NewsCase story

What one reporter, Dan, took from a day of field camera training

A short account of Dan, a regional reporter who spent a day with Tom learning to shoot moving events, and the handful of habits he took back to his newsroom.

Helen Marsden4 October 20265 min read

Why Dan got in touch

Dan is a reporter at a regional television newsroom who had been asked to shoot as well as present. His station was short of camera crews, and he found himself filming his own pieces at marches, road closures and a harbour fire drill. His footage was usable but shaky, and editors kept asking for more cutaways and steadier openings.

He phoned us in early autumn and described the problem plainly: he knew what story he wanted, but he lost the pictures while chasing the action. He did not want a long course. He wanted a single day, with someone who shoots breaking stories for a living, and he wanted to practise on real moving subjects rather than a classroom exercise.

I wrote back with a short outline, and we agreed that Tom Fairweather, our senior camera operator, would run the session. We kept the group to Dan and one colleague so that each of them could shoot a great deal and be corrected on the spot.

The morning: standing still before moving

Tom began with the least exciting part, which is how to stand, hold the camera and breathe. Dan had been shooting with his elbows away from his body and his weight on one foot. Within twenty minutes of small corrections his handheld frames were visibly calmer, before any clever technique had been introduced.

Next came framing for the edit rather than for the eye. Tom asked Dan to shoot every subject as a wide, a medium and a close detail, holding each for a slow count of ten. It felt wasteful at first. When they played the clips back on the small monitor, Dan could see how much easier it was to build a sequence from three deliberate shots than from one long wander.

They finished the morning on sound, since a steady picture with unusable audio is still a poor package. Tom showed how to place the microphone close to the subject, check levels before the story starts and record a few seconds of room tone at every location.

Feet apart, elbows in, camera close to the body
Wide, medium and detail for every subject
Check audio before the action begins

The afternoon: shooting something that will not wait

After lunch we moved to a busy market street, where nothing could be repeated. Tom's rule for the afternoon was to decide the first shot before arriving and the last shot before leaving. Dan had to say aloud what the opening frame would be, find it, and only then react to whatever happened around him.

He found that a plan made the chaos easier to read. When a stallholder started a loud argument with a delivery driver, Dan was already in position at the edge of the scene, with a clean wide shot of the street behind him. He caught the exchange, then moved to a reaction shot, instead of lunging forward and losing the context.

Tom also coached him on walking shots, where the camera moves with a subject. The advice was unglamorous: bend the knees, roll the foot from heel to toe, and keep the camera lower than feels natural. Dan's third attempt was the one he kept, and he asked to see it again on the way back.

Reviewing the footage together

We set aside the last hour for review, because shooting alone does not teach much unless someone sits with you over the results. Tom and I played the day's clips back to back and marked each one as usable, almost usable or not usable, and asked Dan to say why in his own words.

Most of his own judgements were fair. What surprised him was how often the almost-usable clips failed for the same reason: he had started recording a second too late or stopped a second too early. Tom suggested rolling before the action and counting three beats after it, which costs nothing in the field and saves a good deal in the edit suite.

We also looked at the order in which Dan had shot his sequences. A rough running order written on a notepad before filming, Tom pointed out, makes the edit quicker for whoever cuts the piece, whether that is Dan, an editor at his station or Priya in our own suite.

Roll early and hold three beats after the action
Write a rough running order before filming

What changed back at his newsroom

A few weeks later Dan sent us a short note. His editors had stopped asking for extra cutaways, and a package he shot at a council protest had gone to air with almost no reframing. He credited the wide, medium and detail habit, and the practice of deciding the opening shot before he arrived.

He had also taught the routine to a colleague who had never held a news camera. That was not something we had asked of him, but it fits how we run these sessions: short enough to be absorbed in a day, and plain enough to be passed on without a manual.

Dan still has the notepad from the training with the three-shot reminder on the first page. He told us he looks at it before every shoot, and that it has been more use to him than any piece of equipment his station has bought.

Dan's day was ordinary in the best sense: a reporter, a camera, a market street and an operator who corrected small habits until the footage held together. Field Camera Techniques Training works at that scale. If your reporters or crews are shooting moving events and the pictures keep letting the story down, tell us what they film and we will plan a session around it.