The LA Times article by Robert Lloyd ‘The Big Bang Theory’ is ending, but we shouldn’t let multi-cam sitcoms die. Here’s why’ is a deeper-dive into the comparisons between live, multi-cam sitcoms versus single-cam ones. Lloyd demonstrates that our perception of multi-camera media has faded to being dated, traditional, and more low-brow. Comparatively, the best of single-camera productions are viewed as “[miracles] of television”, and deemed high-brow and culturally significant. He argues that “single-camera comedy is more ‘realistic,’ which is to say, it is more like film than like theatre”, but that it misses a key aspect of multi-camera sitcoms: that it looks at “people, at close quarters, talking, talking, talking.” He goes on to say that “the fourth wall is whatever wall’s behind you. You become a witness, participant, family.”

The reason I highlight his particular viewpoint of the comparison is because I believe it’s an important distinction when choosing the medium for a show. While the premise of ours is a multi-camera production and by design of the assignment it should be, I think it’s important to consider what formats work best with what technique. Part of the reason I advocated to pitch The Improv Games was due to this idea and I’m glad the concept came up later in this reading. While it may not be a sitcom, I think the premise of a chaotic show where you can bounce between characters and really highlight actor performances, in particular, playing up to a crowd, is vital for multi-camera productions and is actively hindered by a show with a single camera. We were presented with an opportunity to film a show we never could otherwise, isn’t that worth a risk of trying? It’s not everyday you have a black box studio and 5 state-of-the-art cameras to experiment with. Particularly when the style is reducing in popularity, it’s experience that is vital to working on any live productions, and I was grateful for being given the opportunity to do it.

As for the argument of which is better? They have their pros and cons, and while the traditional filmmaker in me definitely misses the single-camera production techniques and ability to meddle and adjust at every whim, there is absolutely something to be said about the chaotic, fun, and exciting space of working in a live production, not knowing exactly what you’ll be airing that very same day.

References:

Lloyd, R. (2019) ‘The Big Bang Theory’ is ending, but we shouldn’t let multi-cam sitcoms die. Here’s why, The LA Times. Available at: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-big-bang-theory-multi-camera-sitcoms-20190505-story.html (Accessed: 08 May 2023).

I think the Washington Post article (and accompanying video) “Behind the scenes with Seth Meyers” (Izadi, 2018) was a great resource to get our head into a show format that constantly changes. I think as a crew we found ourselves worrying about the content turn-around, but also about how to quickly think on our feet and adapt. This article (and video) demonstrates there is no true formula to making that work, and it just relies on being savvy and quick-thinking to come up with a solution. I personally found watching the video something of a relief: as long as we found a solution to our problems that worked for us, they were adequate. In the article, segment writer for the show Sal Gentile summarises this idea really well: “You have to be less precious and just come up with a joke as quickly as you can.” I think that’s something I definitely struggle with individually; that perfectionism to try and do things as best as they can be, and not prioritising your time to just have everything done well. I was glad I saw the article before we got heavily into the production, because doing things that worked instead of being perfect definitely resulted in a more balanced product.

The other thing that the article demonstrated was the timeline for a show with daily turnaround times. It definitely helped to ease the idea that a show like ours can run on a week-to-week schedule and the chaos of ‘what am I going to be doing today?’ is part of the charm. This is also why I was less stressed about episode two going into it, as I knew that as long as we found solutions as mentioned earlier, the episode would take shape around them. This turned out to be true, though there is something to be said for extended preparation, as I do believe the first episode of The Improv Games probably came out better than the second one.

References:

Izadi, E. (2018) Behind the scenes with Seth Meyers, The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/style/wp/2018/05/29/feature/inside-the-writers-room-with-seth-meyers-how-to-make-late-night-tv-in-the-trump-era/ (Accessed: 01 May 2023).

