TV2 NATIONAL ANTHEM - DUNEDIN BASE
TVNZ Ltd.
Camera Assistant, Dolly Assistant, Dolly Cabler, Cabler
2004

Originally I signed up for some paid cabling and assistant work for the 24
Hour music "telethon" event TVNZ put on around the country in 2004.
However it turned out one of the camera guys was my producer from
COWTV, Cam, and so we were immediately linked to him and spent the
first few hours of the day pushing and pulling a ride on camera dolly back
and forth in front of the stage at the University Union hall or clearing the
cable for it. The hall was almost constantly filled with people once the
doors opened at 5pm, and apparently compared to most of the rest of
country this was uncommon.

After this though as the event went on jobs got switched around and we
were often allowed to setup camera gear and lights, and occassionally
we were even put on cameras for small things during the evening. For
most of the evening I was with Cam, and was mostly his main assist
where he needed me.

The event for me was split into two shifts and so I worked fromm 2pm
until 10pm and then 8am unil 6pm. However I ended up covering two
hours for another one of the crew and actually started my second shift
at 6am. Thankfully the majority of the morning was reasonably low key
and I spent a lot of time at the main presentation area, standing around
talking to the presenters between their links if I wasn't moving the
camera cable so the camera there could be used as another during
music segements.

The late afternoon had me assisting camera on the main stage and then
running back and forth between them and the presenting area again. By
the last couple of hours there seemed to be more staff needed than
camera positions, because the presnting ones were cut back, and so my
last few hours were surprisingly relaxed. Given that I was quite tired by
this point it wasn't the worst thing.

Sadly "telethon" events like this just arent as relevant as they were 30
years ago and so this was the last sort of thing TVNZ did in New Zealand
(TV3 NZ tried one a few years later and it also wasn't greatly successful).
It's a shame because as a crew member it was a memorable event, and
I can only somewhat think of what it must have been like to work on
successful Telethons in the past.