Kathleen Cairns and Alanna Delfino
For photojournalist Alanna Delfino, sound is the most important part of the picture.
“I’m always shooting,” she says. “When I roll up to a scene, I close my eyes and listen for where the sound is coming from. If I hear something, I may put the mic on the ground [to pick up the sound] and go get the video later.”
Using a wireless mic and moving it from person to person gets Delfino the sound she needs. She does have one caution though: “Remember where you put it.”
Delfino works for WBFF-TV in Baltimore, Maryland, and frequently pairs up in the field with reporter Kathleen Cairns. She’s in total agreement about the importance of sound in TV news.
“The sound is what brings the emotion,” Cairns says.
When Delfino and Cairns spent a week covering flooding in Ellicott City, they made sure to capture sound that helped tell the story.
It Happened Again from Alanna Delfino on Vimeo.
At WBFF, reporters are expected to turn two packages a day and feed social media all day long. “The deadline is now,” Cairns says. On a big story, reporters file for the 4, 5, 10 and 11 p.m. and do multiple live shots for TV as well as Facebook. How do they get it all done?
“Find a solution rather than complain,” Delfino says.”News doesn’t need any more complainers.”
On the flood story, they fed back “walk-and-talk” stand-ups for the early shows instead of going live. They were able to show viewers scenes they weren’t going to use in their packages and Delfino had time to edit.
“Find solutions to feed the beast,” she says. “And feed your photojournalist. I work really well on a full tummy.”
When they have the rare opportunity to shoot a story one day and write and edit the next, Cairns and Delfino still work as efficiently as possible. They communicate all the time by phone, email and text. Both of them set up interviews. Cairns logs in the car while Delfino drives.
This story was based on a tip Delfino received about a community planning to help a local ice cream vendor who’d been robbed. WBFF doesn’t like the F word, “feature,” Cairns says, so she had to find a hard news angle to sell the story. The intro reminded viewers that a 10-year-old girl had been shot to death in Washington, DC, the week before.
Mr. Solo from Alanna Delfino on Vimeo.
Cairns and Delfino shot a lot of elements that day they didn’t use, including an empty playground they’d planned to start the story with. “It wasn’t working,” Cairns said. “Sometimes you interview someone and if it wasn’t great, you throw it away.”
The two don’t work together all the time, but when they do, they have a motto: “No guts, no story.”
