12th March
We hit the ground running this week with a Skills Task where we were briefed to produce a 2 minute new broadcast with an opening title sequence and a cutaway. Once the briefing was over Emily came up with the great idea of using the story of the polar bear cub that was born in December at the Highland Wildlife Park in Kincraig.
It's clear that it's just so much easier for us to stick to our regular roles so I set people to their tasks – with the exception of Mia and Phoebe who swapped roles for the day. Mia and Kelsie, as usual, were able to produce talent at the drop of a hat (for which I am always immensely grateful). Calum set about writing a script, I searched for online content we could use for a cutaway and Isaac worked on creating an opening title sequence. Unfortunately, for some reason the university internet wasn't working so I had to take my laptop back to my room to get the material. Thankfully I was able to leave the team to figuring out camera movements and I was confident that they'd get the job done.
Once I got back we decided that it would be a great idea to show a map on the TV screen of where all the other polar bear cubs in captivity are around the world. Not only did it add production value to this task, but it also meant we got valuable information about how the TV works for our final production. I borrowed Emily to help me create this map as she knew of a helpful article which listed all the locations. The map actually looked pretty good on the screen, and I'm delighted at how quickly we were able to produce it.
With the videos I sourced for the cutaway, and the script completed so that the people on the floor could begin rehearsing properly, Calum and I worked together to produce a quick insert of the cub's keeper interspersed with some footage of one of the adults rolling in the snow. It wasn't the best quality of insert ever, but considering the timescale it was produced in I was more than happy with it.
Of course things were going just a bit too well.
We then ran into some serious technical problems with Final Cut Pro. Our clips wouldn’t play properly and the only noise we could hear was this ominous beeping. Joe figured out that there was a problem with the rendering, but we didn't know how to sort it out so we asked Nigel for help. I'm glad we asked him when we did because it actually took quite some time to get the audio sorted – even when the clip had been correctly rendered. But it all got sorted in the end, and Nigel showed us how to stop the sound from distorting the way it was in the future. We need to make sure that all this is sorted well in advance of production day!
And then finally we could do some run-throughs. The talent, Dom McGee, was at ease with his role and all his stuff went very smoothly. Another thing that went smoothly was my PA role – I felt that I'd done really well and had read out everything in good time. Obviously it still needs brushing up but it's given me a confidence boost about it, which I really needed.
The final production was pretty much perfect and we were all really happy with the final result. And there's an added bonus that we're now set for the rehearsal on Wednesday. It's clearly going to be very technical but it is going to help us properly visualise everything – I'm looking forward to it.
Final Product:
I was extremely pleased with this production. We made good use of our cutaway (making the amount of effort we spent on it worthwhile) and the use of the screen was also really valuable. I think perhaps we could have framed the shot with the screen a bit better as you can see lots of stuff on the floor. Again the vision mixing wasn't quite right in places. We really need to get this sorted - and I need to sort myself out as PA!
14th March
It was our rehearsal today! We didn't get off to a grand start because we've become so accustomed to just being able to wander into our booked sessions early that we accidentally walked in on an ITV shoot. Thankfully there wasn't an issue, and everything was fine, so we just waited outside. While we waited I went through the rehearsal plan, which people seemed happy with (especially the break!). Unfortunately we were missing Kelsie as she was rather poorly.
We were able to go into the studio at 1:30pm on the dot and we set about preparing for our rehearsal. We were expecting Lequane at 2 so we got Nigel to show us how the floor spots were going to work. I think they'll look really good!
I also took the opportunity to quiz Nigel further about the television. After reflecting on Monday's session I realised that balancing a laptop on the wheels of the TV was both impractical and unsafe so I was eager to find an alternative solution. As usual, Nigel was able to think of something (hallelujah!) – we'll be using a micromedia player. This is a little card reader that plugs straight into the back of the TV and can be tucked neatly out the way, and not cause a horrific tangle of wires. We'll just need to put our content onto an SD card and all will be fine and dandy. Much better! We've booked one out for the final production as we were told that they tend to be very popular.
This triggered an ongoing discussion throughout the rehearsal about what is actually going to go onto the screen. The initial idea was to just have a graphic of our logo and the hashtag that our audience will be able to use during and after the broadcast of the show. This evolved into a collage of bird pictures, but I think what we're going for now is a video that will loop for the duration of the show that perhaps matches up with some of what our presenter says. It will be a challenge to produce something that runs to time like that, but it would be worth doing because it would look amazing.
