New Week, More Cameras

This is Liverpool calling... Liverpool, approximately 5048 miles from the Las Vegas Convention Centre.

That's where some of my colleagues (and a load of wannabes) are at the moment visiting NAB2012, the annual broadcast industry bun fight where new toys and equipment are demonstrated and released and cameramen and editors from all over the world look to spend money they haven't got on equipment they don't need for clients that don't care!

So far on Twitter people have been banging on about EOS-1D, 4K, 5D MkIII and 6K. All fawning over brand new cameras and shooting standards.... the 5D MkIII is THE camera to have... then it's not. You must have an EOS1D to succeed in the industry. Then you don't. You're a shit cameraman if you don't have Red Dragon... 4K is now sooooo last week and 6K is the way forward. Nothing will do now unless it's got a 6K image sensor.

Now, for those of you who aren't camera ops or the slightest bit technical I must explain that "K" is a resolution standard. Only last year 4K was often spoken of as the last ever resolution you will ever need. It's greater than the current high definition you watch at home by some considerable amount.

 

BTSL (big telly small living room) syndrome will afflict techno geeks for many years

But before you trundle your brand new HD telly into the back garden and rush out to Rumbelows to buy a newer one you need to understand that in order to fully appreciate 4K you would need to have a larger than 55" 4K tv in your living room and sit one and half times the screen height away from the screen... BUT so far there is no 4K domestic content. So the main use for 4K is for cinematic release.

Okay.. lets stop at 4K then... Everyone happy? Cue Red and their 6K sensor... oh for fu........ All the Twitter fanbois now bang on about how its going to revolutionise 'their' industry - everything will be clearer and crisper. It'll be like looking through a window when you go to the cinema... blah blah blah... "Now I can get realistic a film-look for my movies" was one of many Tweets that made my eyes roll into my head.

If you want a film look then SHOOT ON FUCKING FILM! (Eastman Kodak and Fujifilm are welcome to use that as an advertising slogan).

Anyway.. back to NAB. Just when you thought that the big guns had finished and the resolution battle had been won, this happened...

Wait... what..? Bollocks, where's that reciept for my EOS 1D...?

Out of nowhere Blackmagic Design launch the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. Is it 4K? Is it 6K?

No. It's 2.5K. That's the resolution AND the price. That noise you heard was the fanbois choking on their 4K/6K/Canon/Red wank-socks. Two and a half grand for a camera that can shoot above 2K resolution is quite an achievement and could possibly be the DSLR killer that Canon feared and it could knock a couple of other cameras off their perch.
The downside of something like this hitting the market is that it will become popular with "DoP's" who have just left college (don't get me started on that again) and feel that this will improve their work and they will be beating clients away because of the kit they have. It won't. If you are talented enough then it won't matter what you shoot on. Remember, Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later" was shot in standard definition on a Canon XL1.


Hey look everyone, I filmed a dog toffee at 6K... I'm greater than Kubrick now.

 I've said it before and I will keep saying it - camera ops and directors, learn your trade before you worry about what you shoot on. Only engineers and anoraks will really be able to see a difference between 2K and 4K. The viewers won't give a toss.

Content will always be king. Always.




Thought For The Day..

Television: it's called a medium because its neither rare nor well done.

Shit in a jiffy bag..?

Telly isn't all glamour, girls and car chases.. (or am I thinking of The Sweeney??) Sometimes you have fill out a silly amount of paperwork, forms and applications just to be able to do your job properly.

Today I have been told that I will be working at the Labour Party conference in Manchester at the beginning of October. No problem with that. It's my job.

In order to be granted the privilege of access to the conference I have to fill out a media accreditation form so that the nice people in Millbank can send me a plastic card with my name and picture on it and it means that I am no threat to national security or John Prescott.

I don't have a problem with form filling. I don't have a problem supplying a passport sized photograph on a light background showing a neutral facial expression with no reflection on my glasses. But I do have a problem supplying a whole host of personal information for no obvious reason to any political party.



Give us all your details and we still may not let you in...

This form asks for normal things like your name, job title, email address and contact number but it goes on to ask for your National Insurance number, your passport number, driving licence number, your last 3 years worth of addresses and even your personal car details.

Not a work vehicle that you are going to arrive in.

Your own car.

Yes... registration number, make, model and colour. The form even states that they require these details even if you are not going to drive it to the conference.

