Perhaps because of his unorthodox path into broadcast journalism, Arnot is more open than most to new approaches. Although he began his career as a surgeon, Arnot, through a chance on-camera appearance as an interview subject, became a medical correspondent with CBS, then with NBC, before branching out as a foreign correspondent for Dateline, Today Show and Nightly News.
Dangerous Excursion. Women and girls take risky leaves from the Darfur safe camps to gather wood.
While covering stories with traditional film crews, he made a point of learning everything he could about traditional broadcast production. And when digital video cameras and Final Cut Pro became available, he jumped at the chance to shape his own stories. “As soon as Final Cut Pro came out, I was up and training on it,” he says.
With new production skills, and much-improved lightweight technologies, the late-blooming TV correspondent soon morphed into a pioneering single-operator mobile journalist. After 9/11, he frequently reported alone from the Middle East and Afghanistan, where it was too cost-prohibitive and dangerous to land with full crew and gear, shooting, editing and finishing his stories in Final Cut Pro before compressing and uploading to the networks via satellite phone.
Besides the reduced costs realized from the streamlined workflow (“networks realized they were spending a half a million dollars just to walk out the door”), his methods frequently put him on the scene well before other journalists could react. And by crafting every sequence through his camera and on his laptop, he gained absolute control over the development and production of his story.
“Mobile editing really gives you a tremendous amount of independence. You decide what cameras to bring… And because it’s your footage, you can just craft it to your satisfaction.”
“Mobile editing really gives you a tremendous amount of independence,” he says. “You decide what cameras to bring and whether to shoot 24P or 1020i for a more film-like look or just regular 2997 NTSC for nightly news. And because it’s your footage, you can just craft it to your satisfaction.”
In Close in Darfur
Arnot’s mobile broadcast methodology transferred easily to his documentary mission in Darfur, where he quickly parked his high-tech gear in low-tech digs. “Save the Children set me up over there with their staff, arranged for me to hook a ride on the transport planes out into Darfur and hosted me in some Save housing — a little tin box with outdoor showers, but a perfect base to do the story from.”
From there, he moved easily among the refugees, equipped with an invaluable analog tool — language. “I speak fluent Arabic, so when I approached, say, a group of women I’d address them and do an immediate translation, avoiding the laborious traditional translation. This broke down all kinds of barriers. Unlike the typical BBC medium-wide shot where someone talks over images of people with glum expressions, my subjects are right there, very emotional, pouring it out.”
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