Here’s the article – thanks to editor James French for the clever headline….

A

Different

View

I was at the Production Show the other day. I turned up at the GTC stand to say hello and grab a free copy of Zerb – always a good read for us ex-cameramen. The spring issue was very big on DV issues, which was a bit of a surprise to me because I didn’t realise how much controversy is still raging, after all this time. I am moved to chuck in my two-penny-worth.

First, a few modest words about me – in the hope of making you read this article to the end. I stopped being a BBC studio cameraman, and GTC member, 24 years ago, back when men were men etc, etc. For the next good, long time I minded my own business, sitting in edit suites and studio galleries, standing on grotty locations, and trying to learn how to type up my scripts, back in the office.

In late 1995,1 was asked to work on a show called Morning Surgery-Hospital Watch for a daily morning audience. The production had put in a budget of a million and a quarter pounds but had been told they ould only have the quarter and they were looking for ways to get round this. I am the guilty person who specified the brand new DV as the answer to their prayers. I created the first BBC DV kit, now seen in their hundreds coming out of White City every day. I cut the foam innards with an electric carving knife in my kitchen, and when nobody in the resource departments would help, soldered up the first sound adaptors at my office desk. Morning Surgery was hailed as a major technical triumph, and I’ve been lecturing on the fallout from it around the country and the world, ever since.

So – why DV?

I understand and sympathise with the criticisms from camera people in Zerb and elsewhere – mostly, they are absolutely right. But to get a proper sense of why, you have to take a much broader view. Let’s work from the top down….

We live in a market economy – most of us don’t rear chickens in our gardens on the best corn feed – we go down to Tescos and buy what’s cheap today. In turn, Tesco buy the cheapest they can get away with selling us – if they go too down market and we don’t buy, they adjust accordingly. Television is exactly the same.

If you are a satellite or cable company, you need product. You aren’t going to get subscribers if you offer a couple of extra channels; you need to offer a bountiful cornucopia of joys to suit all. You aren’t too bothered about what it consists of, so long

as it sells and makes a profit. You bundle channels together, so that your punters have to buy as many bundles as possible to get what they want. To get Cartoon Network for my son, I have to buy about four other channels that I may dip into for about five seconds a week or less. It’s cheap, so I don’t worry. If it got expensive, I’d dump Cartoon Network.

If you are a programme providing company, you sell what you can, to whom you can, for whatever profit you can make. As a very senior accountant at a major ITV company said to me, “carriage is all”. If they can sell their product to a cable or satellite company, and you and I buy it in our bundles, they are home free. It doesn’t matter whether we tune in or not – we’ve paid for the product. Cynical, isn’t it? But the difference between profit and disaster in this area is very narrow – see Mr Micawber – so the programming needs to be cheap.

You can see where we’re headed here…

You are a producer and are offered a long series of docs at £8,000 per half-hour, instead of £80,000, do you take it? Well, it depends – do you want to pay the mortgage or not? Of course you take it, and then you work out how to make it. The first thing you look at is what you can lose and still keep the customer happy – just like Tescos. You have heard about this DV stuff and seen some good results, so you pitch right in and dump your crews. They cost £800 a day, so that’s a decent start. A bit later on, you dump your editors too. If the results you provide please the customer, end of story. If not, you argue a lot and they either take their money elsewhere, or give you a bit more and see if things get better – Tescos again.

Sadly for crafts people, they don’t set the standards, the market does – he who pays the piper etc. – and that’s it.

In the UK, the BBC is in a slightly different, but similar situation to the commercial people. They cannot afford, if they are to survive, to be two channels amongst, say,

160. They have to make more product, but they have a fixed income. Yes, they can hack back on the bureaucrats, but programme costs still have to come down. Yes, presenters cost, but presenters sell shows and crews don’t. Yes, sometimes it looks pretty aver age to the professional eye but, if the customer – in this case a channel controller – is happy, then that’s that. The BBC and all TV companies are just like Tesco; they do the best they can for the money.

There are other aspects to DV, at the programme making level..

A good crew, or editor, is a joy and a bad one is a nightmare, but sometimes there’s just no substitute, no matter what. But, at the end of a shoot, the crew is off to the next one, whilst the director takes his rushes to the edit suite, in hope and trepidation, and carries that project through till it’s on the air. If he didn’t like what the crew provided, he can go elsewhere next time but, right now, it’s too late. Even the best of crews have to be looked after. They are human beings who are working for you and they need to be managed, one way or another. Take them away and, if you can do DV well enough to please the customer, it’s one less thing to worry about – you’re on your own, but you look down your own viewfinder, and hear what you are putting onto

the tape – there are no surprises, good or bad. You work for as many hours as you want, and as many days as you want. Sometimes you have to work in delicate situations, and two people from the TV company are far less intimidating than four or five – or fourteen (in the old ITV days).

The whole DV thing can be very liberating, if you can do it.

Which brings me to training, or the lack of it. It’s true that quite often a researcher, who has done a two-day course and then turns out wince-making results, is replacing a cameraman with many years of experience. This seems stupid and, if it were a fair world, it wouldn’t happen. But it’s not, it’s market driven and all the professional standards in the world aren’t going to make a difference. The customers choose – first the channel controller, then the viewer – not the camera crew. But the days of rubbish results are hopefully numbered. More and more often, when shows take their staff on, they want them DV experienced, and want to see proof. So colleges are beginning to turn out people who can do what’s needed – a different kind of person is beginning to make television, multi-skilled and pretty comfortable with it.

Where does all this leave the traditional camera crew?

Well, if it’s holding a very expensive Beta kit, I’m sorry. Change isn’t going away – so if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. There’s a huge shortage of cameramen who don’t insist on bringing macho sized kit and attitudes to the party. A DV camera at £2,000 is almost identical to a Digibeta at £40,000 – it’s not as good, but it’s not a twentieth of the quality, and it has its own very clear advantages – for example, have you ever done a two-camera shoot in a London taxi? Why not dry hire yourself without your kit, and don’t whinge on about prostituting your art, just because you are holding a VX1000 – it’s the story that matters, and you can help to tell it. Do you want to pay the mortgage or not?