This week’s session was taping day. Everything that we had been working on for the last three weeks of pre production planning was being put into action. Personally, I was ready to get this done with. After last week’s rehearsal, I knew what I was meant to be doing in terms of how to angle the camera for my segment.
We started out in Studio A and we had a group meeting, going over the schedule for today’s taping. Once that was over, we instantly started setting up the set for the shoot. Good thing we spent the rehearsal figuring out the order in which the backdrop was meant to be ordered in for the anchors desk.
For lighting, today’s session was the first time I properly got my hands on it. Even though Claire had more time playing around with the lighting board than I did, she mentioned that she had to leave before we got to tape the entire show so I spent my time watching what she was doing just so I would know what to do later when she was not around. We were lucky to have one of the techs to show us a way to get to have a set combination of lights to be played to open the show. Honestly if the tech did not show up, I would have been stressing out, trying to figure out which light switches to hit.
After over an hour of setting up, we were finally able to begin a final run-through of the entire show before the actual taping. I spent most of my time, sitting at the lighting board with Claire when it was not my segment to be camera operating. We knew it was going to be a long session today so luckily, Ruth ordered some food to keep us going. It’s good that we had the rehearsal before the final taping because there were some bumps here and there, mostly from whoever was in charge of graphics. There were some graphics that were delayed with what was being said by like a second, which was noticeable and did not look good.
After spending 4 hours prepping, rehearsing and having a break, it was finally time to tape Early Afternoon. Claire had left so I was in charge of lighting for the opening segment. We did two takes of each segment, to compare which one was better and use it when putting it together. The tapings went smoothly and we were all thrilled that our hard work had paid off. The only thing we did not shoot on the day was the weather report but that was to be done in Studio C because it was just the one short segment.
