When he was holding the camera, Arnot shot with relentless efficiency: “I don’t ever continuously roll past what I would use in an edit,” he says.

He credits much of this efficiency to the control he wields as a solo operator. “In the old days, a cameraman would shoot 50 or 100 hours to get an hour on the air because he didn’t really know what you wanted,” he says. “Videographers speak of a-roll and b-roll, but I focus on shooting c-roll — character roll. So instead of capturing generic footage, I’ll follow a particular refugee baby through getting measured, the food line, a medical examination. I know I’m getting all I need around that individual. For an hour show, I might shoot nine hours of footage maximum.”

Arnot digitizes his footage every night onto an 80-gigabyte disk and backs it up onto another identical disk. “I basically look at the rushes while I’m out there to make sure there’s no technical errors and that the shots aren’t looking all the same — too much indoors or outdoors, or too much mid-day,” he says. “Because I travel with a 17-inch G4, with about 7 scrolls down I’ve seen all 800 odd clips.”

“In the old days, a cameraman would shoot 50 or 100 hours to get an hour on the air because he didn’t really know what you wanted. Videographers speak of a-roll and b-roll, but I focus on shooting c-roll — character roll.”

Field Post

While he typically edits and finishes quick-turn news stories in the field, for the Darfur project Arnot delayed principal editing until he returned home. “I did a little editing, but because the electricity is so fluky over there, I tried to spend every second I could either interviewing people or shooting.”

The results, both of his editing and effects work, were well worth the wait. “I did all my fonts with LiveType and all of my intros and promos with Motion. I showed them at several networks recently, who were just dazzled.”

Arnot is already working on a DVD version of “Darfur” using DVD Studio Pro 3. “I was actually putting in marker points for the DVD as I was editing the video, thinking about how I want the DVD to run.”

Highly Defined Plans

Pleased with the results of his first long-form documentary, Arnot plans to do more, including a full-circle pan back to his original passion, medicine. “I have a show airing on CNBC in March on diabetes, a long-term interest of mine,” he says.

And Arnot plans to bring even sharper focus to his coverage of foreign and national emergencies and crises. “All my future projects will be shot in high-definition. My real interest in this was always to go into those really hard-hit places like Congo, Darfur and Iraq, where the stories don’t get told, and have a way to tell them. Now with accessible HD cameras and Final Cut Pro HD I can do that with the same precision, the same visual style, the same standards as a very high-end studio production. It’s a real equalizer.”

Although Arnot doesn’t have a firm schedule for his first HD expedition, he has an definite idea of when. “As soon as I get my new cameras,” he says, “I’m out the door.”