining than others. Some cameras gave a revealing glimpse 'behind the scenes' of broadcast journalism. You wouldn't believe what the on-camera personalities do when the tape isn't rolling... Other cameras were stationary, like the one atop the Washington Monument, which provided a breathtaking view of the 1.8 million in attendence. Perhaps the most interesting was the feed entitled 'swearing in oath left', which was fixed right near the 'pulpit' where Obama would give his address. This particular camera gave me access to hear what the distinguished guests had to say as they arrived in the exclusive bleacher section. It was very exciting listening to the various interactions between past presidents and leaders of state.

The inauguration for me was a hectic series of events. Unlike most of America for me the focus was not on the new president, but instead on making sure that anyone watching MSNBC could enjoy the inauguration free of any glitches. To be honest, I did not hear Barack Obama's speech in realtime, but thankfully, due to my archiving work, I was able to watch the entire speech later...in HD of course.