{"id":3083,"date":"2009-03-12T20:32:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-12T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philipbloomblog.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/12\/some-personal-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2009-05-16T22:20:03","modified_gmt":"2009-05-16T22:20:03","slug":"some-personal-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philipbloom.net\/blog\/some-personal-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Some personal thoughts…"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I have been blogging via my website www.philipbloom.co.uk for over two years now. Thanks to everyone who reads it.
\nMost of what is on there is very much focused on my work as a DP and Director. So I wanted somewhere where I could write about other topics. Some still work based but much broader. So here it is…the relaunched “Bloom’s Blog”.
\nI hope you find it interesting, funny, insightful, engaging, educational, enlightening, inspiring, annoying, irritating and just plain boring in equal measures! This will be at times quite a personal blog, so if you don’t like slushy reminiscing…sorry!
\nLet’s start with a bit of context. Twenty years ago I got into this business, yeah am that old, my aim was to be a cameraman. I become one full time about 4 years after getting my first job in TV. 2 and a half years ago I quit Sky News to go it alone. A terrifying thought. I was making very good TV, getting to shoot and direct my own docos and long features and I had a very good salary, a company car, a company yacht moored in St. Tropez, a company apartment in Belgravia, a company country house in the Cotswolds, a company wife, a company mistress, three company children and a cat. Now all I have is the cat, well three now. I got them wet, mustn’t feed them after midnight!<\/p>\n

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Was it a good decision? Only time will tell, but I have learnt so much in this short time. Before I went freelance I knew very little about what lay beyond the golden gates of staff-dom. What other cameras were out there, what they did, what a 35mm adaptor was, how to tie my own shoe laces. It has been a very enlightening time.<\/div>\n
Now with this bloody recession we are all feeling the pinch. Would I rather be in my nice cosy staff job right now, sitting on my yacht being fed “Munchies” by my far too young for me company wife? Maybe…<\/div>\n
Now you see, ever since I went freelance I have met some terrific people, some not so terrific people and made some good friends. I am far more educated in the world of cinematography. I have done some work I am ever so proud of and I’ve got people who look to me for inspiration. Which to be completely honest with you is both baffling and flattering in equal measures.<\/div>\n
Some people are gonna say “yeah yeah”, but I actually do a get a kick out of helping others…you see I didn’t go to film school. Hell, I didn’t go to university. I learnt everything from others. I was so lucky as a sound recordist at Sky to work with some very talented cameramen who taught me so much. My eternal thanks go to Roland Sullivan, Simon Rowles, Mark Williams and without a doubt my key mentor Gerry Williams who taught me so much and saw something in me that others didn’t. You couldn’t have asked for a better head cameraman when you were starting out. Someone you could take your work to and who would care enough to go through it with you and make suggestions or sometimes just say well done. We all need encouragement and there was nobody better than Gerry. He still floats around at Sky and Five News as a freelancer after going back to Australia to retire and then returning to the UK \u00a0then back to Australia to retire about 96 times! Gerry thanks for everything, without you I wouldn’t be doing what I am today.<\/div>\n
Now, we all have key moments in our lives that will shape what follows and change your life forever. Mine was working at the Supermarket chain Tesco when I was 18 and just finished school with a whopping two A Levels I knew that I wanted to be a cameraman, but I didn’t know how to go about it. I was offered a place on a foundation course at an Art College with my photography portfolio, but I wanted to work. I was sick of school. Sick of studying. I wanted money! I wrote to every regional TV company in the UK and got nothing but rejection letters. By this time I was offered a managerial training scheme job at Tesco. I almost took it. Safe, comfy, unchallenging and not what I wanted to do. I almost took it which would have\u00a0condemned\u00a0me to a life of misery in the suburbs with a wife and 2.5 kids by now (to be totally honest the wife and kids bits would have been nice)<\/div>\n
As fate would had it the week I had to decide about Tesco I got a letter from Sky TV saying they had a really shitty job for really shitty pay and asked if I would be interested. “Hell, yes!”. At this time Sky TV was just some little Satellite TV station owned by Mr. Murdoch and considered a joke by most people. It wasn’t. It was the start of something very different and for better or worse has utterly changed TV in the UK forever.<\/div>\n
So that’s where my life changed. I could have been CEO of Tesco by now with a company car, a company yacht in Monaco etc etc…instead I am a single man of 37, living alone with three cats, the left overs from previous relationships in a pink terraced house in a suburb of London called Isleworth. Who’d have thought it!?<\/div>\n
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