Meet the technicians behind Wake Up!

BUFFALO, NY (WIVB) - The Wake-Up! crew behind the scenes has the incredibly important job of making 4 hours of news run smoothly on the air.

The people who have that responsibility work in the control room and the edit bays at News 4.

"We have a lot of different people working on this shift and we all have to work as a team," says Tyrone Christopher, Wake Up! director.

He calls the shots from the control room making graphics, and cueing up video, sound, microphones, and camera shots. All which requiring a lot of focus.

"I try to visualize the show in my head before I actually do it so that I try to eliminate some mistakes," continues Christopher.

The few times there are mistakes, it's Ty's job to make them go away, "Hopefully you won't see it on the air at home," he says.

There are also video editors. Each story on Wake Up! with just a few seconds of video actually originates from several minutes or even hours of video.

Editors like Chris Broadbent use a computer to digitally cut it all down keeping graphic or disturbing video on the cutting room floor.

"You've gotta be real careful when you're editing the story to make sure something like that doesn't get on air," says Broadbent.

The editors also try to change the video to avoid repetition during the four hours of news.

"Maybe show the viewers something different at 6:30 that they didn't see at 6. That also relates to the producers. They change their scripts up a little bit, it gives you the opportunity to maybe put a different shot in in the next show just to give people a different look at what happened that day," Broadbent explains.

Inside the studio itself are two floor crew members.

Technicians like John Lawrence check wireless microphones and lights, and manually run the teleprompter since the anchors can't possibly memorize four hours of news. They speed up the prompter and slow it down depending on our pace.

"That's a really integral part of us doing our job. Yeah any anchor will tell you it's the most important job right here," says Lawrence.

One person also moves the three cameras robotically.

"People don't realize how much chaos there is behind the scenes, cameras running into the set or colliding together," Lawrence says.

Everyone agrees it's controlled chaos. And it takes teamwork to choreograph and execute 4 hours of news, and make it come off as effortless to viewers at home.