Guild of Television Camera Professionals toasts 50 years with event and awards

On 27 November the Guild of Television Camera Professionals (GTC) celebrated its 50th anniversary at STEAM in Swindon.

The Guild was formed in 1972 with the intention of maintaining standards in camerawork, initially in studio and outside broadcast but rapidly developing to encompass all areas of camerawork. Now having over 1,600 members worldwide the GTC Council made the decision to organise the first in-person GTC event since March 2020 and incorporate into the birthday celebration a day of seminars, the GTC Awards for Excellence and the GTC Bill Vinten University Award.

Members, partners, sponsors and friends of the GTC were encouraged to take part in free training for first aid, to have tours of the restored BBC Outside Broadcast vehicle ‘MCR21’ which in 1966 was involved in the coverage of the World Cup Finals at Wembley, the recreation of the BBC’s ‘Roving Eye’ tracking vehicle complete with roof mounted OB camera (and operator) and then coming right up to date the latest OB truck from zest4.tv complete with the brand new Sony HDC5500 4K HDR live production camera.

Florian Gallier, Strategic Partnerships Manager at Mo-Sys, delivered a fascinating talk on the use of virtual presentation, Image Mechanic’s Neil Thompson discussed the future direction of camera technology, and GTC President John Henshall spoke about the origins of the GTC which he co-founded with the late Dick Hibberd.

Vinten premiered their Making History films celebrating the work of eminent television camera operators, a series set to be released in the new year which were very well received by the audience.

The event ended with the annual GTC Awards for Excellence, where the work of camera professionals is celebrated. Members of the Guild nominate work and a panel of judges, many of them previous award winners, has the hard task of deciding the best of those entries. This year winners came from natural history, documentary, FPV drone operation and light entertainment including the camera team for the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest who flew over from the Netherlands to collect the trophies for their team. All the winners commented on how they valued being recognised by their peers in the industry.

The Bill Vinten GTC University Awards competition acknowledges excellent teaching of camerawork and craft skills within UK educational establishments. The Bill Vinten GTC University Trophy is awarded to the institution with the highest scoring portfolio of films submitted to the competition.

The winner this year was Agata Kazmierczak from Anglia Ruskin University for her film Roots, second place going to Jaime Oliver Lai from London South Bank University for his work on Tell Tyler, with documentary For A New Age, shot by Emily Cooney from the University of Surrey, in third place. The winner of the University Award for the institution with the highest score from all submitted films was Coventry University. Awards for the individual films were presented by Chris Owen, Martin Hawkins GBCT and awards organiser Alan Duxbury while the University Award was presented by very special guest, Mrs Elaine Vinten.

The final award of the night was the Dick Hibberd Award, named in honour of the GTC co-founder and first President. Presented by members of the Hibberd family to Andy Portch in recognition of his long-standing career in news camerawork, trailblazing the use of small form factor cameras in news gathering allowing him to tell stories that might otherwise have been left untold.

Industry support came from Vinten, Anna Valley, CVP, Cirrolite, ETC Lighting, Film Store Rental, and Portaprompt who helped bring the event to life with the provision of camera, lighting, grip, display and prompting equipment.

Words: Simon Edwards