• Vicki Chapman
    29
    Obviously, there has been a lot of interest in the press over the last couple of months around Ring for the King, with requests for interviews in papers, on radio, and filming requests from national, and now more recently an increasing number of international TV stations. Most of these have started off centrally, some have been redirected to more local people to handle, others have been a mixture of the two.

    One thing I tell TV crews in particular is that to organise a group of ringers, get permission from the church, parental permissions for young people and so on, can sometimes take a few days to set up. We need to find a good location, where the ringing will sound good, where the ringers would be happy to be filmed and interviewed, where it is going to show good representation of age, gender, ethnicity etc wherever possible, and show ringing in a positive way. People give up their time freely to accommodate cameras and sometimes intrusive, over excitable journalists.

    A couple of recent TV requests show the sharp contrast. The BBC piece that involved Ipswich ringers pre-recorded, then Birmingham ringers live at a ridiculous time in the morning took over a week to set up, film, put arrangements in place, and the time and engery of several people to make it happen, as well as the ringers who gave up their time for free. I understand the Birmingham band did manage to blag some money out of the BBC to cover breakfast and some travel expenses. On the flip side, Sky News called me on a Saturday afternoon, just as I was on my way out to ring a peal, demanding filming at 2pm that day ready for their 5pm slot. I did suggest that it would take time to arrange and I couldn't do anything right now as I was on my way out. It seemed they decided to go direct and contact the accommodating people in Kent and actually pulled off a good piece. Again, everyone rushed around and gave their time for free.

    BUT, given the majority of these filming requests are arranged quite last minute, ringers sometimes have to be brought in from neighbouring towers to fill the ropes, people may even give up a few hours work or caring arrangements or whatever, so should they be compensated? We charge for ringing for weddings and some places charge a modest fee for teaching where its done outside of normal practice arrangements, and we charge visiting ringers for tower grabs and peal attempts.

    On the one hand, its great we're getting the coverage, ringing is definitely in the public domain now, and its all for the greater good, but actually, as this is outside the norm and special arrangements have to be made, should we be requesting a nominal fee from TV crews? Would that stop them coming, or would it highlight these things do come at some level of cost to the participants and their time should be acknowledged and compensated?

    I have no real strong views one way or the other, and it's too late to capitalise on it now, but it was just something that occured to me recently that if we had charged each of these filming requests, even a modest sum of say £50, towers featured could have been able to use that for whatever fixtures and fittings they needed, or put towards travel expenses for participants, or their tower christmas do.

    Thoughts?
  • John Harrison
    434
    As with all transactions, the deal depends on what each party wants and what each has to give. In these cases the TV company wants an 'interesting', photogenic story, while ringers (in general) want good publicity.
    Money for incidentals (as in Birmingham) probably isn't an issue for the film company if they think it will help get a better story by oiling the wheels, so it's worth mentioning.
    I doubt it would be possible to get anything like a 'performance fee' or for the church to get a 'venue hire' since in most cases the particular tower isn't unique. If you aren't keen they'll go somewhere else or drop the story.
    All the talk about a shortage of ringers and needing more to Ring for the King probably hasn't helped either since it portrays us all as desperate for publicity. They may well think they are doing us a favour by offering us air time. .
  • John de Overa
    490
    All the talk about a shortage of ringers and needing more to Ring for the King probably hasn't helped eitherJohn Harrison

    I have wondered if the long term effect of that pitch is positive or negative. Yes it clearly has been bringing people in, but how many will stick at it, and how much of our limited teaching resources will be burned with no long term return?

    I think we need to make it very clear to people from the start that learning to ring requires regular attendance and a long term commitment. Personally, if I get people who turn up because they just want to RftK, I'll turn them away. Which is the call I'll be making tomorrow when 4 people turn up for the first time.
  • J Martin Rushton
    104
    Personally, if I get people who turn up because they just want to RftK, I'll turn them away.John de Overa

    I understand your POV, but consider that if you can get a youngster (say under 25) to ring, maybe in 10 or 20 years they will come back to it and be the stalwarts of ringing for the next generation. Train a teenager now and they could be ringing in the 22nd century.
  • John de Overa
    490


    As I said, if someone turns up and just wants to RftK and go no further then I'll turn them away, no matter what their age.

    As it happens, I will hopefully have two 12 year olds coming for the first time tomorrow, both of whom expressed an interest which had nothing to do with RftK and I'm going to do my damnedest to retain them. I also have two adults turning up, I'll have to find out what their intentions are.

