ABSTRACT
It takes a lot of skill to be able to select and position microphones to capture absolutely the best sound for recording or broadcast. To be a boom operator is not perhaps the most glamorous job in sound, but nevertheless it takes a good deal of skill and concentration. Equipping talent with radio mics takes technical expertise and the ability to work with people suffering from pre-performance nerves. Everyone knows how to get a microphone to work – a simple matter of ‘plug and point’ – but to get the best out of it is entirely another matter. The same applies to video cameras. We all know how to shoot a home video, but we conveniently ignore how shaky and how poorly framed our images are, how we didn’t manage to capture the most important part of the action, how the autofocus let us down. Excuses, excuses! TV camera operators are at the sharp end of the broadcasting business and have a difficult combination of technical and artistic skills to acquire. A TV camera is a complex piece of equipment, and it is expensive. A fully specified studio television camera complete with lens, viewfinder and mount could, if you demand the best, easily take you over the £100 000 mark. When you are talking about broadcast video, you are talking big money, and this money buys equipment that is absolutely 100% professional, built to do the job and respond sensitively to the requirements of the operator and director.
