Kit, drills and habits behind our handheld camera workshops

Handheld shooting is the core of the workshop, and we teach it with drills rather than lectures. Each person works through a short sequence: a slow walk with the camera held close to the body, a pan that follows a moving subject, and a locked-off shot held for the full length of a spoken line. We watch the footage back together on a monitor straight away.

The aim is steady, usable pictures without relying on fixes in the edit. We talk about stance, elbow position, breathing and where the weight sits, because small changes there matter more than any accessory. Participants swap roles so that reporters understand what the operator is dealing with and operators see what the reporter needs.

We also include a deliberately awkward exercise: a crowded corridor, a moving door, a person who will not stand still. It is never comfortable, and that is the point, because a calm first attempt in a quiet room tells you very little.

For framing we rely on a simple printed set of reference frames and on short clips supplied by the client, with permission, from their own archive. We pause each clip and ask the group to say what the picture is telling the viewer and what is distracting from it. People tend to see problems in other people's shots faster than in their own, so this builds judgement quickly.

We then ask everyone to reshoot the same scene three ways: wide to establish place, medium for the person speaking, and a tight detail that gives the edit something to cut to. The three-shot habit is not a rule so much as a way to leave the location with enough material for a clear package.

Headroom, eyelines and the space left in front of a speaker are covered with plain examples, never jargon. The test we use is whether an editor, seeing the clip cold, could build a sequence without phoning the crew to ask what was filmed.

Lighting training is where the discipline of a small kit pays off. We work with window light, a single portable panel and a folding reflector, and we teach people to read a room in under a minute: where the strongest source is, where the shadows fall and which direction the subject should face. Most poor interviews on location fail at that first minute, not at the camera setting.

We practise in awkward spaces, such as a dim office, a car park at dusk and a room with mixed lamps. Colour temperature gets a plain explanation: switch off the lamp that fights the daylight if you can, balance for what remains, and check skin tones on the monitor before recording.

Autumn light suits these exercises well. Low sun and early dusk force people to make quick decisions, and they leave knowing what they can do in ten minutes rather than what they could do with an hour.

Every workshop ends with a short written note for each participant, produced by Gareth and checked by me. It lists two or three habits that person did well and two or three to work on, with a reference to the clip where each showed up. We avoid long reports because nobody reads them once the next breaking story arrives.

I handle the workflow side. If a recurring problem comes from how a crew is briefed, how cards are labelled or how files reach the desk, I add a plain page of suggestions for the editor or producer. Training on its own cannot fix a hand-over that loses footage between the van and the edit suite.

Where a client wants it, we return for a short follow-up session to review new footage against the original notes. That is the only continuing arrangement we offer; there is no programme beyond it.