Tim works with Dutch Public TV
I first met Tim French when I was at Oxygen Media.
I had come to train 90 VJs to produce their day to day content.
Tim was a staff editor, but he was intrigued by the VJ concept.
When I opened the DV DOJO in the East Village, Tim came to work for me as a trainer there.
When we started the BBC project Tim, and later his wife Kelly, (who was an editor who had done everything from Queer Eye to PBS specials). They became a husband-wife VJ team. Trainers, editors, shooters, producers. A killer pair.
When we did 5Takes, they took off around the world to follow the show, from Singapore to Macchu Picchu. And when I met them, neither even had a passport. From Dutch TV to German to the BBC to KRON to KRN to KGTV to The Travel Channel Academy…
Now, Tim has taken a full time job with The Los Angeles Times, where he will both be a VJ, but will also work on a team that is going to train, as I understand it, more than 100 LA Times staffers to be VJS. (The project is being headed up by Scott Anger, who himself did our bootcamp in Chiang Mai, Thailand way back in 2000).
Well, Los Angeles is a big town, and it’s nice that at least one local media company things you can cover LA with more than 11 crews! I think the LA Times is going to give the local news guys a stroke. And about time.
We’ll sure miss Tim.
But we wish him the best. He has more years of training VJs all over the world than almost anyone else.
And of course, Kelly will still be with us.
And maybe, one day, Tim will come back.
The door is always open, pal.
Meanwhile, mazel tov!
