I'm Rachel a first year Wildlife Media student working towards my TV Studio 1 Module at the University of Cumbria, for which we will be creating a 6 minute programme in a multi-camera environment, including two forty-second inserts and a twenty-second opening title sequence. Bring it on.
1st February
Our first scheduled session in the TV Studio was a task to produce a 2.5 minute magazine-style review show on The Last Jedi. Whilst we were waiting for lecturer Ed Cooper to give us a full brief of our task we began to discuss what roles people might like to undertake. It was during this discussion that I was appointed as producer. I was a little disappointed as I had my eye on the sound mixer role, but as I have produced events and performances before and organisation is one of my stronger skills it seemed to be a sensible match.
Ed gave us a rundown of what we needed to do, and that we would need to broadcast live at 14:55 to ensure we were out of the studio in time for the next team. I asked Ed about the lack of numbers in our group (8 people to cover 11 roles) and asked if we would be able to bring people from outside the group to present for us – yes we could, provided that they weren't on one of the courses completing this module. Perfect!
First order of business was to assign roles, which is the job of the producer. As Mia thought she could call up a couple of Drama friends to be onscreen for us I appointed her as talent scout and she set about getting people involved immediately. The other roles were then divided up as follows:
Mia Boyd – Floor Manager, Talent Scout
Joe Connor – Sound Mixer
Calum Johnson – Director
Phoebe Johnson-Bird – Camera Operator
Emily Lake – Camera Operator
Kelsie Lofthouse – Production Assistant
Isaac Mills – On Set Sound Technician
Rachel Owen – Producer (that's me!)
The roles of Vision Mixer, Insert Operator and Autocue Operator were not filled immediately as we didn’t have enough people (11 divided by 8 leaves a remainder after all) so we knew we would have to double up as we went along – particularly those in the Gallery.
I left Kelsie with the crew in the studio and asked them to get acquainted with the equipment whilst Calum and I worked on a script, as directed in the brief. Neither of us had seen The Last Jedi but we both had enough knowledge of the franchise to come up with some basic interview questions. It became apparent very quickly that writing by hand was going to take too long so I wrote the script straight into QSmart (sadly, due to a technical error this has been lost). This actually took a lot longer than I expected it to so I spent very little time on the floor, which I was disappointed with. For the final production this won't be an issue as the script will have been written, critiqued and uploaded well in advance of production week.
While this was taking place Calum and Kelsie were working extremely hard to bring the production together. Mia had also been extremely successful in her quest and we now had 3 actors in to fill the required roles – one interviewer, Bradley Williams, and two guests, Ben Sharp and Lloyd Mitchell.
After a very quick rehearsal at 14:36 (doesn't time fly when you have so much to do?) we realised that we had waaaaaay too much content so I very hurriedly cut out large chunks of the interview. Again, for the final production this shouldn't be an issue as we'll have time to practice and critique the script weeks in advance, not minutes. At 14:55 we carried out our live broadcast, which went extremely successfully. The onscreen talent were absolutely brilliant, and I'd definitely work with them again. I ran the Autocue for this, instead of being in the Gallery – if I were the producer in the future I would not do this as it left Calum to be Director, Vision Mixer, Insert Operator and PA all by himself (Kelsie had to stand in as a camera operator for the final broadcast) – the Sound Mixer should be able to run the Autocue at the same time.
I felt that the production of the live broadcast went really rather well. The main two issues that held us back were the time it took to produce the script and the lack of people to fulfil roles. Calum did do an excellent job running the Gallery by himself, but that shouldn't have been a situation that occurred in the first place. But taking into account these setbacks we were able to successfully complete our brief – we communicated well, and everyone felt that it had been relatively stress free. We also got some complimentary feedback from Ed as to how calm we had been with one another which was really good to hear. One production task down – two more to go!
Final Product: Unfortunately the footage for this production has been lost, which is a great shame because we were really proud of what we'd done.
5th February
A new week and a brand new set of skills to learn – Vision Mixing. The Vision Mixer is one of the gallery crew and they control which camera is being broadcast live. You know all those seamless cuts you see on Strictly Come Dancing? That's the Vision Mixer at work, and if they're doing a good job you won't even notice that they're doing it.
So, how do you practise Vision Mixing? That is the question that the AV department at the university have come up with an innovative answer for. Your Vision Mixer cuts in time to a piece of music, in our case D.I.S.C.O. by Ottawan.
It's a pretty fast-paced song so the Vision Mixer needs to be confident at switching between the buttons, operating transitions and really feel the pulse of the music. I volunteered to be Vision Mixer for this task as I really wanted to have a go at operating the board, and I felt pretty confident that my musical skills would hold me in good stead for completing this task. Phoebe was the Director; Emily was Sound Mixer; Joe, Calum and Issac were Camera Operators; Mia and Kelsie were our performers.
This task was so much fun to complete. The music really lifted the atmosphere of the team and everyone was really excited to get to work. Phoebe worked through some problems with choreography that involved locking off Camera 2 and getting Calum to join in the dancing.
As Vision Mixer I found it easy to lock into the rhythm of the song, but I couldn't work on autopilot otherwise I would miss the buttons. I had a decent pattern going between cameras 1, 2 and 3, but then the camera operators said that they were struggling to move between shots in the time they had. Phoebe went onto the floor to work out the best solution to the issue whilst I carried on practising hitting the buttons to the beat. The final pattern we came up with was 2-3-1-2-3, which was actually pretty easy to remember. Although I didn't have to use the transitions, I felt confident enough to have a go and made good use of the fade across the long 'OOOOOO' in the song, and Phoebe agreed that it looked effective.
Our final mix looked really rather good. I know that I missed at least one critical change but I was able to keep going without having to stop (similarly to how I operate at orchestra, hahaha), and everyone was really pleased with how the session went. I'm looking forward to developing more skills as we progress with this module.
Final Production
We've got our Vision Mixing video back! Sadly something seems to have gone horrifically wrong and the music is completely out of sync with the cuts. Seeing as everyone was so happy with it on the day I'm assuming that there was an error when recording. However, it could well be that there was a delay between me hitting the buttons and the cuts being received, so next time I might need to preempt the cuts in advance.
This is a crucial piece of information to know about the equipment. I'm glad we've made this mistake now, and not in the final production. It's good to be aware of potential problems well in advance of anything of critical importance.
First Production Meeting
After the Vision Mixing session we decided to have a quick production meeting to begin to develop a direction for our final production. Emily proposed that we look at the theme of Falconry and its relevance to modern-day conservation efforts of birds of prey. This was accepted as a great idea to move forward with. Emily is going to contact a centre in Cumbria to see if they might be willing to get involved. We also discussed what our target demographic would be and we agreed that young people aged 16-25 would be best, especially considering that we are in that demographic!
We then decided on roles for the final production and came to the consensus that the roles we had filled in the first task actually worked really well, and that we'd run with them. I guess that means I'm the producer now!
So our team looks like this:
Mia Boyd – Floor Manager
Joe Connor – Sound Mixer, Autocue Runner
Calum Johnson – Director, Vision Mixer, Insert Operator
Phoebe Johnson-Bird – Camera Operator
Emily Lake – Camera Operator
Kelsie Lofthouse – Production Assistant, Camera Operator
Isaac Mills – On Set Sound Technician, Lighting Technician
Rachel Owen – Producer, PA
This feels like a solid team for now, and there's always an opportunity to switch things up if we feel that we need to.
The next logical step for me is to gain an understanding of what it means to be a producer and the roles I need to fulfil. It sounds like there's going to be a lot of work but I know I can do it, and I've got a brilliant team behind me.
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