Poughkeepsie
Live:
The “Beat Club” of the Hudson Valley
By Peter Aaron
“Four
minutes, guys.”
Producer Kristine Conte checks the time once again as she darts
around Time Warner Cable’s narrow control room. Surrounding
her are enough glowing TV monitors to make the sales floor at Best
Buy look anemic. Conte clearly knows her way around: Despite the
haste, she threads her way quickly and decisively from one end of
the tight closet to the other, narrowly missing the backs of a few
camera people and producer-director Raj Sirohi, who sits at one
of the room’s many blinking terminals. Nobody seems to notice,
though. They’re all too focused on the task at hand.
“Two and a half,” Conte announces as she plants herself
next to the tall plate-glass window that frames the facility’s
performance studio.
Sirohi
speaks low and evenly into his headset mic. “Kathy, give me
a nice, wide shot of the saxophonist and the keyboardist,”
he says. “That’s great, hold on that. Beautiful. Keep
that. Perfect.”
Conte
checks in again: “One minute, guys.”
In
the performance studio, red, yellow, and blue lights illuminate
the edges of the set. Host Michael Dell glides in and takes his
spot on a tall, white-lit stool
in front of one of the cameras. Smiling, he glances back through
the glass and into the control room at Conte. “Thirty seconds,”
she says.
“Band’s
ready?,” Sirohi asks. The five silhouettes in the next room
nod nervously. Dell straightens his back, meeting the gaze of the
camera that points at him, barely five feet from his face.
CONTINUE....
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