Brent Pin­heiro

Tech­ni­cal Pro­duc­er

Okay, so I have a con­fes­sion. Be­fore I be­came a pro­duc­er, I had no idea what that meant. For me, “pro­duc­er” was one of those job ti­tles that you hear but don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what the per­son ac­tu­al­ly does. Think sys­tems en­gi­neer (some­thing IT-ish, right?) or som­me­li­er (one word... wine). Even to this day, peo­ple will ask me what my job is, and you can see the blank stare when I re­spond with, “I’m a tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er”. And you know what? I can’t blame them. Pro­duc­ers are the un­seen team, the ones in the back­ground mak­ing sure the tal­ent in front of the cam­era is ful­ly pre­pared to de­liv­er a sol­id show, all while we try not to die of stress at 50. We jug­gle phone calls, What­sApp mes­sages, re­porters, ed­i­tors, an­chors, video, scripts, break­ing news, tech­ni­cal prob­lems, chang­ing run­downs, and, per­haps most im­por­tant­ly, a clock that, like Big Red of “Bring It On” fame, doesn’t care about your feel­ings.

What does a Tech­ni­cal Pro­duc­er ac­tu­al­ly do?

In the world of tele­vi­sion, change is the on­ly con­stant. I’ve spent the last sev­en years work­ing at CNC3 as a tech­ni­cal pro­duc­er, and I can count on my hand how many times a news­cast has gone 100% to plan. It’s the na­ture of the beast.

But what is a tech­ni­cal pro­duc­er? Well, I strad­dle the bound­aries of the tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments for a news­cast and the ed­i­to­r­i­al re­quire­ments for the news­cast. That means mak­ing sure the sto­ries we’re pro­duc­ing can ac­tu­al­ly make it to air, both tech­ni­cal­ly and ed­i­to­ri­al­ly. A re­porter might have a fan­tas­tic sto­ry, but if the video isn’t in the right for­mat, the au­dio is miss­ing, the in­ter­view hasn’t been prop­er­ly trans­ferred, or the ed­i­tor is still fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to ex­port the pack­age five min­utes be­fore air... Hous­ton, we have a prob­lem.

So, part of my job is mak­ing sure the ed­i­tors have every­thing they need to put the sto­ry to­geth­er, while al­so mak­ing sure those fin­ished sto­ries meet the tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments for broad­cast.

And you would be gen­uine­ly sur­prised by how many peo­ple can­not tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween an MP3 and an MP4. Lis­ten, I’m not judg­ing. Okay, maybe a lit­tle.

When the clock is al­ways tick­ing

This may sound like the most bor­ing, unin­spir­ing job to some, but it’s one of the best jobs in tele­vi­sion. No two days are alike. Every news­cast tests you, your de­ci­sion-mak­ing process, and your abil­i­ty to think on your feet.

It could be some­thing as sim­ple as an ed­i­tor or re­porter not fin­ish­ing a sto­ry in time for its place­ment in the news­cast’s line-up. Sounds triv­ial, right? But some view­ers on­ly watch the first fif­teen min­utes of the news­cast. So hav­ing to move one sto­ry means mov­ing an­oth­er. Then an­oth­er. And be­fore you know it, you’re like a clown in the Suarez Broth­ers Cir­cus, jug­gling sto­ries while the clock silent­ly march­es to­wards the top of the hour.

When live tele­vi­sion goes off script

Oth­er times, a fire alarm goes off dur­ing the news­cast, trig­ger­ing a manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion. The re­sult? Re-tim­ing a news­cast on the fly when you are let back in the build­ing, while field­ing a bar­rage of What­sApp mes­sages from con­cerned friends say­ing, “You ok? I hear al­lyuh build­ing bun down”.

Noth­ing says “pro­fes­sion­al broad­cast en­vi­ron­ment” quite like try­ing to re­build a live news­cast while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­as­sur­ing peo­ple that, no, the build­ing did not ac­tu­al­ly “bun” down. Yes, this re­al­ly hap­pened!

The team be­hind the screen

But the ab­solute best thing about tele­vi­sion is the team you build. Un­like many pro­fes­sions, we must trust our­selves and each oth­er.

As a re­porter in front of the cam­era, you trust the cam­era­man to frame you prop­er­ly, make sure your mi­cro­phone is work­ing and get the shots you need. The ed­i­tor trusts that the ma­te­r­i­al com­ing in is what they need to build the sto­ry. The an­chor trusts the pro­duc­tion team to give them the cor­rect in­for­ma­tion and guide them through the news­cast.

And be­hind all of that, there are dozens of tiny de­ci­sions hap­pen­ing every minute that the view­er will prob­a­bly nev­er no­tice.

When every­thing looks ef­fort­less

And that, I think, is the beau­ty of tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion. When we do our jobs prop­er­ly, no­body no­tices us or even knows our names.

The an­chors present the news­cast. The sto­ries flow. The view­er sits at home and hope­ful­ly has no idea how much chaos hap­pened be­hind the scenes to make those 60 min­utes look ef­fort­less.

And per­haps that is ex­act­ly the point. The bet­ter we do our jobs, the less vis­i­ble the work be­comes.

I’ll hear you out

It’s an ex­pe­ri­ence I wouldn’t trade for the world. Al­though, if you of­fered me one mil­lion dol­lars and bought me a pop­ping bo­ba lemon­ade... I promise to at least hear you out.