Never leave a man behind....

Not exactly Bravo Two Zero....

Following on from my last article, I ran across this photo the other day. Here you see the sound crew, including myself, from last December's live Coronation Street episode. This was taken on the afternoon before the live transmission, after a week of mostly night rehearsals, so what you see is a bunch of grim, battle-worn and visual-effects-stained veterans who had finally managed to have a wash. And we were all still smiling.

Now what does this have to do with getting that all important start in television? Well, there's a couple of other desirable qualities for a broadcast sound engineer which I didn't mention, and these may be actually the most important ones; the ability to take whatever the job throws at you and still come out smiling at the other end, and the ability to look after yourself and to look out for your colleagues.

Shows like Corrie can only work because they have a dedicated and committed crew who can do this every single day in whatever the conditions throw at them. The live episode was only made possible by a massive team effort by ALL the departments, each one of whom from the director down to the humblest cable-basher had a precise role which they carried out flawlessly in conditions of near-freezing fog and darkness, all the while knowing that their mates were right behind them. And THAT I think is what brings a team together. Even though most of them would never admit it.

Why else would we all be sitting on a pile of fake bricks grinning inanely?