Am I applying for a mortgage here or a huge bank loan? No. I am going to provide news coverage of a load of geography teachers, Guardian readers and union activists having a week long jolly in Manchester. *I will also write sarcastic things about other parties as and when they annoy me.



Mr Milliband and Mrs Harman up for a right good Manc knees up


I know I need to be checked out for security purposes. I appreciate that, but I hold a UK Press card that is issued by the Association of Chief Police Officers which has all my details. You can even call the number on the back of the card which takes you through to Scotland Yard who can verify who I am and what I do. I also have a valid Criminal Record Bureau certificate showing that I have always been a good boy.

So why do I have to divulge so much personal information to Labour? Look again at the first picture and read the second paragraph. The details will be held on a Labour Party computer system. Why do they need to know so much about me? I'm not a member (of this or any other political organisation).

Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't they want to introduce a national ID card to the UK too?

If Big Brother is watching then he can help me hold the jiffy bag while I shit my stool sample into it so they can see if I'm eating the right diet to attend.

KEITH FOR BBC DG

Yes, you read it right.

I want to be the next Director General for the BBC and have today applied for the position. It's about time we had someone at the top who actually likes the BBC and will stand up for all departments, not just news.

Like Mitch Benn, I am proud of the BBC and I don't want it to be consigned to history as a former iconic brand.

I won't take the full salary that this post is entitled to. I'll stop the stupid amount of money wasted by the Corporation and I'll hope to raise the staff morale. I want the BBC to be a fun place to work at again. I want people to aspire to work for the Beeb and more importantly I want the viewers to want to watch the programmes we make and enjoy them.

It won't be a gravy train and some harsh decisions have to be made, but I think I can do it.

If you follow me on Twitter then I'll keep up with my DG election promises using the hastag #keithfordg and I will post more about what I would do over the next couple of blogs.

Is that the sound of Tweeps clicking "unfollow"?

TITANIC ANNIVERSARY

Its 100 years since the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic.

The band played on.

"Do you know we're sinking?" shouted the first officer.

"Piss off," said the Liverpudlian band leader. "We don't do requests."

Merseyfail

A nice relaxing Easter holiday and a reasonable drive from Leeds to Ormskirk started this week quite well. That was until Merseyrail spoilt it.

Now, I know things go wrong and railways are complicated things to run but they should remember that customers who use the service are using it for reason. We need to get from point A to point B with as little hassle as possible. So, when a part of the infrastructure fails you would expect an annoucement, a customer service agent with information and a viable alternative.

Not so today.

I got on the train at Town Green station. The electronic departures board stated the train was travelling to Liverpool Central, the front of the train said it was going to Liverpool Central, even the announcements on the train said it was going to Liverpool Central. So I kind of assumed that the final destination of the train was in fact Liverpool Central.

The train pulled away, stopped at the next stop, where more people boarded to go the Central. The announcement said Central, but one lady asked me if the train was going to Central as the station destination board said it was only going to Sandhills (which if you are not familiar with Merseyrail is some two stops further down the line). I assured her it was going to Central station, which was confirmed by the announcement on the train. Again the train pulled away and for the next two stops we were all fairly certain that the train was going to the destination we wanted.

Then, the announcement changed. The train was stopping at Sandhills. No explanation, no apology. There were some confused looking faces on the train. Was it stopping early or was it going to Central. The train arrived at Kirkdale were the guard announced that passengers should change here for services to Kirkby. The doors closed and the train pulled away as the guard announced that due to engineering work the train was terminating at the next station, Sandhills, were passengers should leave the train. A rail replacement service was in operation.

Quite rightly there was a lot of groaning and the odd expletive but we only needed to get the bus for two stops. A lot of people were annoyed that the announcement wasn't made earlier as they could have gotten off the train at earlier stops where it was easier to catch a bus into town.

What greeted us at Sandhills? A customer service agent? An apology? A notice board?

No. This.....

Passsengers for Liverpool.... a wheel barrow will arrive shortly.

The queue for the replacement bus (notice the use of the word in singularity) was massive. Up to 10 trains an hour stop at Sandhills on the way into Liverpool and they were all tipping their passengers off to wait for the replacement bus.

After 20 minutes of waiting and no sign of the bus I fought my way through the crowds and started walking the last 4 miles to work. Many other people had a similar idea.

