Inside a Camera Workshop: How We Teach Framing, Light and Sound

Every workshop begins the same way: a short, realistic story brief handed out before anyone touches a camera. It might be a road closure, a council statement or a flooded car park. The point is to give people a reason for each decision they make, because framing and lighting only make sense when you know what the viewer needs to understand in the first ten seconds.

I run these sessions alongside Daniel Ashworth, and we keep the opening talk to roughly twenty minutes. After that the room is on its feet. Most people learn more from one badly lit interview that they then fix than from an hour of slides about exposure, so we plan the day around making that first mistake early and safely.

Group size matters too. We keep sessions small enough that each person gets a turn on camera, a turn on sound and a turn as the reporter in front of the lens.

Framing for breaking news is different from framing for a planned feature, because the scene will not wait for you. We teach a small set of dependable shots first: a wide that places the viewer, a medium that carries the action and a close detail that gives an editor something to cut to. Once those are second nature, people can improvise without losing coverage.

We then add movement. Participants practise holding a frame while a colleague walks through it, then reframing when the subject turns away. The exercise is simple and a little uncomfortable, which is why it works. By the third attempt, most people stop chasing the subject and start anticipating where they will be.

Daniel often stops a take midway to ask what an editor would do with the clip. That question changes how people shoot more than any rule about thirds.

• Wide, medium and close as a default set
• Hold the frame before you move it
• Shoot cutaways before you are asked for them

Newsrooms and live locations rarely offer good light, so we teach people to read what is already there. We start at the classroom window, then draw the blinds and work with a single practical lamp. Participants learn to turn a subject towards a source, watch for faces going flat under ceiling strips and judge whether a small portable light helps or simply adds a second shadow.

We deliberately use awkward spaces: a corridor, a stairwell, a corner with mixed daylight and tungsten. Colour balance becomes real when two sources fight on screen, and people see the cost of ignoring it on the monitor straight away.

The aim is not a perfect picture. It is a picture that is clean enough to broadcast and quick enough to set up before the story moves on.

We spend as much time on sound as on picture, and we say so at the start. Viewers forgive a soft image far sooner than muffled speech. Participants monitor with headphones for the whole day, which tends to be a revelation: the hum of a fridge, a fan or a passing lorry becomes impossible to ignore once you can hear it.

We compare a camera-mounted microphone with one held close to the speaker and let the playback settle the argument. Then we practise the habits that protect a recording: checking levels before the interview, asking for a few seconds of room tone, and noting a take that was clean.

Tom Pritchard sometimes joins the review to show what bad audio costs an editor under deadline. Seeing it from the cutting side changes how people record it.

• Always monitor on headphones
• Mic close to the speaker, not the camera
• Record room tone before leaving

The last part of the day is playback on a proper monitor. Each person's best and weakest clips are shown to the room, and we keep the critique specific: what the shot told the viewer, what it hid and what one change would improve it. Nobody is singled out for being bad; everybody is asked to explain a choice.

Participants leave with a short written checklist that they helped draft during the day, in their own words, rather than a printed manual. We find people use a list they wrote far more than one they were given.

We also say plainly what a single day cannot do. Fluency comes from repeating the work on real stories, and the workshop is a structured start to that, not a substitute for it.

Bring the camera and microphone you actually use, even if they are modest. We would rather teach with your own kit than with equipment you will not see again, and it lets us point out the settings that matter on your particular model.

Come with a real problem if you have one: an interview that always sounds hollow, a live position that is always backlit. We build the afternoon exercises around what the group raises in the morning, so the day stays practical rather than generic.

Expect to be handed the camera early and often. People who arrive hoping to watch usually leave having done more than they planned, and that is how the day is meant to go.