One of my favourite movies of all time (purely for kicks) has to be Tarantino's from dusk till dawn. And if you watch the director's commentary on the DVD (who does that?) you'll hear Tarantino say that when they were writing the screenplay, they got as far as "midnight" when everyone in the Titty Twister Bar turns into vampires. The last line of the screenplay says simply "all hell breaks loose"...

And then they put the pen down.

At that point a few things must have happened. Firstly (and I know what this feels like) they just couldn't wait to get shooting. And secondly (I get this too) some things can't be scripted. You have to be there and 'feel' it in order to get the best shot. Incidentally this is where most average advertising agencies fall down because an ad script is mostly written and approved long before the real shooting begins. Loosen up man.

By comparison, in the realm of event coverage, there is no screenplay at all. You're lucky if you get a 'schedule' scribbled on the back of the event planners' napkin over coffee. So the term 'run and gun' was coined. The challenge we face is how to distill all that gunning down into a compelling short-story.

The answer is creativity.

The worlds of photography and cinema have always been inherently a 50/50 game between art and science. Modern cameras are pretty complex toys and a lot of the time things just don't work as you expect them to, or at all. So how do you be "creative" while you're trying to be a "camera operator" and sometimes your own "trouble shooter"? With still photography it's simply a case of getting back to basics, dropping all the lights and the fancy add-ons and making images the way the great masters used to. But if you are shooting video... well... you can't take the technology for granted. Ambient audio is unacceptable; low ambient light won't cut it; shaky hand-held footage looks lame.

I had to learn the hard way. By "hard way" I can go on record to say 2009 was the most difficult year of my life. I mean go-home-and-cry difficult. I won't bore you with the details which seem pretty mundane even to me now. But there were times when I just felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life attempting to produce cinema-quality work in a run-and-gun situation using equipment (some of which we made ourselves) not designed for this. We invented gear, made up names, skateboarded outside of churches and dragged crew over the sand using ropes to get the look we wanted. All this happened while the office of the PM threw two summits at us, we ran out of server space about 7 times and lost about a third of our gear at sea. But the resulting imagery was tantalizingly good. I dare say, this damn web-site makes it look easy. It's not.

Or I should say: "it wasn't".

For somehow at the turn of the year I feel like I am bursting through the surface of the ocean after a ten-wave hold down: the water is draining off my face; the sun is blinding white; I can feel the sea foam sizzling around my body and I am taking the most delicious, deep breath of clean ocean air...

We... I... have finally reached where we need to be. We've made all the mistakes, fixed all the bad calls and paid the debts... The best part of all this is that my team - who really stuck by me through the worst - have learnt more here than they would at university and are now capable of doing their job with my eyes closed. And we can finally let the science take a back-seat and let creativity be the driver for the road ahead. I'll give you some clues on what's in store - in another post.

I keep hearing, in hushed tones or through avid, zealous spies, that "this or that photographer is going to start doing video too". That's to be expected. Who wouldn't want to play with these new toys we now all have. But... can they handle the year I just had?

Over Christmas I was pushing my son along on a skateboard. He's doing really well and bravely gets back on after the hugest "stunts" go wrong. His older cousin, a girl, popped up and said: "can I have a turn, will you show me how?". I thought for a while and said: "sure, but I want you to know that you will fall, and you will hurt yourself, ok?" She appreciated my honesty and decided to watch instead. I think it was a pretty mature exchange.

To everyone out there, taking pictures with any of the new hybrid DSLRs and itching to start shooting video for your clients: it's your turn; I'll show you how.

But you need to know that you will fall. And you will hurt yourself. Go for it!