Your Holiness

Your Holiness asked me where I'm from.
'South Africa' I smiled.
'Have you ever been there?' It was a question I shouldn't have asked because the South African Government had recently turned down his visa application.
'It's a beautiful country to visit.' I quickly added, trying to take the politics out of my blunder.
'Yes.' he wasn't more specific than that and I still wondered if he'd ever been there.
'You responsible for colonialism', he said instead, grinning back at me cheekily.
'Yes,’ I replied, ‘but I blame it on the folly of my parents generation.'
Of course I was talking about apartheid not colonialism because I'm not even forty yet. And at my age when folk speak about bad things South Africans did it's usually apartheid. Nonetheless, connecting up the circuitry of my family tree to the roots of colonialism was not foremost on my mind. Fixing the audio was a more pressing concern. I was kneeling on the right hand side of the Dalai Lama. Not praying or bowing but preparing to clip a fresh microphone to his robe. The first microphone made a buzzing sound that we hadn't been able to resolve. Your Holiness was sitting on a hotel chair in a conference room at the Inter-Continental in Geneva and we had an exclusive to film him.

A few moments later I was ready to test the new microphone but the Dalai Lama held my hand firm to his knee and waded back to our discussion on South Africa. 'I met De Klerk and Bishop Tutu, the Bishop - a great man like Mandela.'
All this time we thought we were buying time to fix the audio problem. Instead it was the Dalai Lama who was delaying the start of the interview while his attaché prepared his warmer robe. It’s then I realised that giving this exclusive interview to the BBC was as significant to the Spiritual Leader of Tibet as it was to the BBC.

Reithian Pendulum

Covering events for TV news has changed. Going places with a big camera isn't popular anymore. I started out roaming the streets with a big camera for the international media in South Africa in the early 1990s. Nelson Mandela had just been released and South Africans - black and white - were giving birth to the rainbow nation. In those days the big camera played a vital role in that birth and been seen with it meant good was around because some one was watching. Nowadays the mood has turned around. The big camera is seen as part of the establishment and it’s seen as bad. I first became aware of the mood change at the anti-war march in London in February 2003. To Londoners protesting it seemed the big camera was part of what they were protesting against. A barrister, who is good at dealing with facts might not easily find an argument to support this mood. Broadcast executives and editors will also have trouble understanding it. As journalists we are all taught, and we teach to tell both sides of the story. Balance, truth and accuracy, impartiality and a diversity of opinion are all part of our guidelines. So if we are following the guidelines then where have the big cameras gone wrong and why has the mood changed? Below are two different examples and stories I have filmed recently. This is my brief experience of them, and perhaps they offer an explanation.

I filmed an interview with the almost President of the United States, Al Gore. He was attending an environmental conference in Cambridge and agreed to the interview. It was said to be the first time he'd give an interview to discuss a controversial Channel 4 documentary on global warming called, The Great Global Warming Swindle. This film was the definitive response to Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore's film is spent explaining the urgency needed to change our ways to save the planet because we are destroying it, while Channel 4's film says, "it's not our fault". The interview was also an opportunity for Gore to defend the accusations in the press that he didn't have such a cool carbon footprint himself. Needless to say the interview didn't go down well. Gore didn't like the questions that were asked and he told us so. He implied that we were fuelling a sensational but worthless debate about climate change and doing so would slow down people changing their ways to save our planet.

On another job I was surprised to find the old mood for the big camera back. It is rare nowadays but here people respected it. I was in Oxford, one of the recent worst hit flood areas in the UK. Residents, going through their own turmoil offered to be interviewed and pointed to areas I should film. I was offered free sausages, along with the firemen, police and Environments Agency. A regional cameraman filming for ITN suggested it was the spirit of the blitz.

Why was the mood so different? As far as the floods go, when television has a precise job to do such as in those times of national crisis, instinct kicks in and it does the job well. However, in the global warming debate Al Gore claims that the only skeptics left are the media. Why? Perhaps television is bent on sensation and egotism. Perhaps television is failing to see the wider picture and forgetting that even clever societies need guidance not just balance, impartiality and diversity of opinion. Through the ratings debacle a certain wisdom has been lost and with that television has losts its editorial role to air guidance from those with foresight and wisdom.

