Pre-production once again began with the writers and producers in a circle, discussing the content of our show, now called, Midnight Snack. A lot of deliberation was involved, particularly with what the theme of our show was going to be. We were still deciding whether it was going to be a late-night show or a breakfast show (or both with late-night and breakfast themes combined). Ultimately, the producers chose a late-night show style, mainly because they felt more inspired by popular late-night shows such Jimmy Fallon, Colbert and John Oliver.

As a writer, I felt I did not have a lot of contribution mainly because one of the producers were adamant about a particular style of our show. I wasn’t too fussed on this because I was happy to write for any types of concept/genre/theme. However, I do feel that bigger roles such as the producer need to be more informed of their main responsibilities. Because it is such a huge responsibility to take on, they feel they have to take on the burden themselves when that is not the case. This is why other roles in the studio exist such as the Directing role and of course, the Writing role such as myself and several other talented writers!

Despite the few bumps on the road, I enjoyed getting to know the studio a little better and explore areas that I don’t necessarily need to know for this production – EVS, lighting and even being on camera! My lovely peers were able to help me out on getting to know the technical side of the studio :~) I’d say it’s really helpful to reiterate the information they were given to other people keen to learn (such as myself!).

Here’s a few photos to show what went down during Week 8:

A lot of strategy and deliberation on this whiteboard.

Mucking around with my co-writer and producer, Lizzie!

I can’t wait for our first tech rehearsal on Week 9! The upcoming weeks will truly show how we are able to apply a semester’s worth of learning, not to mention the most recent readings of Karin Van Es and Sorensen as well!

We began with the pitches in our class, particularly about Assignment 3. We reflected how we felt in our roles and used Google Slides to discuss and reflect on our performance with the assignment –

We also received good feedback from the panel but of course, some constructive criticism was given to us. We were aware of these criticisms and ensured ourselves and the panel that we would make sure to improve on our errors.

– AFTER THE PANEL, WE MOVED TO THE NEW STUDIOS – 

We had the safety briefing with one of the Studio Techs, Luke. I have been to several of these briefings and can almost memorise Luke’s punchlines. However, it is important to always be reminded of the safety hazards in any workplace, even in the most inconspicuous places of danger like the studio.

The producers, writers and directors gathered into a circle (including myself) and discussed the potential route our show was going to go to:

• Late-night TV shows
• A parody of the breakfast shows
• Skits like the ones from SNL
• Cooking segments (pre-recorded)
• Vox pops (pre-recorded)
• Interview
• And of course, the live performance from the band!

Everything was set in motion for our plans and ideas – in terms of communication, we had set up several group chats, a Facebook page and an official Facebook page for the public.

As a Livestream operator, I also had a tour in the control room of the studio. We played around for a bit in between the floor and the control room:

Overall, I really enjoyed this lengthier and more in-depth introduction to the studio. I got to see more aspects of the control room as I familiarised myself. I’m looking forward to the next pre-production session on Week 8!

On the day of the production, I, unfortunately, was running an HOUR late which is a disgrace, especially as a Floor Manager. So I felt that I did not start on the right note but eventually got the hang of it as soon as we began shooting. Let’s elaborate on that!

How do you think you went in your role? 

As Floor Manager, I had the preconceived notions and expectations of what my roles and responsibilities were. As a Floor Manager, you are in charge of keeping the talents and camera operators in check and basically the other roles that are on the floor with you. I would say that the Floor Manager is 3rd in charge, right after the Director’s Assistant. The Floor Manager is the person that relays the message from the control room to the floor and also in charge of keeping everyone conscious of the time management. Here is a visual of what I witnessed during the preparation of set, rehearsal and eventually the live show:

(Taken by me on the 12th of April) 

As you are able to see, the talents and the camera operators are all present in the set which means that I am able to lay out my duties as a Floor Manager to the other roles in the studio. These duties consist of:

• Ensuring the set is A-OKAY, no weird props hanging about but also potentially looking out for anything hazardous
• The other studio roles know what it is they have to do (getting the talents in the set on time, ensuring the setting up is done in an efficient yet safe manner)
• Keeping everyone in schedule – this can be done through hand signals and counting down to 10 seconds before going on live

As my own experience as a Floor Manager, I felt that I had to ask Ruth for advice on how I should communicate to the other studio roles. Ruth taught me the universal signal of time-checking. This is done through hand signals where one spins their hand in a circle, either slowly or swiftly, letting everyone be aware of the time remaining. For example, if there is a minute left, you would spin your hand slowly. Once it reaches to 30 seconds, you would start picking up the pace and move your hand faster.

