Behind the Stories

The Not-so-easy Life of an Outdoor Idaho Videographer

By Aaron Kunz
January 30, 2012

Winter is finally here. In fact, there's five feet of snow in the central Idaho mountains, as I prepare to pack in food, clothing and sleeping bags up a steep hill. Oh, and also a hundred pounds of television equipment.

Idaho Parks and Recreation has several backcountry yurts outside Idaho City. Banner Ridge is located more than 750 vertical feet from the parking lot off highway 21. The original plan was to hitch a ride at the bottom on a powerful snow cat used to groom the miles of Nordic ski and snowshoe trails. It would allow us to get to the top of the hill quickly and prevent us from having to pack gear through untracked snow.

But, when we arrived at the parking lot for Banner Ridge, about twenty miles north of Idaho City, the parking lot has virtually disappeared, buried under five feet of snow. At the same time, I was also informed that the snow cat that was supposed to give me a ride to the top of the ridge was out of commission.

Leo Hennessy, the experienced non-motorized trails coordinator at Idaho Parks and Recreation, apologized for the inconvenience. But he expressed confidence that with some pull sleds, we could haul the large camera, batteries, and tripod to the top in just a few hours. And he volunteered to travel ahead and break trail for us.

After using shovels to dig out a place to park our vehicle, we began what turned into a four hour journey, up a hill carrying our backpacks and camera equipment. I'm here to tell you that snowshoes are both a blessing and a curse. They allowed us to walk on snow. But they also made for an awkward climb. Every muscle in my body was exhausted by the time we reached the yurt. Luckily, we got there just ahead of a big storm. Of course, it snowed all night long while we slept in the warm interior of the yurt.

The next day, I woke up early so I could start shooting some exterior shots before we had to catch the snow-cat back to our cars. My first hour was spent shoveling my way out of the yurt. We estimated about one and a half feet of snow fell overnight, making it hard to even open the door of the wood framed, circular yurt.

But what a beautiful morning! An occasional rush of wind through the trees sounded like a snow machine. When the wind stopped blowing, it was absolutely quiet. The only sound was an occasional plopping sound as snow fell from the heavy tree branches.

We had hoped to catch the snow-cat around 11 a.m. at the trailhead. But when we got there, there was no sign of a snow cat. And our tracks to guide us back to the car were gone. It quickly dawned on us that we would have to hike back on our own, again through a new foot and a half of fresh snow. The only path was a line of posts to guide us back to the parking lot.

Again, we had to break our own trail. But we felt pretty good on the descent, considering our climb the day before. We managed to hit the road in just over three hours, exhausted, but happy to know we were close to a warm meal in Idaho City.

But dinner would have to wait. Our green Chevy Tahoe was totally buried in snow. We assumed that the snow plows also added to the pile of snow that completely covered the SUV. Sadly, it took us more than an hour to shovel our truck out of the snow, a reminder that anyone caught in Idaho's back-country will be subject to some rugged conditions. When the Idaho Parks and Recreation website says pack a snow shovel, make sure you pack a snow shovel!

Fortunately, we returned in good spirits and in good condition. Some of our video footage will be included in an OUTDOOR IDAHO show February 16th, appropriately entitled "Winter Grit."

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One down . . .

By Greg Hahn
January 18, 2012

Last Tuesday, Seth Ogilvie and I packed up the Idaho Public Television Chevy Tahoe with two cameras, a mobile light kit, a heavy-duty tripod for one of the cameras and a bulky, industrial-looking c-clamp that can hold a light 10 or more feet high, and we headed to an unassuming garage in Garden City to interview some students that we thought had received some money from the Center for Advanced Energy Studies - a program Gov. Butch Otter had touted in his State of the State as a successful way to build a better state economy over the longterm and a part of his new IGEM proposal (for Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission).

Turns out though, Greenspeed didn't get any CAES money, but since we had packed all that stuff over there and had just a couple of days to turn a story, we thought we'd sit down with them anyway and see what we could learn.

It turned out they were fascinating folks, and exemplified at least one aspect of what folks hope IGEM can do: build a new workforce of highly educated engineers and scientists with real-life problem-solving experience.

So some two hours later, we had some great interviews that we hoped we could use and the promise for some nice hand-held video they had shot of their attempts to break land-speed records in their hand-built truck. It would work for us, if we could find a way to tie it to IGEM in a way that was accurate and made sense.

The next day, we had two interviews on the Boise State campus, so we packed up the Tahoe again took another few hours, plus the time it took to ingest all that video into the computer editing system (a surprising amount of time, if, like me, you aren't used to it). Then, I took all the audio home, and transcribed the interviews until about 10:30 p.m. that night.

Less than 10 hours later, I was up and writing a script for the IGEM piece (even though we had one more interview later that day - another load and unload, and another two hours, plus getting it on the computer).

Then, finally, I had a little break. Seth didn't. That afternoon and evening he spent who knows how many hours in the editing bay, turning my script into a story. We got together a few times during the process, trimming up sound bites, smoothing transitions, recording my voice-over narration of the package.

Finally, by Friday morning, we had the piece pretty well in hand, and after some tinkering with the sound, the music, and some hard-to-convert video the Greenspeed guys had given us (a couple of more hours, when it was all said and done) – and we had exactly 10 minutes of our hour-long show in the bag.

That's right – about one-sixth of our first Friday night installment of Idaho Reports was built over the course of a ton of man hours through four days. If you are one of those folks who gets frustrated with the quality of television, at least know this: It is incredibly hard and time-consuming to do it right. It isn't all that easy to cover the Legislature as a newspaper reporter (I know – I did that for a decade before coming here), but I used to be able to pick up a phone and a notebook and get what I needed for a sophisticated story in a few minutes. Now that's just the start of a multi-level process. It's a fun new world – and I'm learning a lot – and I hope we can raise the bar here for legislative reporting on television.

For last week's show, along with our in-depth look at the IGEM program, we had an interview with Statesman reporter Bill Roberts about it and other business incentives being talked about at the Statehouse. We sat down with three key lawmakers to talk about tax cuts. We included AP reporter Jessie Bonner in our pundits roundtable with Jim Weatherby and Betsy Russell. And Aaron Kunz, working with us as part of a partnership with other public media outlets around the Northwest, put together a quick turn on the prospects for environmental and resource issues this year.

We hope we're putting together something that satisfies and challenges the already engaged folks who make up our base audience. And we hope we bring in a few new fans along the way. We plan to try new things, so let us know what you think works and what doesn't. I imagine we will accomplish some gems and some duds along the way . . .

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