Live from the scene of a crime in the Age of Stupid
Here's a fine piece of reporting from the field by one of our action specialists. John helped make possible our live feed from the Himalayas onto the big screen in New York City where Age of Stupid, Franny Alexander's new documentary film on Climate Change, made its premier. Some internal emails just beg to be shared, and this was one: when these things work, they look effortless, which really is a disservice to all the effort that goes into them.
Rescue hut, once surrounded by ice, where Indian film director Shekhar Kapur once sheltered.
Hi Actioneers,Just a quick report on one of the live broadcasts we did from the Himalayas for the "Age of Stupid" movie premiere this week.
After weeks of work against the impenetrable Indian bureaucracy - which is intended to thwart all but the most patient people - we got the go ahead in one of our preferred locations for the live shoot.
The one permission we forgot though, was from Shiva, the owner of these mighty mountains, he kept flicking our helicopters away like bugs.
But after two forced landings, one bringing Delhi airport to a stop and one in a field the back of nowhere (guess who the French tourist is in this piece), our third heli still couldn't make it through the cloud on the day, so up we go overland and overnight to the Rohtang pass. There Shiva throws rocks at us as we struggle through landslides, and when at last we arrive, he has a word to the satellite gods too, as they decided to block our video stream several days before and not even Gianluca himself could appease them. (I hate Inmarsat)So It's 6 hours before we go live, New York are ready to do the test link but I still have no functioning work around (I hate Inmarsat), a monsoonal downpour is closing in and there's still 2000m to climb from Manali to Rohtang, really not looking good. But this is when our friend the rainbow spirit must have had a word with Shiva. As we climbed and climbed one of the highest road passes in the world, we left the storms below us and the dawn opened up with the pure Himalayan sunshine. Just in time, quickly setting up the gear, I attain the strongest satellite signal I've ever seen, and I'm able to stuff that link with high quality video, right as I hear "go Himalayas" from the control room in New York City, our celebrity starts his spiel and I hear the applause come back through the link. I honestly can't believe everything came together like this. It really was a moment.
After this we're on quite a high, especially our celeb who has sucked down most of our oxygen and was consequently quite lyrical for the next live link to 11 million Indian breakfast TV viewers.I think the best quote was from Shekhar Kapur himself, after the gig (and on the third bottle of oxygen) when he said "I didn't know Greenpeace could do this stuff, you guys walk the talk."
Well we can do this stuff, and do it well, even from the roof of the world.
Cheers,
JohnP.S. Did I tell you I hate Inmarsat?
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