In last semester’s media showcase, Trista and I walked into Studio A to watch our friend’s final work. We were told that ‘News is a joke’ would need the whole class to work together on one program. It sounded interesting and was very different from other ‘filming’ studios, so we chose it as our first preference. During the twelve weeks, I really enjoyed the process of creating a television show and learned a lot of skills.

Before doing this studio, I seldom watch comedy news show because I don’t know a lot about western politics. As I mentioned in previous posts, satire news is a new thing to me because my home country doesn’t have this kind of programs. Pitching a localised comedy news idea was a small challenge, but I finally came up with an interesting one. I was so happy that my idea was picked in the first pitch so I had the chance to further explore with my group members. I would have never thought a comedy news show would need so much effort on finding relevant information. Before making fun of it, we need to get a comprehensive understanding of our topic. Now I really respect John Oliver, Jon Stewart and their teams that they work so hard to produce those great segments. From week 3, we began the group collaboration. I created a google doc for four of us to put all the links in so we can read others’ researches. Finding information is not only viewing facts but also forming our own point of view. Group work makes the task much easier that we discussed a lot in the group chat to improve my initial idea and successfully wrote the proposal to present to the class.

This studio also increases my interests in watching comedy news show. Usually, the host talks quite fast and uses lots of slangs so it is a bit difficult to understand. To learn from those segments, I needed to watch with subtitles for several times. It was interesting to watch the happening issue and listen to hosts’ opinions. Watching comedy news is a good way to know deeply about western culture and to train the critical thinking skill.

In the shooting process, I found communicating with a large group was quite difficult. For example, when someone asked a question in our group chat, others may not reply on time. Inefficient communication could not only slowed down our schedule bit also lead to misunderstanding. Further more, It is important that everyone should come to the rehearsal to contribute their effort. When we recorded segment three, our AD did’t come so Anhar took the place to cue the graphic. However, she was not familiar with the Bendigo script that we took longer time to solve the graphic problem.

There are also some things I could do better next time. I still need to improve more professional skills on graphic making. Besides, I did’t make full use of this chance to broaden my horizon. I could have talk to my classmates who take charge of other positions, such as sound effect and editing, to see how they do their work. In all, this studio offers an unique opportunity to experience the creation of television show.