Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Digging for a Story

Most days, most stories and most ideas take a bunch of digging to research, gather and complete. So it's nice when a cool visual story is handed to you. It's even nicer when the story is of such significant subject matter.

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On Friday intrepid meteorological/Reporter Charles Ewing and I were dispatched to Rockingham County to the site of a UNC-G archeological dig at a revolutionary war era historical site.

The site was home to a century old farm house that burned down in the 70s and the nearby hills and creeks were the workings of a little community that supported efforts in the US Revolution and the Civil War.

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There was a lot of digging done for this story, but in this case the digging was the action I was documenting.

All I had to do was shoot video and listen for good sound, both in the form of human speak and nat sound, which is so precious to us TV Photog types.

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The dig was an endless bounty of great pictures and sound. Every turn I made there was another visual, another natural moment, another great soundbyte.

For the aspiring archaeologists it as an endless bounty of artifacts, measurements and careful notetaking.

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As the students went about their business and I went about mine, I couldn't help but thinking about who may have lived here 200 years ago and what life may have been like.

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That's what these guys and girls were trying to find out too. The professor told us that General George Washington himself stayed on this property, according to historical journals.

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And as these students continue to read the story buried in the red mixed dirt under this overgrown land, Charles and I came away with a great little story too.

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The story of hard working students and teachers hustling to preserve a little known slice of American History in an effort to let it be known.

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