On a day that we're shooting I'll usually have a nine o'clock start, to be on location at 10. I get my contact sheet which tells me where to meet, and most of the time I start off in the station.
I go to the wardrobe people, and then the producer and myself either drive to the meeting point or get a taxi depending on where we're going. Most of the time the crew find their own way there. Then we get there we sit down and we meet with the crew and discuss the shoot and then travel to the location.
The crew is made up of myself, as presenter/reporter, the producer, the cameraman, the sound engineer and the sparks - if we're shooting an interior location, because he's the person who rigs up the lights. So there are about five people all together.
While we're setting up and the producer/director is checking the camera angles, I will be talking with my interviewees, just to know where they're coming from and to make them feel relaxed. People like when their interviewer actually listens to them, so most of the time I try to avoid talking about what we're going to discuss in the interview. So I just give then a general idea, something like, "I'd like to hear about your life." That means when I'm actually interviewing them it's like we are really conversing, which makes a lot of difference. So then we do the interview and after that maybe the producer will want to do some "pick-ups" - maybe he wants to film the interviewee and myself walking in somewhere and then out again. We get to have our lunch, most of the time by 1 p.m.
Usually the producer and myself will come back and look at the tapes and see if we actually got what we wanted to get on location, just make sure that the sound is all right the pictures are fine and we didn't miss anything.
Most days we will be out on a shoot from 10 a.m. until about 4 or 5 p.m.; that might be for two items, but often it's only for one. In television to get two minutes you could be out there shooting for 20 hours - that's the nature of it.
Back at the station the producer tells me what shots he's planning to use and why he's not going to use certain pieces. I like this because he's not dictatorial, he's very democratic; but the producer has the final says on shots because when he was on location he knew why he asked for a wide-angle shot or a close-up. But he does talk to me about why he's using certain things and leaving out others, that's what makes the job very interesting. I try to avoid seeing myself, so I don't view the tapes. Instead I check my messages and I go to work on the next schedule.
Before I took up this work, I've been an actor and musician - I'm still a percussionist with an Afro-Irish band, De Jimbe - and since I came to Ireland five years ago I've studied drama at UCD, and film and television studies at DCU.
We have three producers on Mono: Colm, Niamh and Brian. We also have a researcher called Frank. So while Brian is working on the tapes of the last story I go to Colm and start working on the next story. Colm will give me the brief and Frank will talk to the person who we're going to do the story on, so Frank will find out the information about the person and I formulate questions, type intros, then clock out. Days when we're out shooting are like that; other days are about getting the stories together, trying to chase up other things and coming up with ideas and running ideas by the producer.
In conversation with Olivia Kelly