    If people just want something for their "bucket list" then I'd consider it if they paid the going rate for such things, and if they weren't blocking someone who wanted to take up ringing seriously. Based on other "experience" offerings, the going rate would be north of £250.
  • John Harrison
    434
    we once offered taster sessions for a promise auction to raise funds. We didn't get any recruits but (but we might have done) and we got goodwill and awareness. The cost to us was limited to a few hours, the sort of time we would spend on a tower tour.
  • John de Overa
    490
    we once offered taster sessionsJohn Harrison

    Taster sessions where they have a go for (say) 30 mins are one thing, but RftK is something else entirely as the intent is to train people to ring for an important national event. I'm not interested in doing that unless there's a strong commitment from people to stay on afterwards, preferably backed by some sort of financial incentive to do so.
  • John Harrison
    434
    I mention taster sessions triggered by mention of bucket lists, and because the cost is not open ended. I agree that we should aim to recruit people who want to stay, other things being equal.
    In normal circumstances that would be the default, and anyone given an honest prediction of the likely learning curve would be unlikely to start without at least the though of sticking if things work.
    Advertising to ring for an event clouds the issue, both by introducing an alternative goal and by suggesting they will be doing the favour by helping out, rather than the ringer(s) doing the favour by teaching them (for nothing).
  • John de Overa
    490
    yep, completely on the same page :-)
  • Simon Linford
    315
    We are straying away from the original question which was whether we should charge for filming requests, especially ones where the benefit to ringing is at best marginal. This has certainly been the case for some of the later RtfK enquiries which were from overseas news agencies. Usually we are delighted to have media attention, and we seem to have got away from the media seeing ringing as one of the 'fun' stories to something they take seriously, but some of the requests we have had have looked to be much more trouble than they're worth.
  • Lucy Chandhial
    90
    I think it has to be considered case by case and it is about the PR value for ringing vs. the time and effort to set it up.
    I think we can also be clear about what is feasible.
    With the Sky News example two Kent towers arranged special sessions to get young learners in, in London we simply invited them to an existing planned quarter peal attempt and accepted 15 minutes of diversion.
    So if the request comes from an agency / media channel less likely to generate useful press and new recruits we can tell them when they could join a normal practice but not offer to arrange anything special but for the right media it is worth arranging something special.
    Looking at it another way… if the Central Council / International organisation benefits maybe it should be willing to pay something to bands that take on the special press requests and go out of their way to generate national PR.
    I can’t imagine the TV companies will pay in most cases as for them it is a minor community interest story and not a revenue generating headline story.
  • Steve Pilfold
    11
    I think filming requests come in two varieties, and I have a similar discussion regularly with online video/photocreators:

    • are you doing them a favour (providing something for a feature they are doing which isn't about you/your subject?
    • are they doing you a favour by providing free publicity which although it is filling column inches/tv time, could equally be a story about a cat stuck up a tree?

    In the first case, for example filming ringers as part of a drama where a wedding goes wrong and someone has to escape via the tower, and they charge they plough through the middle of all the ringers, then yes, you should get a fee.

    If it is the second, then there is probably no budget to draw from, especially if it is local reporting: they are reporting on you and you want to get something (publicity!) out of it without paying for an advert. In which case, unless it is a proper feature with someone like the BBC, you are unlikely to get any money and even less likely to get a report on tv, if you demand it!

    As for admin to get it sorted and timescales? Thar, I'm afraid, is the world of the voluntarily and current affairs sectors colliding!
  • Alan C
    103
    I have to ask how many requests for filming does the CCCBR receive in a year when there isn’t an angle to hang the story from?

    If the answer is what I expect it is, we need the coverage more than the media outlet needs the story.
  • Gareth Davies
    4
    My experience is that production companies are only too happy to pay for us not to ring but less so to film ringing itself. There is nothing like having hundreds of cast and extras waiting to shoot a scene to send a runner scurrying up the tower with an open wallet when the bells start ringing.
  • Barbara Le Gallez
    82
    Vicki, if you are a big, famous tower then maybe you could get away with charging a fee. But certainly a little country tower like us could not possibly do so. Recently, by good luck, we got a reporter from BBC local radio to visit our tower. We all (including the reporter) had a fun time and he has promised to come back when we have our new bells. We all felt it was a great way to spend our morning and it never occurred to us to ask for money (which I doubt would have been forthcoming).
  • Samuel Nankervis
    21
    Film crews, you could explain there's quite a lot of organising (some people having to travel a distance) to get a band of ringers together, so is there any chance of a donation to our bell fund? They'll probably ask how much you were thinking about, so have a figure in mind, and gage their reaction. Also, try to have a couple of sentences in your mind on what you would like to say in an interview, and no matter what you're asked, try and get these points across in your reply.
  • Simon Linford
    315
    We had that on a quarter peal tour when we were youngsters. We were given £100 by a desperate producer not to ring a quarter and it paid for our food for the rest of the week!
  • J Martin Rushton
    104
    Some years ago I heard that during the filming of "The Royal" there were problems in Scarborough. The bells of St Mary's can "bounce" off the water and clearly be heard across the bay to where they were filming. Practice nights had to be postponed I understand.
  • Barbara Le Gallez
    82
    Is it perhaps more not just about that one event, but about building a relationship with the media? We actually gave our reporter a present (home-laid eggs) so he would remember us and come back when we have our new bells installed.
  • John Harrison
    434
    when we were on BBC a Breakfast I gave the presenter a copy of my book on the history of ringing in Wokingham. I hope he still has it, and didn't eat it for breakfast.
  • Peter Sotheran
    131
    If you feel it is apprpriate to charge for assembling a band for filming, then perhaps the starting point for a fee would be the same as your charge for a wedding - at least
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