Breakfast a la World Cup!

Like I mentioned in my previous post, we produce breakfast shows, preview (forum) shows and the actual main show with the games. The mornings include presenter Scott Minto and Hayley McQueen who every morning greet the new day of football along with one guest. Over the time guests have come and gone, but still remaining here in Doha with us are Terry Venables, Graeme Souness, Trevor Francis and Glenn Hoddle. Prior todays date we've been joined by Ray Wilkins, Mark Hateley, Iain Dowie, Peter Reid, Gus Poyet, Graham Poll and many more... As I've never worked with 'famous people' before, this has been such an incredible experience. I never thought when I started university and decided to go into journalism that this opportunity would come along after this little time. One of my biggest dreams is of course to cover the World Cup, and now I'm doing it, and I can't quite get my head around it. Next step on the dream ladder, Olympics 2012.

But back to the Breakfast shows, which are very enjoyable, mainly thanks to Scott and Hayley who have been great together. Every second morning either I or V have been in the studio working with the cameras, the setup and making sure that everything is working out alright and that guest/s and presenters are all on time, that the set has been cleaned and that the breakfast is nicely presented on the table and so on... Our set role, which is camera man (woman), has included so much more than just being behind the camera. This has been great for both of us as we have not only learnt about cameras, as we kind of first thought we would, but also about other things that you would have to know as a floor manager. Bonus!

The mornings not inside the studio we have tried to sneak into the gallery - which is miles more disorganised than any other gallery we have seen, or that people working with us have ever seen - just to get a good look on how the director, vision mixer, producer and everyone else work during a live show. For me, who eventually wants to end up directing preferably live shows, this has been a great opportunity. And being amongst people who have spent years and years in the profession, I have managed to snatch some good contacts and with some luck it seems as if I have some good opportunities lined up once back in England.

In the studio there's a total of six cameras, including the jib, but at the Breakfast show four of these are fixed and only the camera pointing at the guest is moving, which means only me or V, and the jib operator. In the preview and match shows all but two cameras (mine and V's) are fixed which leaves us two doing the camera work. And, as I mentioned earlier, this seems to have been a bit controversial as the staff working over here at Al Jazeera are not used to female camera operators, and it's quite hard to know how to handle this from times to times, because you don't want to get on the wrong foot with the locals, as they (read a few of them) know English and are your only life line to the rest of the people working in the studio, with make up, lighting and so on.

But a brilliant experience, and a very useful journey to learn how to handle obstacles that we are not used to in Britain, and definitely haven't yet come across at university - such as massive culture clashes and language barriers. That being said, my first language isn't English either but at least I understand when somebody asks me to move a camera, or to find the Al Jazeera badges for the presenters and such...