Squeeky Bum Time.

News Producers... Need i say more...? Well i'll show 'em. This week you may be aware that yours truly is covering the Olympic Torch relay around our green and soggy land, on the behest of the BBC. Long days screaming around the countryside with your hair on fire and smoke eminating from every car tire.

Squeeky bum time... Will your hero make it...?  'Course he will.

Not only that, our producers have given us cameramen the  herculean task of flitting between one overcrowded destination to another, with little time in between. ( Usually 3 locations per cameraman, per day. ) This can be a tiresome task on normal news gathering days, but when your next location is potentially filled with around 40.000 people... that's right... FORTY THOUSAND..! and their cars, it can fill a cameraman with the fear of God that he won't be making to his next filming location.

This almost happened to your intrepid torch bothering lensman today when i was required to drive between Winchester and Andover, with an hour to do it in. Piece of piss did i hear at the back...? Well, please bear in mind that me and my van were in competition with thousands of other people and cars who wanted to leave Winchester at the same time... So it took me 20 minutes just to get out of the car park.

Now, one thing you need to know about us lens slingers, we know short cuts. Routes that only us, tramps and policemen will know. So thanks to a little knowledge of backroads and a willingness to drive down a one way street the wrong way, can save a little time and the ire of your news producer who i know is doing this just to test me. I'm sure they look on a map, see that locations are only three inches apart and say "No problem... It's not that far..."

Driving to Andover... 'twas a piece of piss.

So as i arrive in Andover with 3 minutes to spare and abandon the van on double yellows. I run into the town centre leaving a trail of Grannies and small children in tears behind me. I turn on the camera and hit record... just as the Olympic Torch rounds the corner and hoves into view. Quite simply i had around a spare 5 seconds or so, or i would have missed it.

So there you go, news producers of this world... Give it your best shot. It's like water off a ducks back. Speaking of which, it's still raining from time to time here in good old Blighty. Looky here... I'll prove it.



Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

www.media-attention.co.uk

Soggy Olympics... Day One.

Just a short post today as i am quite busy over the coming week, what with wringing my clothes out and trying to find dry socks... That sort of thing.

I know i go on and on about our good old British weather, but for Christs sake is there no let up...? Today is day one for me following the Olympic Torch around the South of England, and it hasn't stopped yet. If i get much more of this i think it's a possibility that i may be found dissolved at the roadside, a sort of puddle of cameraman porridge.



On another note, i had my first brush with Olympic security today at Dorney Lake, where the rowing will take place. For a large puddle in the ground it sure is well protected. Nothing serious, and not the security teams fault, but when your name is not on the list, or accreditation has not been issued, problems like this will occur. I did however, manage to get on a school bus who were on their way to see the torch... I think the beard and the grump gave me away though. I hate to see little children cry.

Turn off the engine sir... Trousers down, bend over... This won't hurt much.

 Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter

www.media-attention.co.uk

A Newsreel Cameraman's Letters Home. Burma, c1942.

For anyone interested in the way things used to be done in the TV News gathering industry, a new book has been published by a good friend of mine in the USA, Amanda Emily, who runs a fine website called The Dope Sheet. To see if i could find anything for her next book i took a trip to BBC Bush house, London, where they are preparing to leave. During my visit i came across a small bundle of letters in the archives marked:

'Newsreels: Personal, Mr Jack Furtling-Titmuss. (Cameraman) WW2'

Now, being of a nosey disposition, i read one of the letters and what it revealed was a wealth of information as to life as a newsreel cameraman back in the days of WW2 and film cameras. For historical reasons, i have decided to publish the first of these letters for you to read. I hope you like it as much as i did.

Burma, 1942 with my ever faithful Char-Wallah.

 Burma. 6 January 1942.

Clarissa Furtling-Titmuss,
14 Ffarte Gardens,
Hardon-cum-Studley
Oxon,
UK.

