Been A Busy Two Weeks

I realized today that it's been a while since I've entered in my blog. There's a reason for that. On the road back from Big White, I got a phone call from a director with World Curling TV. They were looking for someone to fill a last minute position as a Technical Director for the world feed of The World Women's Curling Championships in Grande Prairie and they wanted me to leave in four days.

So off I went (what the jetsetter I've become) to the booming metropolis of Grande Prairie, Alberta. Metropolis it isn't, but booming it is. The oil industry is causing that city to burst at the seams. The vacancy rate is 0% and the rent is expensive. Real estate is too. But if you work in the service industry, it's the place to be. Most restaurants (including fast food) are hiring at $15 an hour, to start. There's more jobs than people.

With that event in town, they were out of hotel rooms too. We ended up staying at the only inn in town that had some vacancy. It wasn't the greatest hotel, but it did the job. I managed to find some free internet in my room and that made it better.

But I digress, my job there was my first real sports switching job in a long time and talk about throwing a guy into the fire. The truck we had was old and still had analog equipment. Most of the TV trucks now have at least digital cameras and tape machines. This one had mismatched cameras and they had to add an EVS (hard drive-based instant replay system) but didn't have any analog to digital converters. To basically sum it up: it wasn't fit to be used on air.

The word is, this truck had been sitting in a farmer's field for the last two years and was snatched up by a guy who wants to put it back into service again. Unfortunately, it's going to need a lot of upgrades. It might now be worth it.

Director Rick Davis and I in production in the truck in Grande Prairie.

Anyway, after a few days we got most of the bugs ironed out and the show went on. I personally wasn't happy with my performance, but Rick asked for my card afterwards. I suppose this means that I'll be at the bottom of the list if they need someone.

Upon my return to Vancouver, I've been working on my screenwriter's website vancouverscreenwriters.com over the last three days. It's occupied most of my quality TV viewing time. But then again, I haven't really watched a lot of TV since I got back from Italy. My PVR decided it was bloated and deleted all my episodes of 24, Lost and Desperate Housewives; all shows you can't miss an episode without getting 'lost.' I've given up on them for now.

So I hope this leads to more work in TV sports. I'm getting tired of the daily grind of TV News.