The day of our seminar had finally arrived and from the get go i feel as though everyone felt very calm cool and collected as we made our way to our first meeting of the day at 1:30 in building 80 level 7. After running through the call sheet that Jess made the previous week, Miguel, Helena and I split off from the crew to go and organise the gear that we had ordered for our seminar. We had a 4 camera setup, similar to that of last weeks however we have added another DSLR to cover specifically the still images which was operated by Regina Lee. I was tasked with operating the Canon 650D, which we had decided would cover the close up shots of our guests: Stephen Corvini, Stuart Page and Gareth Calverley (see below). After several hours of setting up our stage, which included several trips back and forth between building 80 and building 7 for furniture, the time had come to introduce our guests to the audience… It had begun… After perhaps 30 mins everything was running perfectly to plan with healthy discussion amongst the panel members and host David Delminico, then suddenly the alarm sounded and building 80 was evacuated for 25 minutes. After returning back into the seminar and everyone slightly in disbelief we managed to complete our Tv seminar with only a few extra minutes on the clock, so all in all I was extremely pleased with how we worked together as a team, (we also had matching crew shirts, go us) but also as a crew on a more professional level, that we had managed to bring in these fully fledged Tv industry proffesionals to come in and talk to us for free about how to move through the swings and sways of such an interesting industry was just astounding, was very proud of us. 🙂 The following few days will be frantic with myself, miguel and helena in the editing suites creating an edit of the seminar to show our peers.

Today’s seminar is about Social Media, hosted by the charismatic personality, Ned Dorman. The seminar was both very strong in content as well as its technical aspects of production. After talking to a few of the crew memebers, Miguel Camacho and I were allowed to come into the seminar room 45 minutes prior to the start of the presentation. We watched as the camera crew set up positions in the room. Their setup included 2 HD video cameras (XL70) and a DSLR camera (650D), the first video cam was placed directly stage right and up 3 rows, the second was at the very back in the centre. The DSLR was used to gather close ups and stills from all sorts of angles around the room. The seminar ran rather ‘rigidly’ in structure that is to say they addressed each interviewee separately, i.e. 20 mins with each guest then they would leave stage, this was perhaps the only thing in their seminar which i could have viewed in a critical manner. I believe a much more effective procedure could have been to have all three guests be on stage for the same amount of time answering similar questions in a ‘discussion’ type setup, it just feels a less awkward way to present the guests… that is solely my opinion though. The aforementioned camera setup would also work best in a setting where the guest speakers were interacting with eachother as opposed to the interviewee to interviewer setup. I will talk to Max and Jess in regards to this matter, only one more week to go :/

After attending our first group meeting today regarding the Seminar Series, I feel very confident that our group is going to excel in most if not all aspects of our TV Seminar in week 6. Our team leader/coordinator is Jess Junor, our first hurdle that we overcame today was allocating the various tasks and crew roles for our Seminar in week 6. Attached below is a screenshot of the excel spreadsheet that we linked to our google docs page. Personally, I have always enjoyed working with the technical aspects of film/tv production, such as lighting, audio, graphics and especially camera. My current goal is to work in the tv industry as a cinematographer/D.O.P. so naturally I presented my interests in pursuing Camera Operator as my main crew role for the seminar. Along with Helena Polley and Miguel Camacho I hope to create the perfect camera setup and hence the most efficient yet interesting way to document our guest speakers’ advice.