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BY FRANK LOVECE

How 50 camcorders captured a day in the life of the LISSR

and aided a networkbrondcqst.
On May 15, as Russia's 11 daybreaks slowly bloomed across its vast time zones, a corps of 100 photojournalists began to document 24 hours in a nation that is to us as familiar and mysterious as a Dostoevsky novel. Fifty had come from the Western world, 50 from Eastern Europe. What they saw would become A Day in the Life of the USSR, which was published last month as the sixth volume in a series whose previous title, A Day in the Life of Arnerica, was one of last year's best-selling books. In an tmprecedented gesture, a Soviet government anxious to test Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness, cautiously blessed a media presence normally unthinkable in a country made insecure by centuries of invasions and upheavals. But within that context, the decision to allow photographers access to places as closed as Vladivostok, home of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, and Star City, site of the cosmonaut training center, went beyond the requirements of good public relations-even more so given the astonishing fact that the Soviets allowed the Western photographers to carry 50 home video camcorders on their assignments. Some of the results have already been aired on ABC's20120, in a segment that ran during the summer and in a follow-up segment in October. And there's talk of a home videocassette. But the significance of the photographers' video snapshots probably will be understood only after some time. International relations scholars, such as Raymond Garthoff of the Brookings Institute, are cautious in their assessments. "It's not simply bringing in camcorders that's significant but the event as a whole," Garthoff suggests. "It represents a further opening up of the

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Soviet government. This doesn't mean it's opening totally or becoming like ours, but it's a worthwhile step. "
Western news crews have, of course, worked in the Soviet Union for decades, albeit under tremendous security, and photographers familiar with Russia say foreign tourists have brought in camcorders before. Yet never have so many news professionals been allowed so much access-83 cities and towns from cosmopolitan Leningrad in the west to isolated Komsomol'sk-na Amure near the Chinese border. The access was far from unrestricted-each photographer had to have one or more interpreter/guide fromNovosti, the government press agency-and some gussying-up of sites on the itinerary for appearance's sake was blatant. But, as Da1 in the Life co-creator Rick Smolan wryly puts it, "They showed us the pretti-

8mm Fronlier:
Photographers David

Turnley (left) and

Stephanie Maze (right) test Auto Handycams near St, Basil's Cathedral in Moscow's Red Square.

er prisons." On the Tuesday before the Friday shoot, the 50 Western photographers were each offered an 8mm Sony CCD-V3 Auto =
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Handycam camcorder to keep. The Soviet-sphere photographers

VIDEO
NOVEIV1BER 1987

70

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The group fanned out across Russia

from Leningrad to Yqkutsk.

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did without, since Russia uses the SECAM television standard and the camcorders are designed for the NTSC standard, which is used in the U. S. Sony sent a training repre-

sentative, Jim Rosemary, who gave 20minute group lessons on shooting 8mm videos. Very few refused the added opportunity, Smolan recalls. Rosemary, who worried that the photographers would see video as an intrusion, found that "in most cases it was just the opposite."

Indeed, the competitive throng

seemed intent on showing who could cross

over to video the best. Neil Slavin, a renowned group-portraitist and contributor lo Newsweek, Esquire and The New York Times, used the camcorder to scout his shots the day before the event. Pulitzer Prize-winner Larry Price, director of photography for The Philadelphia Inquirer, used it as a calling card. "When I used the camcorder, it was easy to approach people. I just let them walk through the frame, rather than hounding them with a clicking

35mm camera." The Russian people themselves-for whom the book was an American-style media event-took the added presence of video in stride. "Like us, they were amazed by how small the Handycam was, especially in Moscow, but they knew as much about camcorders as most of us," notes Douglas Kirkland, a Hollywood photojournalist whose work has graced Life, Look and other magazines since the '60s. "We have preconceived notions of how primitive other societies are, " observes Neil Slavin. "We expect to hear, 'Oh, great white father, what is this magic box from 20th Century?'The Russian people don't have as many gadgets as we do, but they're pretty sawy. They were much more interested in what we were doing than in what we were doing it with."

Kiev to Russia's Asiatic coastal plains, arc-

journalist-Soviet or foreign-to shoot

Moscow's Vladimir Prison, the bitter inspiration for Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archifelago. Inthe provincial Ukraine, Jay Dickman of The Denaer Posl photographed a storybook farming village. Graeme Outerbridge, from Bermuda, was assigned to shoot the autonomous Jewish republic of Birobidzhan near the Chinese border.

Adams became the

tic pioneer towns and mountainous southern frontiers. Pulitzer Prize-winner Eddie

first

photo-

Virtually all the Western photographers and their Novosti guides shot video footage in addition to still photos. Most of their sites-long hidden from foreign eyes due to physical inaccessibility and centur-

ies of Russian xenophobia-have never

been more than mental images, even to

scholars. Now they'll have color

videotapes.

ON THE PROWL
The photographers fanned out from the

"The variety of the shots was amazconttnued on bage 74>

EuropeanJike Moscow, Leningrad and

72

VIDEO

NOVEMBER 1987

thorities to let him shoot dismal, embarcontinued from page 72

0rA$lll0$T

rassing areas they had initially forbidden. And one of the most longstanding nyets of. all-aerial photography-was lifted for the book.

ing toward me. I gave the camcorder to my guide and asked him to tape them as they

questioned me, which he did for a few

seconds before he got nervous and put the

ing," marvels 20120 producer Nola Safro. "We looked through hours of video footage. We haven't gone through it all yet. " The Soviet government did not, of course, serve up the entire country carte
blanche. But neither did Japan or the U.S. when they sat for their national portraits. On the other hand, Eddie Adams suc-

"Train stations normally are out of

bounds for taking pictures. It's a security

thing,

"

says Kirkland, who rode the

camera down. But as soon as I explained what we were doing and showed the police our credentials, they said, 'Ohhh, this is for the photo album!'They ended up saluting
us.

