Just like ‘team,’ there’s no ‘i’ in ‘rally’

CANDACE: Independence and unilateralism are definitely encouraged in today’s J-school student, however there are limits to what a one-woman backpack multimedia journalist can do. Take, for instance, the quarter-of-a-million-people strong Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on the National Mall in October.

LAUREN: When you’re one person lugging around thousands of dollars of camera equipment and you happen to be going the opposite direction of the throngs of rally-goers, you’re going to want a partner. For this particular story, our goal was to capture the wacky, the meaningful, the clever and the just plain absurd of the rally signs.

CANDACE: To conduct interviews, one of us had to chase down interesting-looking subjects in the huge mass of people while the other minded the all-precious equipment. After the interview, one of us had to engage the interviewee in meaningless chatter while the other grabbed quick, just-in-case reference shots.

LAUREN: And sometimes it helps to have an extra body around when it comes time to escape the rushing current of people. You’d think people would automatically get out of your way when they see a metal cart pulling heavy equipment coming through. But you’d be surprised how many people don’t mind having their feet run over by camera carts.

CANDACE: After our interviews were done, we needed to get away from the crowd packed like sardines to shoot a standup. We found ourselves caught in a slow shuffle of bodies trying to exit through a gate in the impromptu fence the park service had put up around the rally venue. The exit was moving at the pace of a slow-dripping faucet, which just wouldn’t do on our tight deadline.

LAUREN: So we decided to sidestep the gate by climbing over the fence right behind a line of porta-johns on Constitution Avenue. This super ladylike and graceful feat of acrobatics at the center of our nation’s capital wouldn’t have been possible if one person hadn’t been there to pass the equipment over the fence to the other before climbing.

CANDACE: Granted, after we jumped we realized the gate was only two feet away.

LAUREN: But teamwork – still key when it came to shooting Candace’s standup.

CANDACE: We wanted to shoot the standup on the steps of the National Gallery, so that there were crowds of people behind me, giving a nice feel of the rally.

LAUREN: The problem with that being, there were crowds of people behind her, next to her, in front of her and walking right through our camera shot. This is when you need a partner: to run interference.

CANDACE: Lauren manned the camera but also played traffic cop, keeping people from walking through the twenty or so feet between me and the camera. And the scary part was, people actually listened to her.

LAUREN: It was mostly because they all thought Candace was actually a famous newsperson and started taking pictures of her doing her standup. Side lesson: Act like you’re important when you’re out shooting a standup and passersby will start thinking you’re from CNN or something.

CANDACE: Sadly, Lauren could not keep the giant stuffed bear from entering my camera shot during what might have been my best take. For that, we send you to the clip reel.