Lifting the lid

Somebody recently asked me about my life, after reading that I’m a writer with a day job in television production. They thought, and I agree, that my previous attempts at describing my work-life were rather basic. They wanted to know what it is I actually do and how I incorporate writing into my everyday life. Well, I’m always up for a challenge…

An old image of me without beard actually doing some work for a change. And no I wasn’t posing for the image. Someone grabbed my camera and took this without my knowledge

First things first; my title. I’m a freelance technical director/supervisor/vision engineer/cameraman/spark/tea boy. In tv land you end up wearing many hats, which can mean my everyday work schedule can be bit of a mess. I can go for long periods of sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, to weeks and weeks of solid work that eats up my entire life. Luckily for me the periods of sitting at home are just great for ploughing through a writing project. At times like these I can basically operate as a professional writer, immersing myself into the world of my stories and only coming up for air for when I need to eat.

But what about when I am required to do my day job; and what exactly is that? Well, I mainly work on sports television presentation. Which basically means I sit in a dimly lit gallery, usually nowhere near the sport I’m actually covering. For example, as I write this I’m sitting in a gallery with a few other like-minded souls waiting for a short production meeting to start. The event we are covering is the Giro D’Italia and I’m located nowhere near sunny Italy; West London to be precise.

So what is it I actually do? At my most basic level I’m what’s called a technical supervisor, and that means pretty much what it says. I supervise all the technical aspects of the gallery and help keep the ‘ship’ sailing along. But in this world of multi-skilling and tight budgets, I also do a couple of other jobs. I’m also the cameraman. Not the type that stands around with a camera on their shoulder, smoking endless cigarettes and moaning about the quality of the light, (joking aside, actually I don’t know anyone like that), What I do is ‘steer’ four robotic cameras in the studio. With the help of joysticks and touch-screens its just about possible not to cock this job up - but only just! I also ‘rack’ the cameras as I’m listed on the call-sheet as the vision engineer. This means I maintain the exposure and colour balance of the studio cameras, or at least I attempt to. Then there’s the lighting. I’ve always had a passion for lighting, going all the way back to my distant am-dram days. You wouldn’t believe how many studio lights it takes to light three or four people. Then, finally, I help out wherever I can covering various other people depending on the situation.

Lights, camera, action… Hang on the light quality is all wonky. Go again…

All that makes it sound like I’m running around like a headless chicken, but the truth is a little bit calmer than that. Television is made up of a lot of waiting around, punctuated by short periods of activity and concentration. Whilst the studio is ‘live’ things can get very serious, but when we are on the ‘feed’, cycling in Italy in this case, things get pretty chilled. We chat, we snack, we check facebook; all while keeping one eye on the output. It’s at times like these that I can do a little writing or some artwork on my laptop. For instance, with the cycling, when the race is actually on we are just ‘sitting’ on the pictures coming out of Italy and the gallery is a quiet and serene place. That can mean several hours of not much to do in the gallery. Of course this is not a given. It changes from job to job. Some jobs are quite quiet, while others are rather intense with little ‘down’ time. Luckily, being freelance I get to pick which companies I work for and so I can balance the jobs against each other.

What this basically means is that, as a writer, I can do a lot more tapping of the keyboard than other people can do in their jobs. Other writers who hold down a more traditional working week have to write outside of their working hours, during the evenings and weekends. Of course they get salaries, pensions, holidays and the like but I’m not complaining.

Anyway, I hope that brief overview goes some way towards explaining what I actually do. Television can be the most rewarding, thrilling, creative place to work. It can also be the most, difficult, stressful and tiring environment but I kind of like it. It’s been part of my life for over twenty-three years and I’m only just starting to get used to it. I just wish the canteen food was better, that’s all!

Shhh! The production meeting has started - I’ll talk later…