One thing I did notice was the complete lack of anyone from Merseyrail with any information or an apology. That is absolutely appalling customer service. At the very least I would expect a company that I was purchasing a service from to have an explanation of why the service wasn't what was expected.

Even someone in a fluorescent jacket directing people to the bus would have been useful. At least then I could have asked how long the bus would take to arrive.

As I sit here typing this blog I am watching the Twitter feed of other disgruntled customers of the "urban network of vital importance to the transport infrastructure of Liverpool and Merseyside" venting their spleen and I notice that Merseyrail have only posted one reply.




Oh well, thats okay then...


What's that? You're sorry for the inconvenience? Your engineers are working to restore the service? You are putting on more than one 32 seater rail replacement bus?

Sorry, my mistake, I just assumed thats what you'd be saying to your customers.

A brave new world

Congratulations to my collegues back in Salford who succesfully launched Breakfast from studio SQ2 at MediaCityUK today.

It hasn't been easy getting Breakfast up and running from the north. New technology, new working practices and new staff all need time to bed in.

The gallery in SQ2 during the pilots

Some of my friends have questioned why there's only two cameramen for 7 studio cameras. The new studio is all automated and 5 of the 7 cameras are controlled by a system called Shotaque which enables the technical manager to change the shot size, height of the ped and pan/tilt using a operational panel infront of him in the gallery, rather than a phyical operator holding on tho the camera head in the studio.

As a cameraman I should be outraged that technology is taking over 'my' job. Yes, it is a bit annoying that every camera doesn't have a cameraman stood behind them, but as the presenters don't move from the sofa and the majority of the shots are either mid shots or wides I don't see the problem. The two cameras that do all the creative moves are operated by studio cameramen who use their skills to combine the track, zoom, focus and tilt. A good use of their time and skills in my opinion but not really justified for a camera that holds the same shot for three hours.

In the right hands a robotic camera system is virtually indistinguishable to the viewer from a traditional crew. Take a look at the output of Al Jazeera English (where I was the Head of Cameras & Lighting for a couple of years). They have 8 cameras in the news studio and four in the talks studio. Only one of them has an operator on the end of it. The other cameras are controlled by a cameraman sat in the gallery with the controls in front of him/her.


and they're off... Bill Turnbull and Susannah Reid with Breakfasts' first TX from Salford

 I've probably offended some studio cameramen out there with these comments but this is the future of television news I'm afraid....

In fact it's not the future at all. BBC News have nearly always used robotic cameras - even back in the days when the national news came from Lime Grove (where they used bloody awful Bosch/Fernseh cameras and Marconi MkVII's before that).

The thing is, that if something amazingly complicated came into the studio then all the cameras would have an operator with them. But how often would you have a 12 piece band followed by a breakdancing elephant followed by Oasis playing live?

You've paid how much...?

Kodak: value for solving every photo flaw in history.... $0.

Instagram: value for re-introducing those flaws back into your photos... $1 Billion.

Easter holidays

The end of the week is here.. a loooooong weekend that involves chocolate, shit telly, more chocolate and traffic jams at shopping parks and play parks!

JnrCameradude is fit and well, his eye is much better. MsCameradude is at the age where it's uncool to spend anytime in the same room as her parents - I've also become "dad" rather than "daddy" which is a sure sign that the pre-teen hormones are beginning to course through her veins. Any time now she will stop speaking rationally and just grunt. Her hair will become greasy and spot detritus will cover the bathroom mirror. Then she'll start worrying about her appearance, the bathroom will always be occupied, her bedroom will be covered in clothes and smell like Lewis's perfume department - then boys will start paying her attention...

Anyway... I digress.

Building up to a rant...

I've got another two weeks left of my tour of duty in Liverpool before I start a stint on Breakfast and Newsround. I've decided not to drive into Liverpool while I'm there, so I'm using Merseyrail. It's the Scouse version of the tube - but people make eye contact and strangers speak to each other. I know. We're crazy up North. The journey takes half an hour and you pass through the middle of the Liverpool suburbs before going underground. I've done the journey hundreds of times when I used to live up here. Nothing has really changed but I find myself quietly fuming at something that I'd never noticed before.

Rubbish.

Strewn along the railway embankments.

Now don't get the wrong idea about me. I'm no environmentalist. I don't vote Green and I really couldn't give a fat shiny shite about the polar bears but the sight of all this rubbish is really bugging me to a point where I want to pull the emergency handle, stop the train and start throwing all the crap back over the fences into the ignorant twats gardens.

