Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1124770
26 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2019 MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Then, in the early 1980s, Stiller learned about an internship at a small television station called KSCI, UHF channel 18 in Long Beach, California, which was then associated with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi — the guru to, among other notables, the Beatles. "At the beginning, all of the programs were focused on Transcendental Meditation," she recalls. "The work environment was extremely chill. It was kind of run by his monks, and there were 30-hour workweeks." Three years into her gig at KSCI, Stiller transitioned from audio to a succession of other jobs, including field camera and, eventually, directing/technical directing. "I learned that I really like technical directing," she comments. "At the time, it wasn't as complicated as today. It was more about overseeing the engineering area, switching cameras, and adding graphics and a couple of transitions." In the late 1980s, she left KSCI to have her first child — Stiller and her husband, an executive at Voice of America in Washington, DC, are parents to a daughter and a son — but, after about a year out of the workforce, she got the itch to get back in. She initially worked as a TD on game shows in Miami, but by the early '90s, opportunities in sports programming were starting to explode. "The technology was growing — the amount of people, the number of cameras and the money," she says. "There were a lot of jobs there." Stiller, whose early sports-related gigs included technical directing broadcasts of the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim professional hockey team, enjoyed telling the story of a game through shots, transitions and graphics. "We're the keeper of the grammar of television — correct and timely transitions between shots, replays and pre-packaged clips are necessary to keep viewers in the flow of the game," she explains. "If the grammar or timing of a transition is incorrect, it can shock viewers, and then they're not with us anymore. In addition, there can be errors we intercept. We're the gatekeeper of whatever hits the air, and it's live." In 1998, she got the call to technical direct the Lakers road games on KCAL (Channel 9 in Los Angeles, then owned by Young Broadcasting) — though not the team's home games, which, at the time, were only shown on cable. "The broadcast shows were the shows that went on the road," Stiller explains. "They thought that if you broadcast local games, nobody would show up at the arena. The whole model is completely different nowadays." Not that the shows produced on the road were anything less than first-rate. "It was one of the premier shows," she adds. "Probably the Lakers and the [New York] Knicks had the most money — and they could do the most elaborate shows." Under the supervision of producer/director Susan Stratton, the crew set up about six hours ahead of tipoff. "I had an incredible boss," Stiller recalls. "She put together a team that was from all ethnicities, all genders and, theoretically, we were all at the top of our games." At the front bench of the mobile unit, the technical director would be stationed at the switcher while both live shots and replays were being called. "We had a minimum of six cameras," she explains. "There were also clock cameras because, at that time, you had to show a picture of the game clock and the shot clock. And we traveled with a field camera operator, Victor Smith, who would go out and shoot interviews and whatnot." The assorted cameras gave the team an array of options, from a game camera that displayed the entire court to a tight camera that zeroed-in on the player with the ball at a given moment. "It's pretty fun because you have to predict what's going Beth Stiller, center left, at the Capital One Arena in Washington, DC, home of the NBA's Washington Wizards, in March 1998 with the Laker Road Show team: Back row from left, Chick Hearn (play- by-play announcer), Bobby Matthews (stage manager), Seth Shore (graphics coordinator), Stiller, Victor Smith (camera and tease producer), Susan Stratton (executive producer/director), Cathy Glynn (graphics operator/chyron), Stu Lance (color announcer); front row, Doug Coffland (associate director), Norm Larson (linear/ nonlinear playback/replay), Antony Hurd (audio mixer), Vance Edwards (linear/ nonlinear playback/replay) and Rich Rose (video control). Courtesy of Andrew D. Bernstein Associates Photography