Trans-Siberian Railroad to the isolated scientifi8 community of Novosibersk. "But I understood I had permission. Yet while I

"

was photographing all these everyday

things-people with suitcases,

women

cessfully convinced Vladimir Prison au-

conductors-I noticed police officers com-

.--o------------------------<

Everything but the salute aired on20l 20. So did 8mm video clips of the inside of a Moscow bathhouse, a herd of Siberian ponies in the snow near Yakutsk, cosmonauts floating weightlessly in a water-filled training tank and a baby being born one minute after midnight in Alma Ata, near western China.

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Ironically, the extraordinary video access grew out of limitations imposed on ABC News. "We had asked the Russians to let us deploy four film crews," recalls 20120'sSafro. "They told us that for logistical reasons, they would allow only three' For tJre Day in the Life of Ameica shool, we had coverage by several dozen ABC
affiliates. But in Russia, even if my compa-

ny could have afforded

it, ten

crews

wouldn't have been enough. So we had to have a couple of backup plans. " The first, eventually discarded, was to
dig up several professional video cameras and try to get some ofthe photographers to use them. The other arose from Safro's

familiarity with the corporate tie-ins for each of Ihe Day in the Life books' The projects'sponsors ranged from such naturals as Kodak and Nikon to the investment firm of Merrill Lynch and Apple Computers.

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Photographers' transportation and accommodations were picked up by yet

other corporate sponsors, and they received, in addition to a $50 per diem expense payment, the choice ofa token fee or

donated producti. America contributors, for instance, were offered Apple Macintosh computers and other goodies. "I knew
that Collins promotes toys for its photographers, " says Safro. Consequently, ABC, in its discussions with the publishing house' mentioned "that perhaps one of those toys could be a camcorder." Smolan, aware of ABC's need for camera coverage, asked Sony for 80 of the $1,500 Handycams-S0 for the photographers and 30 for backup and for his staff. The $120,000 request met with an inscrutable silence. In desperation, Smolan

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turned to his friend Ed Reingold, ?izae

magazine's bureau chief in TokYo. "Ed's a very good friend of Sony chairman Akio Morita," Smolan explains. "He collaborated with Morita on his autobiogra-

Send 91.OO Postage and handling.

phy." Two days later, Sony arranged

meeting with Smolan and Cohen.

'llOOO-----------------------

At first, Sony's American executives were nervous about such a big giveaway. What about the different electrical standard in Russia? We'll supply transformers, Smolan and Cohen assured them. What about cold weather? What about training the photographers? The two said those were technical obstacles that could be overcome. "Basically, we told Sony that
ABC couldn't do the piece without the
Handycams. We said to 20120, 'Look, we know you can't give a written agreement to

sion," he says. "It was pretty boring for him while I shot. " Kirkland, who also shoots documenta-

and a bulky

recorder. The broadcast indus-

ry films, believes that small consumer

camcorders could set "the pillars of the

temples shaking. Consider what happened in the Soviet Union. It makes the mind

try will probably fight it, but the undercover possibilities are too great to ignore." The photographers on this historic project not only painted a more detailed portrait of Russia than Russia has ever

allowed but documented the very process. They also baptized a new tool whose

race. Just imagine the possibilities for

filmmakers. Eight millimeter doesn't have the quality of half-inch, but is it the new 16 mm film?" he asks, referring to the work-

full effects are still to unfold, not only to

amateur videographers but to still-camera and broadcast professionals who may find

horse of documentary moviemakers.

"Eight millimeter lets you get a camera in places you couldn't go with a sound man

use the Handycam footage or mention Sony, but can we have a gentleman's
agreement?' " When Ihe 20120 story ran, Sony got its menfion. Neither Sony's largesse nor the lure of addng20l20totheir credits was lost on the

tiemselves relying in surprising ways on video equipment designed not for the t studio, but for the home.

photojournalists. Some filled the entire one-hour Sony tapes they were given,
while others shot a few well-selected minutes. The Handycam's compactness was a hit. "It didn't glitter, " says Slavin. "It was inconspicuous, which means it did what it

was supposed to do-help me do my

work."

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The photographers say their experiences with the camcorder were much the same as they might have had in the U.S. In Togliatti, the Soviet Union's Detroit, Jerry Valente was shooting an auto-factory daycare center. He let his Novosti guide videotape the children. "They stormed him!" he laughs. "All these little kids crawled all over him, pulling and tugging on him, want-

smaller, lighter weight units far exceed the perlormance of all previous models. Videographers know the f rustration of trying to get great sound when shooting from a distance. AZDEN

ing to see themselves in the viewfinder.

They were like little kids anywhere. " Price says he "got a big kick out of shooting

official ceremonies, like the weicoming banquet and cocktail parties. They were
ideal things for video, " he observes, "since they can turn out kind of boring with a still camera. "

Ressmeyer, who shot in the security-conscious Star City, says that at first "I was afraid of using the camcorder since I tJrinkl looked more like a spy with one than with a still camera. But I got over that. My biggest hangup was getting my guide to use it properly. I talked him through the shoot of the cosmonaut training tank and walked him through it about ten times, but he still didn't get it quite right."
In fact, a great deal of the video footage

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was shot by the Novosti guides. "I discovered that my gurde Igor was a very good cameraman," says Slavin. "He didn't seem to have touched a video camera before, but

he knew how to track someone in the

frame." Kirkland says he was pleased with his guide's efforts "until he became familiar with the Handycam. Then he decided to get artsy and move the camera around too much." Price uncovered a prosaic plus. "My guide was pleased to have the diverFor more inlormation write to:

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