The camera at work
The way the camera is used and collects images has not changed in many years. The range of people who use it has changed completely. The reason is user-friendliness. Modern light digital cameras are simple to operate and have improved in their picture quality, although sound acquisition has become the biggest problem for any hopeful camera-operator. It is important to distinguish between using the camera for hard news and soft news. With the former you get one chance at the shot, and it can usually mean dangerous or demanding work with a tight deadline; the latter takes place in a more controlled and safer environment better suited to features or background material. There is a place in modern news for both ways of working.
By 2000 the ‘crew’ in some programme units became an obsolete word, with the reporter working alone with a digital lightweight camera, bringing with it an operational flexibility and economy previously unimagined. On the other side of the coin there are plenty of professional camera-operators who took to the task of being roving reporters as well. The post-millennium news-gathering operation has now blurred the distinction between reporter and ‘crew’ in many smaller or narrow-focused programme areas. This also removes the distinction between amateur and professional and so we are familiar now with the term ‘video-journalist’. In specialized programme-making teams working on softer features, such as feature film, music, lifestyle or travel stories, a person can have an idea, film it, script it, edit it on a computer screen and lay the track. It is fast, cheap, flexible and any hazards are easier to predict.
In most of the mainstream news organizations there remains a combination of two skills deployed by two people – the one with the camera, and the one with the words. This remains especially true in covering ‘hard’ news events which are complex, dangerous, stressful, or all three. Many news events, by their nature, are still like that. That is why they are news. Despite the advances in lightweight technology, the case for the professional camera-operator for the tougher television news or current affairs assignment has remained strong.
Figure 11.1 Camera crews in action: ITN cameraman Nigel Thompson and reporter Paul Davies. Pressures on news services to make economies have led to a general reduction in crew numbers. Teams made up of camera-operator and sound recordist still exist but have largely given way to single-crewing. (Photo courtesy of ITN.)
A reporter and separate camera-operator can watch out for one another. The reporter working alone with the camera needs to have considerable regard for health and safety. With one eye fixed onto the camera eyepiece, walking backwards is not recommended, no matter how much the shot will be enriched. Riots and other forms of conflict are not suitable news events to be covered by reporter-video-journalists on their own. Video-journalists, the common alternative word for a combined reporter-camera-operator, can, however, get a lot out of feature events where the environment is easily controlled and the deadline is not fixed. For safety it still means paying attention to how and where the video-journalist stands: avoiding stairwells, precarious edges and behind doors which are likely to open without warning.
Such is the pace of change and development of camera equipment that it is impossible to offer a definitive list of what an individual operator or video-journalist would be expected to carry. Much depends on the range of assignments they might be asked to undertake, personal preference for one type and make of lens over another, and their own working practices, developed perhaps over a number of years. However, what constitutes a basic set of either electronic or digital gear is unlikely to vary wildly from the following:
Figure 11.2 Camcorder built-in microphone. A useful device in many situations, but some occasions call for the use of separate microphones.
camcorder and/or camera and recorder
lenses
video cassettes (wrapped until needed)
batteries and charger (protected from humidity and climatic extremes)
tripod and mounting plate
mains power unit
basic lighting kit for more elegant shots (3 lamps)
stands and barn-doors
filters and diffusers
extension leads and connecting cables
electrical socket adapters
audio mixer
microphones
microphone stands
The batteries give enough power to drive the camera through about an hour of material, depending on conditions, before recharging is necessary. The mains power unit is used when the camera-operator knows that he or she will be able to plug it in to a suitable indoor location for a long period.
Although cameras come equipped with built-in directional microphones, operators often prefer to use any one of a number of different types, according to location, weather conditions, and the availability of other help (usually the reporter).
Figure 11.3 Microphone types.
(a) The battery-powered personal microphone clips to clothing at about chest height;
(b) the gun or directional microphone is usually covered in a light plastic tube;
(c) the simple stick microphone;
(d) radio microphone: a combination of a microphone and a smaller transmitter which can easily be hidden from the audience.
