Getting A Sweat On.

Sometimes in this job, they ask you to do the almost impossible. And sometimes the really impossible. A couple of days ago i was asked to do two jobs in the morning, 1 at 8am and the second at 10am. The first was an easy job, film a rather large model of a dinosaur on Southsea common......

You don't see many of these any more ...

The second job was to film at the Navy Days exhibition in Portsmouth. However, the gates didn't open untill 10am, there was no parking onsite for the press, i had to park about 1/2 a mile away and carry the camera and tripod etc in. Now i don't know if you have ever been into the naval dockyard in Portsmouth, but it isn't exactly small, so another mile or so of walking was involved to get the pictures required. Oh, and then i had to lug all the kit all the way back to the car, and get the all important tape back to the studios in Southampton for broadcast on the lunchtime bulletin at 12.05.

Filming the Royal Navy's new warships.

Yes, it was a bit of a panic and a rush down the M27 was made with about 3 or 4 minutes to spare for the editor to ingest the footage and edit a piece for the bulletin.

A quick cup of coffee and i was on the road to get some pictures of the general hospital for inclusion on tomorrows news bulletin, then off to St Mary's stadium, the home of Southampton FC to film a preview piece for the upcoming season, which meant interviews, match coverage, vox pops and general arty type shots to make the piece more exiting than a normal news item.

St Mary's stadium, Southampton.

So, there you have my day on a Saturday, all tied up neatly into a small bite size bundle for you. But on the day, it was a bit of a scramble around the south coast in order to get the news on time. It's not always this way, but today, i got a bit of a sweat on ....

Paul Martin
http://www.media-attention.co.uk