Any will do - just after some info for my Lad, who is interested in becoming a Cameraman

Twas what I wanted to do but didn't pursue. Best advice I was never given is...

a) research a college/university course to death, make sure they have the best equipment & plenty of it, lots of practical to the course and good industry connections to provide the opportunity of work experience.
b) do as much work experience as you can, write, email, phone everyone you can get contact details for and beg if you have to. Don't show feel ashamed or disheartened if they say no, just move onto the next person, in fact be utterly shameless & ballsey in the pursuit of your goal. Be prepared to work for nothing now, it should help you make money later & be prepared to kiss ass.
c) As Syd said, get a camera, get out there and film everything you can, practice makes perfect and the more you have the more on tape the better showreel you can edit if required. Find out as much as you can on the technical side, the latest pro cameras etc, you don't need to buy them, just know how they work, there are companies where you can hire them, sometimes free to young film-makers but you don't need to touch them to know how they work etc.
d) be prepared to move to London, all of the action is down there even though the Beeb are moving a large chunk of stuff up here it won't be for a while and everyone else will still be down south. Most of the independent dedicated training courses are down there and don't come cheap, but there are ways of getting such things for cheap/free.

I'm probably missing something out but if he contacts someone like rlSkillsetrl the industry body which supports skills and training for people in the UK creative industries, they should be able to offer the best advice around, & their website is a fantastic place to start.

Thanks for the advice & links guys.

He is 15 and doing a Creative Media Diploma at school, and is very interested in camera work.
Recently went on a Summer School with the BYFA in Crewe that was a complete waste of time. In a week, he had about 2 hours of instruction on Camera & lighting, the rest of the time was spent just hanging around doing nothing - very frustrating especially when it costs £200 a week !!

We know some people who do the Film catering, so gonna try and get him in there as a helper and hopefully get introduced to some contacts that way as well....

Thanks again.

Might even be worth grabbing one of the sky crew at their trucks by training pitch next time they are at Saints.

The Sky contract is run by Telegenic for Rugby League games, possibly write to them as a start point.

If it's general sporting camera work (not just RL) then Visions and also Arqiva (sp) are both heavily involved in sports productions.

I would get the quill out and get onto these companies.

Interesting ... my eldest lad works for Arqiva (totally unrelated dept though) I'll get him to do a bit of digging around for me. Thanks for the advice.