What do they do?
While making videos of middle class weddings in the bylanes of Kolkata, Gokul Nanda had no inkling that his skills would one day catapult him to a well-paying job at a national news channel where he would be capturing the Tsunami tragedy of 2004 and the anti-Nano campaign spearheaded by Mamta Banerjee in Singur in 2008.
Nanda, who now works with CNBC (Network 18) scaled up the career ladder quick because of two reasons. One was his knack of handling camera with precision and second was a desire to learn continuously, which made him quit wedding photography work and enroll for an 18-month course at the National Institute of Film and Fine Arts, Kolkata.
The job is fraught with risks and a fair amount of unpredictability. “When you are alone at a spot for a story, you face the risk of being manhandled by unruly crowds. Once, in the middle of the night, I went to a ghetto in Kolkata where communal riots had taken place. I was the only mediaperson covering that riot and was mortally afraid of being caught by the instigators, which fortunately didn’t happen,” says Nanda.
It’s very important for a cameraperson to be vigilant to avoid missing any important piece of information. Narendra Gudavalli, executive cameraperson, NDTV explains with an anecdote: “During a cabinet meeting of the NDA government in 1999 at 7 RCR (Race Course Road, the Prime Minister’s official residence), where camerapersons are given less than two minutes to shoot, I recorded a discussion through an ambience mike in which the then petroleum minister was heard giving his resignation. That recording, without the audio, would have been a plain visual but because of little vigilance; it had become the breaking news of the day.”
Travelling with a camera and tripod can be somewhat tough. Though with advancement of technology, lighter and sophisticated cameras have penetrated the lives of video journos, “some of them can also fall victim to backaches or spondylitis. We have a colleague who has been bed-ridden for two months because of severe backache. I also suffer from spondylitis,” adds Nanda.
Sometimes, in a scuffle or during cases of public unrest video journalists and their expensive cameras can suffer great damage. While covering the 2003 elections in West Bengal, Nanda happened to be near a polling booth where rigging was taking place. “As I was shooting the people doing the rigging, someone pulled me back. I fell on the ground along with the camera, and its light broke,” he adds. “The video I shot was flashed on Star news (his previous employer) and I got a call of appreciation from the Mumbai head office.” That day, Nanda also lost his gold chain in the scuffle and learnt the important lesson that a cameraperson should never travel with valuables while on the job.
Being a qualified cameraperson helps you grow faster. Ameyo Pani, a video journalist at the Bhubaneshwar bureau in the CNN-IBN has also doubled as a reporter on several occasions. “When I had to cover the Rath Yatra (when Lord Jagannatha travels out of his famous temple in a chariot once a year amidst much festivities) in 2007 and 2009, and the reporter who had to file the story was travelling in London, and so the head office, with immense faith in me, asked me to carry out the job of a reporter-cum-cameraperson,” says Pani, who studied law, political science and journalism at the PG level from Utkal University.
Travel is inherent in the profession. Though the news channel has bureaus at all important places, a video journalist many a time will have to travel long-distance within or outside the state to cover major events such as a bomb blast, riot, earthquake or critical political developments.
Nanda also travels to the far off corners of India for work. He has been to foreign locations (Bangladesh and Hong Kong) too in his seven years in the news business. While taking stock of the damage in the wake of the Tsunami, Nanda visited Car Nicobar, (Nicobar Islands) and was aghast at what he saw there.
“The island is an Air Force base and there were 100 government quarters, all affected by the Tsunami. I saw a house, which had a photo frame of a young boy hung on the wall, there was a cycle parked outside, I could also see the rest of his belongings, but not a single human soul could be found either in that house or on the entire stretch of island. It was completely ravaged,” says Nanda.
