Roll! Shooting TV News
Views From Behind the Lens
By Rich Underwood

Reviewed by Dudley Darby

The maroon and orange cover stood out from others in the pile of technical and craft books. Roll!, with its drawing of a cameraman, camera on shoulder, against a skyline silhouette with helicopter passing by, caught the eye. Shooting TV News, Views From Behind the Lens, the subtitle said. Okay, the cover did its job. I picked it up and took a peek inside. Can't be one of those macho ego trips if its from Focal Press. Too right. I read a page or two, and was hooked.

The author, Rich Underwood, pursued a career in television news photography starting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, moving on to 9News in Denver, Colorado. Now a commercial director and cameraman, he resides in Southern California, is an adjunct professor of Advanced Cinematography at San Diego State University, sometime writer, and a strong advocate of quality visual storytelling. For this book, he interviewed some nineteen top TV News cameramen and other specialists, two of whom are GTC members, whose words and experiences are used to illustrate different aspects of news operations.

Chapter One starts with the history of television photojournalism from the beginning, and I mean the beginning. It starts at about 30,000BC! Fascinating stuff, with plenty of "not many people know that" moments in the 32,000 years that follow. Then it's down to business.

Each chapter starts with a scene set from Rich and an inventory of equipment used by the cameraman. A specialist's story in his/her own words illustrating one aspect of news operation follows, interspersed with explanation of terminology, or additional narrative and links as necessary from the author. The interviewee's and author's words are distinguished by significantly different type faces, making it easy to skip the explanations so essential for the novice, but less so for the seasoned professional cameraman.

The scene-sets are beautifully written, creating a mental picture worthy of some of the best novelists.

The situations and activities described by the interviewees, along with their feelings at the time, vary from the harrowing and lasting scenes at Beslan through natural disasters of fire and flood, chilling encounters, covert work in hostile environments, embedded work, sport and bizarre documentary, to encounters with politicians and live news situations. Terminology and methods are explained as you proceed through the chapters, with four of the chapters having a Take 2. These sum up: and expand upon, the basics of storytelling, lenses, composition, and camera shots and motion.

Not all of the chapters feature camerawork. Organization, structures, logistics, and both central and peripheral concerns relating to News coverage are addressed. There are chapters dealing with working as a freelance in TV News, editing, working abroad and preparation, ethics, the legal side of newsgathering, and a look into the future of journalism.

Finally, four appendices bring together more useful and relevant information, some published previously elsewhere (suitably credited, of course), on lighting, sound, formats, and that thorny old topic, how to set up a video monitor.

The book is both a celebration of top class news-based camerawork and an excellent primer on the logistics and practicalities of shooting news stories while maintaining high production values. Overall, the book is well structured, informative, and extremely well written, capturing the emotions as well as the technicalities, both on and off-camera, involved in getting the story from camera to screen.

Who is it aimed at? Anyone and everyone interested in any aspect of TV news. It has to be essential reading for cameramen new to this type of work; even seasoned news people will find something new and useful. It should also be on the must read list for journalists who will be working alongside cameramen or even shooting footage themselves.

For anyone previously put off by the America-biased flavour of some of Focal's recent offerings, don't be discouraged by a reference on the first page of the preface to shooting at thirty frames a second. This book is truly global in its nature and coverage, and achieves what it sets out to do: inform, inspire, educate, and entertain.

This is by no means a dry technical publication to just sit on a shelf as a work of reference; it is a very good read.

Review courtesy of the Guild of TV Cameramen
Published in the Spring 2008 edition of Zerb, the Journal of the Guild of Television Cameramen.
www.gtc.org.uk