So you want to be a TV news camera operator, yes? Travel around the globe to exotic places and show the world’s viewing audience your contribution? You have shot a couple of ‘scratch’ movies at schools and wowed the audience. Everyone tells you are talented and the TV industry would be so much better off with you aboard. These seem pretty good reasons why you should set your local TV channel on fire, visually that is. And, besides, you have your heart set on making it big time, right!

Does this outline sound a bit familiar to you? It does to me, because I have interviewed dozens and dozens of would-be hopefuls wanting to make it ‘big time’ with exactly the same ego-based aspirations. In this article I want to be brutally realistic with you in the hope I can shock you into some form of understanding that you are heavily up against the odds of making it into the TV industry unless you are totally ‘switched on’. Right now you can begin by stopping your heart beating on the TV dream and replace it with a wide-open mind. That will help no end. Hearts don’t think logically … some minds do.

For six years my job was to take on young hopefuls and hone them into production shape via a specialised year-long TV news training programme in New Zealand, empowering them to hold their own in the rough and demanding TV news industry. By the end of their first introductory interview they were under no illusions that only one in 20 would make the grade to attend the TV training programme, the means to an industry passport. The rest who didn’t make it just keep on dreaming until they woke up.

The first thing the successful hopefuls learned in hurry was that I was not remotely interested in the home video programmes they had produced. My interest was in the character of their person, resilience, the ability to adapt, improvise, communicate, blend into a team task and retain an individualistic approach to it, display a sense of humour and above all, shine with a large helping of commonsense. Not a mention of camera operation here, notice.

Let me try to illustrate these viable intrinsic qualities to you. I will always remember a delightful young lady knocking on my door looking for work, seeking an opportunity to make it into the TV industry. As we chatted the young lady proudly displayed her bright new BA degree document. This, in her view was her passport into the TV news industry. She had spent three years studying the philosophy of film production, analysed the masters; Directors, David Lean, Spielberg, you name them. She could recite chapter and verse the emotional value and structure of film masterpieces. Impressive stuff you might think. As our conversation widened I asked her if she wouldn’t mind producing for me a simple mini production on the spot. She had 10 minutes to complete it.

The young lady was presented with a carefully broken hen’s eggshell, a lead pencil and a sheet of white paper. Her task; to create a simple story using the three elements. After 15 minutes the poor girl broke down and sobbed. She had put all her heart into her university study but it had failed her. She could not find a solution to the pressing problem in hand. Put another way, she had pursued her education with her heart but she did not possessed it in her mind. Ask any harassed TV news editor on the planet who deals with TV hopefuls looking ‘for a TV job,’ and they will tell you the same thing. Often the spark of free enterprise is dead.

The TV industry survives on resourceful enterprise, adaptability and spontaneous interaction. This lady was destined for great things I’m sure, but not for the abrasive ‘pull rabbits out of a hat, ’demand of TV news production in her present state.

Now let me share with you the same interview situation with a young man who passed the test with flying colours. I was impressed with him long before the test started, simply by the searching questions he asked me, ranging from what I considered to be important things he should do to improve his chances in the industry, and specific TV programmes he should study to help him understand the craft of TV news. He spoke very little of his personal achievements. His questions did that for him. Later I asked him to carry out the same eggshell, lead pencil, and paper test. Within four minutes he was back, mission completed.

I was interested to see what he had achieved. The result was brilliant, simplicity personified. The enterprising young man had arranged both pieces of the broken egg in a way that it looked it had been split apart. Then, with great skill, he drew a series of chicken footprints on the paper, leading around the egg in a haphazard way, finally heading out to the outer edge of the sheet and off it. He had illustrated a story beginning, middle and end, and an answer to the demand. He instinctively knew the way. By the way, there is a happy ending to this story; this self-same man is a leading New Zealand documentary producer based in London and working through Asia and Europe. I am pleased to say he was one of my first students.

So you want to make it into the TV news industry? Put all that video making know-how on the back burner, and open your mind to the world of visual reality around you instead. You must condition your mind’s eye to think outside the square.

Today’s education is based on a philosophy of consensus. It comes through in many ways and in so doing dulls the competitive edge in life. If you take a moment and ask yourself what makes the TV industry work, it is tough uncompromising competition. Now let us take this competition edict into the mind of person hiring a new TV news camera operator. You can readily understand the desire to find suitable people, who live, breath and display the drive to compete. Firstly you compete with your peers and you compete with fellow professionals intent on winning the TV information battle. We can all compete from time to time but I am talking about every moment of the day, and to do it fairly. Be careful very, very careful in the TV industry, you can easily reap what you sow.