The entire focus in the pre-production has been on episode one, and as a result, my focus has been entirely on directing. In the pre-production stage, I sometimes feel as if I am sitting on my hands a bit: everyone else is doing work and unless I over-step my responsibilities, I don’t have a whole lot to do prior to studio rehearsals and tech runs of the show. As the creator of the idea and the person who has to direct it, I did try and suggest a few things to the writers and have sat in on a few of their meetings, but ultimately I am trying to trust the process and allow them to do their roles to the fullest. This is, however, eating me up on the inside; giving away your idea, it being moulded into something else, then given back to you to direct, is a weird sensation. Perhaps I should have asked Ruth to see where I should stick my head in and where not to, but to be frank, I don’t think many people are considering the director’s opinion on things anyway unless I reminded them that I probably needed to know. I think the collaboration between others is great and I think it’s worth allowing people to explore their roles to the fullest extent, but the exchange of ideas is a bit haphazard and in my view misses some steps or people (not just myself, for that matter). I’m also aware that my hands are likely to be very full when it comes to the studio days, so I am not trying to overload either.

Other then that, I planned a “look” for the show about a stage within a stage, which allows for the two episodes to have a consistent aesthetic while we are constantly changing sets, and helped Jacob plan out how the run-sheet is likely to look, trying to balance the logistical elements of the show versus the core parts of it that make it engaging.

I was definitely curious to see what others had come up with for the pitches. When I saw the assignment prompt, I immediately had the idea for The Improv Games, more specifically, a show in the sort of light of Thank God You’re Here (2006), due to the nature of us not having to heavily script the show, creating something original, and would highlight the best bits of what we had filmed so far: improvised discussion. This was highlighted pretty well in our feedback, as we were told that the best bit about ours is it’s straightforward in terms of execution, and the quality of our talent would likely dictate largely how the show comes out. We were also given credit for our original spin on the idea, particularly the game Coco devised, ‘Concept Clash’, where two people have to figure out who the other was. The feedback from the whole class was great and spoke to pretty much all the reasons I chose the idea (straightforward but unique, builds upon previous assignment experience, etc), and I was super grateful that it was chosen by the class.

The other idea that most excited me was the post-apocalyptic talk show that Hamish’s group pitched. I thought that was a really clever spin on the talk show formula, and meant we would be making a more structured piece that allowed for improvisation but with some guiding rules. I honestly thought it was well-thought out and constructed, but perhaps lacked some ideas in the form of content. The other pitch that most caught my attention was the meta-comedy pitch from Jamie’s group, however it appeared they had considered the gimmick of the meta-comedy a lot more than the content itself that the gimmick would work around. It would also require a lot of pre-production work, which is probably why people ended up moving away from the idea when voting. With a lot more time and a crew performing their ideal roles, I think both ideas could be super fun and engaging to work on.

References:

Cilauro, S. et al. (2006) Thank God You’re Here. Melbourne, Victoria: Network 10. 

My expectations for the assignment were that good pre-planning would allow a fairly straightforward production for these game shows.

That wasn’t strictly true, nor was it totally false.

I think my group’s preparation meant we knew what we wanted on screen and when we wanted it. Our problem was a lack of rehearsal that meant how each component segued into the next was, at best, sketchy.

We weren’t given a lot of rehearsal time, as we were the third group. This proved to be an immense challenge as the first group ran through several rehearsal runs, where we were only able to have a singular one.

Speaking of the first group, as a camera operator in that show, listening into a lot of the control room communications, the show appeared very hectic and unprepared. I am not sure if that was due to lack of experience or lack of planning, but it made me anxious listening to it, and I wanted to try my best to communicate clearly and prevent that for the group that I was directing.

