A Tiger in the...

NOTE: I worked as an employee of IIW for 2 1/2 years and then I transitioned to Adventist Media Productions, the central production wing of the Adventist Media Center. I continued to work on the lighting crew (more on that later) as an employee of AMP and later as a freelancer. This tiger show was shot after I left IIW. As a result, I was working on the lighting crew and got to watch this on a monitor behind a very stout block wall!).

One of the challenges of producing a weekly show is keeping the content fresh. It took time, creativity and a willingness to take risks. Back in the day, before his transition to TV, George Vandeman made his name telling stories of far flung places (often supported by film) and tying the stories into his sermon. The IIW production team constantly tried to maintain this feeling of adventure on very tightly constrained budgets!

So this event had been planned for months. It was a matter of bringing the mountain to Mohammed. The show, "How to Live With a Tiger" required getting a real live tiger in the studio as a prop. In my vague memory, the show had been done years before but it needed an update and so...a tiger came to the set. (I was able to confirm this due to the excellent archives at the It Is Written website and a great recent conversation with Kathy Jones, who was a very big part of the production team .)

The tiger was then allowed to "wander" around the set, with a stout chain around its neck. The amazing animal ended up in George's make-believe office area on the far right of the stage. It then hopped on the desk for a rather dramatic shot!

The trainer spent a fair amount of time placing the chain and himself out of sight so we could get shots of the tiger. The trainer would periodically instruct the tiger to lay down and he would calm it with quiet talk and a treat (a rather sizable hunk of meat). There had been a great deal of discussion about no flash photography and no sudden movements. You could have heard a pin drop and everyone who had to move moved very slowly. 

At one point. Dave Jones, instructed one of the cameramen, a veteran Hollywood pro) to pull back a bit. He piloted a large camera and dolly around the studio. It was not easy to move quickly! After Dave's instruction, he whispered on the stage intercom, "Sure, no problem, I'll pull out to the parking lot!" The tension was high.

George came on set and in hushed conversations with the trainer and stage manager, Kathy Jones, the tiger was carefully positioned lying next to George at his desk. At that point, it became clear how brave George was! This was a very powerful animal and while the chain around his neck was hidden as much as possible and the trainer was just outside of the camera frame, George was extremely vulnerable.

Finally, all the static shots were done and it was time for George to begin the process of recording the opening to the show. We got a couple of takes and suddenly the tiger, for reasons known only to itself, jumped up and started to rush George.The trainer instantly threw himself between the charging tiger and George and stopped the charge. It took a couple of minutes for the trainer to direct the tiger off the set and out into the parking lot. Once it was out the door, breathing and the OMGs began! The show finished with George petting a tiger cub by his desk, a much safer, if not as impressive a shot, of George and tigers.

To his everlasting credit, George was calm and collected throughout the process! He left the stage, while the crew reset for a regular taping session, and minutes later he walked back in like nothing had happened.