He asked me if I could get my gear together because Chris Daughtry was on his way and I was the first shooter to hit the parking lot. And honestly, I was one of only a handful of shooters even at work today.
I was already scheduled to help Stewart "Lenslinger" Pittman with this very shoot...on Wednesday...but for whatever reason...Chris Daughtry thought the interview was Tuesday...and you just don't tell a rock star to go away and come back tommorrow.
As I rushed to the Production studio and the production and creative services crews had lights up and chairs out. Melissa pushed our first shoot back an hour or so and I grabbed the three cameras and locked their timecodes.
Chris Daughtry was right on time...just 24 hours pre-mature. That's OK. We had our best guys on it...except for Lenslinger. He was one of those guys enjoying an extra day of a holiday weekend.
But never fear....Weaver's here. (oooh. that's way to cheesy and maybe a bit narcisistic.)
We had it covered though. I had primary camera and Carter took the reverse angle. Our Operation's Manager Timmy Hawks even grabbed a camera and was our roaming handheld. We even had a web guy taking stills, a creatives services dude shooting for an instant promo, and Chris Morton from production taking the photos you see here with my little Canon.
As always when the fodder is American Idol, Shannon Smith was the glue in this operation. She held it all together with her extensive knowledge of all things idol and the close relationship she's maintained with Chris since interviewing him when he was in line for the auditions almost 4 years ago.
The topics of the hour long interview covered areas like the new album coming out in July, his adament declaration that he'll always live in North Carolina, how he keeps his private life private and his new found love of Twitter. (He declares MySpace and Facebook too time consuming.)
After the interview was complete Chris didn't rush off, he stuck around for a bit, shooting the breeze with his Fox 8 fans from around the building.
Even Stewart "Lenslinger" Pittman made an appearance at El Ocho on his day off.
We couldn't keep him away but we didn't let him work...but he wouldn't miss a chance to stop by to say hey....Hell Stewart was right there with Shannon when Chris was just a guy in line to try out.
And this time Stewart even brought his wife for the perfect photo op.
The interview will air Thursday on the morning show. It'll be on the web. And it'll probably be in some of our other newscasts too.
Now that we've shot it...Lenslinger needs to get to work...editing.