When it came around to being our go, with limited time and people in roles they weren’t familiar with, I wanted to try and get everyone on the same page about my direction and what was going to occur, which I believe I did quite a good job of. However, what I think I could have improved significantly was organising the rehearsal in a manner where everyone got to test their transitions and abilities. I think we did well considering the time we had, and the lack of a proper rehearsal, but I definitely could have done better. Also, maybe streamline the process between the director and the director’s assistant, because I think Matt and I probably could have worked a bit closer in tandem with my ideas and the execution of them, because while we had good communication, him being a bit more privy to my specific vision of the show may have allowed some easier communication workflows.

My primary takeaway from this assignment was that it’s important that all roles get to have a basic run-through of their components, and practice segues between segments so transitions are seamless and un-jarring. A secondary takeaway was that pre-planning reduces significant amounts of prior stresses in the early stages of production, but mid-shoot still requires a few practice runs of its own.

Ben Lamb discusses within his article on narrative form and British TV the structure of television conventions and how they’ve changed over the decades. His points on mise-en-scene I found quite interesting, as some aspects of it have held with time while others now definitely show their age. Talking about character interaction around a scene’s set, referring to a sitcom from the 1950’s, Lamb states characters in the front room “do not interact or interfere with the immaculately placed objects that populate spaces”, which still applies in a lot of more formulaic sitcoms of this era, but otherwise has slowly been transformed into making the sets work for the action playing around it, with more interaction and subtle details, such as referenced in class with sequel series That ‘90s Show (Mancuso, 2023) where details of the show were updated from its predecessor, but maintained important details and continuity that allowed the cast to engage with the environment that felt familiar to past viewers, without feeling dated.

I thought this was quite a cool way of doing set design, particularly for a show that is set in an era that has passed us, with our connotations not only of that decade, but also its era’s shows. It definitely helped inform me when it came to doing our set design for our show, because I wanted to gain some level of inspiration from previous shows of a similar ilk, without actually copying them, but providing a feel that is similar with the genre and shows within the “high-school quiz show” subgenre. I think I achieved that to some extent, but I probably could in future use shows like That ‘90s show as an example of how to date things to their era or place, without them feeling dated in the technical sense, just aesthetically.

References:

Lamb, B. (2014) Narrative Form and the British Television Studio 1955–1963, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 34:3, 357-368, DOI: 10.1080/01439685.2014.937181
Mancuso, G. (2023, January 19). That ’90s Show. Netflix.

Something that stuck out to me a lot when watching the video on Jeopardy! in week six was that the process of these productions can be streamlined to almost a point of automation. The director’s assistant knew what the director wanted often before they vocalised it. While on the one hand, doing over eight-thousand episodes would probably make one fairly proficient at that process and would be easier to learn another person’s style and ways of doing things, I also think it demonstrated that proficiency in the form of repetitive reiterations of a program is probably one of the best ways for things to be streamlined, and the more you communicate with your crew the more likely you are to be able to prepare for something going wrong because you’ll have a better understanding of usual go-to’s, or also general conventions of that genre of show or even specifically of the show itself, like what is mentioned in the week six reading by Su Holmes, who discusses game show formulas and how moving away from them is often “precisely it’s negotiation of difference” (Holmes, 2008) between shows.

Holmes also talks about the distinction between game shows and quiz shows, and the differences between them, and whether their classification should be lumped into the same category or not. Across the three pieces we made for assignment two, one was a game show and two were quiz shows. I hadn’t really considered this classification before now, as game shows maybe biggest property of difference in my viewing experience was whether they were a serious game show (i.e. people won something of importance or value), verse a entertainment game show, which I view as the types of programs where the participation is pretty much the award in itself, and doesn’t actually get you anything (and there is less cultural significance for “winning” it). I guess if I had a takeaway from that reading and my experiences afterwards, it would just be that I have a larger appreciation for the differences between these formats and how they work, as functionally they operate in a fairly different manner behind the scenes, comparative to a quiz show, which has different formulas and conventions to make them engaging, such as more refined rules, EVS clips and history behind them.

References:

Holmes, S 2008, The Quiz Show, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [24 April 2023].

