THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 23, 1995 TAG: 9503230056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Interview
SOURCE: Larry Bonko
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines
HOUR AFTER HOUR, day after day, week after week, he sits quietly in the rear of a Los Angeles courtroom, operating the camera that brings the O.J. Simpson trial to millions of people watching television around the globe.
One camera.
It's a Sony.
One cameraman.
He's Chris Bancroft.
Bancroft is tall at 6 feet, 5 inches. He's a bachelor. He's 31. He has a degree in film and TV production from California State U. at Fullerton.
Every live TV picture you see coming from Judge Lance Ito's courtroom - every image of defendant, prosecutor and witness - is beamed out of Los Angeles by Bancroft. While he listens to suggestions from network news executives, no director or producer tells him who to shoot or when.
The cameraman takes orders from only one person. Ito.
When the television camera in the courtroom accidentally focused on an alternate juror for two seconds early in the trial, Ito told Bancroft to stick to wide-angle shots. That sin of photographing the juror was committed when Bancroft was out sick. He won't say who was at the controls that day.
After a week or so of punishing viewers with the static wide-angle shots, Ito loosened up. He decreed that Bancroft's Sony Model 70 I-S camera was again free to roam the courtroom.
``It's a privilege to be the only television cameraman at what people are calling the trial of the century,'' Bancroft said from Los Angeles, when court was in recess. ``Being part of history in the making as the person supplying pictures watched by millions is not such a bad deal.
``And the pay's good.''
One camera. One camera operator. One Sony mounted on a wall about 6 feet above the heads of the jurors and a little to the left of where they sit.
That's it for the TV setup at the Trial of the Century. Sandie Pietz, a sound technician, sits next to Bancroft in the crowded courtroom. The crew on contract to Court TV from CG Productions in Los Angeles consists of but two people - Bancroft and Pietz.
``We're on our own,'' said Bancroft. Court TV shares its courtroom feed with the world. Bancroft has worked for the cable channel for 3 1/2 years.
He has been part of a high-profile trial before. Bancroft ran the camera when the Menendez brothers faced a jury, and when members of the Los Angeles police force were on trial for beating Rodney King.
Now this, another high-profile trial. Make that the highest.
Bancroft called it the camera operator's challenge of the century.
To produce a good picture, you need dexterity and creativity, he said, because the Sony is operated with two joy sticks by remote control from where Bancroft sits behind the last row of spectators.
``You pull back, pan the courtroom and focus in a single motion,'' he explained.
With one camera, Bancroft has to be creative, thinking far ahead to his next shot as he slowly moves the Sony along, as he changes the focus from lawyer to judge to defendant.
If Bancroft isn't as smooth as velvet, he'll have the viewer reaching for the Dramamine. ``The camera is reliable. It works fine. In a courtroom without the best lighting in the world, the camera shines. And it hardly makes a noise when it moves. Once the principals in the trial get into what they are doing, they forget the camera is in the courtroom. It becomes invisible.''
With the camera mounted as it is, the shot of the witnesses is always the same - left profile. The shot of the attorneys is always the same - right profile.
``They're tough angles from up high. Not flattering. I'm always shooting down on them.''
But it could be worse, he said. The camera could be in the back of the courtroom, as it is in several states including some courtrooms in Virginia. And then what would we see all day long on Court TV, CNN and E! Entertainment Television?
You'd see the faces of the judge and witnesses but only the backs of the attorneys. As it is now in Ito's courtroom, Bancroft's camera focuses on judge, attorneys, spectators and Simpson himself.
``O.J. often turns to look at the jury. That gives me the opportunity for good tight shots on his face,'' said Bancroft.
The trial is also covered by three people shooting photographs for newspapers and magazines. They are inside the courtroom while a fifth photographer uses remote control to operate a 35-millimeter camera mounted on a wall near the Sony.
Here's more from the Ito rulebook: Whenever the jurors are moving in and out of the courtroom, Bancroft must focus on the great seal of California above the judge's bench. And Bancroft can't sign on until Ito takes his seat and court is in session.
``That's rule No. 1,'' said Bancroft.
He worries less about accidentally taking pictures of the jurors since the size of the jury has been reduced. There is now room for all the jurors and alternates in the jury box, said Bancroft.
``That helps. They are well out of camera range.''
But just about everything else in Ito's courtroom is taken in by the eye of the Sony. That includes every hourglass on Ito's bench. That includes the calendars on the wall across from where the jury sits.
These images picked by Chris Bancroft's Sony will be on our TV screens for months to come. He's not yet bored with the proceedings, although he has been working the camera since preliminary hearings began last summer.
``There have been some tedious moments. But only a few.''
At times, Bancroft asks himself if what he is taking pictures of is real. Could it be that a famous and respected athlete named O.J. Simpson is truly on trial for not one but two murders? And Chris Bancroft is in the court operating the camera that is sending the pictures around the world?
``I still find it hard to believe,'' he says. ILLUSTRATION: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Court TV's Chris Bancroft operates a remote camera in the Los
Angeles Criminal Courts Building.
by CNB