Made in China

“Go out and make a film guys.” That’s what I imagine the director general of Inner Mongolia Television Station says to his employees. Chagede’er or Charlie as I call him, is one of the director general’s employees who is a filmmaker from the Province of Inner Mongolia, West China’s most northerly province. I was there training Charlie and other director’s and picture editors the technique of making good documentaries and their opportunity to just make films leave me green with envy. Charlie and his team have a free reign - to make documentaries. They have cameras available, crews and tape stock - to make films. All they lack is the skill to structure their good stories, a deficiency the training project is tackling. Anyway – the best way to learn – is to go out and make films. This free reign is a different view of press censorship that the western media paint of China. Charlie is making a film on The Grasslands and it is about one man’s fight to save land entrusted to him by his ancestors which is been destroyed by an environment unfriendly Paper Mill. The man takes the Paper Mill all the way to the Supreme Court in Beijing and wins. But he only wins a small payout which doesn’t’ come near to touching the long term environmental damage that the mill’s effluents have devastated. Nonetheless Charlie was there, he even took two cameras into the court room and filmed the whole trial. Charlie's audience will find out about the long term effects too when they see his film.

All in all I worked with 29 filmmakers from six of the West Provinces of the People’s Republic of China. The key to turn their filmmaking skills into great films is initial research and formulating a clear structure. I discussed this issue with Charlie in class. When I mentioned researching a subject and designing its basic structure before you even pick up a camera he shrugged his shoulders and laughed me off. “That’s feature film” he told me. “For documentary one should only observe.” The Inner Mongolian’s are stuck in one genre of documentary film, and that’s observational. To them the documentary film is all about observing and then editing those observations together in a linear way. They don’t know investigative journalism for instance. The Syrian’s might call this self censorship and I am sure the Chinese Government have nothing to worry about controversial films coming out of the hat.

Although the indigenous films viewed in the seminar and workshops stopped short of criticising or questioning the authorities, the filmmakers always conveyed the hardship, difficulties or inequalities of the under represented. Bringing their issues into public domain. Overall, this was an outstanding opportunity to install valuable filmmaking techniques in a very prominent layer of civil society: social documentary filmmakers. For it is they who are the eyes, ears and voices of ordinary people. And that’s another reason why I am green with envy, in the west we spend too much time glamorising the already famous. It’s ordinary people that the greatest documentaries are made about.

Life in a day

(Podcast version)
Could it be that in life, many of us are making the same mistake? We are looking at the end result and forgetting about the pace. The pace is to enjoy and live the fullest day possible and to be happy and to be good and to do the right thing. Are we all looking at the trees and forgetting about the smell, and texture of the wood?

In today's world - with the stress of striving to be high up on the property ladder and having to earn enough or to achieve enough or to have been educated enough or promoted enough, or rich enough having met somebody else's targets at the age of 35 - aren't we forgetting to live a little and experience and just be?

Growing up in South Africa as a boy cub scout, it was always important to get as many badges as possible. There was a badge for all boy cub scout type endeavours; a badge for lighting the best campfire, a badge for been able to tread water for five minutes fully clothed, and a badge for surviving a weekend in the bush with little or no resources. The most memorable badge I tried to earn was the Pace Badge. A set distance around the neighbourhood was measured out - and budding badge apprentices had to cover the course by sticking to a consistant formulated pace: twenty steps, alternating between walking and jogging. If one stuck to the formula, he'd complete the course at a prescribed time - and be awarded the badge. If one deviated from the formula he'd either be too quick but more likely he'd be too slow. It was a badge I never got, I always thought about the end time, and cheated my paces, trying to predict if I was too far ahead, or too far behind. I never ever just followed the prescribed formula.

