EVENT >
Conflict in Georgia
LOCATION > Tbilisi, Georgia and Vladikavkaz, Russia
DATE
> August 2008 to present
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CONFLICT IN GEORGIA. In this
issue, Eurovision's Olivier Lalo and Dirk Verhulst give us their thoughts
on the challenges they faced covering the recent conflict in Georgia. Olivier ran the coverage from Tbilisi; Dirk was based in
Moscow.
OLIVIER LALO:
It was a long haul just to
arrive in Tbilisi. On Monday, August 11, I caught the first flight out of
Geneva and headed to Istanbul to connect with the rest of the crew.
Originally, we had planned to catch a connecting flight into Tbilisi.
However, the airport had been closed down that afternoon. Instead, we flew
to Trabzon, a Turkish city located 200 kilometres from the Georgian border
twon of Batumi. We arrived at dawn - just in time to cross the border.
We crossed the border by foot with all our equipment and then hired cars plus a van for the 25 boxes of equipment. Twelve hours' drive later, we arrived in South Ossetia. It was total chaos: bridges destroyed, roads cut away, tanks and soldiers were everywhere.
When we arrived in Tbilisi late in the faternoon, my primary concern was finding a safe but accessible place to set up our operation to provide proper live positions and room to install our satellite dish. Unfortunately, the two largest hotels in Tbilisi were already fully booked and full of media. I wanted to be near the broadcasters so I could make sure they didn't lose precious time just getting to our location. I had to decide in a hurry about where to base our operation.
In the old touristic part of town, I spotted some little hotels. One had a large terrace offering a beautiful shot onto the city. That little hotel would become our home for the next few weeks.
Just two hours later we were fully operational, offering live stan ups and tape play outs; we were fully booked on our two outputs. We went on working at full throttle day and night, grabbing what little sleep we could. Every other little hotel around us was booked and our area quickly became the main operational media centre in Tbilisi. The day Russian troops left the city, media attention started to focus once again on the Olympics games in Beijing.
DIRK VERHULST:
Having established a feed point in Tbilisi, we also
needed to organize facilities for correspondents covering the conflict
from the Russian side. Since the Russian Army Headquarters were based in
Vladikavkaz, the capital of the North Ossetia in Russia, Eurovision
decided to send its SNG to that city. Vladikavkaz is located roughly 2,000
kilometres from Moscow. It took two days for our engineers to bring the
SNG, playout facilities and two fully equipped live standup positions to
Vladikavkaz. A camera man flew in on Tuesday, August 12 and our feed point
was fully operational on that day.
Without a doubt, the biggest challenges were in getting to Vladikavkaz quickly and running a fully-fledged news operation with only two engineers and one camera man. We knew there was no other way, however, a staff shortage in Moscow meant this was how it had to be done. For four days, three people operated the feed point with multiple playout formats and two fully equipped live standup positions. It was a tremendous challenge and the Eurovision team handled it incredibly well.
OTHER OPERATIONS COMPLETED IN
AUGUST
Merkel-Medvediev meeting, Sochi,
Russia
Putin's visit to China, Beijing, China
SCO Summit, Dushanbe, Tajikistan
Democratic National Convention,
Denver, Colorado, USA
European Union Foreign Ministers in Brussels,
Belgium
NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels, Belgium
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