Lequane was meant to arrive at 2, but he messaged us to say that he was running late. We decided to get started on the camera movements without him. We've assigned final camera roles now as it just makes sense for people to practice on the cameras they'll be using in the final production. We're going to have Emily on Camera 2 and Phoebe on Camera 3, which leaves Kelsie on Camera 1. Mia stood in for Lequane (a bit ironic really as she's so much smaller than he is) and I stood in as a guest. It really turned out in our favour that we started early because there were some really strange problems with the microphones that we've never had before, which continued well after Lequane finally joined us. But thanks to the perseverance of Joe this got sorted – hooray! Shouldn't happen again but at least we know what to do next time.
We started off with a disjointed run-through to get an idea of timings with Lequane as the presenter and me as the guest. That went really rather well and the timings were just about right. I then got Isaac to stand in as the guest so that I could go and fulfil my PA role, and we did quite a few more run-throughs. Timings varied a bit with the answers, but we aren't going to get a proper feel for that until we work with the final guests.
We took at break at 3:30pm, which everyone really appreciated and I'm very glad that I scheduled it in – even if Calum worked right through it. The run-throughs after the break, where we asked Mia to step in as guest, went OK but it revealed that we might not have enough material to fill the time. The guests are likely to embellish a bit more than we did but we reckon that we should come up with some extra questions just in case they're needed.
The thing that I personally need to work on is practising my PA role because that was definitely what was holding the floor team back. I now have a better understanding of what they need – and I'm also going find some more videos, like the Live East talkback videos, to gain further knowledge of what a good PA sounds like. I may also look at using a timer because I was struggling to countdown on the inserts and things.
Other notes from today - we've moved the deadlines for the VTs to the 13th April because of upcoming deadlines in the next few weeks. Also, our guest line up has completely changed – we're now going to be interviewing Mike Braddock in Year 2, as he used to work at a falconry, and Cain because he knows a lot about conservation.
15th March
Thursday saw us creating a 1 minute 30 second excerpt from a music programme. Ed came to brief and said that because there were so few of us in our group that we could cut all the graphics production and not have a presenter, and to just focus on the camera movements and the PA work. Oh yes, today is the day the PA has to count the beats of the bar and ensure that things are cut to time.
This could either go extremely well, or really badly.
Seeing as this is going to be a musical performance Mia and Kelsie decided it would be worth calling up some of their Musical Theatre friends to have a go at singing for us. We had picked a song before they arrived but it was one that they (and I to be honest) didn't know so we spent quite a long time finding another one. In the end we settled on Dancing Queen by ABBA (what a tune) and everyone seemed happy with that. It's also got a solid beat which made my life a whole lot easier.
I spent some time watching the performers and camera operators who were doing a grand job at creating a slick production. Our COs have really gotten a handle on what is needed to make the shots look good, and Calum always has a really clear vision of what he wants.
The main thing that I needed to do was to work on the counting. I tried it a few times but really couldn't get the hang of it, so Calum and I took a step back to work out a good speaking pattern. This ended up being "1, 2, 3 to _" – the _ is filled by the number of the next camera we'll cut to. It was a very good pattern and one I could get my head around.
We faffed around for a while with not starting the track at the beginning, which proved to be very tricky because it took me quite some time to find the beat. That was eventually scrapped in favour of just starting at the beginning. That really worked and the next few run-throughs were very successful. Calum then suggested that we hold some of the shots for more than one bar, so we came up with some new calls to signal this – "1, 2, Double _" and "1, 2, Still on _". These were very successful and we were able to get through numerous run-throughs ahead of the performance.
The final production was also really good, and I only fluffed up once which was fabulous. David filmed Calum and I in the gallery so I'm expecting a video of us to appear at some point with me just counting frantically. I was dead chuffed with the result and I got really good feedback about my communication, which was great. I need to figure out a way to transfer these skills to our main piece, but that's something to work on over the coming week.
It may have sounded like this entire session was totally positive (I mean, we were listening to ABBA for pretty much an hour and a half) but there was an issue with personnel. Sadly Phoebe couldn't be with us because she was poorly so Mia took over Camera 3, leaving Isaac to be Floor Manager. There seemed to be some issues with communication because normally when I address the Floor I just get Mia responding, unless the question has been directed to someone else. I was getting all sorts of chat from different people. It seemed that Isaac wasn't fully paying attention to what was happening so the COs decided to cut out the middleman and just talk to me directly. That makes sense in retrospect, but it was a bit confusing at the time. Hopefully we won't have this issue again.
Final Product:
I might be biased but I think this is absolutely fabulous! The cuts are clean and the shots really suit the music. Clearly both the performers and our camera operators were having a brilliant time. I thought it went really well. The only suggestion for improvement I've received was that those of us in the gallery were so focused on the counting (which was the main part of the task) that we didn't look at the screen to make sure that nothing was going wrong. Pleased to see that nothing did go wrong, but that's certainly something to consider ahead of the final production. A great piece of work to send us out to Easter!
Bonus Content!
See what Dancing Queen looked - and sounded - like from the Gallery!
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