In 1969, while still a senior in college, I became a part-time reporter at the small commercial television station in my college town. I was a journalism major, and my every intention was to become a newspaper reporter, but when the part-time opportunity came in television news, I jumped at it. My first day on the job was a Saturday (“rookie,” “weekend,” synonymous terms...). I was sent to cover a whale of a story – the opening of a new municipal swimming pool in an even smaller community about 20 miles from the station.

I was handed a Bolex 16mm film camera. The camera already was loaded with film – lucky for me since I had no clue how to load it or unload it or anything else, and since no one in the newsroom was interested in filling me in on these somewhat important details. I only knew that the camera was powered by a wind-up spring because I had seen a photographer winding that same camera the day I had interviewed for the job (why was it they hired me again?). I shot the entire hundred-foot roll of black and white film at the swimming pool (that’s a little more than two minutes). I remember the film editor remarking that I had done a nice job of panning the side of the clothes-changing building but that it would have been nice to have some shots of someone diving into the pool or something like that.

In spite of the inauspicious beginning, I had enjoyed myself immensely, and I determined that I would become a “shooter,” as news cameramen were called at the time. Principally, I was a reporter (and later would become a weekend anchor, etc.), but I wanted to shoot, too; it was a bunch of fun. So learn I did. As I moved up in market size (the 188th to the 100th to the 52nd), I learned to use wind-up Bolexes and Bell & Howells; I learned to use great big battery-powered Auricons that actually recorded sound on an optical or magnetic stripe on the side of the film itself. And then there was the CP-16. Before portable videotape recording came along and revolutionized television news, I graduated to the Arriflex, one of the best 16mm film cameras ever made. About the same time the video revolution approached, I took my leave from television journalism to go to law school.

A few years out of law school, when I opened a solo law practice, I also opened an independent television production company. We owned two Ikegami HL-79s, the finest video camera in existence at the time, and we owned a blimped (meaning it made little noise so as not to interfere with sound recording) Arriflex 16BL. I owned the company, so I got to shoot commercials and a syndicated fishing show and industrial documentaries; it was a blast. The company didn’t do nearly as well as hoped, but the work we did was fun.

I closed that company, opened a cable television advertising business (where I shot lots of commercials) and then soon sold it (for a nice profit), whereupon a friend put me up for a job as lawyer at the operations and production arm of the then-fledgling Country Music Television Network (CMT) in Nashville, so I went to interview for the job. As my future boss was perusing my résumé, he noticed my television news experience and asked if I could shoot film. I said: “Sure.” At that moment was born my new job: General Counsel and Director of Cinematography (the network itself actually was producing many of the music videos at that time). What a job title! Just imagine lawyering the first part of the week and filming music videos the rest of the week. What a job!

The first music video I shot was a great Bob McDill song recorded by Tommy Overstreet called “Heart Of Dixie.” The most memorable music video I shot was “The Yellow Rose Of Texas” sung by the duet of Johnny Lee and Lane Brody. In the fight scene at the bar, Johnny was supposed to be hit in the face by a drunk. The “drunk” was Johnny’s road manager. He was anything but drunk; he was scared to death he was going to really smack Johnny and lose his job or whatever. Of course, that’s exactly what happened. He didn’t lose his job that I know of, but, after several takes of not getting close enough to one another to make the punch “work” in the movie sense, he moved in a little closer and Johnny moved in a little closer and “Pow!” The look of absolute shock on Johnny’s face after he actually got hit in the eye and stumbled back into Lane's arms made for a great piece of film – and a serious black eye for Johnny the next morning that lasted for at least a week (which is why, as we had, you shoot scenes like that last).

After shooting video only sparingly for a number of years, and without making a long story of it, I got the opportunity a few years ago to be the cameraman on three music videos for a country CD on a start-up Texas indie (for a variety of reasons, the album was not released). The songs are “Get A Nightlife,” “Obey All The Rules (Miss All The Fun),” and “I’ve Been Thinkin.’” The experience was doubly pleasurable because the videos were directed by my California-based stepson, Glen David Miller. It’s hard to remember when I’ve had such fun. (Of course, that I co-wrote one of the songs (“Please Go”) on the ill-fated album also is very cool, but songwriting falls under a different button on this website.) Even better, my wife, Beverly, got to act in one of the videos; she's the store clerk in “Obey All The Rules.” When time permits, I'll throw in some excerpts from the music videos.

In the last year, after founding Equulus LLC, I have found myself shooting more and more video. Most prominently, I am shooting (with others) the pilot for a proposed television series titled “Inland Waterway Lifestyles,” and I am shooting a sophisticated video biography on the life of a very interesting man. See www.equulus.com.

As I say about shooting stills, as well, there’s something about seeing the shot, framing the shot, and getting the shot that I just love. Then, of course, there’s a whole other story about editing moving images.