Study Break Practice Run:
Study Break Proper Run:
Week 1:
This week was our introductory week; getting to know the course and what we’re doing in it, as well as becoming familiar with both each other as well as the equipment and concepts that we’re going to be using for the rest of the semester. I thought that our practical (which consisted of messing around with the cameras and eventually filming a small news article) was really useful in terms of getting a feel of the studio space and how each part of the crew worked together. In the exercise I signed up to be a camera operator and an actor; both roles that I was familiar with and had a base knowledge of. I did this because I wanted to start off slow – begin with things that you know and use that knowledge to get a good idea of working in a multi-cam studio before working on the more unknown roles.
Even though I knew the basics of camera operation, using a studio camera was a whole new experience. The different dials for zooming in and focusing, the whole method of moving the huge thing around, as well as the in-built lines to the control room really gave off a sense of professionality – one that I’d never experienced before. The same thing could be said for acting in front of the camera; using lapel mics and reading off an auto-promoter was a far cry from the more amateur filmmaking I had done in the past.
I did wish that I had a chance to be in the control room, both because I’ve never been in there, and would love to figure out how all of those roles work, but also because I like the role of editing more than almost any other in filmmaking, and I feel vision switcher would cater to that. But in the end I feel that working the camera and acting at the start did give me a good idea of how the studio space works, and gives me the ability to move onto the more multicam specific roles next week.
I think all of these different roles are going to help me achieve my main goal for this class; to learn how to work in a multicam space, mainly camera and control room wise, which I plan to do by trying out as many different roles as possible, eventually finding the ones that I like and running with them.
Week 2:
A part of the class discussion this week really stuck out to me, particularly the section about livestreaming possibly becoming the new ‘prime time’ for television. Realising that one of the main draws for ‘prime time’ television was the fact that it would consist of shows and programs that the audiences liked the most, but could only watch it at certain times, really put into perspective how much the TV landscape has changed over the last few decades for me. Now, when audiences want to watch a show, they can just pull it up on a streaming site, or even DVDs or Blurays if they prefer, instead of having to wait for a particular time and hope that they can catch the show, if their channels even broadcast it. It dawned on me that I and a lot of other people probably wouldn’t be fans of- or even have seen, many of our favourite shows if streaming sites hadn’t come along, and if we still relied on prime time to watch shows when we wanted to. Tentpole TV shows had to be produced for prime time, probably leading to more episodic shows as families couldn’t always necessarily catch a broadcast, which is something I had never considered before.
So when Viv brought up the idea that livestreaming captured the essence and was becoming a sort of ‘modern prime time’ I was really intrigued by it. An audience member can only get the full experience of watching a livestream; talking and interacting with the streamer or broadcaster, if they tune in while that person is live. Watching it later somewhat devalues the core experience of watching one. So in that sense, the audience has to tune in at certain times to fully experience the livestream, in the same way that audiences had to tune in at certain times to watch shows on ‘prime time’. It really showed me just how much the media landscape had changed, and how, while that aspect of prime time may be gone from the production of TV shows, it still lives on on the internet.
Week 3:
This week we filmed our first assignment; a short interview between a host and two students about what they thought about going back to uni. We had a few goals; besides the normal ones like clean cutting, sticking (relatively) to the script, and staying on time, we had ones that we would try to get done, but wouldn’t be disappointed if they didn’t work out. These included fading in from different angles towards the host, as well as playing an intro and outro track. I was designated vision switcher, so I was in charge of making sure that the first one was done, which took a little experimentation, but I think it worked out pretty well in the final cut. I hadn’t expected the job to be so stressful; finding a balance between making sure I was following Jack’s (the director’s) orders while cutting shots myself if I felt that the focus needed to be on another shot was hard. But once we got to the proper thing, I felt that I was able to cut and prepare the next shots when Jack wanted me to, while also cutting a shot myself if I thought he had missed the call. I also pulled of the fading in from multiple shots at the beginning and end pretty well, which I think added to the overall piece and ticked off one of our goals for the project.
The music we had prepared did manage to work on the practice run, but didn’t end up working on the final product. I think that it was because it was played too early in the final cut; you can hear elements of the music at the very start of the introduction, as well as everyone being too distracted to que up the audio to play at the end. I’m not terribly disappointed that we couldn’t get the music to play in the end, since we all knew that it was a long shot, but the fact that it worked really well on the practice run but not the final piece is a little infuriating, to say the least.
On all other fronts, I think that our group did really well. We kept time well, made sure that graphics and the autocue were all running smoothly, as well as making sure that all the shots looked great and that the general script was stuck to well, so in every sense except the music, and the props which we forgot to bring out, I think that the group project went really well.
I do think that we would have aced the thing if we had one more time to run through and sort out all the other kinks in production, but that was a luxury we didn’t have, and one that we probably wouldn’t get if we were doing it for real.