Cameraman calling

I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a cameraman. Even as a little boy, I loved playing with my dad’s Cine camera – and not just because it was shaped like a gun. It was on Saturday mornings, while watching the cameramen caught in shot on Going Live, that I decided to make playing with a video camera my job.

Despite my enthusiasm and barrage of questions, my school careers advisers never took my determination to be a cameraman seriously. Instead, they tried to convince me to become an accountant. Thank goodness I found my own way.

In a gap year after A-levels and before college, I worked as a runner in the post-production department at BBC Pebble Mill. I remember going in early to help the cameramen in the studios in the mornings and then doing my shift as a tea boy in the afternoon. That was my foot in the door.

Towards the end of my first year at Ravensbourne College, when I was back working as a runner at Pebble Mill in my holidays, I bumped into a cameraman in the corridor. He mentioned there were some new BBC traineeships coming up and said I should look out for the adverts. I applied, jumped through all the hoops – camera, maths, spatial awareness, group dynamics tests, and a grilling from a five-man panel – and got the job. The decision to quit college after just the first year wasn’t a tough one when I’d been offered the best training in the world.

Over two years as a trainee and a further two years as a BBC staff cameraman, I cut my teeth on shows such as Style Challenge, Telly Addicts, Top of the Pops, Blue Peter, EastEnders, Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook, Goodness Gracious Me, Doctors and numerous outside broadcasts.  Everything was falling into place just nicely. Then in 2001 I was made redundant.

When they closed the BBC studios at Pebble Mill, I went freelance and I’ve never looked back. If anything, being self-employed has increased the variety of work I’m doing for the BBC and independent production companies. Everything from portable single camera shows such as Countryfile, To Buy or Not To Buy, Gok’s Fashion Fix and Animal Madhouse, to sports outside broadcasts and live multi-camera wildlife shows Springwatch and Big Cat Live. I was also camera supervisor on this year’s Autumnwatch.

Filming beautiful landscapes may be a dream job, but it’s not so glamorous when you’ve had to lug your kit to the top of a mountain in horizontal rain or when you’re bobbing up and down filming on a fishing boat with a green-at-the-gills soundman hanging his head over the side.  One thing’s for sure; there’s no such thing as a regular day at work for me.

Last week, I found myself sat at 1am in Jonathan Ross’s back garden waiting for the clouds to clear so we could shoot a film for the forthcoming Stargazing Live. Even then, shivering in the sub-zero temperatures, I wouldn’t change what I do. Being an accountant was just not for me.

Mike was talking to Laura Johnson.

Find out more about his work at www.tvcameracrew.com