Yes, we should always have a plan and a goal and a focus but lets not forget about - just being from time to time. Afterall, tomorrow our opportunities are gone and we will only have the anticipated memories of what should have been. Maybe sometimes in life it is okay not to always have a plan - instead, from time to time - lets just live a little.

Getting Around in 2006

(click here for podcast version)

Having taught camera and picture editing techniques to hundreds of professionals in different regions of the world I have learnt that bad work usually occurs because of one, or two of two reasons: basic skills are lacking or need refreshing; and the lack of motivation, attributed usually not only to poor salaries and working conditions but also poor team work. The former, is easy to address, it has become one of my finer skills to teach, it is the latter I have had difficulty with but which I am finding solutions to which I want to share.

The problem with improving camera and picture editing skills while there is poor motivation in the air, is that the issues are not with basic skills – although basic skills still need to be addressed – the issues lie in vertical and horizontal areas. Horizontal - solution rest with team efforts, quite often in a news room: with the reporters and news editors. Vertically, the solution rest with management who fail to keep teams communicating and who fail to come up with motivational incentives. The obvious solution is to arrange a training programme for the whole team including management.
In Syria recently I solved a lot of team work troubles by getting my course participants to teach the ABC's of their job to the rest of the team and visa versa. We also left ample time for discussion. This brings out any burning issues reporters, camera operators and picture editors have while working together. This method has proved to be effective, and solved the team work issues for TV stations I worked with in Syria. However in a working TV station it is not always possible to have the cooperation of whole news teams at once, particularly while they are delivering hourly news bulletins. Or as in the case of Macedonia, participants had come from all parts of the country – away from their teams. In situations like these, how can one solve the issue of motivation?

Working as an international consultant is not much different to been a bumble bee, except your garden is the world. One picks up ideas and spreads them across continents, using them as solutions for re-occurring problems such as this one of motivation. I have come to refer to my Nigerian students method when participants complain about team work and salary. The Nigerians have amongst the poorest working conditions in the world. Their salaries are a pittance, they work on antique dated equipment and they're at the studio seven days a week. Nonetheless this doesn't phase them. They work within their environment and motivation for them is like a crest of a tsunami breaking over their right ear. Thompson and Kikki are two of three picture editors I taught on a BBC World Service Trust pilot project leading towards the April 2007 elections. They call themselves the three musketeers and they have their "turf layed out". They taught me the expression “weting the soil” to cool the feet of those they need something from. With the African sun always so high, the ground heats up quickly to piping hot. To please an individual one can water the earth that this person is about to step on to cool the soil for them. This is of course only an expression and now I often mention it to my course participants around the world where team work is an issue. My interpretation of “weting the soil” is to spend time building a relationship of respect with team members in order for them to respect each others’ professionalism.

That's team building what about salary? On the seven day week in Nigeria, the boss of course doesn't work all week. This gives Kikki and Thompson an opportunity to freelance on company equipment. It's the way things work in Nigeria and as it happens one of the musketeers' clients on Sunday is the boss working for his own freelance clients. The day I was there he was making a party political promotional video.
The solution for motivation on this particular area of salary is not to teach corruption, it is to find answers within the environment and culture that participants are working within.

At the end of the day basic skills have to be in place but quite often the reason for poor production lies in lack of motivation. The best way to address it is to deal directly with those who can solve the issues at hand. However, it is also up to the individuals, in my case the camera operators and picture editors I train to initiate change themselves and to find solutions to solve their own motivational issues.

Just add water

(Click here to listen to our podcast)

"Why do I always get my best ideas in the shower?"

Albert Einstein

Some of the best ideas happen with water. So when I picked up Xaver Walser of SGP Media at London’s Stansted Airport, which happens to be closer to the county Essex where we keep our yacht Sophie, I took him sailing. Xaver came to town for inspiration and input and where better to get it than on the River Crouch. Although I am not sure how much inspiration SGP Media needs because in just three years, Xaver has set up a TV Channel in St. Moritz, Switzerland. To do so he had to crack open a conservative isolated market not ready for change or competition. He is challenging the established regional TV news outlets competing for the market share of viewers and advertising space. His channel offers a variation of local news, features, weather and a ski report available on cable TV, as well as a variety of TV monitors strategically placed around St. Moritz and at the local cinema. However, in a force 4-5 wind with Xaver crewing a sail boat for the first time ever, there was little chance to find inspiration for the innards of an emerging TV channel. Instead we flew westward on a Main sail and a tangled Genoa on Yacht Sophie with smiles closer to the water than most flying fish.

