I spent all week shooting a new video series for Politico called Inside Obama's Washington. I worked with my favorite executive producer Tammy Haddad, Steve Mort (our shooter/editor/reporter from Orlando) and the people at Politico. We interviewed Arne Duncan (Education Secretary), Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House), Eric Cantor (House Minority Leader) and Dan Pfeiffer (White House Communications Director). The shooting and editing process took at least 16 hours for each video, so I was working from 8am to midnight everyday.

We had less than an hour to setup for each interview, which is really not enough time for a two camera shoot. The Arne Duncan interview was scheduled to begin at 8:30am, so Steve and I showed up at 6:45 hoping for extra setup time. Unfortunately we had to wait for the press person to arrive, chose a room, move a conference table, and argue with the producer about the location of flags and plants in the background. We were still rushing around adjusting lights when Duncan arrived, but we couldn't make him wait, so we had to drop everything and start the interview.

For Pelosi, we arrived at the Capitol building almost three hours early, made it through security fairly quickly and were able to start setting up two hours before the interview. Given we had the most time, her interview looks the best. Pelosi reminds me so much of my mother. Obviously their politics are much different, but their mannerisms are so similar.

The Cantor and Pfeiffer interviews were conducted on the same day, with only about an hour and a half between them. I brought extra cases for the lights, so we wouldn't have to worry about packing neatly. After the Cantor interview, we just through everything into the cases and ran to the White House as quickly as possible. Well we didn't actually run, we took a cab, but it was still a rush. That night we had to edit both videos, so I got Emily to come help. It was almost 1:00am by the time we got home.

I shot a couple big interviews yesterday. One with Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to President Obama and one with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner . Murry, a freelance cameraman I often work with, and I were at the front gate of the White House at 8:30am. It took awhile to get in, because they had to check the gear with a bomb dog and by hand. We finally got to the interview location, the War Room in the Old Executive Office Building at 9:00. We only had 30 minutes to set up for the two camera shoot. Normally it takes at least an hour. We were making final adjustments to the lights as she walked in. The interview itself went fine, but it took over an hour to clean up afterward.

At 2:00 we arrived at the moat entrance to the Treasury Department. This time it took even longer for the guards to look though our gear and bring over the bomb dog. Finally we made our way down the rough brick driveway and into the basement of the building. They certainly don't make it easy to bring in the equipment. This time we had an hour to set up, so we had time to fiddle with the lights. Lighting is usually the most fun part of a shoot and if there's time, I can spend hours getting it just right. Geithner arrived a little late and seemed to be in a better mood than the last shoot I did with him. He joked about not being able to get a reservation at a local Indian restaurant. I couldn't get a reservation there either, but you would think it would be easier for the Treasury Secretary. The interview was conducted by Mike Allen from the Politico. After 15 minutes, Geithner's press secretary motioned for us to wrap it up, but Mike was relentless. He kept going even after signaling he was finished by asking the "finally" question. Geithner didn't seem to mind though and Mike eventually concluded the interview. Look for them on the Politico website later this week. It may be picked up by the networks as well, but that remains to be seen.

I spent Thursday and Friday of last week in NYC shooting for the NewsHour. Thursday I shot in the Little Haiti section of Brooklyn. We tried to find a restaurant with a large number of Haitians who were effected by the earthquake, but the restaurants were deserted. We ended up at a Haitian radio station where people were gathered to find out information about their family members in Haiti. I shot some b-roll of the radio station and surrounding neighborhood, before getting an interview with the DJ. From there, we headed to the office of the nation's first Haitian city council member and conducted an interview outside of his office.

The producer at NewsHour arranged for us to feed the footage via satellite from a Hispanic TV station in Brooklyn. We got there ten minutes before our scheduled feed time and tried to connect the camera. It didn't work. They tried connecting it to various places in their network, but still no luck. We moved the camera into the control room and kept working on connecting to the satellite while our allotted time expired. Finally they gave up on a digital connection and switched to an analog output. The picture worked right away, but not the sound. They brought out old, scotch taped wires with the rubber stripped off and connected the audio. I quickly started sending the footage, but only one channel of audio was working at a time. I had to switch the audio cables back and forth to send the right channel until all of the footage was sent. It was a horribly nerve wrecking experience that I never want to repeat. I found out later that the people at the TV station had so much trouble connecting the camera, because they had never fed from a camera before. Their lack of experience was, of course, blamed on me.

Friday we shot a local city council meeting where it was announced that city workers could donate money to the relief effort directly from their paychecks. The Haitian city council member, who we interviewed Thursday, broke down crying when he started talking about his family members in Haiti. After the meeting, we went to a community market popular with the Caribbean diaspora. A white woman came and sat with us and told us about how she was sick of the 'white media'. She said that she couldn't read most publications or watch most TV stations because it was biased against people like herself. She went on to tell us about how she went to Nigeria and felt like she was at home. After freeing ourselves from her crazy stories, we went back to the TV station to feed the footage. This time they were ready and it went fine. Next time I need to send footage via satellite, I will make sure to go somewhere that has done it before.