/* fivel rothberg */

i shot an interview last tonight with ira goldstein of the new york city taxi and limousine commission. the interview will be included in a short documentary that i’m making about the effects of technological upgrades in nyc cabs. the new technology – gps and credit card machines – were highly contested additions. in fact, the new york taxi workers alliance (NYTWA) organized a city wide strike over the issue in october 2007, before the legislation took effect. at this point i’ve interviewed bill lindauer of NYTWA, javaid tari of NYTWA, professor edward rogoff of baruch college and ira goldstein.

in terms of the subject matter, the interview with mr. goldstein was interesting because it was great to hear a government official talk directly about issues that don’t neccessarily get touched on. in particular, i was interested in hearing where the advertising money goes. the gps / credit card machines in nyc cabs now have the capability to display ads on their screens. it was not clear who directly benefits – the medallion owner, fleet owner, or machine vendor. it seems like it’s simply a means of reducing costs for the medallion owners as they pay less money in leasing fees on the machines if they agree to have ads on the screens.  Yet from a taxi driver’s perspective, they could care less because they still pay a 5 % service charge with every credit card swipe.  And the cabbies aren’t particularly happy about hearing the same ads cycle over all day.  One person I spoke to, Bill, joked about how “these are the same people who had recorded celebrity voices – including Elmo – telling passengers to ‘buckle up’ every time they got in the cab.  It drove cabbies nuts.”  Can you imagine hearing Elmo say “Buckle Up For Safety” over 30 times a day?  yikes.

just from a filmmaking perspective what i find amazing is that everytime you turn off the camera people say far more coherent and interesting things than when on-camera. on the one hand it tells you just how practiced some folks are at acting ‘natural’ when on-camera. on the other, there must be filmmakers out there who have some amazing techniques that get people to relax.

there’s also the fact that i didn’t notice the subject’s lav mic wire had come out from behind his tie and was dangling across his body. yikes. during the interview i was just concentrating on asking the questions, listening to his responses and going with the flow of the conversation. then, after looking at the footage – wham – there it is. it feels like such an amateur mistake. and who wants to make amateur mistakes? grrrr.

that being said, i’m going to go over the footage again tonight. b/c i know the wire wasn’t visible the entire time, so there must be useful segments in there.