You know when you watch the news and see a mass of media people swarming around something/one? Yes? Well I like to call that a media mosh pit.
Play some music and they'll start jumping up and down?
Like a cyclone or tornado, the media mosh pit varies in size and intensity. However I have found the craziest of media mosh pits seem to occur outside of court and around politicians.
Here's a particularly spectacular Anchorman moment from Western Australia, where Channel Seven courageously attempted a live television cross with anchor Rick Ardon, in the midst of a media mosh pit during the Lloyd Rayney trial.
I liken the media mosh pit to a game of basketball - media mosh pitters have to keep on their toes, with their elbows held firmly out, as fellow media mosh pitters inadvertently (and sometimes on purpose) trip up, push and generally get in each others way as they attempt to score that darned clear shot, whether it be a picture, video or an audio recording.
And sometimes, if they're not paying enough attention, media mosh pitters stack it. Badly.
I’ve seen some epic stacks in my time. From camerafolk falling flat on their face to save their camera, to a murder suspect handing back a journalist’s shoe, as she sat on the ground bewildered.
Heck, even a much younger version of me was threatened to have my camera thrown down the stairs by a federal politician during a media mosh pit. (It made national news. Video below).
No one is immune to the media mosh pit stack, as so I discovered last week at the WA Labor press conference.
As Mark McGowan and Kim Beazley casually walked and chatted their way up the stairs of the Joondalup train station for the cameras, so too the media mosh pit followed in its usual frenzy. I was nicely lined up in the middle of the pack for that darned clear shot until I placed my weight bearing foot half-way across a piece of decorative concrete.
DECORATIVE. CONCRETE.
In defence of the decorative concrete's designers, they probably didn't have the media mosh pit in mind when they put it there, but alas it was there and over I went. Right in front of all of the camera folk and politicians.
Thankfully, a fellow media mosh pitter could see the decorative concrete stack unfolding next to him and kindly grabbed my arm and yanked me up before it became yet another truly epic media mosh pit stack.
As any good cameraperson does, I kept rolling, so here's a POV documentation of a media mosh pit stack, for your viewing pleasure.
PS: I think I owe that bloke a beer!