For interviews in particular the most favoured is the battery-powered personal microphone. This is small, light and clips to clothing at about chest height. As it is placed fairly near the mouth, this type of microphone is ideal for interviews or pieces to camera where background noise is intrusive. It is particularly useful when plugged into digital cameras.
The gun or directional microphone is usually covered in a light plastic tube as protection against wind noise. The gun microphone picks up sound through a narrow angle over long range, which enhances its versatility. But it is also inclined to restrict the camera-operator as the microphone (or whoever is holding it) can easily creep into shot by mistake. Its shape is also unfortunate: from some angles it closely resembles a weapon and in some situations this might draw dangerous attention to the user.
A third popular type is the simple stick microphone, held by the reporter. It has no handling noise, can be prepared for use in a very short time, and has the extra benefit of giving the nervous or inexperienced something useful to do with one hand. The stick microphone should be grasped firmly near the top by the fist, not truncheon-like until the knuckles go white or so delicately by the fingertips that it waves about out of control. If used for interviews it should be ‘favoured’ gently towards each speaker, preferably at a distance from each mouth so sound levels can be kept comfortably balanced.
Next comes the radio microphone, which has become one of the essential tools of news reporting. It has the distinct advantage of freeing the user from a lead attached to the camera – which troublemakers learned could be cut as a way of interrupting coverage. The piece of equipment comes in two parts: a microphone and a separate, pocket-sized transmitter. Some early radio microphones were inclined to be temperamental, but reliability has improved enormously and good reception can be expected over about 150 metres.
Other microphone types may be supplied as standard or made available from a general pool for special assignments. These include those fixed to booms above speakers’ heads, and stand microphones, which are well-known for producing high-quality sound at the expense of obtrusiveness.
Camera-operators, being acquisitive creatures by nature, also manage to gather spare parts and various other bits and pieces of equipment over the years in an effort to make their working and personal lives on the road that bit more comfortable. Stout shoes, gumboots, warm clothing and a case containing passport, other documents, toiletries and underwear can usually be found in an odd corner in preparation for the unexpected foreign assignments. The issue of flak jackets, gas masks and other special protective clothing has also become almost a routine necessity in preparation for news-gathering.
As with other areas of television news, there are few rigid rules which camera-operators must follow, so much depends upon the time, place and nature of assignment, and on the experience of the operator concerned. But there are some basic principles which the most conscientious have adopted and apply instinctively under almost all circumstances.
There is no substitute for a sharp, rock-steady picture wherever possible. Most of the time that will mean using a tripod, even though professional camcorders are ergonomically designed to be held comfortably on the shoulder. Sudden jerking or shaking of the picture is entirely compatible with the coverage of riots or similar situations, but such movements are out of place in set-piece interviews conducted at relative leisure. Small digital cameras have a problem as a by-product of their virtue – they are just too light. Their lack of mass makes it harder to obtain a steady shot if hand-held. In the absence of a tripod the video-journalist should try to prop himself or herself against the nearest firm structure (usually a wall, doorframe or even a tree).
Although fashions have changed with programme concepts, it is still acknowledged that news work should be kept direct and straightforward, without ‘arty’ movement for its own sake. Pans, zooms and other extravagances should be kept to a minimum, making sure that if they are used the beginning and end of each shot is held long enough for the picture editor to get the scissors in. Pans and zooms however are perfectly acceptable in longer current affairs programmes. In this case they are always thought out beforehand, and the camera movement will be done for a reason. ‘Hosepiping’, the rapid spraying of the camera in all directions, belongs to the media-wannabees who think their reports must look like one of those early music videos from the 1970s. Hosepiping works fine on Saturday morning live shows for the kids because ‘live’ means you can move like a human eye. At the other extreme the professional does try to avoid the boringly static scene which could just as easily be captured by the still camera. If a news programme is suited towards rapid movement of the camera, at least make sure it looks deliberate!
