From Runner to Production Manager: Sky Sports News' Victoria Rudling Talks Planning and Creativity

From runner to production manager: Sky Sports News' Victoria Rudling talks planning and creativity By Heather McLean, Editor

Thursday, September 3, 2020 - 15:04

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Sky Sports News production manager, Victoria Rudling

Sky Sports News has kept going throughout the 2020 lockdown thanks to the hard work of a great team of people of which production manager Victoria Rudling is one.

Rudling's year has gone from working on location at the Cheltenham Gold Cup to helping to keep Sky Sports News reporters online through the use of her wealth of skills picked up over the course of her career, and back to covering Royal Ascot as lockdown eased.

On how she first found out about TV broadcasting as a career, Rudling explains her inspiration. At a school career open evening, I was handed a leaflet about broadcasting and was encouraged to do a nature documentary to fulfil that passion. My careers teacher actually laughed at this idea as a career for me and said I could be a secretary at the BBC, but would struggle as I am dyslexic.

However, I had some great teachers who helped me get the grades to go to college for Media Studies, she continues. I saved up and brought my own video camera (kids today have no idea how lucky they are having one in a phone!) and then some friends and me made short films and documentaries. These won a few awards at festivals.

Evolving creative goals

Her media studies course was progressive, so she was teamed with the local arts council, giving Rudling the opportunity to direct a short film under the mentorship of David Yates (director, latter four Harry Potter films).

Rudling comments: The experience taught me so much. It reaffirmed that this is what I wanted to do; being part of a crew that is all pulling together in different roles for the same creative goal.

From this path I managed to get into film school, as it was now my career goal to work in the film industry. But film school isn't free, so to pay for that a friend who worked at Sky got me into Sky News as a runner. The rest, they say, is history!

The best bit about my role is seeing something you have planned come off the pages and become a production that runs smoothly

Running is a great way to start in this business, notes Rudling. She says the experience meant she was able to see all the different roles that went into creating a piece of live TV. She adds: The runners How to' guide in Sky News started with the lines, leave your self respect at the door and wear your thickest of skins , advice that has served me well over the years. After leaving Sky for a brief period to complete my studies, I returned as a runner but this time at its new channel, SkySports.ComTV, that then became Sky Sports News. I tried many different roles as a runner from lines ingest, cutting LVO and helping vision mix on the overnights.

Then one evening she says, Andy Cairns [former Sky Sports News executive editor, now retired] caught me in the corridors and asked, why are you still running? .

Andy was the head of the sports desk when I worked at Sky News, and [at that point] he headed up Sky Sports News, Rudling goes on. He very kindly put me forward to a new job that had opened up, marched me to Darren Long's [then director of Sports operations, now group content processing director, Sky] office, and said here is your new sound recordist. I had done soundie work at film school but it wasn't the direction I intended to pursue, preferring instead to go into film. I said I would do it for six months I am now in my twentieth year as a staff member at Sky. Darren and Andy have been massively influential in my career at Sky and have given me amazing opportunities.

Sky Sports News' Victoria Rudling working on location in Los Angeles, covering David Beckham signing for LA Galaxy

Global achievements

Rudling carried on working at Sky Sports News for years as a sound recordist, travelling the globe covering large events. She gradually started getting involved in more of the planning of the coverage for these events, eventually being offered the role of production manager for Sky Sports News.

She adds: I truly learned on the job, working with all the departments within Sky.

Planning for mainly non-rights holder events for Sky Sports News, from World Cups to Olympics, I enjoy the challenges of putting an event together no matter how small the crew was; often the most enjoyable were just me, the reporter, and a camera person. Going to Equatorial Guinea for the African Cup was one of the trips with just three of us covering the stories; it was during the Ebola Crisis, but I was privileged enough to visit a place one would never think to go.

She continues: The 2012 London Olympics was the biggest thing Sky Sports News had done [at the time]. We built a full studio on top of the Westfield Shopping Centre. To overlook the park we remoted the entire studio there, but left the gallery back at what was then our newly built Sky Studios. You never knew what you might encounter [when building the studio on top of Westfield]; deciding where the drains would go for the toilets is still up there as one of my top strange days at work, and I have had quite a few!

She adds: Running a kilometre of fibre in Rio for the 2004 World Cup to reach the fibre connection from our studio base with our local fixers dressed incognito as council workers to run it along the telephone poles was a fond memory. The locals were so very happy as they mistakenly thought they were getting better internet! Sorry to say we could not help them with that.

What she enjoys most about her role is seeing a plan become a smooth running production. Rudling explains: The best bit about my role is seeing something you have planned come off the pages and become a production that runs smoothly, both technic

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