18 Must Have Skills Required By A TV News Cameraman.

Not so long ago, i wrote the Top 10 tips to being a TV news cameraman. Well, they were the basics. You see, most TV news cameramen have an inbuilt ability to do things that a great deal of other people are unable to. I have noticed this over the years as i have mixed with lens luggers from a multitude of TV news broadcasters.

These skills are learned from the hard and sometimes bitter experiences we find ourselves in, along with the must have abilities that come from being in a job that requires tact, diplomacy and the ability to function on minimum sleep.

Hello my love... Hmm..? No it's not late, go back to sleep. ( See No 18.)

Years ago, before the manifestation of the ukcameraman you know and love, i was in the Army. The Army taught me much needed skills like the avoidance of authority figures, the making of a perfect egg banjo and the ability to knock one out in a sangar whilst facing the enemy at 3am on stag watch... and to drink heavily. Sadly the BBC won't give me a gun, so these skills are no longer required by a modern, forward thinking, suave and sophisticated metrosexual cameraman.

So here is a list, curated here at the ukcameraman institute of TV news studies during my lunch break, of those skills that are required of a modern day TV news cameraman....

1. The ability to wake up at 4:00am for a breakfast news shoot, get dressed in the dark and leave the house without waking the missus. (Bitter experience has taught us this skill.)

2. The ability to achieve skill No1 at 4:30am after you dozed off, without being late for the live shoot.

3. The well rehearsed skill of finding and getting spot on, the bubble level on the tripod... In the dark.

4. The ability to sense and feel the oncoming rain storm and fitting the camera rain slicker before it hits, and not to tell your reporter.

5. The ability to find the one and only place in a 5 mile radius where you can make a cup of tea.

6. The ability to get along with the one person in any given news room that everyone else hates.

7. The innate ability to flirt with a good looking interviewee / reporter / Minister of State, without being labeled a drooling letch.

8. The ability to convince anyone that it can be fixed with a roll of gaffers tape and a Leatherman tool... And then showing them how.

9. The skill of staying cool and calm when your camera is on and working, when the sat truck engineer screams... "We've lost the signal...!" No, No, No... YOU'VE lost the signal...

10. The zen like ability not to throttle your reporter on the 15th take.

11. The hard won ability, through years of being on your patch, of not needing to switch on your sat-nav.

12. The ability to 'look busy' whilst in the crew room with nothing more than a small length of flex, a pencil and a soldering iron.

13. The ability to know that shit rolls downhill, and not being at the bottom level, sitting next to the new intern.

14. The skill of driving at warp factor 9, eating a bacon sandwich with a cup of tea and not to spill or drop any.

15. The ability to sleep whilst leaning upright on a tripod / in a sat truck / in a hedge / court steps, without looking like the local tramp.

16. The skill of knowing who to avoid whilst recording vox-pops / political interviews.

17. The ability not to laugh at a newspaper reporter, (to his face,) who is filming his news piece with an iPad.

18. The ability to get undressed, have a shower in the dark and get back into bed at the end of a long day without waking the missus. (See No1...)

So there you have it. By no means a full and comprehensive list, and anyway, it's late and 18 skills were all i could think of. So if you have any more skills that the cameraman world needs to know about, please leave a comment... Thank you very much and don't wake the missus.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

www.media-attention.co.uk

Little Known Facts about TV News Cameramen.

We film the days news don't we..? That's it. Not much to it. You would be wrong my friend, oh so very very wrong. TV News camera operators all over the world have contributed to the growth of nations, the appliance of science, the exposure of wrong doings, and are largely responsible for the meteoric rise of the cheese puff industry.

NBC Cameraman Dwight Finklestein, just before ejection from the lunar module of Apollo 13.

 There are a great many previously unknown facts about news camera operators that the average TV News watching citizen doesn't know. For example...

1. The inexorable rise in fast food and coffee outlets is directly linked to the advent of the TV news cameraman. In 1945, just as Army newsreel cameramen came home from the war, a certain Colonel Sanders overheard a passing NBC cameraman say... "I would kill for a piece of fried chicken and a luke warm latte right now." He told his wartime friend, Hercule Starbuck, and the rest as they say, is history.

2. Cameramen are basically lazy creatures. While sitting in a traffic queue one day,  newsreel cameraman, Augustus T. Thruppence, got fed up with shifting from first to second to first gear, whilst dabbing the brakes every five seconds. Two months later, the first automatic gearbox was invented in his shed.

3. Early newsreel cameramen are directly responsible for the Bow Tie becoming fashionable again in the early Thirties. This was due to BBC cameraman Bert Cumberbatch who, whilst operating a wind up film camera, got his tie caught up in the mechanism resulting in his slow strangulation on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice, London.

4. Sciatica is a painful inflammation of the nerves in the lower back. Most TV News cameramen will suffer from back problems. The medical term 'Sciatica' was actually named after an Italian American cameraman, Pauly Sciaticalli, who was always on the sick with his bad back. He is also responsible for coining the terms 'Bastardo' and 'Yo Mamma,' during visits to his chiropractor.

5. Sleeping sickness was until recently, thought to be caused by the Tsetse Fly. Further investigation by the World Health Organisation has revealed however, that the cause originated from a small ball of fungus, found in a TV live truck in East Anglia, UK. This is why, whenever you open a live truck door, everyone is asleep inside.

6. TV News Cameramen also have a hand in the world of fashion and Haute Couture. The size of the leg pockets on a pair of cargo pants were directly linked to the size of tapes and batteries carried by a TV news cameraman. Modern, small SD cards have now rendered this obsolete, resulting in the sacking of 250 sweat shop children who made them.

7. TV News Cameramen used to be paid huge sums of money until recently. The International News Cameraman's Club of Grand Bahama has now moved location to a bedsit in South East Peckham, London.

8. A little known fact about Moon mission Apollo 13, was the inclusion of NBC TV News Cameraman Dwight Finklestein on the flight. Unknown to his superiors at NASA, Finklestein smuggled aboard 6 packets of cheesy puffs to eat whilst on the long flight. The moon landing never happened due to a cheesy puff escaping its packet and getting lodged in the air tank pipes. Finklestein was airbrushed from history following his ejection from the lunar module on re-entry to earths orbit, just after Commander James Lovell punched him in the face.

9. The term 'Press Scrum' originates from the original Latin saying, 'Informitus Scrummagius.' It was first used when scribes and sketch artists from the Rome Herald rushed to the scene of the assassination of Julius Caesar.

10. The word 'Cameraman' is now somewhat of a misnomer. Women camera operators have always formed a large percentage within the TV news industry. Modern terminology of the word also now includes producers, runners, interns and the cleaner. Also it appears, anyone with a smart phone.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

www.media-attention.co.uk