At all times the pictures must be shot with the editing in mind, which is why most training for combined video-journalists-editors must include sound and vision editing as well. That means avoiding single, isolated shots. Aim to produce sequences of long, medium and close shots, with plenty of variety in angles. Overdone, though, this can lead to complications. Picture editors and writers have been known to come almost to blows with camera crews who, they maintain, have swamped them with pictures they have simply been unable to view in the time available, and have therefore omitted key shots they were not aware existed.
For world television news services with internationally minded audiences, the task of covering important events in far-off places can be daunting, fraught with uncertainty and at times almost crippling in expense. This means that while the less well-off are forced to rely on agency or pooled material picked up at relatively bargain-basement rates, the larger organizations which demand exclusivity and speed to enhance their international reputations have no choice but to join the rat-race, praying the budget will stand it and casting anxious glances over their shoulders to see how the competition is faring. This is despite the economic realism which governs foreign news-gathering as never before.
As a matter of course, any staff or freelance journalist who contributes regularly to a television news programme from a foreign base is expected to establish good local working arrangements and secure lines of communication (see pp. 21–22). Different criteria are applied to what is known as fire-brigade operations – those occasions when news teams are sent direct from home or the nearest suitable location to cover particular stories as long as they last.
Television news crews operate abroad under frequently untried conditions which vary according to country and circumstance. Local attitudes range from enthusiasm, with an offer of every facility, through tolerance to downright hostility and threats leading to restriction of movement, harassment or arrest. The depressing catalogue of death and injury which has befallen journalists in recent years, especially during the civil wars after the break-up of Yugoslavia in the last decade and the unrest in Indonesia in 1999, makes some accounts of earlier times seem almost relaxed by comparison.
Whether journalistic presence is a help or hindrance has also become a matter of controversy: well-fed reporters arriving to record harrowing scenes of starvation and departing again just as quickly; hampering humanitarian relief efforts simply by their presence; and contributing, perhaps, to the audience ‘compassion fatigue’ identified after a period in which the news is dominated by a succession of tales of mass human suffering. These charges are strongly rebutted by the news organizations, which point to the strong desire of relief agencies to heighten public awareness and which could not do so effectively without ‘the media’.
During the conflicts which tore through Bosnia in the mid-1990s, the then British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, complained that some journalists behaved like ‘founder members of the “Something must be done Club’”, enthusiastically pushing for military intervention, in essence making political decisions more difficult.
For senior television journalists the answer was more straightforward. ‘Television in particular is a very curious beast: it has huge muscles, distinctly poor eyesight and a disturbingly short attention span’, said the BBC’s foreign editor John Simpson. But what he suspected Mr Hurd disliked was the way television alerted people so graphically to what was going on in a place like Sarajevo because it made his job of edging away from involvement in Bosnia so much more difficult.1
Even where there is absence of controversy, where there is genuine readiness to cooperate, language and culture barriers, unfamiliarity of terrain and a whole list of major and minor differences provide their own natural obstacles in the path of efficient news-gathering. This does not include making any allowances for the solution to the other, perhaps more important half of the equation – how to get the material on the air at home within scheduled programme times.
Three options suggest themselves. The first and most obvious is for the crew to collect the material they have gathered and take it home at the end of the assignment. This may appear to be simple and foolproof, but ‘hard’ news has a notoriously short shelf-life, and the method is practicable only for the news-feature type of material, possibly collected on DV camera, where the time factor is not of overriding importance.
The second option, almost equally simple and obvious, is to send home, by air, each separate stage of the assignment as it is completed. Part of every camera team’s routine at any foreign destination is a thorough check of all airline flight times for the quickest and most direct routes home. This ‘shipping’ of news material has become much simpler since airline staff employed in cargo departments started to become familiar with those precious ‘onion’ bags. Arrangements can be made for the entire cost of shipment except local taxes to be met at the receiving end. All it requires at most friendly airports is enough time (sometimes no more than half an hour before the flight) in which to conclude the formalities of a customs declaration and to obtain a form of receipt called an air waybill. To speed clearance and collection at destination the waybill number is telephoned, faxed or e-mailed to those at home.