I felt that I operated quite effectively as a Floor Manager because I follow the procedures that any experienced Floor Manager would. I let the talent know of my hand signals and what they meant and I relayed the messages that control room wanted the floor crew to know about. Some realisations I had about this role is that you have to be really clear and concise about relaying your message from the control room to the studio. There were definitely some confusions in the time management – for example, the DA/Director would tell me that there is a minute left until we shoot but then it gets delayed to another minute and so on. These delays are bound to happen and you have to let the crew know in the studio about these delays while remaining calm and stress-free.

Overall, it was an enjoyable position to be in and I have learnt a lot just from this one session in the studio. I definitely see myself doing this role in the future as I gain more experience over time.

What were the successes of the production/How did this lead to a successful production? 

I would say that the successes overall was the cooperation with everyone. We all managed to work together despite only preparing everything through the group chat. Some of my favourite aspects of our productions were the graphics:

(Screengrabbed on the 15th of April) 

The graphics suited really well to the aesthetics we wanted, which was a show that was 90s-themed. Everything in the 90s was bright and loud and the visual example from above proves how the graphics stuck to the brief.

Our ideas were also well-executed from the questions written by our wonderful writer, Lizzie. A mix of pop culture, film and music, it was relatable to most of the class members and was easy for our talents to digest and answer (they were part of the class, after all). Our host also did a wonderful job of catering to our guests and was clear and concise in the delivery of the questions. She was also quick to adapt to any changes that happened whether it was planned or unplanned.

The graphics and the content overall was what I considered the successes of our production, but most importantly, our teamwork is what made this production run smoothly with minimal stress. If one of us were to absent from the day of shooting, it would not have gone as well as it would have. Our communication between each other was spot on and avoided confusions as much as we could. I am thoroughly content with our work!

What needed improvement for next time? 

The essence of technology is nothing technological – it tells us about ourselves, about who we are and what we are. (Scanell, 2013)

I feel that our main point of improvement is technology and cueing. In order to get better at cueing, we need to familiarise ourselves with learning and using the technology in the studio. The quote above is from Week 5’s reading by Scanell. In relation to my group’s studio experience, we let ourselves be known through technology. Being unable to fully use the studio’s tool means that we are not able to reveal our true identity – who we are and what we are. Therefore, improvement in the use of technology ensures that cueing never gets delayed and we are able to show our full capacity as media makers.

In order for this to be improved, more practice and rehearsals are required so that we are able to utilise technology in the way that we want it to operate.

How did you observe the different roles interacting and collaborating?

1. Floor Manager to the rest of the crew on the floor
   As mentioned before, it is my responsibility as a Floor Manager to relay the message between the control room and studio. Therefore, I had to initiate several interactions and collaborations, mainly with the people on the floor. These roles were the Talents, the Camera Operators and the Producer (Alex was on the floor). My observation of these roles collaborating with each other is just the constant communication and time check with everyone, especially as a Floor Manager. This also included the reassurance of what our roles were supposed to do. We also wanted to make sure that not just the production crew were ready but also the audiences that were part of the show.
2. Floor Manager –> D.A. and Director
   My interaction and collaboration between these two roles was the constant confirmation of the time and also the use of technology in the studio as a whole (including the control room). As audio and graphics were used for our production, I had to make sure that the talent and camera operators were aware whenever an audio was put on for a question. It was prompted in the questions itself but for reassurance, I communicated with the Director whether it was heard in the studio.

Between myself and the other studio roles, this is how we communicated as a group – I would like to say that it was a successful interaction and collaboration which is why our show ran smoothly without any massive mishaps.

For Week 5 of “Ready, Camera One”, we discussed the role of Graphics behind the whole production team of a studio. These are the results of our group discussion:

Taken by me during Week 5’s class 

If you look closely, we discussed where the person in charge of Graphics would usually be located (in the Control Room) and what their roles and responsibilities consist of. Graphics would have to prepare the required Graphics for the show – this usually meant that they would have to make their own template via Photoshop, Lightroom or even from a quick online search.

Graphics’ interaction with the other roles of the studio would mainly be between the Director and Vision Mixer, whilst it also requires interactions with the Audio Director and EVS but not as heavy of an interaction in comparison to the Director or the Vision Mixer. In relation to the Vision Mixer, these two roles would usually have a discussion of when the graphics should go on and therefore, the person in charge of Graphics will need to know when to prepare the upcoming templates. As for the Director, he would usually give directions for the role of the Graphics, when and where they should place the graphics on the live screen and how long it should stay on. Finally, the role of EVS and Sound’s interaction are usually limited to the Graphics role – they would only be required to heavily interact if EVS or the Sound required graphics. Finally, it is the D.A.’s responsibility to kindly remind the Graphics person to get ready in preparation for the Director’s cue.

