CBS Local Producer Shoots Story With iPhone

Gio Benitez.... producer... VJ

Gio Benitez, a producer at CBS4, the local TV station in Doral, Florida, shot his entire local news story on his iPhone, then cut the piece on FCP on his laptop and delivered it for air.

OK, the cutting on FCP is no breakthrough (except probably to most local TV news stations who still use editors and RM4590 tape to tape editing decks), but the iPhone in the hands of a ‘producer’ is.

Again, Benitez’ shooting is a bit shaky.  We always say, the first rule is ‘don’t move the f**ing camera!’ but outside of that- not bad.

Certainly it has potential.

Which puts Benitez on the cutting edge of cost-savings at local stations. (Not that they will ‘get it’).  Benitez has effectively delivered a reasonable piece for air and in the process gotten rid of:

* The cameraman
* The reporter
* The camera(!)
* The editor
* The edit suite
* The truck.

Nice job, Gio Benitez!!

Of course, as soon as I heard about the story, I went to the website:

And as you can see, the video is not embeddable.

So I emailed the news director at CBS4 in Doral, Florida, and asked where I could get hold of an embeddable version of the story. Surely they had uploaded it to Vimeo or Youtube or something.

The ND wrote back to me and told me that ‘footage’ from the station can’t be downloaded or embedded, but that they ’sold and licensed footage’ from the station for use in documentaries, if I was interested in buying it.

No kidding!

Perhaps they would mail it to me on a 3/4 inch uMatic tape.

Hey Gio, here’s some good advice”  “get out of Doral”!

In fact, get out of local news.

It’s over.