Camera shy

“Oh my gosh…there we are. We are on TV!” I heard someone shriek from behind me. The room burst into noise and rustling. You would think our mushroom lasagna had burst into flames and was torching the kitchen at how quickly everyone ran out of the kitchenette to gather around a television smaller than the box of wine we had tapped for dinner at this announcement.


With the furry I turned around from the layers of fresh pasta and finely grated parmigano that I was lining a pan with and I could instantly feel my face rush red in a warm blush at the sight of myself taking notes on television.

My hair was disheveled – in a tangled mess partially covering my face. In my hands was my jacket that I had to take off because of the hot production lights over head which caused my note taking to look awkward and nerdy.

I didn’t know they were filming us then, I thought to myself. While it is notable that Rété Veneto doesn’t put on a “show” for the news, I really could have used some hair and makeup.

On Tuesday morning my travel writing, cultural communications, and ethic courses visited Rété Veneto, a television station in Bassano del Grappa. An office, hidden on the outskirts of town, in a building that doesn’t even seem large enough for a family of four, is a surprisingly small production facility for the station that transmits to a region the size of Chicago.

Inside was even more cramped, especially when you are trying to maneuver around 14 extra people through small offices, production rooms, and a multi-use studio. Taking up more than half of the entire hallway standing shoulder to shoulder our group quickly settled around Angelica, one of the newsroom editors, for our tour accepting that we were going to be uncomfortably close for the next hour and half.

Even though early in the morning and close enough to my class mates to know if each showered the night before, the company tour was eye opening to the differences between Italian news and American news.

“One thing is the journalist, one thing is the news” Angelica said describing American and Italian news. American news is more about the show – it’s over the top and glamorous, while the Italian news is all about just the news, she continued.

Throughout the remainder of the day we came to learn this fact well. Standing around the studio, we were told we were going to be on the 10:45 news brief with the pattern station. Immediately my hands started sweating and I’m sure my eyes were probably wide with anxiety.

The lights from the overhead were bright and hot like the most miserable summer day, which did not help calm my nerves. When we were grouped together behind Angelica I made sure to stand off to the side and not directly behind her to try to avoid the camera.

Once the camera was off and I stopped holding my breath, I was glad that I did a great job of staying off the camera almost the entire time. But obviously you just can’t hide on stage.