This this the last time for me to work with the crew!! Kind of sad but still excited. This time I was assigned to be the switcher first and then the lighting designer. Switching is now like a piece of cake for me haha and I don’t think anyone else does it better than me (except Jenny).
Lighting design is something I’ve never tried before in a TV studio. So basically, there’re 8 light boxes hanging from the ceiling and they can be adjusted in direction and intensity. The positions are pretty much set for the talk show every time so I don’t really need to worry. But there’s a couple of changes that you have to make every time before an episode starts because the guest and host might sit differently or there might be two guests sometimes. So you have to make sure everyone’s face is evenly lit and the lighting is not too dim or too strong. For the second episode of the night, the lighting seems to be not one point for no reason. The host’s face looks so dark and shadowy and the lighting on the guest is dim as well. So there’s this guy (I don’t even know his name haha) who usually does the lighting, teaches me how to use the keys on the boards to control the intensity of the light boxes. It was straightforward, basically each key controls one light box and if the key goes up it increases the intensity and if it goes down it decreases the intensity. For the standard lighting for a talk show, the lighting casted on the host and the guest’s faces should be the strongest of all. The lighting casted on the side of their faces should come second in intensity and the lighting casted on the back of them come last. The lighting gut put all the keys down to the bottom and asked me to give it a go. I actually freaked out when he did that because it’s only 3 mins to the next recording. But I fixed everything in time by adjusting those keys back and forth. The guest was wearing a white blouse so it means that there should be less lighting casted on her body so I decreased the intensity of that light box and everything looked great. It was pretty successful for someone who does it for the first time!
I’m so glad that I acquired new skills this time because that’s what I signed up for RMITV for. And I thought this might help with my making of PB3 because I’ve already seen how an interview-directed talk show was made. I might bring what I’ve learned to practice later.