Tuesday, November 13, 2007

The VJ revolution in earnest

By the time word got around about Channel One, the applications came flooding in.

Everyone with a gene for adventure wanted in. I know this from one late evening reading a whole batch of CVs and applications left on my desk.

But I have jumped several montha ahead.

The managers had certainly devised a novel way of sifting through the 800 applicants.

A camera was left in the middle of the floor and candidates were invited to pick it up and play with it.

The interviewers used this as one method to eliminate those they thought just didn't have a chance in hell.

The day I pitched up for my inteviewer, a short bespectacled - almost geek-looking guy was emerging from the corridor to the interview room, with blodd pouring down his face.

Dan Rowland, probably one of the most gifted videojournalists for our era, demonstrated from the get-go the lengths he was prepared to go for his art.

In this case it was road-eye level.

A group of cyclists were riding by and Dan spotted the perfect photographers shot.

Trouble is Dan got so close that, you guessed, one of the cyclist clashed into him reconfiguring his face.

The interviewers were aghast.

Did health and safety cover this?

Meanwhile the trickle of bodies were beginning to assemble; all young, eager, and with a touch of the" we know we;re doing something awesome" aboout them.

Training was intense, but no one could warn you about the mishaps.

For my sins the frame of a billboard would leave me concussed, sidelined at home for a week that I almost missed the launch date . . .

continued.

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