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For two-and-a-half months, videographer and editor Ron Whitting hunkered down in a dusty bunker to document the war in Afghanistan for CBS News. Whitting used his ScreenPlay nonlinear video editor almost daily, creating more than 23 hours of B-roll for reporters and network feeds for special reports. "There was no question, I would definitely take my ScreenPlay with me to Afghanistan," said Whitting, a freelance photographer and editor who has been working with CBS for more than 20 years.
"I knew I would need a reliable editor for creating simple and slick footage quickly. It took 10 minutes to setup the ScreenPlay, and in another two minutes I was editing. Nothing fancy, just simple cuts, fades and dissolves."
Manufactured by Applied Magic of Carlsbad, Calif, ScreenPlay is a turnkey, PC-free, nonlinear video editing appliance -- appliance meaning it does one thing and only one thing well: Edit video. ScreenPlay offers a 60GB hard drive for about 4 hours of broadcast (DV) quality video, real-time effects, drag-and-drop simplicity, and array of transitions, special effects, color effects and more for about $4000.
Whitting's news team consisted of seven freelance broadcast professionals who took turns shooting and editing footage during their tour of duty in Afghanistan. The CBS team was based out of Camp Rhino, a Marine outpost south of Kandahar. Much of their time, however, was spent holed up in a 12-foot by 15-foot bombproof bunker burrowed in the ground just outside of the Northern Afghan City of Kabul. The bunker was so close to the front line that bullets whizzed by. Heavy artillery blasts rattled the Earth. Sadly, one foreign photographer was killed just 100-150 feet from where Whitting stood shooting with a Panasonic F565 with a DVC Pro Recorder.
"The conditions were pretty extreme," Whitting recalled. "Everywhere we went we had an Army escort. It was cold, 20s and 30s, blowing dust and dirt, creepy crawling things everywhere. It was nasty! We did have generators in the bunker that powered some heaters and the editing equipment."
Despite the extreme conditions and continual use, Whitting said he edited on the ScreenPlay daily and it "performed flawlessly." Although he could not say the same for the Avid that shared the bunker editing bay with the ScreenPlay, two 8" Sony monitors and a Mackie audio board.
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