You want to impress me, and everyone else in the industry, yes? Simple, do your TV news homework. Become a TV news investigator it’s great fun. Get into the habit of asking yourself and others how and why TV news works. Focus your mind as you would your video camera. Scan every TV news item you can lay your eyes on. Ask yourself what part of the TV news item grabbed you, and why did it grab you? How were you touched? Investigate at what point did the touching happen? Was it the pictures, you saw, the sound you heard, the words that held your interest, and how where your emotions alerted? Or perhaps was it the simplicity of the story? Make this information work for you. If you have a video recording system at home tape another channel’s version of the same story and stack it up against the original. Do this every single day for six months. Then, when the opportunity knocks, and you have the chance present your case in a job interview or discussion you have some powerful information to exchange. Think about the broken egg test account I related to you earlier. You will see many, many examples of the same ingenuity in the compression of time contained in a TV news item. Remember a TV channel has a minute or two of news time at the most to visually account for a happening that may have taken several days or months to unfold.

A searching question that you can bet on during an interview will be; do you watch the TV news? This is your big moment to impress. Outline to the interviewer you do indeed watch the TV news and outlive with confidence the rich rewards you have gained from it. Explain that you taken on the personal role of viewer/investigator to learn the way TV news works and its value to yourself. Remember that! Compare that to someone who says, ‘oh yes, I do watch the news,’ …next question.

Let tell you that throughout the dozens of career interviews I have conducted only two applicants have ever stopped and outlined their true understanding and appreciation of the industry they wished to involve themselves in.

Both of them are highly regarded TV news camera operators producing in Australia. The lesson! Do your TV news homework day in and day out. Never stop while you are in the industry.

Finally, you will find that most TV news operatives are approachable people when they have a moment to spare. They have to be people conscious, it’s the lifeblood of the communication industry. Let me share with you a page out of my book, being written right now, to illustrate my point about resourceful people looking for a way to enter the TV industry:

For months Joan tried to make employment inroads into a TV news channel, calling, writing and waiting for the phone to ring. Nothing happened. Undaunted Joan decided to plan her moves using creative energy to uphold the objective. She had a big heart and little else. This is how she did it. First, she established in energy plan involving dollars, shoe polish, a light aircraft, and an advertising banner and perfect timing.

Stage one of the energy plan began with fundraising. Joan established a shoeshine stall on the footpath near the TV channel’s administration and news offices. She began make friends and money as well. Occasionally the news executives from the channel stop for a shoeshine, often chatting to Joan as news people do. The conversation was pleasant without specific reference to the ultimate objective. Joan kept her intent under wraps. She wanted to exploit the element of surprise.

Within four or five weeks enough money had been raised to begin the next stage. This involved hiring a small aircraft pulling an advertising banner behind it. Like to guess what the words said on the advertising banner? TV XYZ I love you! Phone 878 57892. The aircraft flew over the television channel, and the city, during the lunch hour on a bright clear day. It wasn’t long before the phones began ringing from a host of curious people including the media. Why did this person love TV XYZ?

Put yourself in the position of a TV XYZ news executive. How could you resist picking up the phone in dialling 87857 892? Then, to learn later of Joan’s shoe cleaning fundraising project designed to attract the interest of the channel’s newsroom. The rest, I am really pleased to tell you, is happy history. Would you have the enterprise to do what Joan did? Simple, progressive thinking combined with skilful use of curiosity.

There is always a place for high-energy enterprise in a TV newsroom. There is a place for you too! Would you consider employing a person like Joan with enterprise brimming over? Would you send her on an international assignment in the future? She is one bright lady in a hundred who will not fall by the wayside. Let us briefly analyse the energy value of her thoughts and take special note of the key elements and the progression of her enterprise:

1. The strong drive to achieve
   
2. The development of an energy plan
   
3. The personal contact and service
   
4. The understanding of the news function
   
5. The enterprising capture of TV XYZ’s imagination
   
6. The uniting of mutual interest
   

Please remember the world and the TV industry in particular is starved of high-energy enterprising people like Joan. Understand that vital point, apply your own creative enterprise, and use the tried lessons outlined in this article. Do that and you cannot help making real progress. You will have changed your dream into reality! The universal law of cause and effect will see to that. Good Luck!

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Roger Jeakings trained in the New Zealand Army as specialist combat cameraman serving in South East Asia. He covered the emergency in Malaya before moving to the conflict in South Vietnam for three years. On his return to New Zealand he worked as a freelance photojournalist providing news and documentary material to New Zealand, Australian, British and US TV networks. He shot a major documentary series over a six year period recording a multi-million dollar offshore oil exploration venture in NZ. Later he established a unique year-long series of television training programmes in New Zealand, designed specifically to place skilled operators in TV networks in Australia and New Zealand. Presently Roger works as TV training advisor, and is writing an operator's handbook 'Picture Perfect', a personal insight into the philosophy and specialist skills required of today's TV news field camera operator.