Xaver is an inspiration alone, even without water. He set up his own company to do what he loves, filming, travelling and surfing. His TV channel which caters for the winter tourist market closes down for the summer leaving him to trail the world’s top waveski surfers to isolated waves and dangerous places with his camera, making surf videos. I asked him if he ever feels discontent? He said that he does but it quickly disappears when he reminds himself that he does what he loves, and makes a living out of it. He also runs his own distribution outlet for his films across nine countries that keep on selling day and night.

It is so easy to loose our sense of achievement in life. We set goals and often reach them but forget to smile a little or pat our own backs unless we’re choking. Instead we move the posts a little further away aiming at greater, better bigger goals that dwarf our humble evolution. This time the inspiration comes from Xaver: Lets not forget to smile a little at our own great achievements, even on those days when we are not plain sailing.

Morogo in Nigeria

Morogo Films has been training the cameramen and picture editors for a pilot TV series in Nigeria called TALK TALK. The project is a collaboration between the UK's department for International Development and the BBC's World Service Trust. The series aims to give ordinary Nigerians a platform to discuss key issues relating to the coming presidential elections in April 2007.

Arriving at Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport Abuja my theory holds fast: the way porters behave at airports provide an accurate benchmark to the experiences one might come across in the host country. In Nigeria, I expected to find porters demanding credit cards and bribe money to get my baggage back. This didn't happen and no similar incidents happened during my stay. Although my travel advisers told me not to use credit cards at all but rather carry cash. I was also warned to be careful what information I give away over the Internet and avoid giving my email address out to anyone, I spend ten days there and came away unscathered. I also left with a view that Africa is not a basket case so often thought of in the UK and its doing okay.

Their is an intriguing culture of work in Abuja, everyone is a businessman in his or her own right, especially the staff of the TV stations I worked with. One has to be to survive. Staff are encouraged to find their own clients to make up for their salary shortfalls, using company equipment. This culture is not the foundation of independent broadcasting but it certainly has created an entrepreneural spirit that I have found nowhere else.

Apart from their business skills, the people I have worked with in Abuja - who come from all over Nigeria including Lagos - leave me with a deep sense of humanity. It is true what they say in Africa, "We are people through other people."

Afghan Kite

Morogo Films is working on a film about the state broadcaster in Afghanistan. Radio and TV Afghanistan or RTA has a legacy of been the government mouthpiece. To transform this institution into a fluid working machine that represent the diverse Afghan nation while informing, educating and entertaining its audience at the same time isn't going to be easy. Nonetheless its transformation is an important pillar to rebuilding Afghanistan because a vast majority of Afghan society are illiterate. With a well thought out mission statement and remit, RTA will go a long way playing its part to rebuild Afghanistan into a prosperous country that is no longer a terrorist threat to the outside world.

There are a few important steps RTA need to follow once Karzai's government has created a clear and functioning legal and regulatory framework for the media to operate in. The most important is for RTA to establish its independence which it won't achieve until it finds a funding model not attached to the state. Once that is set it needs to decrease its number of employees, and raise the capacity and skillset of those left behind while upgrading programme output.

There is room to strengthen and extend its technical and transmission capacity. With a particular focus in the provinces which are lacking valuable resources, from engineering to transmission and IT components. However taking all this into account, the most important task at hand is for this national broadcaster to gain audience trust.

First blog

This is our first blog, it is only a trial run. Today Morogo Films is at Lombard Street Research filming webcasts. We filmed Gabriel today. He has suggested that from next week his webcasts may have a further maturity and insight for he turns 50. Happy Birthday Gabriel!