The weather report
Every fortnight, we ask artists and performers about how some of their most famous work happened. This week, Bridget Jones talks to TVNZ’s weather presenter, Dan Corbett, about how he pulls the nightly weather report together - without a script.
As a young boy I was fascinated by clouds and weather. Big storms and severe weather is always exciting for meteorologists because you really get to see the amazing forces of Mother Nature in action.
My work day generally starts around lunchtime, sometimes earlier depending on the weather.
I get dressed into my suit and get stuck into the weather. I look at all the information - radar and satellite data, observations, computer models - and
Big storms and severe weather is always exciting you really get to see the amazing forces of Mother Nature in action. Dan Corbett
build a picture in my head of the current situation and what might happen over the coming days. I also think of the best way to take all that complexity and put it into an easy to follow story.
The graphics team make up most of the original weather graphics and I tweak them daily to make a weather show that is the best way to visually show and tell the weather story.
No longer working with a green screen hasn’t changed that much for me - but it does mean the green ties can make an outing from time to time.
I am normally in the studio several minutes before the weather slots. I move into the weather presenting spot in the news track before the weather or in the ad break. I chat with the studio director beforehand about our allotted weather show duration. Sometimes because of other things such as breaking news, overruns or underruns we can have different durations to previously planned.
Since all of my weather presentations are ad-lib (no script) I just adjust what I say to keep to the allotted time. I am given time cues in my ear so I know when time is up.
To do my job without writing a script, I look through all the weather information throughout the afternoon so I have a great image of the country’s current and forecast weather in my head. I have also built the collection of scenes around that image, so it all becomes a big weather story that I present in the studio each evening.
Things do go wrong sometimes. Weather clickers or graphics have played up before, but in the live studio setting you just have to go with the flow and do what you can in the circumstances.