Scheduled flights are not the only answer. Freighters and charters play their parts as well, and there are some occasions when the material is important enough for the news service to hire its own aircraft to fly the story out. This is very rare, but the big operators will still do it for an international scoop.
An alternative to shipping is hand-carrying it as the personal baggage of a member of the unit, air crew or cabin staff. On occasions it is entrusted to a willing passenger, sometimes referred to as a ‘pigeon’, who is met personally on arrival and gratefully relieved of their burden.
So to the third and fastest option, to which news organizations are turning in increasing numbers as the pressure mounts on them to provide instant or at the very least same-day coverage of events. Despite the cost, the use of satellites to send sound and pictures from news locations has become by far the biggest growth area in global news-gathering.
It was the use of this option which began to change the face of television news back in the late 1960s and, as many would have it, helped turn American public opinion against the war in Vietnam. Such a powerful phenomenon deserves close examination.
Telling it to the birds: the development of satellites in the late twentieth-century
Sitting apparently motionless 36 000 km (22 300 miles) above earth, man-made space stations are the agencies through which viewers of television news programmes the world over are able to witness the momentous events of their time – political changes, state occasions, natural disasters, sport, civil unrest and wars, of which Vietnam has gone down in history as television’s first.
It was the steady drip of nightly newsfilm showing fighting in the jungle and the paddy fields which many believe finally sickened the American people into demanding an end to the carnage. Without the communications satellite to speed the coverage on its way between battlefront and living room, it is arguable whether the impact would have been as great, as soon. Vivid, full-colour pictures of this morning’s fresh casualties have a gruesome reality that those of yesterday’s do not.
Throwing television news pictures across continents was not, however, all that new. Even in its formative days, BBC TV News managed to receive material direct from the United States using a BBC system known as cable film. This employed conventional transatlantic sound circuits, but it was a slow process, requiring about an hour and a half for every minute of 16 mm film. An extra hazard was that the sound had to be sent separately, making synchronization another technical hurdle to be overcome before the whole could be transmitted.
The impetus for something faster and more reliable came, not surprisingly, from the United States, where potential military advantages reinforced a commitment to the exploration of space. The principle was to bounce the picture and sound signals off orbiting satellites from one earth station to another.
Figure 11.4 Geosynchronous orbit. Satellites appear stationary at 22 300 miles, enabling global coverage.
The first satellite was launched from Florida in July 1962. This was a tiny piece of electronic wizardry called Telstar. Every two and a half hours it completed an earth orbit, each one bringing it within range of ground stations built in America, Britain and France. The immediate effect was sensational: the only trouble was that the satellite was effective only for the few minutes that each orbit was visible to both sides of the Atlantic.
Within a very short time Telstar had proved to be only the forerunner of a worldwide satellite system for public use. This was the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization, more generally known as Intelsat, established in August 1964 with a founder membership of eleven countries which, by the turn of the century, had grown to 143. Intelsat operates as a wholesaler of satellite communications. It links the world’s telecommunications networks. It owns and operates a global satellite system that links public networks, video services, private and business networks and Internet services. Each member pays towards operating costs, research and development in proportion to the use it makes of the system.
The United States is represented by Comsat, the communications satellite organization, and it is the biggest investor in Intelsat, with a holding of 20.2 per cent. Comsat provides telecommunications, broadcast and digital networking services between the United States and the rest of the world. These are used by Internet service providers, multinational corporations, telecommunications carriers, and United States and foreign governments to extend their networks globally. The other main investors in Intelsat are the United Kingdom (8.3 per cent), India (5.2 per cent), Germany (3.4 per cent) and France (2.3 per cent).
Figure 11.5 Intelsat has more than 140 members and operates as a wholesaler of satellite communications. The satellite system links public networks, video services, private and business networks and Internet services.
The first satellite launched under the auspices of Intelsat was Early Bird, in 1965. Although it was capable of providing only one television channel for use between Europe and North America, this 39 kg satellite has won a permanent place in the vocabulary of television news journalists. To this day, satellites are known as ‘birds’, and ‘birding’ has become the accepted term for the entire process of transmitting news by satellite.
