Reality TV . . .

One of the things that interests me about making TV programmes is how little most people really understand about the process - and the costs!

If you walk into any conventional TV company, and ask them to make (say) a series of 12 or so half-hour TV shows, on a reportage/feature basis, they'd probably assign a team of three or four people to do the job. They'd also hire in specialists, like cameramen at £300 at day or more, for the odd day or two on each episode. They'd probably shoot for 2 or 3 days, and spend days on the edit.

Overall, you'd expect to get a bill for £10,000 per episode, maybe a lot more, and they'd take a week, maybe two, to make each one.

Here on The Caravan Channel, it's all very different. There's just me. CG. The only person who makes the programme. All of it, all on my own.

So I do the basic journalism and research, for each an every item in the show. I do the journalistic editing - ie, deciding what and how we're going to do things. I do all the fixing - that's arranging for shoots, getting people lined up for interview, etc.

I shoot the shows. That means travelling around to the different places we go, working out how to shoot a subject, and actually filming it - sometimes putting myself in front of the camera, although mostly only when I think it will explain things most clearly. Because I work at this alone, I don't have time for the sophisticated job I could do if I had another person working with me - and so I shoot me fairly close-up, to ensure I get a good picture, and clean sound.

After shooting material, I have to edit it, mysef and no-one else. I quite often don't worry about slight intrusive sounds or minor picture points, essentially because the materal has been shot with no-one behind the camera, only me in front of it, and there's no time to go back and do it again.

For each show I make, it takes between 1 and 2 days of 10 hours to edit the material, except during the winter, when we show some repeat material - usually less than 20% in each of 4 or 5 shows in December and January.

I spend between 6 and 8 days making each programme. It's intensive, hard work. The programmes don't go out perfect, simply because of the bulk of work required and the level of detail involved.

The shows cost a tiny amount compared to terrestrial TV - but the BBC and ITV companies won't make TV about what they see as tiny, not very interesting minorities. The only times they do, they tend to employ comedians and comics doing silly stuff to attract a mass audience, and most caravanners and motorhomers then say how little they like it.

So, where's all this going?

Nowhere much. I have to admit I get a little frustrated when someone talks to me about minor focus or sound issues; I really am not interested unless the person making a complaint would like to pay for the additional time and employ an additional person to deal with it for me!

There, that was easy, wasn't it? Is that all I do?

Well, no, actually . . . I do run all of the business side, everything from selling the ads to making them, and from writing the bills to writing the cheques . . .

PS -added next day; I also spend at least 4 or 5 hours a week looking after The Caravan Channel website, and probably the same on the forum, depending on how busy it is. I only though of this just now, as I got up at 6.30, and except for stopping for a shower, have been online since then . . . (its 10.30 now)