Haleakala and the Vienna Boys Choir-Part 1

During the time I worked at  It Is Written (1977-80), we would do a couple of  two week-long video shoots for the show in the studio at the Adventist Media Center in Thousand Oaks. During these shoots, we'd record 35+ shows we needed for the year.

This involved constructing an elaborate set on the sound stage, hanging and focusing over a hundred light fixtures, bringing in an 18 wheeler mobile control room, assembling 20+ freelance and media center staff and then working 12 hour days for two weeks (well, except for the Sabbath, in the middle).

It was grueling for the crew and it was definitely a chore for George Vandeman, the speaker/director, who was in his early 60s. His was one of the hardest jobs. The whole show rode on his performance and he was, with rare exceptions, a trouper!

During this particular shoot, we had hired the Vienna Boys Choir to perform several numbers for our Christmas show and it happened that on the day they were there, we taped a couple of shows in the morning and the afternoon was dedicated to getting the choir taped.

The first show of the morning was about creation and it featured a short history of the indigenous Hawaiians and their deities represented by the very active volcanoes on the islands. The script required George to name several of these indigenous gods and volcanoes as we worked through the script. These scripts were on a teleprompter and he just needed to read the text. Then, midway through the show, he had to say "Haleakala." That word, for some reason, got stuck between his brain and his mouth.

We would roll tape and he’d mispronounce it. This was not a particularly unusual process when taping a half hour show. Even at It Is Written, perfection was unobtainable. Normally, he'd stumble, correct himself, pronounce it again correctly and then say, "Ok, there, I've got it." (Remember that phrase.) We'd simply slate a new take and start over a sentence or two before the mistake so we could cover it with a camera cut and he would move on. Usually it only took a take or two to solve the problem. On this day, that system failed.

I remember clearly, because, as the associate director, my main job was to keep track of takes and mark any problems in the script so we could fix any problems that popped up in post-production. After 30 takes, things began to get a little wacky. George was now well and truly discombobulated. We tried everything.

We printed the word phonetically on the teleprompter—no joy. We had the stage manager stand next to him and whisper the pronunciation in his ear and quickly step off camera. Nope. Dave Jones, the director, would pronounce the word on the stage PA and then we'd roll. That didn't work.

Finally, we had him read the script and keep going to the next camera cut even with the mispronunciation, planning to have him just say the word and we would drop it in place during post-production. We got a "good" take and then we settled down to having him just say the word while we rolled tape. Finally, after a couple of hours working on this issue with nearly unusable results, George was exhausted and we decided to give it one more try and then move on, planning to "fix it in post", somehow.

We rolled tape and to the unmitigated joy of George and the crew, he got it! It was take 72!