Ringing Forums

I didn’t have such a negative impression. He was clearly flustered but not terrified, and given the build up that he was trying to perform a skilled act with negligible training the fact that he struggled isn’t surprising, and the competent way Darren managed his attempt showed he wasn’t in any danger,
If anything the calm competence of the other ringers contrasted with his fumbling showed was a good portrayal of a skilled activity.
The best test of 5he film would be to show it to a non ringer (all of it, not just the practical bit). I think you would find positive responses.
The view outside our little bubble is often different from the internal view. I remember after we filmed Midsomer Murders ringers were quick to find the faults and object to how it showed ringers but non ringers were impressed by how much there was to ringing. (I even got a recruit from someone who knew nothing about ringing before she saw the film, and wanted to learn after she later moved to England.)

I'd not seen that nor heard about it so thanks for the link.

I thought it was great. Tom has obviously understood a lot about the basic mechanics of ringing a bell and communicates it clearly and in an engaging manner. It links in nicely with his earlier video about Taylors. The production quality is absolutely superb, there are very few videos of ringing recorded and edited as well as that.

He has 6.75 million subscribers, that's prime time BBC1 size of audience. Opportunities to feature ringing to that scale of audience come round infrequently, and virtually never for a segment as long as the YouTube video is.

He doesn't look terrified to me. He is doing well on the training bell but clearly finds his limit when trying to ring rounds on the full ring at Worcester. I thought it illustrated quite nicely that the very basic steps are quite easy to pick up but there's a huge amount of skill in being able to control your bell at will.

His instructor is clearly in control of the situation throughout. As a teacher its clear to me that there's nothing that would give me cause for concern. His instructor exudes confidence and calm and I think that will come across to a non-ringing audience.

Having been involved in a couple of video productions with non-ringers they are exceptionally hard to exert full control over. You don't have control over the final edit. No doubt hours of footage will have been recorded at Worcester to produce that video, but less than 10 minutes of it makes it into the final cut, and it isn't the ringers who make the decision on which segments it is. The difficulty of ringing while speaking to camera also shouldn't be underestimated.

My experience of these "learn an activity" type programmes is that the presenters are very, very quick at learning and pick it up significantly quicker than the average learner. However both of the ones I was involved in the presenter significantly altered their behaviour when doing it to camera compared to what they were doing in the practice. I don't know whether this is the added difficulty of speaking to camera or whether they had their own narrative that they wanted to weave into the story (mostly that a lot of knee bending is necessary! Which it certainly wasn't during the practice).

The people creating these videos know their audience and they know how to engage them and what works. I think as ringers if we want the type of exposure that these programmes/videos offer then we need to have a little flexibility with how ringing is portrayed. I concur with @John Harrison that the average non-ringer would have a much more positive view than someone within the ringing bubble.

My experience of these "learn an activity" type programmes is that the presenters are very, very quick at learning and pick it up significantly quicker than the average learner. — Jonathan Frye

That’s what I thought about Mike Bushell, who had the official record for learning the most number of sports. I ass7med he would be good at learning new skills, like the actors in Midsomer Murders had been. But I was wrong. He clearly expected it to require some macho effort, which made it hard to get him to relax and feel what the bell was doing.
As Jonathan said, we had no control over the final product, a three minute slot on BBC Breakfast, with an estimated audience of 12 million, see https://allsaintswokinghambells.org.uk/Articles/BBCBreakfast.html

That was really interesting. His explanation of the basic mechanics of bellringing was excellent.

IMO it was a massive step ringing for the first time on the big cathedral bells before having a lot of hours on lighter bells to gain basic control. Non-ringers wouldn't appreciate how big a leap that would be, so kudos to him for having a go. His instructor was managing it really well I thought.