I am actually not sure what my expectations were going into the first assignment. I guess I didn’t feel ready for some of the roles, but other ones I perhaps did. I did the host role (which I wasn’t expecting to do initially), as everyone else had a strong preference and I wanted to save being director for a different assignment. I suppose I definitely did consider it an exciting challenge for a couple of reasons, primarily that I enjoy being in front of the camera to a similar level I enjoy being behind it, and in the long-term, being able to do both in a manner in which I have a decent amount of creative control would probably be ideal, so I found this as a good starting point to dip my toe into that aspect of things.

We tried to achieve something similar to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014-), and me being host probably helped with that. We wanted to create a satire piece which is obviously comedic but genuinely focuses on a topic and highlighting an issue. In that respect, I think we achieved what we tried to do quite well. Our primary challenges were getting the issue across in a short-form segment, as opposed to having a long time to focus on it like they do in that show. Technically, we actually didn’t face many. Watching it back, Darcy did a remarkable job as vision switcher and Coco did also as director. It definitely felt more polished than I was expecting.

Speaking of our group, we had a great bond and I think we did really well in collaboration. We created a document (see a screenshot from it below) that ran through the idea, the type of questions we wanted to cover, and a rough draft. We all were good at building off each other’s ideas and honestly, it was one of the few group assignments I haven’t hated.

References:
(2014) Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. New York, New York: HBO.

I really enjoyed our class discussion on roles within a studio environment. I think previously I had probably hadn’t considered why there were so many roles in a large-scale production, and particularly studio environments. For example, previously, roles such as floor manager I definitely did not have an appreciation for what their role actually entailed, and how it connected the set to the control room.

In doing some of the tasks ourselves, I realised where some of these knowledge gaps lay, and performing those roles gave me a larger insight to the communication required. When we spoke about these roles in class, such as in the video we were shown of the half-time show at the Super Bowl, seeing the assistant director giving constant direction with clear communication, followed by our exercises of it on the Friday, I definitely began to consider the roles that needed consistent communication, and the roles that work closely in tandem. 

I think the obvious way to apply this to my own media making is to gain more experience in these roles. I’ve definitely tried to get as much variety in roles as possible to gain an appreciation for as many of the roles as I can. I am particularly looking forward to directing in this environment properly, as even though I have done that before, it will be a new experience for me to be able to do it in an environment where you may not be able to control every waking movement, but you can make your content more compelling by some of the choices you make, and how you break the formula of what has been done before you. With that being said, it’s important I learn the ins and outs of the roles and their rules, so I can be considered and deliberate in my choices for when I choose to deviate and break them.

The main reason that I joined this studio was to focus on a shortcoming of mine within the media sphere: how to operate in a multi-cam, studio environment. Previously all my work had been single camera shoots and I wanted a better understanding of traditional (and particularly broadcast) media functions. On top of that, I wanted to get a better understanding of some roles I had less experience in, and definitely in more of a fashion that revolved around fast turnarounds.

Immediately I began to realise while I was probably in the right ballpark in terms of expectations, the scale of some of these operations I started to achieve a greater appreciation for. We were shown a video of the Super Bowl half-time show from the perspective of the control room which I found quite mesmerising. I don’t think I had previously considered just how many moving parts were required to make a coherent and engaging visual sequence previously, and I found myself in my regular life afterwards having a totally new appreciation for broadcast television and tried to recognise how they were achieving it.

As for the studio, I enjoyed the round robin exercises that allowed us to get a feel for the roles in a unique environment. It definitely allowed me time to explore and experiment with what I was doing and I felt comfortable doing so, particularly in roles I had less experience in such as graphics. As a bit of an aside, I enjoyed being in front of the camera again also, as it had been a while since I got to be and performing is a big part of my artistic background, and even though I most definitely do not want to do it all the time (I enjoy the creative process behind the camera equally so), I definitely enjoy doing it where the opportunity arises.