Idaho's Anchorman

"Idaho's Anchorman: Jay Hildebrandt's Lifetime of Broadcast News" won third place in the feature documentary division at the LDS Film Festival. The full documentary is available via YouTube at the end of this post.

Receiving Award at 2020 LDS Film Festival

After thirty-five years as the main news anchor at KIFI Local News 8 in Idaho Falls, Idaho, Jay Hildebrandt decided it was time to move on to the next season of his life. He was ready for retirement.

I got to know Jay first as a news viewer who grew up in the Idaho Falls broadcast area, next as a friendly competitor when I worked at a competing TV station, and finally, as a friend and colleague as we worked together teaching at Brigham Young University-Idaho.

 

Poster for Idaho's Anchorman Documentary

 

Jay stopped by my office at BYU-Idaho after class one day as he was nearing retirement. We chatted for a while, and  I suggested doing a documentary about his career as a TV news anchor would be great. He agreed, and we started to brainstorm.

"Bro." Hildebrandt with one of his classes at BYU-Idaho

 

Fortunately for me, Jay had already started to put together some short segments highlighting various aspects of his career. With that as a starting point, Jay made a list of some of the many stories he'd been combing through from his archives. Jay had dubbed over a variety of stories from old 3/4 inch and other old tape formats. 

 

Old 3/4-inch Umatic Tape Deck
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-matic#/media/File:SONY_BVU_800.jpg

 

Jay anchoring the news in Twin Falls, Idaho

 

We set up a day to meet at the KIFI TV station in Idaho Falls to do an interview and gather some b-roll. I used a DJI Osmo 2 smartphone gimbal to get behind-the-scenes shots of the newsroom and set before and during the 6 p.m. newscast.

 

After the newscast, we set up on the anchor desk to do an in-depth interview. It was a lot of fun. Jay is a consummate professional and was articulate and easy to chat with. After about an hour, I had plenty of great stories to go with Jay's plentiful archive footage. 

Jay Hildebrandt on set at Local News 8

 

Brian Howard on the other side of the camera.

 

Over the next few days, I reviewed the interview and the archival footage and started to form an outline. I also remembered doing an in-depth interview with Jay almost ten years earlier for a TV program I host and produce called Latter-day Profiles. In that program, Jay shared some great stories I didn't get in our interview at the TV station. The video quality was SD, but it fit well with the rest of the archival footage. Instead of doing a second interview, I used multiple segments from the Latter-day Profiles episode.

 

Latter-day Profile interview from the archives.

Over the next few weeks, I spent an hour or so each evening piecing the documentary together between grading for my day job and other family and church responsibilities. I exported a rough cut and sent a copy to Jay via a private YouTube link. He liked the direction it was going, so we ventured on. Jay was an excellent contributor, shooting interviews with his kids about what growing up with a dad as the local news anchor was like. The interviews fit in perfectly with the last segments of the documentary.

I pitched the documentary to the news director and general manager at NPG of Idaho / KIFI-TV. We worked out licensing so I could use the archival footage from the station. They decided to air the documentary on their digital over-the-air station 8.4.

When I took on the documentary project, one of my primary goals was to have it ready in time to submit to the LDS Film Festival. I finished it in time and submitted it via Film Freeway. I got to know the new owner of the LDS Film Festival, Kels Goodman, at the Latter-day Saint Publishing, Media & the Arts Association Conference. He is a great guy; you can watch an interview with him on the Latter-day Profile website.

The documentary was accepted into the festival. I had never attended the LDS Film Festival before. It was a great experience. The festival was in February 2020 at the SCERA Theater in Orem, Utah.

 

 

 

 

The 2020 Schedule for the LDS Film Festival

 

            

Idaho's Anchorman: Jay Hildebrandt's Lifetime of Broadcast News

 

Idaho's Anchorman screened at the LDS Film Festival