Talking

emember that very few people are and it’s likely anyone put in thesame position would feel the same.The next thing to do is get help. Help comes in the form of advicefrom your peers and fellow broadcasters (who are likely to have feltjust like you do when theyfirst started). It also comes inthe form of reading books onTV production (particularlysports production), biographiesof professional sportscommentators (I can particularlyrecommend MurrayWalker’s) and watching plenty of varied sports and watching andlistening to how the commentators work.You can, fairly inexpensively, enrol in a local college course, eitherfull or, like I did, part time in the evenings for a few weeks. A generalmedia course is enough for most, but you can take it to degreelevel if you are academically minded. In fact, a number of commentatorsrun media degrees alongside working for a gaming broadcaster,and the two help each other.If in any doubt, look right down the barrel of the lens in the camera- you can’t go too far wrong from there. Just ensure you’re lookingat the right camera (usually the one with a red light on top of it if it’slive on you) and listen to your producer for further guidance onwhich will be being used.It might be that you take to it easily and none of the above willapply to you, in which case, great - you are probably a natural-bornshow off, and that’s pretty cool for the career you’ve chosen!36