Word: verna
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Such shots require a precise and intimate knowledge of the game, and no one is more aware of what is called for than CBS Director Tony Verna, the man who will choreograph the coverage of this week's Super Bowl. An 18-year veteran of TV sports coverage, he has been drilling his squad of 100 technicians and production people with the single-minded drive of an electronic Vince Lombardi. He is studying game films and continually revising his play book, a 36-page treatment of the deployment and minute-by-minute moves of men and equipment...
During a game, every time the quarterback calls signals, the TV cameramen have to second-guess him. Lest they be faked out, they learn like any linebacker that when the offensive linemen charge, it is usually a run; when they pull back, it is a pass. Verna's goal is to place the viewer on the 50-yd. line and then, through the cameras, let his eyes roam as they might if he were actually in the stadium. When a field-goal attempt is imminent, for example, the scene cuts to the kicker warming up on the sidelines. When...
...Verna is only too well aware that despite the sophisticated electronic devices, TV is not infallible. In a game between the Washington Redskins and the San Francisco 49ers, Quarterback John Brodie fouled things up by faking out the defense-and the CBS cameraman-to hit Wide Receiver Gene Washington with a 78-yd. scoring bomb. All that appeared on home screens was a shot of Washington loping into the end zone. Like Lombardi, though, Verna wins more than he loses. In a similar situation in another 49ers game, Verna was so confident that Brodie would throw to Washington that...
...have a seance, and strange things happen. One girl, Mickey, falls into a trance followed by a fit of hysterics. Did what she see in the trance actually occur, or is there some conventional explanation like repressed sexuality? Paula scoffs at the idea that the vision was real. Verna, an insidious looking woman with an East European accent, dares her to offer herself as a victim for some occult event. More strange things happen...
...Oates will also continue to act in carefully chosen roles. "On the surface he's a scruffy, funky, Okie guy, but he has a quiet thing going underneath that makes him extraordinary as an actor," says Verna Bloom, who played opposite him as the wife in The Hired Hand. Without boasting, Oates acknowledges a mature quality in his own work. "I don't get fan letters from little girls," he says, "but I do get them from doctors, lawyers, writers and professors. You see," he explains thoughtfully, "I try to give whatever I play a morality...