From 9 years ago

Next up, Bill Clinton.

Hot on the heels of my first production experience with HarvardX in DC recording John McCain and Yusef Komunyakaa I was asked to go to Harlem and record Bill Clinton reciting a poem by Langston Hughes titled “Harlem”. Who would say no to that? I packed the gear, 3 cameras in the kit and a 4^th for safety, lights, microphones and we were off.

My crew was a HarvardXer named Beyza.  For some reason we thought it prudent to take about $20,000 worth of gear on the subway up to Harlem from Penn Station. I suppose we could have taken a cab but that would have been too easy. Besides it was snowing.

We made our way to Harlem and President Clinton’s office without much trouble, made it though security which by now was old hat to me having just gone through it in DC at the Capitol building. We got to his office building and were ushered into his conference room.  It was impressive but had a wall of windows that would be impossible to shoot in front of  so I opted for the bookcase as a background. During the set up I asked the aide that had been with us the whole time if I could move a large reflective dish and a few books to make the shot better. He got visibly nervous and said not to touch a thing on the shelves. President Clinton had been there early this morning arranging them himself and would know if anything had been changed.  That was fine we could deal with it in the editing process. I set up the three plus one cameras and the lights and we waited for the President to arrive. In the conference room was an accordion wall divider. At the other end of the room was the door and the bookcase with our “set”. After a while the aide said the President would be in soon.  Beyza and I fired up the cameras and lights and got ready. The door in the accordion wall opened and Bill walked in about 4 feet from me and stuck out his hand for me to shake and said, “Hello, I’m Bill Clinton.” I said I knew who he was and that it was a great pleasure to meet him. He sat in the chair we had set for him and placed a cup of coffee, a Coke and a bottle of water in front of him and was ready to start. I asked the Aide if I could remove the Coke and the water because they had brand names on them and with a nervous nod he said it was OK.  Bill was OK with it too. As soon as I got repositioned behind the camera and was ready to call “Action” President Clinton pushed his chair back about 2 or 3 feet drastically changing the composition of my shot.  I asked the Aide if I could reposition him in the frame and was told “NO”. We shot the piece and everything from that point went very well.

After we were done and before we started to break down the equipment President Clinton started chatting with us. He asked us all where we were from and told us about how he first came to Harlem years ago and took us over to the windows to show us the distant Central Park and told us about the Church we could see nearby and how different it was from Arkansas. We were all engrossed in this personal time we were having with Bill Clinton. Meanwhile outside the other glass wall that faced the lobby of the office it was a different story. His press secretary and other Aides were trying to get his attention but no one would come through the door. Bill had another meeting that he was now late to but he was happy talking to us. I know I was not going to interrupt him.