:: Earl Green - Freelance Television Writer / Producer ::

For the second story of November sweeps 2006, and the one which would air on Superbowl Sunday, we have this little number about gambling addiction. I shot some of my own material for this one, as the script talked about a roll of the dice…and no such footage existed and we were unlikely to be able to go and get it. So I set up an unlikely contraption at home (consisting of a TV tray, two wooden CD shelves and a slab of plexiglas set up in front of my trash compactor) and shot my own footage with my miniDV camera, rolling a couple of dice from a Monopoly game right into the camera lens (or, more accurately, right into the plexiglas that was set up in front of it). It quickly became apparent that it was going to be really difficult to get the dice to land where the camera could see them, while still making it look like I was giving them a good throw. Hopefully it looks more like a craps table than a crap table. The rest was filled out with some footage we requested from CNN and ABC; the only actual original footage from the package was that of our anonymous interview subject’s hands holding a Gamblers Anonymous pamphlet.