Part 1 & 2 of The Barefoot Bandit's Seattle Media Day

The good folks at Seattle's King 5 Morning News had me on last Thursday to talk about Colton and my new book, The Barefoot Bandit. I used to work in television, but always on the other side of the camera and almost exclusively out on location, so it was fascinating to take part in a high-tech studio shoot.

As a former cameraman, it was a little disconcerting to not see one anywhere in the studio. All six of the cameras were robotic and directed via an out-of-site control room. The only people in the large, dark stage were the talent, anchors Joyce Taylor and Greg Copeland along with the weather reporter. When it was time for my segment, three Transformer-like cameras began moving themselves across the studio to line up the angles on the "chat" set.

I clipped a mic on my sportcoat and sat by myself for a few minutes until they went to commercial and Greg came over from the anchor desk. The show's director spoke to him continuously through his earpiece, but I couldn't hear any of it.

We did the scheduled segment (it's impossible for me to figure out how long they last while they're happening; the time goes by very fast. On a television set, though, the interviewer has a view of a timer flashed on the teleprompter as well as signals or voice alerts from the director so he or she knows when we're running out of time.

After the segment, they went back to commercial. As I was leaving, I walked over to the anchor desk to say hello to Joyce. She asked more about the book and potential movie, and then she and the director were suddenly having an earpiece conversation and decided that the audience might like to hear what Joyce and I were talking about, too. They asked me to stay for another segment during which both Greg and Joyce would ask questions.

As a sign of the fascination people have with this subject, in almost every interview I've done so far, I've been "held over" for extra segments.

So, at this KING 5 link you'll first see the initial talk and then a long hold on the book cover as the second segment is introduced. The director hadn't prepared to run an extra six minutes on this, but did a good job of improv by re-running some stock footage of Colton to intercut with the live shots of us on set.
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