I went to a taping of The Daily Show the other day, and am left wondering what the camera men do all day? I assume that there is a rehearsal before the audience is let in and the cameramen participate in that, and then there is the actual taping which occurs in real time. Some of the cameramen put away their equipment and left before the show was even over since their camera is never used for the closing segment.
So, basically, it seems like the cameramen have about 2 hours work each day, assuming an hour rehearsal and 30 minutes to bring in the audience before the actual taping. Am I right? Is there something I’m missing? What do they get paid, and how can I get the gig?
Many, many news stations now have completely robotic camera work. Someone sits in a booth with a joy stick and goes “weeeeeeeeeeee!” But yea, there ain’t much else to do for the camera people once the script is known.
When I worked in TV, we had several broadcasts a day, and did other station maintenance when nothing was being broadcast. There’s more to the job than just aiming the camera.
And if there are other shows in that building (or studio – It’s not impossible that the Daily Show set gets put away during the day and another one rolled into place), then the camera operators work on those.
They crew on other shows. They also do camera work for commercials, promotional videos, industrial productions and lots of other stuff. There’s also a lot of busy work like rehearsals, etc.
AFAIK, the Daily Show set & studio is used only for that purpose. I’ve seen tapings at both it’s old studio (now used for the Colbert Report) and the current one, and the set is always there as is. It’s kind of like Conan O’Brien and David Letterman - they don’t use those studios for other shows.