Early Bird, otherwise known as Intelsat I, was followed over the next five years by bigger and more powerful satellites. Intelsat II, placed over the Atlantic and Pacific in 1966–7, extended coverage to two-thirds of the world; the Intelsat III series completed the global link by the end of that decade. Further launches in the 1980s and 1990s ensured that broadcasters were able to transmit material from anywhere on earth using small, portable ground stations. By now each satellite appeared to be stationary in its appointed position over the equator – an idea first suggested by the author Arthur C. Clarke in a famous article published in the magazine Wireless World in 1945 – not only picking up and re-transmitting the signals, but amplifying them as well.
Until March 1984 all but two of the Intelsat satellites were launched from Florida, on the south coast of the United States, by NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The European Space Agency’s Ariane rocket system carried the others. Ariane has suffered its own setbacks, and the history of Intelsat has included some technical failures, with satellites lost when their launch vehicles went wrong and others not reaching their correct orbits.
By the end of 1994 the Intelsat chain had grown to twenty satellites, of which eleven were over the busy Atlantic Ocean Region, four each over the Indian and Pacific Ocean Regions and one covering the Asian Pacific.
Figure 11.6 An impression of the Intelsat VIII satellite. Each will have a lifetime of between 15 and 18 years. (Intelsat)
A later development has seen the leasing of Intelsat capacity on a semi-permanent basis, especially between the United States and Europe. Reuters Television, the London-based international television news agency, joined forces with Western Union in BrightStar, a 24-hour direct video service using dedicated earth stations and microwave links in the United Kingdom and wholly owned earth stations in the USA, to link the transatlantic pathway with the American domestic satellite system. CNN International (CNNI) also took space on an Intelsat satellite to deliver its 24-hour news programmes from Atlanta, Georgia, to Europe and Latin America.
But it is the United States Information Agency which claims to have begun the first permanent global television network by satellite. Worldnet was inaugurated in 1983 as a means of getting across US foreign policy through live news conferences between American government officials and journalists in Europe and elsewhere. Two years later, a two-hour transmission service of news, current affairs, science and education features and sport was introduced, coming every weekday from USIA studios in Washington.
The success of the ‘public’ Intelsat system has also been followed by the arrival of competitors vying for a share of this increasingly lucrative business, among them the European-operated Eutelsat and Astra satellite systems. Those charged with the responsibility of bringing in by the fastest and cheapest route the raw material shot by their camera teams abroad, have a bewildering choice of carriers and tariffs, with frequent special offers bringing rates in off-peak periods down to only a few pounds a minute, compared with hundreds in the early days of satellite transmission.
The other enormous change in news-gathering operations has come with development of mobile satellite ground stations small enough to be packed away in a few boxes and carried into the field by air or road, making all but a few parts of the world geographically accessible. Signals from these ‘uplinks’ are aligned directly with a satellite in the global system, dispensing with the often time-consuming business of sending them to fixed ground stations.
The Gulf War, which engaged forces from the United Nations and Iraq in early 1991, proved it was possible to provide immediate, high-quality pictures and sound under even the most inhospitable conditions. Since then other front lines and big international events, such as the Solar eclipse in August 1999, and the celebrations for the Millennium, resulted in the growth of forests of satellite dishes operated by the world’s leading television news services, and by specialist organizations working on their behalf, helping to increase the amount of coverage to a level never previously achieved. In turn the system has been successfully adapted for domestic use by news teams covering stories in remote areas of their own patch.
Digital technology, compressing the signals, has enabled equipment to become smaller, cheaper and more efficient, and development has reached a stage where it can be used to meet several communications requirements, including telephone, e-mail and computer network applications, and can be rapidly prepared for action by a single operator.
For the television news team on a brief ‘fire-brigade’ foreign assignment, the availability and timing of satellite transmission is a crucial part of the planning of coverage, and the deadline these factors impose. Fine calculations on the spot are needed every time to ensure not only the news material itself is safely gathered (surprisingly, often the least difficult part of the exercise) but the pictures are returned from location in sufficient time to meet the demands of programmes thousands of miles and several time zones away.
