Wednesday 29th
May
Glasgow
After the hot, sweaty,
smelly days in the slums of Freetown, the deprivation of the Sierra Leonians
out in the bush and the long journey home today’s job was a breeze.
I met Ed the Daybreak
competition producer at Glasgow airport and we did the short journey to Suzie
Lee’s house.
Suzie had been lucky enough
to win £31K in one of Daybreak’s competitions.
The door of her little house
opened up as I was parking. Suzie came out to welcome us with an infectious
giggle that punctuated a lot of what she said.
It must have been a family
trait because her mum and dad were in the house and similarly peppered their
conversation with laughter.
Suzie rather reminded me of
one of the doyens of Scottish comedy, Mary Doll, Rab C. Nesbit’s wife, aka
Elaine C. Smith.
 |
| Giggly Suzie.. |
 |
| ..doing her interview |
It was good to the shoot at
a leisurely pace with time to set up lights and tweak them for the best effect.
We did Suzie’s little
interview from three different angles for a bit of variety in the edit.
There were a few set up
shots to do with Suzie in the garden and then we were done.
One of which was a little
staggered three hundred and sixty degree shot around Suzie sitting in a chair.
I recorded her for a few
seconds and then without her moving I cut, moved round about forty five degrees
and did another short shot, continuing until I was back in the starting position.
In the edit Ed would then
just us a few frames from each shot to create a very fast staggered shot going
around her.
When we had done that it was
time to call it a wrap.
At the Xscape indoor ski
centre not far from the airport Ed and I had a late lunch before I dropped him
back at the airport for his flight back to London’s city airport.
Thursday 30th May
On the road to Port Logan
Yesterday’s job had been a
lovely easy paced pleasant job. Today was shaping up to be much the same.
All that I had to do was to
enjoy the drive to a hotel near Stranraer on the west coast to overnight prior
to a series of weather broadcasts with Laura Tobin ably assisted by producer
Christina.
It was a perfect day for the
drive, the sky was blue, the sun was shining and I had all the time I needed to
do the almost four hour drive.
I pulled into the BP petrol
station near Edinburgh airport to fill up with fuel and get myself a sandwich
and drink for a little picnic on the journey.
As I clicked the fuel pump
nozzle back into the pump I realised that the leisurely dream drive had just
turned into an annoying nightmare.
Doing something stupid once
in life is irritating but doing the same stupid thing a second time only a few
weeks after having doing for the first time is really bad.
At least I had spotted it
before I drove away and came to a grinding halt on the M8.
I had only gone and half
filled my tank with unleaded petrol rather than diesel!
The problem was easily
solvable if I had a hose. I could just syphon the fuel out and refill the tank.
Unfortunately I did not have
a hose to hand. I went to ask in the service station if they could help.
A very brusque and dour
assistant curtly told me that there was nothing they could do and I should call
the AA.
In my best emphatically
polite voice I said, “thanks for your help”.
After I drove the car to a
parking slot a few meters from the pump I did indeed call the AA’s Fuel Assist
department.
They could come and sort me
out but, not for about four hours and at a cost of well over two hundred
pounds.
Jeez! This mistake was going
to cost me dear. I didn’t think ITN would be too keen on me putting that on my
expenses.
Very reluctantly I booked a
slot to get my tank drained. There was a possibility to cancel up to an hour
and a half before the yellow van arrived.
I went online and called
another couple of numbers of specialist companies.
One that I called expressed
a bit of surprise when I told the operator my location. They only covered
London. It didn’t say that on the website.
I did find a company that
could do it within an hour and it would only cost me £165. Only £165!
Clearly I was in the wrong
business.
The Hungarian guy that came
to do the job must have thought so too. He told me that he was a documentary
and commercial maker and was just doing the fuel draining job to make ends
meet.
 |
| An expensive mistake.. |
 |
| ..being put right |
I had been held up for
coming up to three hours before getting back on the road.
The sun was still shining
but my mood was less than bright.
Some if the sights on the
drive did cheer me up a little though.
 |
| Ailsa Craig on the drive to Port Logan |
Friday 31st May
Port Logan
Christina gave me a quick
tour of Logan Botanic Gardens when we arrived, showing me the areas that she
thought would be good to show.
It was certainly a beautiful
setting, particularly when the forecast light rain and clouds had not
materialised, and the sun was getting ready to climb into the clear blue sky.
 |
| The beautiful Logan Botanic Gardens |
The locations that we chose
were quite a distance from the STV satellite truck that Eddie was busy parking
and also from each other.
It was going to be a busy
morning just moving around and dragging a very long length of cable.
Whilst Eddie was playing
with his dish, getting it locked onto the satellite and sorting his end out I
started to roll out the drums of cable.
I had the honour of breaking
the seal on a brand new drum of multi-core cable and pulling it out.
We were getting things done
at a steady pace with a bit of time to spare.
The two lengths of cable
were fully out and joined together. Andy the sound recordist plugged up his
mixer to the breakout box and I plugged up the camera.
Eddie came over the talkback
to say that he could hear tone but could not see any pictures.
I double-checked the
connections. Everything was as it should be. Eddie did the same at the truck
end. Everything was good at his end too.
Transmission time was
creeping up. Also we needed to do a couple of standby pre-records before going
on air at around 5:45.
I called James the technical
director to let him know that we had a problem and were working on it.
Eddie dashed out from the
truck with a spare set of short cables and breakout box.
We tried them, still no
pictures.
We scurried to the junction
in the cable and plugged in the sound and camera, still no pictures.
It was now about 5:40 am.
I unplugged the camera and
ran to the truck to plug it directly into the tailboard connections, still no
pictures.
I checked that the output
from the camera should be digital rather than analogue. Eddie confirmed that
was the case.
Just to check I switched the
output from SDI to VBS ie digital to analogue.
“That’s it!”, Eddie shouted.
I gave myself a talking to
for not doing that check first as I sprinted back to the end of the first
cable.
I stuck the BNC connection
from the camera into the breakout box and instantly I heard a voice over
talkback from London saying that they could see and hear us.
It was a little bit before
5:50 am.
We were not in the location
that we had wanted to be in for the first broadcast but at least we were able
to get on air.
Anyway we were really
spoiled for choice because it did not matter which way I pointed the camera it
was a good shot.
Laura launched into her two
short pre-records, getting them done exactly to time first take.
There was then time to
rehearse the opening of the programme.
As well as doing the weather
and pollen count broadcasts we also had to do a short interview with Richard
the curator of the gardens.
He proved that he was not an
ivory tower type by being very hands on and helping to drag the cables around
the gardens saying that it was much like dragging a hose.
 |
| Richard helps with the cable |
One of the most impressive
things growing in the garden is the giant rhubarb.
 |
| Giant rhubarb |
Although the little café
does not open until 10 am one of the ladies came in early and provided us with
a cup of coffee which we managed to get time to almost finish in between
broadcasting and repositioning.
 |
| Ladies with the coffee |
 |
| How to keep the crew happy, Laura brought the biscuits.. |
 |
| ..had one herself of course |
When we finished we were
treated to a very nice bacon roll. Christina and Laura could not take as much
time as me over enjoying it because they had to get to Glasgow airport so that
Laura could catch her plane home.
My journey home was not as
pleasant as the one coming. The forecast clouds had rolled in bringing with it
some mist.
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