WTIU videographer sees life through a different lens

By Rose McIlveen

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The cameraman with 28 years of experience documenting "all things IU" puts it differently.

"Do I see things other people don't see? It depends. I try to put the camera in such a place that the picture has balance, contrast and good composition. There are many different things you can use to decide on what composition you're going to have," said White.

Sometimes that includes another technique.

"When you move the camera, when you pan from right to left or left to right, you're planning on ending on a shot that's more interesting than it was when you started to move. And there are all kinds of little things you are thinking about when you're shooting" he added.

Trained at Bob Jones University, White received bachelor's and master's degrees in film production and later taught film production at West Virginia University. That was followed by a stint at a commercial television station in Kansas City.

Things were changing at IUB's RTS when White accepted a position on the staff.

"Bill Kroll, the former general manager of WFIU/WTIU, had been to England for a time and had seen how the British Broadcasting Company had organized their production facilities. Everything they shot outside was on film, and everything inside was on videotape. And they would just transfer the film to the videotape, because in the '60s and early '70s, the television equipment was so bulky and big and heavy that it was much more economical to shoot exterior scenes on film, rather than on tape. And that was true right up until they invented the hand-held cameras in the late '70s," explained White.

White was never interested in heading for Hollywood after graduation. What interested him most was working on documentaries. He recalled the very first thing he did after coming to IU.

"It was a little documentary. I worked with Mickey Klein when he was here. We did a short subject to pad the end of an opera they had done here at the Musical Arts Center. It was about the Children's Chorus and the opera Carmen. The little documentary was called Opera Kids and lasted about 10 minutes. I had to learn my way around the Musical Arts Center very quickly, because I had never been in the building before," he said, laughing.

The very last film documentary White worked on was shot on location, as they say in Hollywood. That location was Senegal, a country on the east coast of Africa.

"It was called Living Africa: A Village Experience. We did that in 1983 with the African Studies Program," White said.

He brushed up on his college French and got all his inoculations, because the crew was going to be in Africa for a month. The village they filmed was in northern Senegal near the Senegal River.

Another project White worked on was a 1979 videotape for IU Admissions called Are You Ready for the Year 2000?

"That tape is still around. I'm sure it would be amusing to see. The narrator was Ken Beckley, who's now president of the IU Alumni Association."

Filming or taping a documentary is only half the job. It is the editing of the raw material that is time consuming.

"It takes a lot less time to photograph a documentary than to edit it," said White. "If you're making one—even a dramatic one—the rule of thumb is that you have to allow five times longer to edit it than to film or tape it. There are exceptions to that, but, in general, it's right."

White believes that editing is more important than anything. That's what makes the communication. He is quick to add that none of his work at RTS has been strictly his own.

"Every video production that you see is the work of a team. We've had students on crew. We've had staff help us with things," White said.

He points to some recent work and the collaboration that went into them.

"Susanne Schwibs was the producer of Treasures of Indiana, which is a good video presentation of our Indiana heritage. I worked with Mickey Klein on The Spirit of Monroe County, a two-part documentary about its history."

Still more recently, White worked with Eugene Brancolini on a documentary, West Baden Springs: Save of the Century. The Herman Wells documentary was another Brancolini/White collaboration.

"The Wells documentary is probably the most satisfying thing I've worked on. I really got a good feeling about the history of IU. I think it's valuable for people to understand the history of places that they live in. Every student should see it."

http://www.indiana.edu/~radiotv/wtiu/specprog.html#other

(Editor's note: Some of the documentaries mentioned may be ordered through WTIU in VHS format at the Web site above. Some documentaries also are among the video holdings of campus and public libraries throughout the state. The IUB African Studies Program has a video lending library that houses the Senegal videotape. E-mail afrist@indiana.edu for information.)