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.