Like a rabbit in the headlights

Just filmed my first video for CHOICE recently..it was a lot of fun but bloody hell I have a lot of respect for those tv journos now (yes even the ones on ACA and Today Tonight) I thought delivering a piece of script down the barrel of the camera lens would be a piece of cake compared to slaving over a long in depth print article but boy was I wrong.

Despite having a good memory I couldn't seem to remember more than one line at a time and needed my version of an autocue...the budget version, a piece of paper printed up in enormous font stuck under the camera lens. This I learned, you can look at and even though it looks like you are looking into the camera you aren't. Spooky - what it meant is that I had to emote to a piece of printed paper all while making sure I didn't flick my eyes up into the actual lens (a giveaway that you're not really looking into the lens you see). While doing this I had to make sure that I didn't drop my eyes too low - gives you a kind of zombie eyes night of the dead look.

SO once I got the eyes sorted then there was the rest. At the age of 38  thought I was pretty competent at walking and talking yet when I was asked to do it on camera I discovered I could only do one or the other...but not at the same time. We decided that I would stand still.

It's a similar story with my hands. I don't usually spend much time thinking about them yet when I was on camera I simply didn't know where to put them. They either hung by my sides like useless tubes or waved about so much that I on camera I looked like I was mentally deficient. There were points where I was reading my 'autocue' and thinking shit SHIT use your hands and my hand would rise up and then it would hang in the air waiting for further instructions - eventually it settled on my hip when no further instructions were forthcoming which kind of made me look like I was scolding the viewer - and left our video producer in stitches.

Add to these problems hair getting blown around, lipstick smudging, a microphone pack that won't transmit, a small audience of a homeless man, a few office workers having a ciggie and some nosey shoppers and of course traffic and jackhammering filming al fresco isn't as easy as it looks.

Finally I deliver a perfect take - in the middle of it a truck rumbles past. From the camera comes a hesitant voice...'ummm could you do it like that, again?"

To view the carnage head here to CHOICE