The Freelancer Today

Freelance cameramen epitomise the relentless casualisation and fragmentation of the TV news business. The dramatic revolution in information gathering, in content provision and transmission, in costs, equipment developments, editorial demands and commercial upheaval is far from over. It is set to accelerate. With it, the lot of the freelance can only become more difficult.

Yet TV news, in whatever form it develops, will always need vivid, moving pictures. That is the hard edge of commercial competition.

So too will the information providers in the convergence between text and video on the Internet or CD-Roms. Video cameras cannot be talked through roadblocks by microchips! Virtual reality cannot substitute for the guile and cunning of an excellent cameraman. Good TV news needs talented people hired at a fair price. They can't be cheap, ambitious, unattached 20-year-olds looking desperately searching for their break into TV.

There are complex contradictions. News organisations of every size feel commercially uncomfortable with large numbers of secure, pensionable staff on their payroll. Increasingly they are a permanent cost on the finance director's spreadsheet that has to be reduced.

Steadily the generations of fine staff cameramen who graduated 100 foot mute film, to CP16 comag, to the first RCA TK76 cameras on U-Matic, then to the AMPEX and Sonys of Beta-SP, are being encouraged to retire or seek redundancy. News organisations are buyers of skill as and when they need them. Supply of skills exceeds demands. Whether contract or hired by the day, the negotiating strength of the freelance - however brave, resourceful and even foolhardy - is being weakened.

This is the gap both the wise, experienced savvy freelances and the ambitious firebrands - the young and not-so-young - are still fighting to fill. Many are the most consummate of highly skilled professionals. Others come from TV school with inflated expectations, or they come from the strangest of backgrounds and want a change of direction in life. It might be temporary. If the money's right it could be permanent. Most aspire to be Rory Pecks: they simply want to be a damn good TV news cameraman and will do anything to get a break.

All of them chase the moonbeams of fame, recognition and probably the self-delusion of fortune. Some are brilliant, incorrigible and outrageous in the risks they will take to secure the best footage. At night in the hotel bar colleagues mutter jealously how they must have been born with part of their brain missing. Others dismiss the foolhardiness.

Some see the chance of career and a business from the freelance game. But what freelancer could write a business plan? What bank manager would give him or her even the time of day? "People do not do this for the money," one of the best told me recently. Even winning awards is recognition of past excellence and resourcefulness. It is no guarantee of future capabilities to be in the right place and earn good money.

Yet the freelancers' satisfaction is in excellence and being first. Often the cash price comes a poor second. This is the freelancers' vanity and commitment that news organisations exploit willingly in the ephemeral daily grind of TV news.

Freelancers - even the best with a distinguished, reliable track record of quality and delivery - complain that securing a commission from the news companies is sadly a rare event these days. They say that apart from Channel 4 Independents' Fund, the big players rarely take the physical or financial risk, even if the likely cost is a few thousand pounds. "Show us the pix when you get back" is often the corporate message. But weeks of initiative filming in distant, dangerous, unseen locations can then be blown away by a major breaking news story. At a stroke the time and investment is lost. The news cycle moves on, but the money has gone.

Some freelancers talk with relief of how the bankability of 'bang-bang' coverage is fading. Others say that taking absurd 'bang-bang' risks where staffers refuse to go is the only way to guarantee a place in an overcrowded market. Even the editorial demand for thoughtful conceptual news is drying up, some complain. With the ever shorter news cycles and the growing predominance of domestic news stories, many freelancers who made their names amidst the dangers of conflict are having to reassess where the new market might be.

And then there are the Hi-8's and DVC. Once these cash-and-carry cameras gave freelancers the competitive edge over staffers carrying weightier Beta machines and the traditional retinue of gear boxes. Now even the Hi-8 provider is being undercut by the even cheaper amateur-cum-cameraman with initiative, a good line in chat and a knack of being where it matters. Or there are simply the amateurs.

In the relentless, voracious cycle of supermarket news video, the excellence and impact of fine camerawork can often be overlooked, forgotten or taken for granted. That is why we TV news practitioners -whether correspondents, producers, editors, managers of TV entrepreneurs- must commemorate and honour the work of the best freelancers in the name of Rory Peck. Too many are merely names on a passing invoice, unattached to any company, with no corporate benefits or security, but still devoted craftsmen and women in their own right. But with such commitment come the problems of cash flow, pensions, life assurance and recognition.

TV Reporters of the Year and Best TV News Programmes all need brave, mischievous and resourceful staff. Increasingly they are freelances like Rory. They must be recognised, honoured and given the chance of financial security for the moment when -like Rory- the worst happens.