Figure 11.7 Satellite news-gathering equipment is getting ever smaller and lighter. The ease with which portable satellite uplink equipment can be transported to story locations has added a new dimension to news-gathering, whether abroad or in domestic sites. This ITN links vehicle is in Cornwall for the eclipse of the Sun. (Photo courtesy of ITN.)
Where really big running stories are concerned, the world’s most important television news services fly their editing equipment to the nearest possible location and set it up in a hotel or similar centre. It means they are able to be independent of the local broadcasting organizations which might wish to be helpful but find themselves overwhelmed by foreign demands for facilities they themselves are scarcely able to use. In some places where a big news story breaks, hotels come to resemble broadcasting centres, with rooms converted into miniature studios, cables run under floors and satellite uplinks handily placed so that edited tapes can be fed direct. All this costs a great deal of money, because although conventional editing equipment is portable, it is not as portable as all that, and it is possible to visualize excess baggage charges continuing to have the effect of limiting foreign forays for all but the richest organizations.
Nevertheless, once the commitment is made and the bits and pieces have arrived, an experienced picture editor is able to turn almost any small room into a basic edit suite in under an hour. Even setting up and testing a modern PC-based laptop edit system takes as long. Certain compromises are sometimes necessary: since the surrounding ambient noise might be loud or unpredictable, the reporter might still use a traditional lip microphone (similar to those used by sports commentators) for recording commentaries direct onto the sound track, or a headphone pilot-mic style system. For the same reason, the picture editor might choose to use headphones instead of loudspeakers, though careful rearrangement of curtains and furniture in a hotel room can go a long way towards creating a passable imitation of studio conditions.
These conditions invariably help to generate a greater feeling of cameraderie and close cooperation between camera-operator, reporter and picture editor than is usually considered possible at home, because they are all working on the same story for a considerable time. The picture editor may be able to see the material gathered and suggest how it might be shot to help at the editing stage later, a distinct advance over most other stories to which he or she probably comes cold. The camera-operator may be able to spend some time watching the edit and explaining how a particular shot or sequence was constructed; and the reporter may be able to work at the same time as the picture editor, recording commentary during the assembly stage, changing it perhaps only minutely to extract the best possible combination of pictures and sound.
When the moment comes to transmit that precious edited package the team will do so either by feeding it back to base by way of their own satellite dish or, perhaps, taking it off to the local television station for onward transmission. All of course is based on the assumption that the necessary arrangements have been made in advance. There is no point in booking expensive time on any satellite unless some sort of prior arrangement has been made with those expected to provide the necessary facilities. There is no point in turning up in great haste at a heavily guarded television station without some form of acceptable documentation or at least the correct name of the current local coordinator or contact. Trying to explain to a soldier with an itchy finger on a gun that it has all been arranged ‘by the office’ and would he please stand aside to let you and a large hire-car inside at once is not the most enviable task to be faced with in a strange country. The chances are that you are there at a time of local tension anyway. The arrangements may indeed have been made ‘by the office’, but the office is a good 3000 miles away, and what may have seemed like a firm promise made to them at high level over the telex yesterday turns out to be a commitment to provide every facility tomorrow. Today is a national holiday you did not know about and only a skeleton staff is on duty.
Most of all, there is no point at all in arriving with edited stories or a mountain of cassettes of the most exciting news pictures recorded on a technically incompatible standard which cannot be transmitted or converted. So if disappointment or outright failure is to be avoided, it is essential for someone to have done all the necessary homework before the team ever set out. It might result in a decision to set up a separate facility known as a feedpack, a mobile standards converter through which it is possible to transmit material back to base. But that means another body, another hotel room and more excess baggage to add to the bill.
Often a better way out is to work on the local standard, be it PAL, NTSC or SECAM, and at the same time take advantage of a phenomenon of the world circus in news, which allows both formal and informal interchange of help and – often – raw material.
