Everyone has heard of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Many of us switch it on in one form or another and allow the organisation into our living rooms, kitchens, cars and private spaces on a daily basis. As well as churning out a fabulous range of diverse entertainment, they also take the likes of amateur historians with no hair and whip them into shape in the presentation department. I am thrilled to say that I am now the product of an intensive boot camp of such training.
Only last week I was sitting in the BBC Academy television studios with multitude of high-end cameras, top professionals and bright sparkling lights all focused on me. I was reading an autocue and introducing a dummy version of The One Show, a BBC flag-ship programme that airs daily on BBC 1 on early evenings. In my ear was not only the sound of the director giving me instructions, but a host of production people gabbling various technical speak to each other. As my side my co-presenter was ready to bring on the first guest and the floor manager was giving a 10 second visual signal before the first video clip was played in. It was brilliant.
Part of the training was to learn how to present certain pieces to camera when on location, something I have been doing quite a lot of with the Bald Explorer videos. To add to that we were give actors to play with. They help us understand the dynamics of interviewing people by pretending to be a variety of characters, some more awkward and harder to question than others.
Presenting is not as easy as you may think, even if you have been doing it for a while. I learned a load of new techniques and styles and I am sure as I make more Bald Explorer productions I will be incorporating some of this new skills into my work. Watch this space and see if you can notice the new BBC trained presenter in the videos.