Take this picture for example:

Railway embankment shit.

It's garden rubbish and general crap that has just been thrown over the garden fence and on to the railway embankment. Why do people do this? Is it so difficult to dispose of it properly? Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the mentality here. Then I started noticing it in more and more places along the Northern Line. From Orrell Park to Kirkdale it seems that every third house just dispose of unwanted furniture, garden wicker shit, rubbish, toys and building crap over their back fence.

I had a look on Google Maps (other satellite imagery services are available) to see what road the houses where on and bugger me YOU CAN SEE PEOPLES SHIT FROM SPACE.

Space shit

It has really annoyed me. I was shocked at how much it angered me. Liverpool is my home town. It was the City of Culture, the gateway to America, the birth place of sixties music. It had the worlds largest dock, two of the greatest footy teams in the world (insert joke here about Liverpool/Everton and Liverpool/Everton reserves), its got two Cathedrals and two cracking radio stations (sorry to Radio Merseyside, but Radio City has always been my favourite since I was a kid. Long live Uncle Norm!).

It's by no means perfect - I like the rough edges and the unpredictability of the place but come on fellow Scousers - this is your home. Be proud of it. Stop giving other parts of the country the ammunition to put us down all the time. The Luftwaffe couldn't destroy Liverpool. Mrs Thatcher couldn't destroy Liverpool (despite her best efforts). Even Deggsy and his Militant council couldn't do it. But the city's own people seem to be happy to do it themselves.

We're just about to be inundated with thousands of people coming to the Grand National. They will see the same view out of the train window as I do. They will go back to other parts of the country thinking that the worlds greatest steeplechase is held in a shit hole.

Do the people of Kirkdale and Walton have any respect? From the look of it, no. They don't.

The Grand National - a BBC institution.

So this will be the last year that the National will be shown on the BBC. Channel Four have the rights to show it now. Another in a long line of sports that have fallen away from the BBC portfolio. 

Many moons ago when I was a trainee cameraman I was fortunate enough for my first outside broadcast to be part of the crew that worked on the National. I was given the chance to operate a camera all by myself as I had proved that I was a 'toplens' in the making!

I wanted to operate the camera that was on top of the Citroen that followed the horses, called the CRE.

The CRE - right, where's that risk assessment..?

The camera supervisor gave me camera four when he stopped laughing. So off I trotted to the camera four position, armed with my lunch, the form sheet and a determination that I was going to win a BAFTA for the best shot of the races' history.

I adjusted the controls to my Philips LDK5 camera and made sure that the friction on the pan and tilt head was just right. Not too tight, not too slack. I had a couple of races to practise on and everything was fine. I was up for it.

Then it was time. The eyes of the sporting world were on Aintree. 

The director started calling the shots. 

"FOUR NEXT!" came the call and I was ready. The horses filled my frame, in focus and steady. My cue light came on and my camera was live to world. I followed those horses like they had never been followed before.

And the BAFTA for best pan of a horse race goes to..

My pan, zoom and focus all flowed and then it was over. Camera 5 took over. 

I'd done it. Hell yeah.

I climbed down the scaffolding and started on my packed lunch. At that point I felt like the greatest cameraman in the world. I tucked into my sandwiches and can of Coke with a satisfied feeling.

"FOUR NEXT!" I heard on my radio. "FOUR.... FOUR... FRAME UP FOUR..."

That's my camera. 

I bolted up the scaffold, panned, zoomed, focused and missed the bloody mobile glue factory. Live on air. Grandstand viewers saw the floor, the sky, the arse end of a horse and then a super wide shot. 

Bollocks. No one told me the horses went round twice.

The Falklands 30th Anniversary

I can't believe that the Falklands conflict was 30 years ago this month. My brother-in-law was deployed there with 12 Air Defence Regiment, seconded to the Rapier missile battery. He travelled there with his battery along with the Welsh Guards aboard HMS Sir Gallahad. 

He made it off just minutes before it was hit by an Argentine missile.

Something that seems to be forgotten in the age of instant coverage and embedded news teams was the fact that back then there were only two camera crews covering the Falklands war. Micheal Nicholson was there with his ITN crew, while the BBC was serviced by the late Brian Hanrahan and his cameraman the late Bernard Hesketh.