No longer do teams work in isolation. Now the international brigade is part of a great baggage train moving from one major event to another. No longer do crews shoot exclusively for themselves on the bigger stories. Coverage is carefully coordinated in partnership with others, even the usual competition, so a wide range of events and locations can be covered in a short time by a minimum number of crews.
The downside is the pressure faced by crews in the field. Bill Nicol, a BBC veteran cameraman whose experience straddles news-gathering using both film and video, defined the problem this way:
Gone are the days when one could start early in the morning, do the story by lunchtime, put the film on the afternoon plane and then have a few hours to yourself. Now one still starts early and tries to complete a story in the morning so that the on-site picture editor will have plenty of time to assemble the package for satellite transmission into the first programme at home. Then it’s back on the streets or up into the mountains to find the pictures to update the package for the next programme.
The demands of television news programming, intensified by continuous news services in both radio and television, often mean that reporters spend so much effort ‘filing’ for different deadlines they have little time and energy left to gather the news they are expected to transmit. Tales exist of correspondents who are so chained to the satellite link they have had to rely on news agency material fed to them from home about events they are meant to be covering.
An increasingly important person in the international baggage train of the big story is a somewhat indeterminate figure known as a field producer or, more aptly, fixer. Crude though this latter title may be, it does accurately convey the essence of the task, as a member of the visiting news team to tie up the many loose ends at the scene of a major event, so that transmission into bulletins at home may proceed with the minimum of delay.
The fixer’s duties are predicated on the fact that the reporter and camera-operator covering any news story are capable of being in only one place at a time, either in the thick of the action on location or back at the hotel editing suite, uplink site or local television station, taking up valuable time to negotiate such tiny but crucial matters as the allocation of space to keep the equipment safely and the arrangements to supply food and other necessities. Because the fixer is there, the rest of the team can throw themselves into their assignment, secure in the knowledge that wherever their temporary headquarters may be, one of their own is protecting their interests, keeping an eye on what the competition is doing, watching for any unexpected developments which might affect the story or their own circumstances, and soothing the anxieties of programme editors and other back home by providing frequent progress reports by telephone or e-mail.
The fixer therefore needs to be trusted for a sound editorial judgement, and as the possessor of a sound enough technical knowledge to be able to cut corners in a crisis. The work is sometimes extremely boring – sitting about for hours in a foreign television station far from where important things are happening; frequently testing – trying to persuade an uninterested local technician to attend to your needs before those of your national competition; but almost always worthwhile. Assignments, often given on a temporary, story-by-story basis, are much sought after, particularly when they involve foreign travel, and the glamour scarcely seems to pall even though the most important task of an entire mission might be no more creative than jumping into a taxi to find a spare part for a camera that neither the normally resourceful camera-operator nor anyone else is able to produce.
Fixing roles, once invariably the province of experienced journalists allowed to escape briefly from newsroom-based duties, have also come to be assigned to picture editors, on the not unreasonable grounds of the cost of the additional person.
Those who have travelled the world as fixers will readily recognize the occasions when editing equipment has broken down and they have either had to repair it themselves or summon expert help; when in the absence of everyone else a snap decision has had to be made about the cancellation of satellite booking time, or the agreement to cover events which go beyond the original brief; when outside attempts to influence the editing politically have had to be resisted; and when it has been necessary to break a legal speed limit in an unfamiliar vehicle on the ‘wrong’ side of the road in order to get to the feed point in time. Add to that the fatigue which comes from never really being off duty away from base, and it is easy to see that, despite all the superficial attractions, fixing abroad is a task requiring real stamina and dedication.
Even on those occasions when all does go according to plan, reporter and fixer find the time towards transmission appearing to melt away at a disconcerting rate, until the realization comes that only a few minutes remain and the last edits have yet to be made. For the reporter and crew, on whom the news team at home are depending so much, the tension becomes almost unbearable. Will that effort be wasted, after all, in the dreadful anti-climax of a missed deadline? Fortunately, persistence and a refusal to panic have a tendency to pay off.
1. The Huw Weldon Lecture, 1993.