Richard Blumenthal and Linda McMahon are in the middle of an intense campaign for the US Senate seat from Connecticut currently occupied by Chris Dodd. On Tuesday, the campaigns came to New London for a televised debate at the Garde Arts Center sponsored by The Day and WTNH. My job was to capture the audio and video feed of the debate from the WTNH truck (using my Sony HDV deck and a bunch of adapters to convert BNC and XLR to an RCA input) and to do a short color piece about the scene outside. I drove by around 5:00 and the crowds were already getting loud in preparation for the debate, which was to start at 7. Since I was going to have to capture and compress 60 minutes of miniDV tape, I tried to keep the edited piece short and sweet. I shot until about 6:45, when they closed the door, started the deck just before 7, and then went back to the office, where I wrote a quick script and edited together everything but the intro, where I left room for a pair of soundbites from the debate. I was back to the truck by 8 to gather my gear, and then back to the office (nice to be only a few blocks away) to capture the tape and send both pieces to the web.

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