Peter Bakker is Chief Cameraman for the Dutch Production company Cinevideo. He covered the Euro2000 Football Championship live for host broadcaster NOS. Peter has been a cameraman since 1985 and he covers mostly sports and concerts. He also teaches young camera operators the art of filming.
Holland lost in the semi-finals against Italy after they missed 5 penalties.
Where you disappointed when Holland lost?
Oh yes, I would have liked to see Holland in the finals. The whole area around you would have been orange, your own team would have been there and it would have been a whole different ball game. But I was also thinking if they got through there would have been some organizing to be done. The people from NOS would have done a special program on the final, with other cameramen as well, and that was another part of the organizing I was busy with. So that was more in my mind; what would have happened if Holland was in the Final and we should have had more cameramen?
But they lost in such a strange way. That was something which was special because they missed about 5 of 6 penalties so I don’t feel sad that they lost but because they couldn’t shoot penalties. They deserved it. They deserved not to win. It was a pity. Before they got to the penalties, after the match of course, we said to each other "well, we could have been home by now".
How difficult is it to concentrate on your work when you have a good match going on?
It’s not difficult. You get a feeling that what is happening is all about your own country and you sense around you that people are either cheering or are sad, but you are so busy thinking about what the director wants and are more or less listening to the commentator (you have to take care you don’t listen to him too much). And you also want to make sure that you take shots for the other stations as you are there as a host broadcaster cameraman and have to take shots of the other team too. You're busy trying to follow the game and taking note of what is really happening so you can adjust your shot. So I didn’t actually have much time to get into the game. Only between the first and the second half and after the game can you talk a little bit about the way they played but more about how everything went, how you think the shooting was.
Is there a lot of pressure while going live?
Depends on how important the event is. Like in the final in Rotterdam you do feel a sense of pressure but the good thing about it is that the are so many good colleagues around. As a cameraman you are only a little piece of the whole machinery that makes this happen. Everybody knows what he or she has to do and everybody knows what should be done. There is some pressure but normally with football matches that we are doing during the season there's not that much.
Over the last three years I've been taking a lot of young persons on the jobs we've been doing and they have the strange feeling that you are not nervous and you do not feel stress. I am not nervous about myself but I am curious about how the younger people are dealing with the camera and if they are up to the job. You are anxious that they do not miss goals. It is a good feeling when you see them learn things and learn from their mistakes. I like to see people make mistakes but only once or twice and no more after that. It’s a good feeling to see them make mistakes and not repeat them over and over again, that’s when it gets serious. You see all the young people and you can see their attitude towards this experience of standing behind the camera and doing the job and it is almost the same feeling that I had 14 years ago. You see the same expression on their face that perhaps I had; you see something of yourself. I feel like an old man now that I am saying this. It gives you a good feeling to see people doing things which you had problem with when you started.
Do you like football?
Well I like football for television but there are other sports which I like more. For example my favorite sport, because I do it myself, is golf. So I like to cover golf as a cameraman, but cycling is also a great experience. Last year I had the opportunity of doing the camera work on a motorcycle during a live race. To cover cycling from the back of a motorbike and follow the cyclists is a great experience.
How hard is it to film from the back of a moving motorcycle?
It’s hard. It’s very hard. Because on the motorcycle you follow the cyclist most of the time, you are sitting with your face in the direction you are going in but at the same time have to keep looking around you. It is a tuff job.
But you feel totally comfortable behind the motorcyclist. The riders who are driving the motorbikes are very capable people. They have being doing it for years and it’s incredible what they can do with a motorbike. I always say that they are more or less the cameramen themselves. It takes the two of you, but they make the nice moves. They can adjust the throttle and let you move faster or slower and they use their brakes in such a way that you feel you are on a track. It’s incredible really. They also have a great knowledge of the cyclist that is riding next to you. So they know exactly whom you going to have and what kind of shots you are going to make. So the motorcyclists themselves whom I've worked with so far are sort of semi-cameramen. They more or less make the shots themselves. You move between cars, around corners, things you never thought would be possible. It’s really exiting, that’s what makes it interesting.
How difficult is it to follow the ball with the camera?
I always try to explain it a little bit like when you have to point your finger at a Ferrari which is driving 200 miles an hour and you are standing about 500 meters away as it passes you by. It’s easy to point your finger at it and just follow it but if it drives by about a meter in front of you, you don’t have time to follow it with your finger because it's moving too fast. What we are doing with the camera is about the same thing, it is not so difficult to follow a ball when it is far away from you because you have all the time to follow it with your lens. When the ball is close, then it is more difficult. You have to take into account that the director and the technical director will cut you away at the moment it gets too difficult for you. That is normal in these kinds of actions. When the ball is coming towards the goal, you then have a camera that is standing behind the goal. A ball that is coming towards you is not so difficult to follow. It’s the ball which is moving from left to right that is difficult to follow.
And normally what I make sure is that I put more experienced cameramen on those cameras which have to follow the ball from left to right or right to left because these cameramen really have to look at the way the people are shooting the ball to adjust their shoots on them. You have to have a little bit of a feeling of how people are moving and what they can do with the ball. Sometimes you just know it, if they put their foot to the ball you more or less know how far the ball will go. More experienced cameramen are placed behind the cameras that really have to move fast as it is difficult for new, less experienced people to keep the ball in the frame.
What do you teach the younger generation?
First it is very important to see some emotion in the things you are doing. That is difficult sometimes because emotion is not always there, but if it is there it is important that you can see it and feel it, and that you can capture it as an image on your camera. There must be some speed in it because sport is always fast. It's like news stories as news is always short lasting and you have to be the first to get it. You can't afford too many mistakes when filming sports. You have to take the responsibility of having everything in place before you start. You don't wait for something, you look for something.
I always say to people when I am teaching, there is a compromise between very good shots and very useable shots. That means a lot to me. You can take very beautiful shots but that can take a while. It is also very important to be able to take a shot in a few seconds. Nowadays, as there is often less time to get shots, it is very important that you can set the camera on a tripod quickly and do an interview with somebody with a nice bg and good position for the person you are interviewing because people do not want to hang around and wait until are ready to roll. Some reporters are anxious to do the job as fast as possible and you must be able to react to that.
What is the biggest difference between sports and other kinds of filming?
With sports you never know what to expect. The ball can go left, it can go right, and also with sports you can't do it again. It is always a one-off. You have to capture it at that one moment. You know, people who are running a marathon, you can’t send them back 500 meters and say "well I am sorry, I missed the finish, can you come back again". It’s always different, it’s always that one time. You never know what to expect and you can’t repeat it.
And of course with a documentary everything can be produced. In the editing room you can say "well, lets cut this away, we take another take", or in theory you can adjust the people or change the light just a little bit, but with sports NO WAY, you do it once. When you are following a game of football or something else and you missed the one and only goal, then you won’t have an easy time going home because that was the only goal coming by. It’s tough, which is the thing about sports. You do your best and it always puts you in perspective about what this work is all about. Sometimes you like to follow the ball very closely and it goes out of the frame for whatever reason. You know that next time you go close again it may look very nice but you might miss the goal, so you have to go just a little bit wider making it easier to follow the ball and that is what I just told you, a compromise between what's nice or what's perfect and what is good for the program. To have your shots, there's a compromise you have to make sometimes.