I mainly discussed the role of Graphics’ and its interaction between other roles in the control room, rather than the roles on the floor. For further information about the roles of Graphics and other floor roles, it is all written in the photo above!

The Pre-Production Stage 

Before we were all assigned to groups, the class was shown videos from the previous year in regards to Assignment 3. As we assembled into groups, we discussed the successes and errors that occurred in the video and they were the following:

• The characters were ‘built up’ well, such as the host
• The underlying racism – in one of the quiz shows, a joke about race was mentioned. Our aim as a group is to try and avoid this issue.
• Good sound effects but there were some issues with the audio
• It would be better to have more general questions for the quiz rather than specific ones – we all agreed to this in order to avoid long and awkward silences

As we were brainstorming, naturally, we expressed the roles we wanted to fulfil. For this assignment, I initially decided to take on the role of Props/Set and also the Host but I decided to swap with Ella to the role of the Floor Manager. As I have fulfilled multiple roles in and outside of the Ready, Camera One, I have never been a Floor Manager before, so it was exciting to see how I would operate along with the floor staff. My expectations as a Floor Manager would be double checking the setup of the set/props, ensuring the talents knew what they had to do and of course, relaying the message from the control room to the floor production. It wasn’t until the date of the production that I would realise that there is more to the role of a Floor Manager than I thought there would be. 

We all decided as a group that we would do a quiz show about the 90s to the early 2000s – it is because the majority of us could relate to the era’s pop culture and music, and of course the rest of the class too. We organised a group chat where we could freely discuss our ideas and which role we would take on. It was an easier way to communicate considering we only had this class once every week.

(Screengrabbed at 4:51 PM, 14/04) 

Overall, I’m feeling pretty confident about the week of the production. It should run smoothly according to our plans. I feel that I am also paired with an organised group of people and that we are all able to work interdependently in the upcoming production of our 90s-2000s show.

(Source)

Bring on the 90s baby!

This week, we were provided with two readings – one covering the ongoings of a live television show, whilst the other discusses the concept of liveness and control for a broadcast interview. Let’s break these two readings down in order to fully understand the intentions of the authors!

Reading #1: Doing it Live! (The MacDonell Reading) 

Macdonell breaks down the procedure of what it was like going into a live television show – she broke it down to twelve sections, explaining each and every step of how they accomplished to broadcast The Bill TV show live. Since it was a live television show (no, not a game show, not an interview but a SOAP OPERA), pre-production was heavily required in order for the production crew to successfully film it live. Therefore, planning began six months in advance and this was, therefore, considered as a long pre-production for a single-camera show with two episodes. I do believe this was necessary because it gave enough time for the producers to carefully pre-plan everything and layout the possibilities that occur whilst filming LIVE. MacDonell further discusses the techniques they have used in order to adapt to the live situation – for example, she found herself using more theatrical techniques. This meant that she had taken extensive notes during rehearsals and from the blocking of each scene. As for the actors and actresses, it became a one-hour play for them rather following the method of recording it non-sequentially and one at a time.

Skipping ahead to the final part of filming The Bill television show, MacDonell discusses the few setbacks involved such as the car scene – because it was not able to be flipped over, the Director, Camera Ops, Vision Mixers and Actor/Actresses had to quickly think on their feet and improvise. The message that I have gained from this reading is that no matter how much preparation is involved for live TV, there is always going to be that one tiny detail that changes the whole dynamic of the show but in order to counter that, the best you can do as a production crew is to accept that change and have a “the show must go on” mentality.

Reading #2: The Design and Scripting of ‘Unscripted Talk’. Liveness VS Control in a TV broadcast Interview (The Lundell Reading) 

In this reading, Lundell discusses the struggle between professional standards versus the need to attract audiences. This is made visible in the communicative choices that media professionals use in order to format, script and perform for a broadcast interview. There are two concepts that Lundell has introduced for us in the reading:

• Orientation to liveness in the sense that they desire to please the audience by engaging with them in a spontaneous, informal and unscripted manner.
• OR the choices are equally oriented to scripted, institutional control to meet demands of objectivity and balance

As my own personal opinion, it is important to have both of these aspects in order to achieve the perfect balance for live television. As it is proven for most situations, too much of one thing can be disastrous and leave unwanted results. Therefore, if these two elements were to be achieved, not only will the production team be successful in the creation of the show but also in the attempt of entertaining the audience.

In this day and age, it is important to be updated with the times, especially if it means changing the format of a live television show. Despite losing the conventionality of a live show, the elements of entertainment will oversee the other aspects. Despite it being a traditional or a spontaneous show, the liveness still remains to be the overarching component of a live show, no matter the type of technique media professionals aim to go for.