The Time Team film crew

Time Team film crews shoot more than 30 hours of film over the three days of a dig, all of which has to be condensed into the 45 minutes (by the time you've allowed for adverts) that make up a programme. Every dig has three separate camera crews, each made up of a camera operator, sound engineer and camera assistant. These roam the site independently capturing footage.

These crews of highly experienced film makers work long hours, often having to fight the elements (as at Skipsea, where it was blowing a gale for much of the dig) to get the shots that make Time Team an award-winning programme, consistently highly rated for its technical ability by the television industry.

'The idea of recording a scene is to get over to the viewer a sense of what is happening in one go,' says number one cameraman, Mike Todd. 'Essentially we shoot the scene a couple or more times to get in all the details. For example, we might record a conversation between Tony and an archaeologist with both of them on screen. Then we'd record the conversation again focusing on each of them as individuals. And then we'd film some of the archaeology that they were talking about.

'Finally, we film the scene from a distance to get what's called a wide shot, which gets the scene into context within the site. We probably film each item three or four times. When it's all edited together in the cutting room it looks like one big smooth scene.'

The film crews have worked very closely with the archaeologists for years and the whole package of doing an excavation at the same time as making a film now works very smoothly. Obviously when some delicate finds are lifted from the ground the process cannot be repeated, so that's when multiple cameras will all film the same thing from different angles.

'The key is in trying to get as much material together as possible to help the director tell their story,' says Mike. 'Time Team is not a set-up show, so a lot of stuff that happens is spontaneous. Obviously we need people to stand in certain places for the right light and stuff like that, but once they start talking we just let them run with it, which is what makes it natural. The constraints of working within the three days of digging also add extra levels to the show. If it's bad weather we still shoot and they still dig. It's just another part of the story to be told.'

Hear Mike Todd talking about being a cameraman.

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