Jim Galbreath
A few months ago, Jim Galbreath brought his 34 year-long career at the BBC to a close. For the last 23 years, he had worked in news and current affairs as a lighting cameraman. He has filmed extensively around the UK and in around 40 countries. Based in Linlithgow, he has set up a company, everypicture, and is planning to film a range of projects, both corporate and broadcast.
1. You took a voluntary redundancy package from BBC Scotland. For professional or personal reasons?
Probably a mixture of both. I had been in the news and current affairs department for a while. With a mix of technical progress and cost-cutting I had watched as three-person crews became two, then one and then none as the journalists were asked to do everything themselves. As the quality work grew less and the stand-up interview or talking head work increased, I decided at my stage in the game to put my hand up and volunteer to leave. I still enjoy filming enormously and will pursue my own thing as a freelance.
2. What was the split, for you, between news and current affairs and other types of camera work? And which did you prefer?
My background was very much general camera work. When I moved from working in studios and outside broadcasts to location camera work, as a lighting cameraman, we did a wide range of programmes. Gradually, as news and current affairs grew, that range of programmes narrowed as the ever-changing accounting systems took greater control. As the range of projects narrowed it became clear to me that my first love was documentary-style programmes, with a bit of news feature work thrown in for good measure.
3. The idea that a broadcast journalist can do everything when on an assignment - from asking questions to holding the camera - has been around for a while, now. In your experience, is that the reality?
Of course, a video journalist can do everything. The question is, can they do it well? Or at least well enough so that customers donʼt think they are being short-changed. Either way, people out there are buying the highest of quality HD TV screens capable of seeing, in minute detail, whatever we choose to send them. The customers will decide.
I was involved in the very early stages of the video journalism trend. When my own manager couldnʼt make it, I went on a course run by Michel Rosenbluum, a New York video journalist/cable TV guru who preached about the virtues of video journalism. The course was fun and we had some lively debate about the pros and cons of the whole thing. For about a month on my return, I helped train journalists on basic camera skills.
By this time, it was becoming clear that it had been decided at a high level in the organisation that video journalism was going to be used to reduce the cost of providing regional news.
For a while in Scotland, a sensible middle ground was held in all of this. In Scotland, we had standards as high as our network news colleagues. It seemed that video journalism was best suited to the regional newsrooms of Birmingham or Southampton and not for our national service in Scotland. We couldnʼt have been more wrong.
4. How has camera technology moved on these last five or so years?
Like everywhere else, technology is moving along fast. Five years ago, broadcasters were using tape cassettes. Many were still cutting tape on studio-size machines that needed two people to lift them. Some were transferring tapes to edit on computer or non-linear based-edit systems. Now with card and Blu-ray disc cameras, tape really is beginning to fade.
Now material can be edited on a laptop anywhere, and, if there is time, sent back by broadband.
There are a number of smaller cameras around mainly used by journalists and assistant producers, self-shooting. They are really quite good now - but professional camera people and serious broadcasters still use the slightly bigger camera with high quality lenses.
The day the small camera can do the job as well as the bigger heavier camera, I will be the first to order one.
5. What does the future hold for camera technology?
High Definition will rapidly become the norm even in news. Sky already have plans to convert all news gathering to HD. The real format debate in the industry at the moment is between solid state card technology and the rest. This amounts to a battle between Sony and Panasonic. Canon, Ikegami and JVC are still very much in the market, but for high-end broadcasting in the field it's a Sony or Panasonic. Panasonic launched a few years ago its P2 card system, using cards costing around £500-£600 for approximately one hour of material. This represented an enormous investment for broadcasters when a 40-minute tape cost little more than a tenner. The card - at the cost of a package holiday - had to be re-used pretty quickly so someone had to spend time backing up the data on it hours after it was shot.
What producer or cameraman wants their original material erased soon after spending a lot of money filming it? Yes, it could be backed up but back-ups can be corrupted. Both Panasonic and Sony still produce tape cameras but Sony now produces a cheaper card-based camera as well as one that uses both cards and tape as a back-up archive copy. Hedging their bets even further, Sony also produce a Blu-ray disc-based camera range which uses cheap, re-useable Blu-ray discs. All the various formats are now file-based systems. These make it a lot faster to edit and process material.
6. What, if any, technical jobs associated with making television news and current affairs are becoming a dying breed?
I think there is a view right now in the business that anything technical is so reliable that specialists are no longer necessary. I think its a very British thing. Unlike most of Europe, the engineer has a poor professional status in the UK. This is all the more curious because a lot of the UKʼs broadcasting reputation is based not only on its programme-making expertise but also its technical standards and innovation. If you are a picture editor, sound person, cameraperson or engineer, then plan your future with care. Above all else, be prepared to diversify.
7. What advice would you give anyone thinking of developing a career on the technical side of broadcasting?
if you have good IT skills and and really want to work in the business, then go ahead. Get the best training you can from the best university or college course you can and make sure you have a range of technical production and personal skills. Despite what some may think, the industry is always going to need people with good technical skills.
8. The impression is that BBC Scotland staff (and former staff) are fiercely passionate about the Corporation. Is that the case?
Absolutely. The Corporation in its very British way represented the highest of standards - journalistic and technical. Most of us in the business are passionate about public service broadcasting and the high standards it set. No more so than in Scotland where we have a strong national identity and vibrant creative community.
Like most good businesses, delivering a high quality service to its customers, that quality should be the passion of everyone in the organisation.
9. Proudest broadcasting moment?
We were filming in Malta on a Lockerbie documentary - one of several I worked on. The Maltese authorities had always disputed the claim that the Pan AM 103 bomb had been loaded at its Luqa Airport. Central to the story was the claim that the bomb had been wrapped in clothes traced to a shop - Maryʼs House in Valetta. Testimony from various interviewees indicated that it was by no means clear as to who, and exactly when, the items were bought. To pursue this further, an interview was fixed with Maltaʼs chief of police. We turned up to interview the chief early next morning. As we waited outside his office, three very large Americans in dark government-issue suits walked past us and down the corridor. Suddenly, the interview was off. We established later that they were CIA. We were at the heart of a massive international story. The film and its conclusions still ring true today.
10. Funniest or most embarrassing?
Most embarrassing really. We were filming live presentation from Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC. President Clinton was unveiling a Cairn to those who died on Pan Am 103. Reporting Scotland was being presented live from there by Jackie Bird. We finished the broadcast and Jackie and Atholl Duncan - then producer, now head of news and current affairs at BBC Scotland - came up to help load the kit into our self-drive people carrier. There wasnʼt much time to get to the airport to catch our flight. I went to get the car keys - they werenʼt in my pocket. Panic ensued. They had been in my pocket but they were now gone. Jackie and Atholl, minus luggage, decided to get to Dulles Airport and catch their flight. More frantic searching then I spotted a gap in the flooring of the temporary grandstand and 20 feet below, in the darkness, amongst the scaffold tubes, were the keys. We caught the flight - but only just.
