Terrifying ! Out in Cornwall in St Mellion as a self-employed TV cameraman with very little experience having been laid off by Carlton TV, before they bid for the London franchise ! I had never done golf before and yet here I was out on the fifteenth fairway working for the B.B.C., about to go live on TV all over the country and probably the World as well. Worse still, I had a ball-follow camera ! I had to follow the ball off the tee to where it landed on the fairway...gulp !
Fortunately we had been up the day before to rig the cameras in all their positions, the riggers had laid all the kilometres of cables in place and we had taken our cameras out, set them up - most of us had two or three positions to look at so we could move cameras around the course with the lead players.
This gave me time to have a rushed "practice" before the big day. I attempted to follow some balls as the players came through. I think I missed the first two, but the third I caught - there it was in my viewfinder in mid air coming towards me !
"Phew, my first one" I said as it touched down and I zoomed out to establish where it was. Pulling my head back from the viewfinder hood I realised one of the riggers was standing behind me. Covering my embarrassment and the possibility that my lack of experience might be spotted from what I had said, I looked at him and said "That's the first of the week !" (ie. not the first of my LIFE !).
What a relief...I could do it ! There were a few tricks that I had picked up in conversations with other cameramen - "contrast up, brightness down" (in the viewfinder), "make a cardboard hood up to tape to the viewfinder so you can exclude all light from the screen" and best of all "if in doubt, zoom out". That last one was usually for when something was coming towards you very fast and you were starting to lose focus - a focus point is less obvious the further you zoom out !
"OK camera 12, coming to you next". I jumped up from my conveniently constructed seat, heart pounding. Down the fairway were two or three groups of golfers walking my way having fortunately tee'd off already ( allowing me some grace to get used to being on-air without ball-following !)
"Get me Ballesteros"
I zoom in to the closest group, not knowing (at that time) what Sevvy looked like - or any of the others for that matter!
"No 12, he's in the yellow"
I looked with panic at the black and white viewfinder, quickly giving this up and looking over the camera to pick out a yellow jersey ! Fortunately there weren't two of them ! Back to the viewfinder and into the guy in the yellow BANG, on came the red cue-light in the viewfinder telling me my camera was on air (there was a green light if you were being recorded). He was a long way off, half a fairway away.
BOOM,BOOM,BOOM went my heart, wobble,wobble,wobble went the camera. My heartbeat was shaking the camera (I had a huge lens and was at the tightest end of the zoom). Gently I eased a little wider to include the caddie he was walking with and the wobble stopped being so apparent !
Well, that had all gone reasonably well, apart from picking the wrong golfer initially, but the handy thing about being a cameraman who does "anything" is that you can't be expected to know all the sporting personalities.
"Coming to camera 13" They were gone and I could get ready for the next shot
It was on me in no time. Tiger Woods was on the bloody Tee !!
"Ok, where are we going next ?" the director asked "Tiger is on 12th tee" said some smart-arse back in the truck.
"NO, GO AWAY, GO AWAY!!" the little voice in my head screamed, "Find something else to cover". Fat chance with Tiger in my sights!
"Ok 12, coming to you for Woods"
Here I was about to go live with the B.B.C. doing my first real ball-follow live on-air on B.B.C.1 BOOM,BOOM,BOOM went my heart. Now, here's the real tricky bit, ball-follow relatively easy, but judging when the bastard was actually going to HIT the ball was another ! Golfers always walk up towards the ball and have a few practice swipes, there is a skill (which I managed to pick up during my practice sessions) of being able to spot the signs of when a golfer was actually going to strike a ball. There was Tiger, at the tight end of the zoom, a red cue-light in the viewfinder and my heart trying to pound itself out of my chest !
Tiger positioned himself to tee off. He was about a third of my viewfinder in height, at the bottom of frame, this left me enough space above him for the ball to lift into and (please God) follow. BOOM,BOOM,BOOM ! Whack, I lifted the camera and the ball was in the frame, RELIEF!! I zoomed out as it came towards me and gently tweaked the focus wheel to follow focus. A final spurt of zoom as it was about to hit the fairway, gentle zoom out to establish with the tee in the background and that was it - I HAD DONE IT !!
"GO AWAY LITTLE RED LIGHT" I screamed in my head, but NO;
"Ok 12, back into the next player" (Still on air and now miles out of focus !!)
BOOM,BOOM,BOOM. I gently eased back into the tee as the next player approached the ball. Focus was fine as the light was good. It was difficult to judge if the player had taken his practice swipes or not !! One practice swipe and then he addressed the ball.
I will just add here that if you aren't WIRED in concentration it is easy to get caught out. I have seen a B.B.C. staff guy tilt the camera up on-air to catch a ball that was still on the ground !! How bad is that ?? Tricky to recover from with the rest of the crew pissing themselves (you can see what the output of the selected camera is, in your viewfinder by pressing a small tit under your zoom control). A cock-up meant a barracking in the hotel bar for hours later on !
Anyway, the next golfer tee'd off and the ball was in my viewfinder. All went well and I caught it landing and developed to a nice shot.
"Back again, as before 12"
"BOLLOCKS, GO AWAY !!" my head screamed !
Swiftly (almost confidently) I zoomed into the (thankfully) last player in this group. I was back on him quickly enough to see his first approach to the ball and all went well apart from the BOOM,BOOM,BOOM. I don't think I ever managed to lose that fear completely and I covered lots of golf when I became more established. I rarely missed a ball, and when I did I usually managed to get away with it by counting the in-air time for the ball and catch it on the fairway.
"Racks" is what the B.B.C. call engineering. These are the people back in the trucks watching all the cameras' outputs. They need to be on the ball as well. If they are outside the truck having a piss or something then there is no-one to close up your iris as the ball goes into the air so the viewers can see it and, more importantly, the bloody cameraman ! When you watch golf and the cameraman loses the ball as it lifts, the chances are it's because racks aren't looking at that camera's output ! We had a means of speaking to racks and I often used this to make sure they were on-the-ball so that I could be too !!
Anyway, the long and the short was that I survived St Mellion and went on to follow all the B.B.C.'s golfs for a couple of years. I went to most of the big tournaments like The Open and even the US Vs. Europe tournament in Valderrama, Spain (I forget the tournament's name but it is held every two? Four? years). Anyway, I'm all dried up after that bit of writing so I had better go and walk the dog. Catch you later
