Are We Getting This?

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Quick! Something particularly exciting has happened! And, for some reason, there's a reporter on the scene, complete with cameraman! At a particularly exciting moment, the reporter has got to turn to the camera and say something to the effect of "Are We Getting This?" The answer is usually yes, but it's anyone's guess as to whether the camera will survive the episode.

Examples of Are We Getting This? include:

Anime and Manga

  • Possible variation: in Naruto: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow, the movie director keeps yelling "Keep filming, keep filming!" every time someone attacks the princess/actress Naruto's group is protecting.
  • A variation (sans the stock phrase) appears in Penguin Revolution when Ryo and his rival Narazaki get into a fight on the set of the Sentai show they're filming. Since the episode being filmed calls for their characters to fight, the director of the episode immediately demands that the cameras start rolling.
  • Used in an episode of Pokémon. The English dub had the reporter comment that Team Rocket was making a dramatic exit through the roof - then she turned to the camera and said gleefully "Just like our ratings will!"
  • This is what happens in Digimon Adventure 02 when some rogue Digimon crash a Christmas Eve concert.

Comic Books

  • An issue of Runaways uses this, only with a little bit more swearing.
  • Used to tragic effect during the Onslaught Saga, with longtime X-Men character Trish Tilby's video report appearing to show the X-Men betraying and murdering the Fantastic Four and Avengers.

Film

  • Die Hard: A reporter asks his cameraman this twice - played straight after a massive explosion inside Nakatomi Plaza, and then sarcastically after being punched in the face by Holly Gennero.
  • In Pearl Harbor, while the Japanese are attacking the titular location, one of the characters is filming the planes coming in with a camera yelling "This is great footage!"
  • [REC] 2 has a priest following a SWAT team through an apartment building, constantly ordering a camerman to film various things they encounter.
  • In The Rocketeer when the eponymous hero takes to the air with his Jet Pack to rescue a friend at an air show.

Literature

  • In Scott Westerfeld's book Extras, the main character, Aya, is constantly asking her hovercam, Moggle, "Are you getting this?"

Live-Action TV

  • Done on Babylon 5, when an Earth reporter gets rare footage of Ambassador Kosh.
  • Asked repeatedly by D'Anna Biers, the reporter in the Battlestar Galactica episode "Final Cut".
  • Said by the remote operators who find the faked wreckage of Oceanic 815 in the Lost episode "Confirmed Dead."
  • Used in a sketch on Saturday Night Live, where the premise is the gang at a frat party and someone is recording the events. One character makes a double entendre, and Jimmy Fallon's character turns to the camera and says "Tommy, please tell me you got that!"
    • In one of the Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches, Will Ferrell as Alex Trebek has this response to a Final Jeopardy! response that could actually be interpreted as correct. ("Where are you?" "Indoors.")
  • Done to perfection in an episode of Sanctuary, where the reporter witnesses a number of nasty things, is duly horrified and then, as soon as she can speak again, asks "did we get that?".
  • The Suite Life On Deck: When Baily's possessed by a an ancient princess, she attacks Zack (as he's being interviewed by a local reporter for discovering an ancient artifact.) Her response?

Reporter: Get this! This will be better than my story on the coconut that looked like Estabon Francesco!

Western Animation

Grace Ryan: (gasps) Are you getting this?
Cameraman: Am.. am I getting footage of me, the cameraman? Absolutely not.