My dearest Clarissa,

As you know my dear, being of flat foot and unable to serve in His Majesties forces, I rue the very day i signed on for this BBC newsreel filming job. Following the fall of Rangoon to the Japs, I and the BBC Newsreel team retreated into the jungle. I miss the hotels, crisp clean sheets and profligate gambling. I now find myself in a shell-scrape with the 14th Yorkshire (East Riding ) Regiment of Foot and Mouth ( Territorials ). We seem to be fighting off the Japs on a daily basis, who swarm everywhere in the jungle like bees.

Our dispatches to London are on at the cinemas next week. Amazing just how quickly we can send our films back what with an RAF runway close by, 8 days from camera to cinema. An amazing feat of modern technology i'm sure you will agree. 

The jungle humidity is stifling, making my BBC issue camera easily susceptible to rust. Oil is reserved for weapons only, so i find myself making do with the Char Wallah's curious oil substitute to loosen the spigots and shutter. A white sticky concoction consisting of i know not what, but only comes in thimblefuls once a day. He's always got a sweat on that chap… but it does the trick. May have to get you to make some upon my return to Blighty when i get around to getting the recipe. Not speaking the local lingo, sign language prevails, but it seems to involve a lot of whisking….

My dear Clarissa i miss you so. Sleeping in the mud next to my BBC correspondent James, is a trifling disconcerting. Regular consumption of the local whiskey means the chap snores frightfully, bringing our location under Jap sniper fire on many an occasion. This earns us a severe berating from the Sergeant Major of our rifle company to whom we are attached.

My BBC Correspondent, James Gaultier Stickleback Jones, is an ex Coldstream Guardsman. 3rd generation. His father Crispin, was the Colonel in charge of a British forces expeditionary unit during the ill fated attack on Reims by the Germans during WW1, Terribly good show. Being the only survivor of that attack earned him a bar to his DCM, which he won by attacking a Boche machine gun position dressed only in his scanties and tin hat.

Made of good stock though is James, only last week he saved my life. When attacked by local Burmese tribesmen, he fired a warning shot straight between the eyes of their chieftain, with his fathers service revolver. All the while taking notes for dispatch to the BBC in London.

In other news, there was much rum goings on in the camp last night, Gunner Perkins fell asleep in his bunk with a lit cigarette. The resulting fire and screaming brought the entire front line on stand-to, until the fire was put out. Clean water being a scarce commodity in the jungle, the fire was extinguished by the combined bladder efforts of 6th and HQ Company. By morning Perkins and his bunk had disappeared and there was much mumblings amongst the troops.

The Regimental Sergeant Major boosted morale though, by announcing a suckling pig barbecue for that very evening. Lord only knows where he got the lumps of pork from, but morale has indeed lifted. When the Char Wallah produced an unexpected pot of his relish that seemed very similar to his camera oil substitute, smiles were returned all around in the enlisted ranks. Made a delightful change from the daily bully beef with rice.

Now, do not be alarmed my dear Clarissa, but crotch rot has returned with a vengeance. Please send more of mothers goose fat and bandages, as much as you can manage. Filming becomes hard with a camera on your shoulder and the other hand down your trollies to relieve the itch, i'm finding it hard to focus. James's pustulating bum boil was finally lanced last week at the first aid post, using a rifleman's sharpened pull through spike and wire wool pilfered from the Officers mess tent. I must say he took it like a man. Much mirth for the Dhobi Wallah's though, they find it all highly amusing and highly profitable.

Well my dear Clarissa, it is time to sign off this letter. A big push along the Jap lines is expected for the morning and i am tasked to film it for next weeks newsreel films. I do hope you get to see them.

Toodle-Pip,

your loving husband,

Jack.

Well, there you have it. They were certainly different times back then, a world away from the modern technology we have now. There are more letters which i am taking the time to read, and i may post more of them here on this very blog. If i can be arsed.

You can buy Amanda's sparkly new book HERE.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

www.media-attention.co.uk










 

DSLR Cameraman with Chamois Leather Trumps Robot.

