Loving the OB Lifestyle: Living on the Road With NEP UK Broadcast Guarantee Engineer Markela Deverikou

Loving the OB lifestyle: Living on the road with NEP UK broadcast guarantee engineer Markela Deverikou By Heather McLean, Editor

Monday, October 10, 2022 - 14:31

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Markela Deverikou, NEP UK broadcast guarantee engineer, was working on the WTA Monterey Open in Mexico, where she was able to use some downtime to hike the Cerro de La Silla mountain

I love the excitement and the pressure of a live environment. It's so satisfying seeing a project from the early stages of planning, prepping and rigging, to a final product people would enjoy on their tellies, says Markela Deverikou NEP UK broadcast guarantee engineer.

I love the OB lifestyle, travelling around the world, working with a team and different people. Travelling and being away for months at a time is a big part of being an OB engineer.

Like most people, I wasn't aware of the outside broadcast industry and all the behind the scenes roles that go into making a programme, so broadcast engineering roles were not on my radar

As to the challenges of working in the job that she loves, Deverikou comments: Keeping calm when things go wrong. Our job is time sensitive, faults need to be resolved as soon as possible, and if they can't a work around has to found. You also shouldn't let pressure affect you, which is harder than it sounds. Some projects have a big budget and big fines when they fall off air, which is the worse thing that can happen to you as a guarantee. Managing expectations but at the same time meeting clients' requirements can also be tricky, she notes.

NEP UK's Markela Deverikou worked at the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, which was a major highlight of her career so far

Loving the OB lifestyle

Deverikou has taken a convoluted route to sports broadcasting. She explains: My interest and career in broadcast is not as straight forward as you might think. I discovered my passion for broadcasting a bit later in life and it was actually completely by accident, which is a recurring theme amongst female professionals in the industry.

Since I was 15 I wanted to be an engineer, to be more precise, a sound engineer. I loved the idea of touring, setting up equipment and making a show. At university I realised how much I enjoy figuring out how things work and being hands on with equipment when in our lab sessions building circuit boards and amplifiers. But like most people, I wasn't aware of the outside broadcast industry and all the behind the scenes roles that go into making a programme, so broadcast engineering roles were not on my radar.

Better to be a little fish in a big bowl - somewhere new and unknown than a big fish in a small one what you know and are familiar with

After she graduated from high school in Greece Deverikou moved to the UK to study audio engineering at the University of Surrey, where she completed the Audio Media Engineering course. However, she says, it turned out to be more electronics and less audio .

She continues: I graduated with a BEng in Electronic Engineering, but not wanting to follow a career in engineering as I didn't enjoy electronics a great deal or the potential engineering roles that came with the course. Although sound engineering was still on my mind, I felt I needed a break from engineering altogether.

After graduation she moved to London and through a friend heard about a media assistant role at OB company, Racetech. She applied and got what effectively was a tech office job; her daily tasks varied from tape ingest and repairing disks to answering emails and phone calls. There I slowly got exposed to the OB industry, she says. I took my first steps as a trainee engineer a year later. Best decision I've made; I haven't looked back since.

At university I realised how much I enjoy figuring out how things work and being hands on with equipment when in our lab sessions building circuit boards and amplifiers, says Markela Deverikou, NEP UK broadcast guarantee engineer, seen here taking stuff apart on the set of Love Island 2022

Taking things apart

At Racetech Deverikou spent half her week in the workshop learning about kit, repairing and maintaining equipment, taking things apart, soldering and making things work again and the other half of the week out on the road, which she says, is where I truly discovered my passion for broadcast .

She learned a lot at Racetech. I worked within vision, audio and RF. I learned broadcast video and audio workflows, how to rack cameras (control colours, exposure so they match), set up radio (RF) cameras, and audio mixing presenters and commentators. After a year I was fully on the road as a broadcast engineer and shortly after I started guaranteeing OB trucks. I guaranteed and planned jobs like Royal Ascot and Epsom Derby.

I want to be good at what I do I take pride in it but most of the time there isn't time to familiarise yourself with equipment and projects. So you have to be responsible for your own progression

Through her work on the road with Racetech, Deverikou was able to connect with NEP crew which led her to her current tole as broadcast guarantee engineer at NEP UK.

She says: I was approached by NEP on one of the horseracing meetings, which coincided with the deployment of one of their brand new trucks, to let me know about available positions and inviting me to have a look around their base.

At the time I wasn't sure if I wanted to move but looking back I was probably a bit intimidated and insecure about my knowledge and skills, she continues. Because of those reasons I wanted to see where I stood in the industry, at what level I was. My experience was limited to the kit I had been using so far and to one way of working, and I was confident about my skillset at the time, but for me it wasn't a real measure either. I love learning

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