Cameraman Bernard Hesketh, reporter Brian Hanrahan and sound recordist John Jockel

He was there and filming when my brother-in-laws ship was hit and filmed the aftermath of what was the largest loss of British troops during the conflict.

John Jockel and Bernard Hesketh arrive with British Troops at Port Stanley.

They didn't have the luxury of SNG trucks, transportable earth stations or laptop edits. He had to rely on the RAF flying his 16mm film and Betacam tape back to the UK. Yes, they had to post the footage back before it could be shown on the TV.

Imagine that now... I know news editors who would implode (and often do) if the latest shot of a perp leaving court isn't on his desktop milliseconds after it was shot.

First blog - not yet a rant!

Morning all,
its another week in the glamorous world of television. I've just arrived at Radio Merseyside where I am based this month - actually quite a nice place.

I love working in my home town. Liverpool is a wonderful place, I never tire of coming here. Although the city centre is changing I always feel welcome and feel at home. Surprisingly I felt the same way when I was in New York last year... did I forget to mention that I may go off at tangents???

Anyway... bit of a hectic weekend at home resulting in spending Sunday in A+E with my son, JnrCameradude. He managed to stab himself in the eye with his thumb nail.

It sounded like a fork skewering a pickled onion.... bluuuurghhh

His big sister nearly vomited, my wife thought he had blinded himself and I shuddered at him actually touching his eye.. (I have an eye thing, as well as a clown thing and an attic hatch thing... more about those as the weeks go on). When Jnr eventually opened his eye he had a perfect gouge mark above his pupil and off we went to A+E thanks to the SCARY AS SHIT LARGE RED LETTERS ON THE NHS DIRECT WEBSITE THAT IMPLORE YOU TO GET TO CASUALTY IMMEDIATELY. 

I don't know if you've ever had the experience of a children's casualty department at the weekend in an inner city but my god, what the fuck do the staff take to still be courteous in the face of a mix bag of morons, bigots, tossers and panicking mothers?


What shocked me most was the number of drunken parents who turned up with their injured children. My son wanted to know why one man was shouting at his child, who was bleeding from a gash on their chin, to 'sit the fuck down and stop bloody whining'.

Eventually we were seen by a weekend locum Opthamic consultant who was from Germany. A very stern looking lady in her early 20's who wanted my son to tell her if is vision was disturbed. He's three and would tell you dog poo was orange and smells of lavender if he was scared enough... holding a child up to a specialist eye imaging machine was a new experience for me but Jnr got through that. Then Fraulein Koch (made me snigger) put eye drops in Jnr's injured eye - the effect was to dilate his pupil. Now he looks like he has been affected by a nerve agent. One fixed dilated pupil and one pin hole sized. Luckily his eyesight shouldn't be affected and will need antibiotics for a week or so.

NEW CAMERA RELEASE... AGAIN

Also this week saw Sony launch ANOTHER new camera. The PMW100 - its an XDCamEX format camera and is about the size of a Z1. Predictably lots of people on Twitter are extolling it's values and seem to have forgotten about the camera they raved about that was released last week.... and the one the week before that!

I'm all for technology and updates to the tools of my trade, but for fucks sake, lets just decide on a definitive format for television. I do feel sorry for my freelance collegues who have to buy new cameras now. It's a tough choice on which format you go for because you are tied in to working for one broadcaster as there is no longer the defacto broadcast format.

It was only about 15 years ago that Beatcam SP was the world wide format of choice, Digital Betacam for higher end production and 35mm film for anything higher. You knew where you stood in camera purchasing. You bought a bleeding expensive camera (BVW400's were about £45,000) and you did your job. Everyone happy (unless you worked for Thames or Anglia then you had to have MII).



Me at Thames with a tube camera, a sound recordist and a spark.

Did the type of format or camera we use make the slightest bit of difference to how we shot? Did it shite. I know guys who bought DigiBeta cameras with all the bells and whistles but couldn't shoot a peice to camera to save thier life. I also know guys who could use a domestic VHS-C camera (remember those, kids?) and would shoot amazing films.
Its all about WHAT and HOW you shoot rather than what you shoot ON.

As I've Tweeted before, people should really learn their trade before they come with fancy titles for themselves and get daddy to buy them the latest CanoFujNikOny WDXQ790B camera.


Viva la Betacam!