Here we go again. Now this time i'm not talking about the merits of this or that DSLR, smartphone or TV Camera. I've talked about that before and will probably do so again. No, this time i want to draw your attention to the use of robotic cameras, you know, cameras without a cameraman. NO CAMERAMAN..! Christ on a bike, we are all up shit creek without a paddle.

Earlier today, my attention was drawn to this article in petapixel.com, about Reuters and the innovative use of robotic cameras for this years Olympic Games in London. That's London, England... You know, the land of eternal sunshine. Now being a cameraman, i like technology, gadgets, and things that go ping... but have Reuters really thought this through...? I was reminded by my good friend and colleague Les Colyer of Razor Television of the TV debacle that was this years Jubilee, where robotic TV cameras were used... In the rain. I don't think they produced one single usable picture from the whole day, although the pictures had to be broadcast because they had no other choice. They were bad... really bad.

Go on... leave your camera out in the rain and then film or take a picture without cleaning the lens. Then take it to your boss and see what he thinks. It would look something like this...

And the winner of the men's 100 metre final is.... Oh fuck.

 Just imagine, the 100 metres men's final, London... in the rain. Or any other event outside... in the rain. I'm not saying it is going to rain, it may, it may not. But this is the UK, so it probably will, even in the summer. Those flesh and blood photographers and cameramen have a good chance to get good clear usable shots with the help of a chamois leather and other assorted lens wiping aides... sleeves, snot rags or a handy Olympic logo'd McDonalds serviette with ketchup on it. The robots though, well they will just have to sit there and hope it doesn't piss down like it has for the past 3 or 4 months in record quantities. Or a spider doesn't spin its web overnight revealing a spiders arsehole to the world when you switch it on in the morning.

I will wait with bated breath for the Olympics to start, and hope that the weather is on our side. The cameramen's side that is... Not the robots, the job stealing shitbags.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

www.media-attention.co.uk

   

Filming The Higgs Boson.

Today is a momentous day for TV news cameramen the world over. News has broken from the large hadron collider in Auric Goldfinger's underground lair that the Higgs Boson, or the 'God particle' has been observed. I watched the TV News earlier this morning with some amusement as reporters, science correspondents, and various egg heads tried to convey the physics behind what had been discovered. Lots of "uum's" "aah's" and "Well, this is really difficult to explain in layman's terms..."

There were lots of in depth graphics from the pixel dept, deep within TV Centre, even ones from Goldfinger himself using Comic Sans. ( The font of champions ) But i was surprised to see that the producers had not tasked a news cameraman with filming one... Now i don't know about you, but even with my best zoom lens, with the doubler on, i struggled to find one of these particles on my bathroom floor this morning. I searched, honest i did. I even lifted the bath mat to see if any Higgs Boson's fell out or were hiding in the nooks and crannies, but alas... I could not find one. If a news cameraman does manage to film one it will be like hitting the payday jackpot.

Higgs Boson's... not easily visible on garden weeds.

On websites and on the TV news this morning, it was explained thus:

"ATLAS will today announce a 5-sigma signal and CMS will announce a 4.9-sigma signal of a new particle with a mass of 126.5 GigaelectronVolts (GeV) and 125.2 GeV respectively"

I opened up my cameras menu and searched for the settings but i couldn't find anything resembling a 4.9-Sigma signal. Not even on my filter 2 on a white balance setting of 3200K. I even tried filming through a magnifying glass but only found a matted clump of long lost facial hair in the sink hole.

This is going to be a tough assignment. Even in the garden, excitement turned to disappointment as i whooped and hollered to the missus that i had found a Higgs Boson, only to be told that it was blackfly on the roses... Buggeration.

I rang a friend of mine who specialises in macro filming. He told me that he saw a tiny black dot in his childs ear hole early this morning, his heart raced as he thought he was the first news cameraman to film a Higgs Boson, but it turned out to be a speck of dust.  It would seem the race is on amongst us news cameramen as to who will be the first to film one...

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.

www.media-attention.co.uk