ASK & DISCUSS
INDEXLooking for some advice on the best place to go to get freelance work in the news sector.
12 years ago - Peter Baxter
Looking for some advice on the best place to go to get freelance work in the news sector. I have a new sony pmw400k camera and HEAT trained.
i always seem to hit brick walls when getting intouch with news stations like ITN
Thanks
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11 years, 12 months ago - Scott Reed
Take a look at Philip Bloom's blog site. He started his career in news gathering and often talks about it.
http://philipbloom.net/2013/05/30/personalpost/
That article has a bit about how he got started etc and there's more on there. He's quite approachable at shows and social media too.
Good luck buddy.
Scott.
11 years, 12 months ago - Marlom Tander
As you are HEAT trained, it might be worth going to some unreported smouldering war on spec. If you're lucky it will flame up while you're there.... Or does your HEAT training mean you know just how bloody silly that is :-)
Seriously though - can you do something to make your reputation? Something that you know News Orgs will be impressed by. Use that to get the meetings with the people who can then hire you.
Otherwise these days it's not a badly paid entry job, it's an unpaid internship. In which case, the choice is 20K living as one of hundeds of interns, or 20K on a project that grabs people attention and gets you noticed, and commissioned.
I know which I'd do.
Good luck.
12 years ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin
I guess you could try racing to incident scenes and getting footage, hoping someone gets unlucky/you get lucky and have the only footage of something gruesome? The rolling news channels often loop the same 30s of footage and dreadful phone cam shots in desperation, if you have something they need, you're in a bargaining position.
11 years, 11 months ago - Olivia Prutz
Hi Peter
I work as a cameraman for RT and we occasionally hire freelancers to cover stuff when our cameramen can't make it/are busy on other projects. In fact, we recently hired a new full time cameraman who started out by doing freelance work for us. If you want to send me your CV/showreel I can pass it on to my boss just in case something comes up? Where are you based?
Olivia