Ronald McDonald and Destiny's Child

This post comes to us from Janet.
Thank you for the contribution!

Destiny's Child visits sick children
Ronald McDonald House/ 3pm photo-op
July 30, 2005

I will try to be professional in this post, because I
believe that the PR needs to know how they can prevent
these types of things from happening in the future. I
truly believe that PR meant to give us a good shoot,
however for the second group, this turned out to be an
absolute fiasco. Several points:

1)Random groups: The photogs were split up into two
groups, presumably to shoot in shifts. Sounds good,
only the groups were NOT assigned in order of arrival.
I was approximately No. 10 and ended up in the second
group. For PR, we always line up in order of arrival,
this is the only fair way. It is not fair to flip a
coin and have those arriving last in the first group.

2)First Photo Op: We were promised:
a)that there would be plenty of space
b)both groups would get a photo op.

For the second group of shooters, this was not true at
all. People like Andrea and others refused to leave
when their time was up, preventing the second group
from starting their shoot. By the time we got up
there, Destiny's Child were all over the back of the
room and when Beyonce actually got to an area where we
could shoot, we were practically physically acosted by
security and told DO NOT SHOOT-it's for the kids.
I can certainly appreciate this fact and it's great
that Destiny's Child visited the center, BUT the press
was invited for a photo op.

Why not pose them for 1 minute and then let them
continue to chat with the kids? I don't like to be
made to feel like a criminal when I was invited to
shoot.

3)Second Photo Op-this changed 3 x-first from two
shifts shooting, second to DC posing briefly, then no
posing, 1 minute of shooting to around 20 seconds of
posing.

Again, I can appreciate the fact that these shoots are
variable and subject to the moods and schedules of the
celebs. But in those 20 seconds, DC could have looked
LEFT, RIGHT and CENTER and everyone would have gotten
the shot and walked away happy.

We were promised that we would line up in order of the
list, but again, the second group got totally shafted.
When we arrived upstairs after getting NO SHOTS, all
the spots were taken and 2nd, 3rd row only available
in the corner. We were told "sorry you didn't get your
shots" and then "you have enough shots". Beyonce
didn't look in the corner at all and then PR blocked
the rest of the shots.

The list should have been recalled or at the very
least those 20 seconds could have been used to
everyone's advantage.

I walked away stressed and very agitated with only a
few useless frames.

Something for PR to keep in mind: Photogs get panicky
when they are not getting any shots. If we get a
simple photo op, even for a minute, we generally
behave in a professional fashion. But when chaos
ensues, we become part of that process too, even if we
choose not to.

Extremely disappointing, especially since we were told
in advance this would be a great shoot!