There was more for me to do during production than there was pre-production, due to the fact the camera will naturally get more involved while shooting the live they not being live. I worked with the audience member into telling them that we were going to film him, and where we needed him. Because everyone else on camera wasn’t present or had little experience on being behind the camera, I helped them in framing and adjusting their shots a bit. During our rehearsal run, a couple of things went wrong, such as myself not getting a specific shot in time, because I wasn’t 100% sure with the script, which is a bad or my part not learning the script enough, but it was also a position thing. After our rehearsal run, I switched my camera position with another camera position, because we needed more light on the audience member. I worked with the audience member practising my shot position, with him standing and him sitting and determined him sitting had better lighting than him standing. During the final production, I shot a Medium Close-Up of one of the host, A Close-Up of the Audience member, and surprisingly a Long Shot of the panel. Because I was never told anything about shooting a Long Shot, I was not prepared, but I still managed to get a the shot off. During the production, I also had to adjust my shot of the host while being live, so I had to adjust it slowly and lightly enough to follow the host, as he moved a bit during a segment, so that was a challenge.

(My Camera Shots)

Compared to the last production, we were much more prepared this time around, as we thoroughly discussed the premise the shots the show. I already knew what kind of shot the director wanted and was in position for each one. The director didn’t give me much direction on what shot she wanted, because she was already happy with the type of shot I was giving her. I felt a sense of self accomplishment after doing the long shot, because I could hear the Director say liking the shot.

After reviewing the whole segment over again, the final turned out well in terms of shot selection and position. But when comparing to other talk shows I’ve done before like Syn Media 1700, I can clearly tell this is a student production, compared to a more professional broadcast. The use of graphics were really in our faces and big, compared to proper productions. It felt like it was just floating in mid air. The lighting was dark, I wish we had more options to play with the lighting. Overall I think this production went better than our last production. We prepared a lot more and discussed a lot more of what we were going to do. And being on Camera, I got to do a lot more physically, and adjust shots, which I liked doing.

For our group, we all discussed we were going to do a “Q and A” type of show. And the theme we wanted to put out was the topic of memes, as it is a popular and modern thing to talk about. We divided our roles according to what we haven’t done before, so we all did something else. I went from being Director in the last production to the Camera in this production. As we decided our goal and ideas, we went on with preparations. Being the only person who was assigned to camera at the time, I worked with the producer and writer to get an idea of what vision they wanted at the time. Because we wanted to have an audience member participate, we needed one camera to move from the normal static shot of one of the hosts to audience back to the host. I volunteered to take the role, being the only one there with an idea what what the producer wanted and also having experience on camera before. During pre-production, I also helped with the producer in deciding the layout of the set and suggesting where the audience member is going to be, to get the best kind of shot from. I also had my say it what memes we should be using and in the end the team went with my idea for the final name of the Q and A show we were doing, which was “Dank Q & A”.

There’s a lot that goes on to “scripted” live productions. In the reading “Doing it Live” by Joanna Mitchell, Joanna tell us how much effort is put into the pre-produciton and preparation for filming a scripted live drama. The Bill, is usually filmed on single camera, but for special occasions, such as anniversaries, they decided to film it live and broadcast it live. Now just because it was broadcast live, it does not mean everything was improv. In fact, she states it takes a much more preparation than the usual. Instead of 2-3 weeks to prepare an episode, they would have to use 6 weeks to prepare the episodes ready to go live. Even though it is live, it is scripted and ready to go when it goes to air. They did many rehearsal runs in preparation, including one just in the morning, before the actual episode was going to be aired live. Even though Joanna, state that the production was not perfect, it was the fact that the imperfections that added to the liveliness and that the team felt a huge sense of accomplishment by the end of it. Because they pushed a live drama to success.