Group Practice – Legal Highs

In week 6, our two groups both finished the recording of class segments successfully. It was the first time I went into Tv studio and operated that huge camera. I’m very proud of our final work, but also know we can still make a lot of improvements. 

My most favourite part of our work is the street interview, which is totally unset but enhances the comedic atmosphere. Our topic is about the use of drug and legislation, so we think it is a good idea to hear from people. After the week 5 rehearsal, we walked around library and building 80 to interview passersby from different ages for two questions:

  • Do you support the legalisation of marijuana?
  • Do you or your friends have any funny experiences of drugs?

This short interview shows two important features of comedy news: the truthfulness and the increasing political participation. Two daily show street interviewees once said they were not afraid to be filmed because they were speaking truth to power. It is true that street interview usually can not be set, and people just naturally speak out their first thoughts. Comedy news hosts are free than journalists, and street interviewees are even freer so they can come up with crazy words to surprise the audiences. It works in the similar way with daily show to make politics approachable and understandable. Also, street interview directly involves people in commenting the happening issues. This is a chance for interviewees to express their ideas, and a chance for audiences to learn things they may never know. These answers are not only hilarious but also thought-provoking.

As the camera operator, I think our group can arrange more interactions between the host and two cameras. For this segment, me and Niki achieved the right position and timing, but most time we only used the main camera to film from the front which may be a bit boring. I learn that camera operators should also help the writer to view our script from different perspectives and also adjust during the rehearsal. This is a really interesting experience to communicate and cooperate with the director through the mic, that I need to pay attention to both the host and instructions from control room. Producing comedy news is a complicated work that requires every group member’s efforts, and I think we can do better in the final shooting by learning from this practice.