World Cup kicking off - in Qatar!

My summer was to kick off – and so was the World Cup. Both events taking place in different locations but with one purpose – football.This is definitely the most exciting, interesting and most busy summer for me yet. Usually when school, college or university approaches the summer break my plans tend to be focused on doing as little as possible for as long as possible. But this year I got an offer I really couldn’t turn down. To cover the World Cup for Al Jazeera Sport in Doha, Qatar. So on 9th of June, off I went... Me and V arrived in Doha in the afternoon (Mecca time) and found ourselves in the middle of a massive climate change. In the early morning we had left a 15ish degree ‘lukewarm’ England behind to be met by a 40 something degree boiling Middle East. Pleasant – but only thanks to all the air conditioning running on full speed. Also, I was completely thrown by the massive culture clash, and I still find it hard to deal with it sometimes. For me, coming from Sweden, been travelling a lot – but mostly in Europe – and seen a fair bit of the continent, still can’t get my head around what it can be like living in these countries, and especially what it can be like being a woman... But more about culture clashes later on...

So after arriving safely in Doha we were, together with four other people who were to work for Al Jazeera as well, transported to our hotel where we would spend the following five weeks of our lives. After a well deserved dinner we all got informed that the following day would provide us with more information about our stay as we would go to Al Jazeera to meet up with the rest of the crew and also have a look at the studios we were to work in.

As this is my first real work experience within TV, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect – but whatever I did expect it was not this. People who work with TV back in England say this is nowhere close to as professional everything is being run back in the UK. Here it’s all a bit ‘hakuna matata’, ‘take it easy’, ‘there will be time’, ‘don’t worry’, ‘there is always a day tomorrow’ kind of approach. If you want something and want it now, forget it. Nothing happens quickly. Unless you can make it happen quickly yourself. This was one of the first things to learn how to tackle without letting it affect your mood. How to get people (locals in the studio who obviously are used to their ways) to work with you and more effectively together, when they thought what they did was good enough. Another massive issue was, and still is, the language barrier. A few of the guys in the studio know some English – but the ones who don’t seem to not even be bothered about trying to explain or understand so when worst comes to worst, problems can easily appear from nowhere. Also, as the studio crew over here are basically consisting of 100% men, it’s quite hard to come in, as a woman from the Western parts of the world, trying to tell them what to do.

Throughout this World Cup, I and V worked in the studio mainly as camera men, but partly doing everything else as well that you need to do in the studio, such as making sure guests are at the right place at the right time with makeup and microphones ready to go, count downs from breaks, positioning of chairs and tables at the different sets and so on. I have learnt a lot from this, and as I didn’t see myself working with anything like this only a few months ago, my experience has made me a lot more secure and confident in what I can actually do, and what I would like to do in the future. Over the time we have covered all but two games each, every breakfast show and also so far two forum-shows which mainly has focused on the guests, their opinions and views on what has happened so far in the tournament, and what might happen in the next round/s. As a football lover I have enjoyed every second of this tournament (even though Sweden didn’t manage to qualify!) and I have come to realise that I would definitely much prefer to work with sports and other live events from a studio rather than in the middle of all the action. I hope to find myself as a director one day, and probably working as a vision mixer before hand, as I believe it is important to learn how the vision mixing works before you tell people how to do it... So far an incredible experience that isn’t quite over yet. I will update my blog and tell you more about everything, such as guests, culture, Qatar, language and of course football, as soon as I possibly can.

Until then, enjoy the summer and the football!